New key figures for BPMon & BP Analytics, especially for working capital improvement

Last Monday (June 11th, 2012) the new ST-A/PI 01P plug-in was shipped to customers and this means that many new key figures have been shipped for Business Process Monitoring and Business Process Analytics in SAP Solution Manager. This blog will give a short overview about what is new. Many new key figures were especially created in order to improve your working capital and supply chain planning efforts. And we provide new key figures for SAP Transportation Management (SAP TM) which was not covered before.

The new ST-A/PI 01P is available for download and can be found under (SMP login required) http://service.sap.com/supporttools.

A complete list/catalog of all available out-of-the-box key figures is available as MS PowerPoint presentation at (SMP login required in both cases)

• http://service.sap.com/BPM > Media Library > Customer Information > Key Figure Overview.ppt
• Or directly here

  Remark: On slides 1 and 2 (Table of Content) you can find hyperlinks where you can directly access the respective chapter of interest.

The following new Lead Time calculations have been developed for SAP ERP:

• Time from  Sales Document Item creation to Invoice (in days)
• Time from Outbound delivery creation to Post Goods Issue (in hours)
• Time from Post Goods Issue to Invoice (in days)
• Time from Shipment creation to Shipment Completion (in days)
• Time from Shipment creation to Shipment End (in days)
• Time from Open item creation FI-AP to clearing (in days)
• Time from Open item creation FI-AR to clearing (in days)

New monitoring objects and key figures have been developed in the following areas in SAP ERP:

• Material Master Data (Materials without backflushing indicator, standard price or moving average price)
• Customer Master Data (SD invoices with different payment terms)
• Vendor Master Data (MM invoices with different payment terms)
• Vendor Payments (early or late payments in FI-AP)
• Customer Payments (late payments in FI-AR)
• Check Deposit Transaction (not complete posted)
• Cost Estimates (not released)
• IS-U Data Exchange Task (data exchange process in certain status)

New monitoring objects and key figures have been developed for SAP Transportation Management:

• Transportation Requests (created & changed per day)
• Transportation Orders  (created & changed per day)
• Freight Settlement documents (created & changed per day)
• Forwarding Settlement documents (created & changed per day)   

New key figures were introduced for Sales Documents, Sales Document items, SD Invoices, Purchase Orders, Stock Transport Orders, Goods movements, Production/Process Orders, Outbound deliveries, Delivery items, Reservations and Open Vendor items FI-AP. Some examples are:

• Number of changed orders (you can check if “no touch” orders are really not touched after creation)
• Overdue SD requirements (you can check if old sales requirements still exist in table VBBE which might lead to inaccurate planning and availability check results)
• Changes of SD document items
• Unconfirmed schedule line items
• Sales invoices with open FI-AR items (instead of just checking open & overdue FI-AR items in general you can specifically check which SD invoices were not yet cleared on FI side)
• Debit memos / Debit memo items created in reference period (including orer reasons)
• PO Items with Invoice Receipt Qty greater Goods Receipt Qty
• Overdue STO schedule lines & overdue STO schedule lines in transit
• Goods movements created with reason & cancelled goods movements in reference period
• Production/Process Order components overdue for consumption (you can check for order reservations which have not been completely withdrawn although the requirements date lies in the past)
• Production/Process Orders with planned qty unequal actual order qty
• Production/Process Orders with Planned Orders start date unequal Order start date
• Conversion of Planned Order too early/late
• Release date of Production/Process Order too early/late
• Incomplete outbound deliveries
• Missing fields in incomplete outbound delivery items
• Overdue LE requirements (you can check if old sales requirements still exist in table VBBE which might lead to inaccurate planning and availability check results)
• Reservation items overdue for final issue indicator
• Reservation items with final issue indicator/deletion indicator
• Blocked items for payment where cash discount is endangered or lost (these key figures already existed for MM invoices and are now also available for FI-AP)

In the area of interface monitoring new CRM middleware monitoring capabilities have been introduced, especially related to synchronization issues between mobile site and CRM server.

Besides all these new key figures that have been shipped with ST-A/PI 01P there has been also a lot of news with ST710 support package 5, e.g. a complete new setup environment for Business Process Monitoring and Business Process Analytics and a new and enhanced version of Business Process Analytics which is described in greater detail in this separate blog. Basic new features are the benchmarking over values (in a dedicated currency) and some Advanced Benchmarking that allows benchmarks over material/plant combinations et.al.

