20 key questions to ask when designing a sap em solution

20 Key Questions to consider when designing a solution that utilizes SAP Event Management

Published: 10/21/2012, Author: Kevin Wilson © Q Data USA, Inc. 2012 of 6


If you are contemplating implementing SAP Event Management, you will need to be prepared to answer a series of questions in order to be able to establish a design that caters to your needs. The following list of questions is a good start (although there are more based on the answers to some of these):

1. Which processes do I want to track?

a. Having a good understanding of what SAP Event

Management is used for is key here. One of its main

functions is to monitor a business process matching the

execution of the process against the plan of the process

to uncover exceptions or opportunities in the process.

b. Another key function of SAP EM is to provide visibility of

the status of the business process to interested parties

to that business process.

c. If your need for your business process falls in one or

both the above 2 categories then the business process is

a candidate for tracking…

d. E.g. Order to Cash, Procure to Pay, Outbound Delivery,

Incoming Vendor Payment

2. Which objects of these processes should be monitored?

a. Once you have determined which business processes are in scope you need to be able to

isolate the objects that are utilized in the business process

b. E.g. Order to Cash: Sales Order, Outbound Delivery (Warehouse scenario), Purchase Order

(Drop ship scenario), Customer Invoice

3. Which events within my processes am I interested in tracking?

a. For each object in your business process you will need to determine which events are

relevant for tracking

b. Be sure to address changes to the business object as well

Understanding what you are getting in to before you begin is critical to getting out what you think you should be getting out of an implementation…

A good understanding up front, coupled with good guidance by experienced folks helps path the way towards reaching the promised ROI…



c. E.g. Sales Order create, Sales Order complete, Sales Order Changed, Delivery Created,

Delivery Picked, Delivery Packed, Delivery Issued, …

4. Are my events date and time driven?

a. For each event check whether the event is expected to

occur at a certain date or time

b. At the same time also consider if the event is location or

partner based.

5. Where should the planned dates and times for my expected

events come from?

a. If you have established that certain events are bound to

a date and time then can you determine how to calculate

what that date and time should be?

b. Consider when, in the process, is the best time to

determine the expected date and time for each event

c. E.g. Sales Order line complete should get it’s expected

date and time from the next confirmed schedule line’s

material availability date

6. From where will the actual events be reported (i.e. IDoc’s, Legacy, R/3)?

a. Consider where these events will be reported from.

b. If they are coming in from an SAP system, will you be using the SAP EM Application

Interface framework to create the events or will you utilize another technique because you

might be concerned of performance in the existing process?

c. If the events are to be reported via a legacy system, a 3rd party system, RFID scanner,

mobile device or another method do you know how to accomplish that? Do you have

security requirements about this data flow between the systems?

7. Do I have any events which may occur but are not planned?

a. Are you able to list out all the possible unexpected events that might occur in a business

process? An unexpected event is any event that can occur during a business process but is

not expected to occur every time.

b. E.g. Sales order on CR block, Sales order on Delivery block – Neither of these are expected

to occur each and every time a Sales Order is created but both of them are critical for

tracking purposes

All processes are based on business objects and the events that are exercised against them. Do you need to provide visibility to the status changes to your business process as and when it changes? Is it critical to track your events near real-time?



8. Which rules should be applied to my process when events are or

are not posted?

a. Can you describe what should occur in SAP EM when

each of these events are reported?

b. Can you also describe what should be done if expected

events aren’t posted in time?

c. With SAP EM’s integration with SAP workflow and the

SAP Alert Framework you could consider a proactive

alerting approach when you uncover and exception

d. Note that SAP EM can also be used to uncover

opportunities as well…

e. As a general rule you always want to consider updating

the status of the business process whenever an event is

processed (or not) in order to keep the interested parties

in touch with what’s happening (transparent visibility to

the process)

9. Which statuses do I want to have assigned to my process and at what time within my process

a. Are you able to list out what categories of statuses you want to assign to your business

process. You need to have a clear understanding that each process can have several

categories of statuses associated with it at any one time and each category can only have 1

value assigned to it at any one time…

b. E.g. Order status ‘delayed’ should appear when a delayed event has been posted to a

related shipment. It should be assigned to the “Delivery Status” category

10. Will I use the out of the box scenarios or will I be customizing the delivered scenarios?

a. Firstly, are you familiar with what comes pre-delivered with SAP EM?

b. Once you have an understanding of what is available can you recognize common processes

or business objects that meet some of your needs?

c. Any advantage of pre-delivered content should be leveraged. Understand that all pre-

delivered scenarios (visibility processes) need to be tweaked in some way in order to make

it work in your environment.

SAP Event Management is a very flexible and versatile tool that allows for the facilitation of many kinds of activities on the receipt of an event. As an example, you could launch an alert, a workflow, a custom method to trigger re-planning in ECC, a status update, an extraction to BW, and …



11. Do I have access to the following resources: Business representation, Functional resource, ABAP

resource?

a. If you are going to embark on a SAP EM project, which is heavily intertwined in the

business process, are you sure that the business has bought in to the solution and that

solid representation is going to be available during the project?

b. Do you have detailed knowledge in SAP EM and if not what is your plan for getting up to

speed on SAP EM?

c. Do your ABAP folks have knowledge in SAP EM? SAP EM’s

ABAP is a little different to normal ABAP code in that it is

object oriented in nature and tied to configuration. I.e.

