FAQ - Is it so difficult to map planning functionality in SAP?
Planning is a central functionality and it involves lots of coordination with various departments of the organization to plan demand planning, material planning, supply planning etc.
Planning Team requires doing coordination and compiling the sales data, forecast data and do material requirements planning.
Planning has to be on time and with the right input data.
Most commonly 'Excel' used for planning.
While SAP implementation, 'Excel' based planning process mapping in SAP become a critical and complex task for SAP planning functional consultant.
To convince the planner how in SAP system planning would happen is not digestible!!! It is a change management!!! It requires lots of education to make aware of SAP terminology to the Business user community.
Most of the time Scope of implemention is only for ECC (R/3), it does not cover Advanced Planning Optimizer (APO) in first phase. APO implementation project plan is down the line after 1-2 years time. That is also not a firm plan.
Head of the Planning Team ask various questions to the Implementation Team, which she/he suppose to ask to his top management who took the decision of implementation of SAP ECC.
She/He keep asking questions!
In Excel sheet it is very simple to do the calculation. Why it is not supported in SAP?? This is the typical frequently asked question!!!
If it does not support by SAP then why we require such a costly software???
We require flexibility while planning. Our marketing team provides details as and when and same we require to update and recalculate the new plan.
SAP planning consultant will go mad answering such type of queries as it is recurring type!!!
SAP Planning consultant has to give recurring answer on Benefits of SAP Vs. Excel as below:
- Integration of Sales data, Inventory data
- No limitation for data volume
- Data accuracy
SAP functional consultant has to derive clear scope of project for planning business processes to be mapped with the current SAP ECC project. This scope she/he has to share with the all concern team members.
Prepare detail activity plan which will be done in SAP and which will be require to be done out of SAP (May be in Excel!!!).
If She/he tries to do mirror imaging of the current excel based planning in SAP then I am sure she/he will go mad!!!
If we want to have an answer of the question 'Is it so difficult to map planning functionality in SAP?' as a ‘No’ then try to make things easier while providing business solution.
Ask back questions to the business planner for things which are not able to map in SAP. Is it really require to do planning in this way?
I am sure 90% of the business users answer will be ‘Yes’ but actually this ‘Yes' is really ‘NO’!!! Most of the planning data collected from sales, production team is for information. It does not play any direct role in planning.
