SAP Business ByDesign Customization: 4 Real-Life Examples
When it comes to ERP systems, a strong and diligent selection process can really help you meet your business needs without the requirement for any customization. While SAP Business ByDesign is able to fulfill the majority of common business requirements, there will always be industry-specific or customer-specific requirements. For these requirements, SAP provides a combination of tools: both front-end based adaptation and extensibility as well as the Cloud Applications Studio can be used to develop solutions to bridge any out-of-the-box gaps.
In this blog series below, we’ll explore four examples of customer-specific SAP Business ByDesign solutions built by FMT Consultants. While the level of effort behind each of these enhancements varies, the business impact for even the simple solutions has been substantial – improving efficiency, automation, visibility, and data integrity. The solutions are ordered from least complex to most complex. The first two solutions can be built without the use of the SAP Cloud Applications studio. The second two solutions do require a small customization to be built in the SAP Cloud Applications Studio.
4 SAP Business ByDesign Customization Examples:
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Application Identifier on Bar Codes in SAP Business ByDesign |
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Detailed Material Description in SAP Business ByDesign |
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Actual Freight on Customer Invoice in SAP Business ByDesign |
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Material-Specific Lead Time in SAP Business ByDesign |
Related articles:
10 Tips for Reports and Data Sources in SAP Business ByDesign
Customizing SAP Business ByDesign to Your Needs – Part 2: The SDK (Cloud Applications Studio)
Customizing SAP Business ByDesign to Your Needs – Part 1
Contact FMT Consultants today to learn more about SAP Business ByDesign.
Hello Jakob,
Great article! I would like to add that extending User Extension field to forms from “further usage” screen might be more convenient for most users as compared to adding in Adobe LiveCycle.
I would like to share my experience In creating the Detailed Material Description field. The material in this use case has too many components within the specification so the standard field did not serve the purpose. Due to the nature of the Material it had to be extended to Purchase Orders (even Shopping Cart due to change in Output form now showing new field and not standard field) so basically the entire system where the option is available to view and print.
This did add to maintaining duplicate fields in the Master data and in case of Data Migration meant a lot of work in order to try and squeeze the specification within the 40 Character field (and still keep the information clear and usable as some screens do not allow the new user field to be visible) and additionally maintain the Full Description for All other purposes.
The default 40 character Material Description is definitely not enough (for some reason the Product Category Description gives a 80 Character field!!).
This workaround is time consuming to create and extend and I have wondered in the past if the "Details" field in the Material master could be extended more conveniently, perhaps using ByD SDK, I would like to hear if you have tried the "Details" Field or thinking about exploring this option or may be its just not possible to use for this purpose.
Regards
Nick
Nick,
As time consuming as the workaround is to set up initially, we've found that it's the easiest way to get the information where you want it. You can extend it to screens, forms, and reports.
The problem with the "Details" field is that it's a type of field that's not extensible by default (so even if it was used, you'd still have to go through the process of adding an extension field to the appropriate screens, forms, and reports) and you'd also need to be able to populate it.
In addition, the type of field is more along the lines of Formatted Text, which makes it harder to extend to reports.
As you mentioned that there are "duplicate" fields in the Master Data, but typically i think you may find it better to extend all the fields (i'm guessing these represent Product attributes - like size, color, etc.) through to the scenarios you need. Then, instead of having to ensure your detailed description is kept consistent with the other fields, you can generate the Description on the Form Template based on the base description and other extension fields.