You need to know both in order to develop and unit test

in the SAP EM space.

d. How about change management… Do you have the right

focus on change management and education in order to

drive out the intended advantages of the project?

12. Will I be interested in using the Web Dynpro to display information

regarding my processes to internal or external users such as

carriers or customers?

a. There are several options to display SAP EM data to the

end user. Do you know which option best suits your

users?

b. E.g. Web Dynpro, Web Communication Layer (not

recommended), Custom UI

13. If using the Web Dynpro there are few considerations related to design.

a. Which search criteria do I want to give my users?

b. Which column header information should I display on the results screen?

c. Which events should I display on the detail page?

d. What functionality for reporting events via the web should I enable, if any?

e. Which roles should I cater for? E.g. Sales Representative, Sales Manager, Customer

14. Which information would I like to bring into SAP EM associated to my Events / Process?

a. Do you have a good idea as to what information is needed in SAP EM in order to display in

your reports or send to BW for reporting purposes?

b. E.g. material description, sold to number, ship to number, ship to address.

Key to all successful SAP implementations is the commitment and buy-in from the business. This is particularly true for SAP EM projects because it is all about sharing the outcome of a business process with the extended business. “Airing the dirty laundry” can be a change management challenge – The business needs to be aware of what they are signing up for….



15. Which information should be analyzed within BW

a. Do you know which KPI’s you would like to define and

which data should come directly from the SAP EM?

b. Do you have a good understanding around what is

available standard within SAP EM functionality?

c. SAP EM provide tight integration with BW and leveraging

this technique can provide great benefit to your solution.

d. E.g. What % of sales orders went on CR hold – Break it

down by sales region

e. E.g. On average, how long did it take to remove a CR

block from a sales order – Break it down per CR agent

f. E.g. What % of deliveries were shipped on time vs. Late?

16. When should event handlers be archived in order to maintain a

good system performance?

a. It is critical to plan a process from the beginning with

archiving in mind

b. Are you able to define your retention periods for each of

your business processes?

c. E.g. My sales order history should be available for operational reporting for 3 months after

the associated invoice has been fully paid. Additionally, it needs to be searchable for an

additional 9 months after which it needs to be retrieved for analysis purposes only. For

Auditing purposes data older than a year needs to be restored within 24 hours.

17. Will I be interested in using the Alert Framework to send out alert notifications during the tracking

of my process?

a. Do you know when and who should be notified when an exception or particular event

occurs?

b. Do you know the detail that the alert should contain?

c. Is this a notification only or should the recipient actually be forced to execute a series of

tasks (workflow) to correct the situation?

d. E.g. if my shipment has been delayed, should the Account Executive be notified?

e. E.g. a delivery block is added to a sales order so the appropriate rep is notified via a

workflow to remove the delivery block.

Analytics and the design around it is often overlooked at the beginning of a SAP EM project. It’s often inserted in to Phase 2 of a project… Well when Phase 2 comes around all the folks in the know are no longer on the project… They are either on new projects or back doing their old jobs. The time is now to do the analytics work. How else do you measure how well your business process is performing?



18. Which systems will be interfaced with SAP EM?

a. Can you list out the various systems that you will need to

integrate with SAP EM?

b. Do you know the techniques needed to extract data from

these systems?

c. Are there security considerations in these interfaces?

d. What is the timing needed for these interfaces? E.g.

Batched every 10 minutes

19. Should I set up SAP EM as a stand-alone tool or on the same box

as ERP or APO?

a. There are many considerations around making this

decision

b. In general implementations have gone for the standalone

option in a productive system and as an add-on in the

development environment

20. How large should my server be?

a. There is no quicksizer for SAP EM so you will need to consult with an experienced SAP EM

architect to guide you through the proper sizing of SAP EM

About the Author Kevin Wilson is an Associate Partner in charge of the SAP Event Solutions practice and SAP Solution Engineer at Q Data USA Inc. with a primary focus of facilitating solutions for companies experiencing SAP process and technical integration pains. His solutions cover the various applicable toolsets provided by SAP to accomplish real value, whether it be SAP Workflow, SAP NetWeaver PI, EDI, ALE, ABAP or SAP Event Management. Since he started with SAP in 1996 he has utilized these skill sets to help many companies achieve value through the use of mature solution adoption. He is very actively involved in the SAP Event Management community speaking regularly at user group

meetings and conferences on the topic. He regularly gives webinars and training sessions to users on all topics in his area of expertise including SAP Event Management, SAP Workflow, EDI, ABAP, XI BPM and ALE.

About Q Data USA

Q Data USA, Inc. (www.qdatausa.com) is a member of The Business Maturity Group that supports and promotes Business Maturity – which is the leverage of technology to meet business goals. Q Data USA’s solutions and Maturity Methodology helps organizations increase their

Implementation Maturity that allows them to successfully implement complex initiatives and enhance the overall organizational experience. Q Data USA assists organizations to balance the art and science behind implementing complex SAP solutions. Q Data’s main focus and niche area covers the Supply Chain process with particular emphasis on SAP Event Management (EM), SAP Object Event Repository (OER), SAP Auto-ID Infrastructure (AII), SAP Global Batch Traceability (GBT) and SAP Transportation Management (TM)

Don’t let sizing catch you out!!! SAP EM can store huge amounts of data if you are not careful. Make sure you only store it for the time that you need it. In addition, take special care to code any interaction with SAP EM with performance in mind. It can handle the load but only if you code it to…

20 key questions to ask when designing a sap em solution

Documents