Thursday, September 03, 2009

SAP: Configure Automatic Postings

What are automatic postings?

Postings are made to G/L accounts automatically in the case of Invoice Verification and Inventory Management transactions relevant to Financial and Cost Accounting.

Example:

Posting lines are created in the following accounts in the case of a goods issue for a cost center:
  • Stock account
  • Consumption account

In this manual you can find a good explanation of how to configure the automatic postings, aka OBYC, the T-Code associated in SAP to this configuration.

Tuesday, September 01, 2009

Support your internal processes' usage with Sharepoint

Many company have their internal processes very well defined, however, the related process documents are usually spread in very different locations:

  • File systems
  • Document Management Systems
  • Intranets
  • Personal Computers

Sometimes is very hard to see the overall process and its interactions with other processes, and to use the related documents (process description, user manuals) as a tool to help in the daily activities.

Sharepoint is a very good solution to solve this problem. Using Sharepoint Services you can create your company internal processes website.

Using Sharepoint capabilities you can publish the process drawing in Visio and give your employees a great visual perspective of the process and all others related processes. Then, aggregate around it all the documents related to the process (uploading to a document library or linking to your file system), and thus the user can access directly to the documents while looking to the process diagram.

Managing all the processes and related documents in Sharepoint, you’ll have a centralized source of information, easy to manage and maintain. For example, if you have a manual of “how to do something”, which is common to several different processes in the organization, you’ll have only one single document linked to different processes, avoiding the duplication of information.

Whenever a new process is launched or an existing process is updated or a new manual is created, with Sharepoint you can easily address the company employees. On the other hand, you can collect feedback and suggestions from your employees about the processes and promote a continuous improvement.

For any question feel free to leave a comment that i'll get back to you.

Monday, August 31, 2009

SAP Configuration Guide

For those who struggle every day to configure SAP in order to meet your clients' needs, this is a very good guide to help you in your configuration tasks.

Contents:

  • General Settings

Define Countries, Set Currencies, Set Calendar, Field Display Characteristics.

  • Enterprise Structure

Define Company, Maintain Controlling Area, Define Location, Maintain Sales Office, Maintain Storage Location, Assign Company code to company/credit control area/controlling area, Assign Plant to Company code, Assign Sales Organization to Company code, Assign Purchasing Organization to Company code etc…

  • Logistics-General

Configuring Material Master,Field Selection, Maintain Company Codes for Materials Management, Material Types, Define Material Groups/Divisions/Material Statuses/Number Ranges for EANs/UPCs (Barcode), Maintain Authorizations and Authorization Profiles etc…

  • Sales And Distribution

Define Customer Groups, Define Delivery Priorities, Define Terms of Payment, Define Incoterms, Define Sales Document Types, Define Purchase Order Types, Define Billing Types, Define Order Types for Intercompany Billing, Define Sales Activity Types etc…

  • Materials Management

Consumption-Based Planning, Define Number Ranges for Planning Run, Define MRP Controllers, Define Order Profile, Configure MRP List / Stock/ Requirements List, Define Attributes of System Messages, Define Tax Jurisdiction, Define Shipping Instructions, Define Terms of Payment, Check Incoterms, Create Purchasing Groups etc…

Friday, August 28, 2009

SAP eCATT

Some of you heard about eCATT, but the question is How to use it.

eCATT stands for extended Computer Aided Test Tool.

eCatt is a tool developed by SAP for automated software testing. This tool offers a GUI to record and configure any integrated process represented in SAP.

eCatt is a powerful tool to certain kind of tests in SAP environements:
- Integration Tests
- Performance Tests
- Regression Tests

Check the manual to use this tool.

For any question feel free to leave a comment that i'll get back to you.

Thursday, August 27, 2009

Metodologia ASAP

O termo ASAP é amplamente utilizado na consultoria SAP, mas muita gente não sabe o que significa na prática e quais são as fases que envolvem esta metodologia de implementação SAP.

ASAP é a abreviatura de Accelerated SAP, e pretende ser uma metodologia de implementação de qualquer tecnologia SAP. A metodologia ASAP foi desenvolvida pela SAP em conjunto com vários parceiros de negócio.

Podem ver neste documento a apresentação que a SAP faz desta metodologia.

Apesar desta metodologia ser amplamente aceite na implementação de sistemas SAP, há empresas que utilizam metodologias próprias, como é o caso da IBM que utiliza a metodologia Ascendant na implementação de qualquer sistema ERP.

Irei apresentar mais tarde as principais fases da metodologia Ascendant, por agora vou fazer um resumo das várias fases da metodologia ASAP:

1. Preparação do Projecto
Nesta fase é refinado o âmbito e entregáveis do projecto e é elaborado o plano de implementação. São constituídas as equipas e são definidos os procedimentos associados ao projecto.

2. Business Blueprint
Nesta fase são identificados, mapeados e detalhados os processos actuais do cliente, fazendo uma análise AsIs. É detalhado como esses processos se encaixam no standard do SAP, e caso não o sejam, são definidos os GAPs que irão dar origem a desenvolvimentos.

Será elaborado um documento que irá apresentar o desenho da solução ToBe, detalhando os processos que serão suportados em SAP, bem como a solução funcional e técnica que será utilizada.

3. Realização
Implementação de todos os processos de negócio, configurações, parametrizações, baseados no Business Blueprint gerado. Durante a fase da realização é elaborado um protótipo que se aproxima da solução desenhada, e que será apresentado para recolha de feedback.
No final desta fase serão efectuados os testes de aceitação da solução implementada.

4. Preparação final
Nesta fase são preparadas todas as tarefas de cutover que antecedem o Go-Live. As formações aos utilizadores também decorrente nesta fase e pretendem prepara-los para a utilização do sistema implementado, reduzindo o impacto no negócio desta implementação.

5. Go-Live e Suporte
O Go-Live é a entrada do sistema em produção, executando todas as tarefas de cut-over, Pré Go-Live, bem como tarefas de Pós Go-Live.
Durante esta fase é também dado Suporte ao arranque, apoiando os utilizadores e corrigindo eventuais erros que sejam detectados.