- STP Consulting, Inc.

45
TIPS
for the Busy
+
SAP MANAGER
by Synod Phahla
QUICK REFERENCE
45
TIPS
for the Busy
+
SAP MANAGER
by Synod Phahla
INTRODUCTiON
You probably need this booklet if you are busy with
management and have had few reasons to recently
touch the SAP screen. This is true even if you are an
SAP manager who was once an ABAP developer or
a Configurator.
It is important to stay current with the latest SAP
trends and technologies. This booklet helps you do
that. Imagine getting a Friday afternoon call from
the helpdesk that a batch program failed in production and your helpdesk or operators cannot reach
your on-call developer or configurator. You have
to diagnose the problem yourself. One tip from
this booklet could help solve or identify where the
problem is. That alone would give you a worry-free
weekend and the satisfaction of realizing you are
the person with vital solutions. It’s the small detail
you know that can easily be quick wins for that
moment. That’s what these tips are about.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Synod Phahla is an SAP consultant. He is Founder
and CEO of STP Consulting, Inc. His SAP R/3 experience since the mid-1990’s includes working on
more than 20 projects. These range from mini SAP
projects taking 3 months, to full implementation
and upgrades of 6 months to 2 years. Synod has
worked for companies like Unilever, Accenture,
and BrightStar. STP Consulting, Inc., founded in
1997, helps companies by providing high quality,
experienced SAP consultants. Some of the clients
that STP Consulting has served are Allergan, 3Com,
Abbott Vascular, Merisel, Pacific Gas & Electric,
Respironics, and MCR Safety. STP Consulting, Inc. is
developing a new SAP tool called MYSNAPSHOTS.
NEW TECHNOLOGiES aND SAP TRENDS
1
Smartforms. Use smartforms as the standard for developing output documents like
invoices, delivery notes, and customer order
confirmation. They have not yet completely
replaced sapscript (layout set). Smartforms
are powerful enough to create a web form and
easier to use for development. While this is a
good tool for your developers to use, the value
of converting all sapscript to smartforms versus
the benefits might not be quickly realized.
2
Adobe Forms. Build electronic PDF forms
that use enterprise data like HR info (from
SAP) and require electronic signature. Adobe
forms came from SAP and Adobe. This allows
users to work with interactive forms that can
reach users without SAP access. It is ideal for
complex government forms. You no longer have
to print and enter data from your enterprise
system. SAP Netweaver ERP 2005 has 900 print
forms and 60 interactive forms available.
3
Document Management System (DMS).
Store all documents relating to master data
in your SAP system in a DMS. You can revise
and re-link new documents very easily, allowing
everyone in your organization to print accurate
information each time.
Examples:
You sell hazardous material requiring a
material data sheet accompanying the sale
to warn the user. This document can be
stored in SAP and linked to that material.
For more information about this tool, our other
services, and bulk and customized purchases of this
booklet, please use the most convenient contact
method below.
STP Consulting, Inc.
27475 Ynez Road, #378, Temecula, CA 92591
1-866-787-2661 (Pacific time zone)
[email protected]
[email protected]
www.stpconsulting.com
© 2008, Synod Phahla
Your team needs instructions to follow when
receiving material from a vendor. These can
be printed on the goods receipt.
4
VIRSA. Use this security and compliance
solution to reduce costs associated with
Sarbanes Oxley regulatory act (SOX). VIRSA
allows companies to have adequate and simplified internal controls in place for segregation
of duties. This is particularly important if your
organization is a public company, spending an
alarming amount for compliance.
5
Supply Chain Management (SCM) and
Advanced Planning Optimizer (APO)
Modules. Consider Supply Chain Management
toward the top of your future projects list. SCM
and APO modules are becoming increasingly
important. Many businesses want to collaborate
with vendors to ensure product demands meet
suppliers’ on-time delivery ability. Generating
letters of credit can be a lengthy process if you
have suppliers across national borders. An efficient process saves time and money.
6
ECC6.0 Upgrade. Schedule this project soon.
Early adopters and those implementing SAP
for the first time are already working on this
version. The upgrade makes running applications outside SAP seamless with ABAP and Java
applications now sitting on one platform. A
tighter integration reduces costs of supporting
interfaces and enables you to link SAP to those
non-SAP applications you previously could not.
