Lesson 5 of 5
The Basis skills a customer still needs
9 min
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A common mistake when signing RISE is to assume the Basis team can be disbanded. The tasks change, but many remain, and some become more important. Contoso's platform team after go-live is smaller than its ECC Basis team, but it is not empty, and its people need different skills: less operating system and database administration, more service management, release coordination, security, integration and evidence.
From R&R to roles
| Capability | Typical R&R basis | Contoso role |
|---|---|---|
| Service management | Service requests are created and submitted by the customer; incident resolution is confirmed by the customer | Sam, as RISE service owner |
| Release coordination | Version upgrade planning and coordination is a Packaged Service; testing and acceptance are excluded | Release manager, with Priya for regression |
| Security | User administration is a Packaged Service; SSO design and security concept are excluded tasks | Security lead |
| Monitoring | Job and interface monitoring are Packaged Services or customer; SAP Cloud ALM included with RISE | Operations analyst |
| Disaster recovery procedures | Customer-side DR procedures are excluded tasks | Sam, with interface owners |
Mapping residual work to roles. The R&R explains why each role exists.
Some technical depth must stay. When CMP is slow, SAP ECS will check the infrastructure and database, but the R&R limits SAP's troubleshooting to technical issues and leaves application problems to the customer. Someone at Contoso must still read a dump in ST22, analyze a lock in SM12, or trace an expensive custom report, and then decide whether the problem is SAP's, the partner's or Kenji's. Without that skill, every slowdown becomes an escalation ping-pong.
| Skill | ECC (self-managed) | RISE |
|---|---|---|
| OS and hardware administration | Core | Not needed for managed servers |
| Database administration | Core | Mostly SAP; customer reads performance data |
| Contract and service management | Minor | Core |
| Application-level troubleshooting | Core | Core |
| Release coordination and regression | Core | Core, with SAP-driven release plans |
| Monitoring design | Solution Manager | SAP Cloud ALM |
Plan the skill shift as deliberately as the system move. Contoso's former database administrator became the operations analyst and learned SAP Cloud ALM monitoring; one Basis administrator moved into release management; and Sam spent the first months reading the R&R line by line with SAP's Client Delivery Manager. Each person had a short learning plan with a date, and Grace tracked it like any other project deliverable. People who lose their old tasks without a new role tend to leave, and they take the landscape knowledge with them.
What would you do?
After go-live, Contoso's CFO proposes cutting Sam's team to one person, because 'SAP runs the system now'. Grace asks Sam for a short argument. Which is the strongest?
- RISE removes OS and most database work, not the platform team.
- Residual capabilities: service management, release coordination, security, monitoring, application-level troubleshooting, DR procedures.
- Each residual role traces back to customer, Packaged Services or excluded tasks in the R&R.
- Run regular service reviews with SAP ECS and keep the responsibility matrix current.
Check your understanding · not graded
Lesson check
1. Which skill becomes more important for a customer's platform team under RISE?
2. Under the R&R, which problems does SAP's technical troubleshooting not cover?
3. How does the R&R classify the design of single sign-on for systems in the cloud landscape?
4. What is the strongest basis for sizing the residual platform team?