Heads-up if you use the new ST-A/PI 01P on the managed system together with an “old” SAP Solution Manager release lower than SP5

With the new ST-A/PI 01P together with the new Business Process Analytics features with SAP SolMan 7.1 SP5 it is now possible to benchmark users and document values (in a dedicated currency). As this is very sensitive data it needs to be secured with new roles and authorization objects which are part of ST-PI 2008_1_* support package 06. So if you are using Business Process Monitoring or Business Process Analytics in an SAP Solution Manager release before 7.1 SP5 together with an ST-A/PI lower than 01P in the managed system, then the following happens

1. If your ST-PI 2008_1_* support package level is lower than 06 in the managed system (i.e. the new authorization objects do not exist in your environment), then the columns with user and value information in any detail list will be always blank.
2. If your ST-PI 2008_1_* support package level is 06 (or higher) in the managed system (i.e. the new authorization objects exist in your environment), then you have to configure and generate one of the new roles SAP_MANAGED_BPOANA_ALL or SAP_MANAGED_BPOANA_DIS in the managed system and assign it to the respective user profile in order to access available business data (e.g. detail list, execution of transaction ST13). Otherwise you users will no longer be able to navigate into the detail list at all or perform an age analysis.

More details on the new roles and authorization obejcts will be given in a separate blog.

Further information

You can find all necessary information about Business Process Analytics in this document.

Frequently Asked Questions about Business Process Monitoring and Business Process Analytics are answered at http://wiki.sdn.sap.com/wiki/display/SM/FAQ+Business+Process+Monitoring and http://wiki.sdn.sap.com/wiki/display/SM/FAQ+Business+Process+Analytics respectively.

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The following blogs (in chronological order) provide further details about Business Process Monitoring functionalities within the SAP Solution Manager.

• New Business Process Monitoring functionalities in SAP Solution Manager – ALE / IDoc Monitoring
• New Business Process Monitoring functionalities in SAP Solution Manager – qRFC Monitoring
• New Business Process Monitoring Functionalities in SAP Solution Manager – functionalities For Inconsistencies in SAP Solution Manager
• SAP Business Process Monitoring within SAP Solution Manager
• New Business Process Monitoring functionalities in SAP Solution Manager – BPMon Trend Analysis Reporting
• Best Practice: Business Process Monitoring for Manufacturing
• Best Practice: Business Process Monitoring for Procure to Pay 
• Best Practice: Business Process Monitoring for Order to Cash
• Functional Scope of Business Process Monitoring in SAP Solution Manager
• Business Process Monitoring – Template configuration available for download
• FAQs about Business Process Monitoring
• Typical Use Cases for Business Process Monitoring in SAP Solution Manager
• New Business Process Monitoring functionalities in SAP Solution Manager – Customer Exit
• New key figure catalog for Business Process Monitoring available
• Why SAP offers different tools for Business Process Monitoring & Business Process Optimization
• Create your own auto-reaction messages in Business Process Monitoring via BAdI exit
• Protect your SAP ERP investment & improve your core business processes
• Refresh Solution Landscape cache for Business Process Operation Work Center
• Create your own customer-specific key figure for Business Process Monitoring within 5 minutes
• Best Practice: BW Process Chain monitoring with SAP Solution Manager – Part 1
• Best Practice: BW Process Chain monitoring with SAP Solution Manager – Part 2: Setup Example
• New key figures for Business Process Monitoring in SAP Solution Manager, especially for CRM Marketing
• New functionality “Business Process Analytics” – how to improve your business processes
• New key figures for Business Process Monitoring in SAP Solution Manager, especially Lead Time measurements
• Traditional Business KPI approach vs Business Process Monitoring
• Systematic errors vs real exceptions or improving efficiency vs effectiveness
• Before you get started with SAP HANA…you should also consider cleaning-up your backend system first
• Best Practice: Business Process Monitoring for CRM Sales
• SAP Business Process Operations Extensions at SAP TechEd 2011
• Business Process Operations dashboards – ALL AT A GLANCE
• Customer testimonials on Business Process Analytics
• Customer Exit: Create your own key figures for BPMon AND Business Process Analytics
• Heads-up: Set-up environment of BPMon & Analytics changes with SolMan 7.1 SP5
• New Business Process Analytics features with SAP SolMan 7.1 SP5