SAP enterprise support ends December 2008.
7
SAP R/3 Enterprise Upgrade. Plan your
upgrade, knowing that the extended maintenance starts from April 1, 2009 until the end
of March 2012. The first 12 months includes an
additional fee of 2% on top of the mainstream
maintenance fee of 17%. The next 24 months
brings an additional fee of 4%.
to the Web by allowing your customers to enter
contact data directly via the Internet. SAP has
encoded the Unicode standard in SAP ERP
(ECC5.0 and ECC6.0).
10
DUET. Integrate Microsoft and SAP applications with DUET if most of your forms
applications are better developed using Microsoft and must still interface with SAP. DUET also
works for integrating Excel based solutions with
SAP.
11
SAP Inbox. Use the SAP inbox to send
messages to one person or an entire distribution list. Messages can be a link executing a
transaction or attaching a DMS document to
review and approve. The SAP inbox can also be
used to route messages and approvals if you
have workflow processes.
12
RFID. Discover RFID as a better solution
than bar coding in tracking your product. It
leaves borders and tells where it ends up. One
of the companies already engaged in an RFID
project is McKesson. They presented at SAPPIRE
2007, an SAP AG sponsored annual conference
where decision makers from businesses large
and small, from more than 25 industries worldwide, came together to discover how to take
advantage of the right IT solutions to run their
business at the speed of change.
NAMInG COnVEnTIOnS In SAP
8
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9
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SAP R/3 4.6C Upgrade. Work with the
schedule of extended maintenance from
January 1, 2007 until the end of December 2009.
There is an additional fee of 2% on top of the
mainstream maintenance fee of 17% during 2007.
This goes to an addition 4% fee in 2008 and 2009.
Unicode Conversion. Support multiple local
language characters if you are managing
global master data or if you open your system
Table Descriptions. Add a “T” at the end
of the table name if you do table descriptions 90% of the time. Example: T005 country
table would have it’s descriptions (or country full
names) in the table T005T.
Custom Names. Use Y* and Z* in transaction SE38 to find the custom programs.
SAP standard reports usually start with R. Most
Customer objects start with Y* or Z*. Customers
use Z in most projects. This also applies to other
objects throughout the SAP e.g. tables.
GENERaL TipS
COMMONLY USED TOOLS/AppLiCaTiONS
USED BY CUSTOMERS WHO OWN SAP
15
Remedy. Get this helpdesk system to
control change requests. SAP is developing
a Solution Manager to handle change requests.
19
Reporting Options Available in SAP. Check
the Standard Reports before creating a
custom report. Then develop a report using
custom tools such as: Query, Report Writer, and
Flexible Analysis (LIS). Create a custom report
using ABAP if no report meets your needs and
you cannot get the users to be flexible.
20
IXOS – Explore this document management and archiving product. It is used for
archiving output e.g. customer invoices.
Standard SAP Reports. Look in Information
Systems->General Reports for Standard
Reports. You may also find Standard Reports in
the specific application e.g. SAP Menu->Logistics->Sales & Distribution->Sales->Information
System->Orders-List of Sales Orders
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21
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Snag IT – Consider this for capturing,
editing, and sharing screenshots of your PC.
The company needs to create user training and
is having trouble with cutting and pasting, and
showing icons to click. It is a common software
used by numerous companies
18
Quick Keys
/h—Turn on the debugger to see what the
program is doing by pressing /h where your
program starts. This helps you see what is
happening.
/o—Open a new transaction in a new session
(window) by simply typing /oXXXX where
XXXX is the transaction you want to go to.
/BEND—End a BDC session that you are
currently running
ALV (ABAP List Viewer). Ask your developers to create an ALV report if you need
to create a report. ALV is the tool of choice for
custom reports in SAP R/3. Bringing as many
fields to an ALV report reduces the need to keep
changing the report and makes simplifies the job
of changing the report. ALV provides an Excel
download. ALV can be a much more powerful
report development tool when used due to its
flexibility. Developers should use the class/object
based ALV instead of the function module based
ALV.
