Introduction to Business Process Monitoring Using Solution Manager

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Author:Onkar Borkar

Date:07/09/2013

Target readers: All SAP Functional and Basis administration consultants

Keywords: BPMON, Business Process Monitoring, SOLMAN, Solution Manager.

Summary:

This document aims to introduce users to th Business Process Monitoring (BPMON) tool in SAP Solution Manager. It details of alerting, reporting and analytics capabilities of BPMON in Solution Manager for the monitored processes.  This document also provides an appproach for selecting the KPIs for monitoring which can result in improving the efficiencies of the Business Processes.

  1.   Introduction to Business Process Monitoring using Solution Manager

Business Process Monitoring (BPMON) is used for the proactive and process-oriented monitoring of a company’s core business processes. Business Process Monitoring is intended to detect problem situations as early as possible in order to solve them as fast as possible, before they become critical for the business.

BPMON is an out-of-the-box solution offered by SAP, using Solution Manager as the monitoring system. Solution Manager  has
the capability to continuously track activities in the monitored applications/systems.

Based on extensive research and client feedback, SAP has provided standard Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) for the Business Processes. During the solution set up, users can select the required KPIs, and enter the input selection parameters for the selected KPIs. Based on the parameters entered in the BPMON solution, it can trigger alerts when the upper or lower thresholds are exceeded.

2.  Key features of Business Process Monitoring

Key features of SAP Solution manager BP Mon are:

• Alert notifications : Measure performance of business process against predefined set of metrics, and Provide notifications (alert)
  when actual is not in-line with defined preformance metrics.

• Analytics:  Based on the data collected, users can run analytics reports, Benchmark analysis etc. for comparison across different countries, Sales Organizations etc. This analytics functionality is another  out-of-the-box functionality provided by SAP.

• Service Level Reporting: BPMON setup can be for Service Level Reporting aggregated per day, week or month.

• Business Process Operations Dashboards:Based on the data collected using Business Process Monitoring, it is possible to build BPO Dashboards can provide an overview of a specific business topic such as a business process or a business area. It is possible to restrict the display to a specific user group by giving them specific roles/authorizations.

3.   Business Benefits of using Business Process Monitoring

Key benefits of BP Mon are:

• Improves process transparency, efficiency, and effectiveness of monitored Business Processes.
• Revenue Improvement
• Cost reduction
• Process cycle-time Improvement
  • Defects/Rework
  • Hands-off improvement
  • Bottlenecks
  • Wait time
• Increase Customer Satisfaction
  • Service Level Agreements
• Legal and standards Compliance

4. General Infrastructure for Business Process Monitoring

SAP Solution Manager is connected to all the business systems being monitored using standard SAP connectors. The systems
being managed by Solution manager are called Managed Systems (Ex. ERP, CRM, SCM). The BPMON infrastructure is contained in various add-ons both on solution manager as well as managed systems. On the SAP Solution Manager system, the BPMON engine is part of the ST add-on, while the setup functionality for BPMON is contained in the ST-SER. On the managed system, the interface monitoring coding
that is called by SAP Solution Manager is part of add-on ST-A/PI. For infrastructure reasons, add-on ST-A/PI is also required on the SAP Solution Manager system.

Depending on which add-on versions are installed on your SAP Solution Manager and on the managed system, the functional scope for interface monitoring may be limited. In order to have the full functional scope available, SAP recommends the most current of these add-ons installed.

For all SAP Solution Manager Releases, the technical infrastructure used for Solution Monitoring is based on the CCMS Alert Monitor. The communication technique that is used between the SAP Solution Manager and the corresponding managed systems is established via the RFC technology. This technique is used for all parts of Solution Monitoring in the SAP Solution Manager, i.e. for System, Interface, and Business Process Monitoring.

4.1 Setup Procedure for Business Process Monitoring in Solution Manager

The process for setting up BPMON solution is specified in the figure below. The next section will provide step-by-step instructions to create the BPMON solution.

 

5.   Using BPMON as a tool for Business Process improvement

BPMON tool can be used to monitor Business Processes and improving the  processes using the PDCA cycle.

• PLAN
  • Identify the Key Figures to be monitored
  • List the people who will be taking corrective measures
  • Define threshold values for each KPI

     In this step,  we plan the Business Process, The Key figures to be monitored, corrective actions that will be required to be taken once      the KPI is measured, and the people reponsible for taking the corrective action.

• DO
  • Create and activate BPMON solution for the identified Business Processes and Key Figures

     The BPMON solution is created to measure the KPIs in analytics and trigger alert e-mails, based on defined thresholds.

• CHECK
  • Check the values collected for the KPIs being monitored

• ACT (Adjust) – adjust counter measure, standardize, stop monitoring
  • Take required action on the KPIs, notify the person responsible to take necessary action
  • Adjust the threshold values for the KPIs based on experience
  • Add or remove KPIs from the solution

5.1        BPMON as an Analytics tool

The data collected by BPMON solution can be used  for generating various useful charts such as Bencmarking, Age analysis, Trend analysis and Detail analysis.

Some examples of charts generated in BPMON analytics are shown below:

5.1.1   Age Analysis – 12 months

Key Figure – SD Deliveries– GI date in the past but not delivered

X-Axis – Calender Month;

Y-Axis – Number of Sales Orders, Sales officewise breakup

We can also have a breakup on the basis of document type and Sales Org

5.1.2   Benchmarking

Key Figure – SD Deliveries – GI date in the past but not delivered

X-Axis – Sales Office

Y-Axis – Number of Sales Orders, Document typewise breakup

We can also have a breakup on the basis of Sales Office and Sales Org.

5.1.3   Trend Analysis

Key Figure –SD Deliveries– GI date in the past but not delivered

X-Axis – Calender days

Y-Axis – Number of Sales Orders, Sales Officewise breakup

We can also have a breakup on the basis of Document type and Sales Org.

5.1.4   Detail Analysis

Key Figure – SD Deliveries – Outbound Deliveries (overdue)

5.2        BPMON as an Alerting tool

BPMON solution can be used to receive system generated alerts based on the threshold values set up for specific key figures. Once the
low and high threshold values are set in the BPMON solution, system will send an alert e-mail if the threshld values are exceeded, thus acting as an early
warning system.

The e-mail also contains a hyperlink with which it is possible to log into the Solution Manager and perform further analysis.

References

http://service.sap.com/bpm