22
LSMW (Legacy System Migration Work
Bench). Get your developers to exhaust all
possibilities with LSMW before building a conversion program from scratch. LSMW can save a
lot of development time. Your configurators can
also build their own quick conversion program
using LSMW.
23
SAP Component Version/Hotpack. Check
what SAP version your component is
on. E.g. SAP BASIS 620 or SAP APP 4.70. Click
System->Status. Look next to the field component version. Click the magnifying glass on the
right corner.
24
Barcodes. Use smartforms from this point
on to have the latest technology with
barcodes. You don’t have to configure character sets from transaction SPAD to make sure
the output device is setup. You also don’t need
external software to design labels you want to
print. Smartforms takes away that headache. For
Example: Printing Zebra Labels.
25
Converting Material Master. Make life
easier and increase your chances of success
when dealing with large amounts of data by
ensuring your conversion programs have the
following functionality;(a) Be sure the conversion programs can
handle loading subsets of data.
(b) Understand that creating delta load functionality in your program is essential if you
are loading data over a number of days.
(c) Ensure that there are subtotals for records
to make reconciliation easier if there are
dollar amounts in your data.
26
Development and Naming Standards.
Review the standards with every new
version or upgrade. Example: Program Names
were 8 characters in length prior to 4.5b. They
are now longer 30 characters. Select specifying
fields should include fewer fields. SAP introduces
new improved ABAP statements which may be
an improvement to old programs.
27
Peer Review Steps. Make this painless and
acceptable for developers by using the
following process:
(a) Have a meeting where a developer presents one tip on improvement or best
practice in coding to the ABAP team. This
eliminates all developers making the same
error.
(b) Have each developer pick their own buddy
to review their code.
(c) Create a checklist for peer review that
every buddy must use minimally. This list is
updated as more tips are added.
28
Developing reports. Revisit your reports to
reduce as many as possible to one page. It
was common in years past to produce a report
showing all the information, sometimes generating a 30-page report. This was done to produce
the same report used in the legacy system. Much
of that report was never used. More companies
manage by exception, making one-page reports
acceptable. All you need to do is build intelligence and indicators (green, yellow, red) to flag
items needing attention.
29
Transporting Objects to QAS to PRD.
Move transports to the QA system and
Production either manually or automated. Some
companies automate moving the objects to QA
on every hour. Other companies have created
ZSTMS_COPY, which is a clone of STMS with
tight controls. This still allows programmers
and configurators to move their objects to the
Quality System. These methods can save much
time. There’ll be less work for your BASIS team.
The tech team on different time zones and those
working after hours can move objects to QAS
without the need to call BASIS to move transport.
30
Data Clean Up. Do a data cleanup in the old
system when needing to move from legacy
to SAP. It is a necessary step to avoid moving
bad data across which might make your project
fail.
31
New Tools. Wait for a non-critical project to
introduce new and unproven software tools
if at all possible. It can be easy to get excited
with a new tool and forget that project and business success are a higher priority. The role of IS/
IT is to support business functions and improve
productivity rather than build to impress your
peers in the other team.
32
SAP MOD or SAP Standard Modification.
Use SAP MOD if you need to make a change
specific to your company when there are no user
exits or customer enhancements, or a solution
in BADI. A developer can make a SAP MOD by
registering the object/program. The system will
then allow them to change the SAP standard.
Since 4.5B, SAP provides a modification assistant
during upgrade to re-apply any modifications
made. With versions prior to 4.5B, SAP would
not always support you when a program failed if
a SAP MOD was involved, even if your developer’s change was not the cause. This made many
companies nervous.
33
Test, Test and Test. When dealing with
large teams or large consulting firms you
can be overwhelmed with the amount of documentation they produce. While documentation is
important, realize:
(a) The product must be working. Sit with
the person that developed/configured the
product. Let them take you through the
process screen by screen, with good test
data.
(b) You can never test enough. Test, test, test.
String Test and do End to End Testing. Test
for one. Test for many. Test exactly how
the process will be executed in production. Run it in batch If the program will be
run in batch. Make sure the output gets
printed to that exact/similar printer if you
will produce output on a specific printer
during go live. Don’t be content with
seeing output on the screen.
(c) If anything fails, you must schedule another
walk through when bugs have been fixed.
PROJECT aND TEaM TipS
34
Business Users/Super Users. Have users
test drive an incomplete product to make
sure it’s on the right track with their expectation.
Involvement and participation of the business
users is crucial to the success of the project or
any kind of development. It is common for users
to say, “I know this is what I asked for, but that’s
not what I want.” IT also sometimes wants to
impress the users by only showing them the
finished product. You run the risk of ending up
with the perfect but wrong solution unless you
are an external software company selling an outof-the-box solution.
35
Hiring Consultants. Stick with the best and
most experienced people even if it means
paying extra money per hour. It’s tempting to
shop for the rate to meet your budget numbers
when getting consultants. You can explain away
cost overrun. You cannot explain away a failed
project, especially when it comes to complex
systems requiring the consultant to interact with
your customers. Experienced consultants are,
overall, less expensive and can save you major
embarrassment or headaches.
36
Keeping Good Consultants. Find as much
work as you can to keep good consultants
busy. They do not like to be bored or have too
slow a pace. This is a win/win. They know there
are acceptable slow times in project phases. You
run the risk of losing them when they feel their
skills or marketability are threatened by slow
pace or very little work, no matter how much
you pay them.
37
Productivity. Search for the best knowledge worker talent you can find. Studies
suggest that with knowledge workers the difference in productivity between a top performer
and an average or below average performer is
10 11
100%. In assembly line workers it’s 20%. Since
there are more knowledge workers today, better
talent in these positions creates more value.
By Ed Michaels Former Director of McKinsey &
Company (from The War For Talent Study)
38
Knowledge Transfer. Plan for knowledge
transfer. Consultants often need to temporarily support various aspects of projects. The
best person to take over needs to be aware of
the scope of the project very early on. Companies release and rehire without considering how
to retain the knowledge in-house or motivate an
internal team to pick up as much knowledge as
possible.
39
Measuring the Success of Each Project.
Decide what defines success before
starting the project. This includes identifying
specific productivity improvements. It is more
than everyone merely being happy with the
project success and then moving to the next
project. IT needs to work with the business to
determine if the project was done the way the
business wanted it and if the actual results can
be quantified. Doing this can make it easier to
create a business case for a new projects.
40
Project Post Mortem. Plan a project post
mortem and lesson-learned exercise. This
might seem like a waste of time. Chances are
that such a meeting may reveal errors to avoid
in the future, especially if your team believes in
continuous learning and continuous improvement. Schedule this within a month of the first
go live. Do it whether a project was a success or
not.
mistakes. You can then retain the knowledge on
shore.
42
Errors and Omissions. Create an environment where your team can admit errors
and omissions without fear. This will allow
members of your team to come to you very early
if something was missed. The benefit is that
you’ll know about all problems early enough to
fix them rather than on a go live weekend.
43
Big Picture. Make sure the team can see
the big picture or the vision for the entire
project. Everyone can get busy with their own
carved-out piece and lose focus of the big
picture. They need to know why this project is
important to the organization and where it fits.
44
FRICE—Forms, Report, Interfaces, Conversion and Enhancements. Use this to
indicate areas where ABAP is needed. Adding W
(FRICEW) at the end means workflow.
45
SOA (Service Oriented Architecture).
Employ this latest buzz word for a standard
of coding program units so they are reusable by
different applications, irrespective of programming language and operating systems. Example:
You create functionality to enter customer name
and address information. It is as easy as submitting a request to this functionality to capture the
information the same way. This is true whether
it’s SAP or non-SAP when you have multiple
applications needing the customer to enter this
information.
41
Outsourcing. Realize that off-shore
outsourcing is here to stay. Use it wisely. It
can reverse the savings you expect when used
as a sole IT strategy. Outsourcing can allow you
to save when it comes to tedious yet repetitive
work. Complex development requiring a developer who typically questions every assumption
and has a lot of experience can save you big
12 13
Module Specific Displays
in SAP System
SAP Transactions to Know
(popular user transactions SD, MM, FI/CO)
Sales Order
Transaction VA03 or Logistics->Sales &
Distribution->Sales->Display Sales Order.
Primary technical table is VBAK (header info)
and VBAP (detail info).
Delivery
Transaction VL03N or Logistics->Sales &
Distribution->Delivery->Display Delivery.
Primary technical table is LIKP (header info)
and LIPS (detail info).
Invoice
Transaction VF03 or Logistics->Sales &
Distribution->Delivery->Display Delivery.
Primary technical table is VBUK (header info)
and VBUP (detail info).
Customer
Transaction VD03 or Logistics->Sales &
Distribution->Master Data->Display Sold-to.
Primary technical table is KNA1 (header info)
and KNVV (detail info).
Material Product
Transaction MM03 or Logistics->Logistics
General->Material Master. Primary technical
table is MARA (basic material data) and
MARC (plant specific material info).
Purchase Order
Transaction ME23N or Logistics->Materials
Management->Purchasing->Purchase Order
Display. Primary technical table is EKKO
(header info) and EKPO (detail info).
Goods Movement
Document
Transaction MB51
These documents are in tables MSEG (detail
info) and MKPF (header info).
Accounting
Document
Transaction FB03 or Accounting->Financial
Accounting->General Ledger->Document>Display. Primary technical table is BKPF
(header info) and BSEG (detail info).
General Ledger
Account
Transaction FB03 or Accounting->Financial
Accounting->General Ledger->Master
Records-> G\L Accounts-> Individual
Processing->Centrally. Primary technical
tables are SKA1 and SKB1.
Cost Center
Transaction KS00 or Accounting->Controlling->Cost Center Accounting->Master
Data-> Cost Center-> Individual Processing>Display. Primary technical table is CSKS.
Maintenance
Work Order
Transaction IW33 or Plant Maintenance>Maintenance Processing->Order->Display.
Primary technical tables are AFIH (work
order header) and AFPO (work order item).
Maintenance
Notification
Transaction IW33 or Plant Maintenance>Maintenance Processing->Notification>Display. Primary technical tables are QMIH
(work order header) and QMEL (work order
item).
14 SM04
Kills your SAP session when the report is running
too long. Or Click the little SAP icon on the top left
corner of the screen. When a menu comes down,
select stop transaction or login again. Select terminate all other sessions that are still logged on.
SPRO
Takes you to the configuration area to locate any
configuration setting by functional area.
SP01
Finds and checks if a report you printed did actually
go to the printer.
SM37
Checks if a job you ran or scheduled is still running
or has finished.
SE16
Checks the contents of a table in SAP. E.g. VBAK
SNOTE
Pulls a SAP note, which is SAP code that fixes a
system bug.
SEARCH_
SAP_
MENU
Finds the menu path that allows you to navigate to
the transaction someone gave you.
SU3
Views and changes your user defaults, like
currency settings, your default printer, the date
format, etc.
SU01D
Displays the name and info on the user-id in SAP.
Some companies do not setup SAP id’s as an
abbreviation of a person’s name. Example: Say
someone left his/her PC while changing a sales
order in VA02 and his/her id is QC142616. You can
check their actual name so you can tell them to
release the order.
SM31
Finds where configuration settings are set for a
table that you just discovered. Enter the table
name and click customizing, prompting a pop-up.
Click continue without specifying a project. A list of
possible locations where the table is maintained
appears. Example: if you enter table T014 you end
up in SPRO under Enterprise Structure->Definition>Financial Accounting->Define Credit Control Area.
SHD0
Transaction Variant to personalize the SAP
screens. Sometime SAP standard screens have
fields and screens that are not relevant to your
business process and cause confusion to users.
You can personalize the screen using Transaction
variants, simplify transaction flow by: (a) Inserting
default values in fields (b) Changing the ready
for input status of fields (c) Hiding various screen
elements and menu functions, or even entire
screens (d) Adjusting table control settings.
15
Important SAP Websites
43
TIPS
for the Busy
help.sap.com
Online SAP documentation for self training and
researching, and for
keeping up to date on
what’s in SAP.
+
service.sap.com
Wealth of information on
SAP’s portal to help sap
users.
www.asug.com
American SAP Users
Group—Customers get
together to discuss issues
that influence new functionality SAP brings up.
SAP MANAGER
www.sapfans.com SAP consultants and technical users post technical
problems and help each
other get solutions.
by Synod Phahla
16