1) Brief Background
2) Most Frequent Accrual Related issues during Month end
3) Proactive steps to handle such issues.
1) Background :
Fig-1
Trade promotions are incentives paid by the Consumer Product Manufacturers to Retailers/shops for merchandizing support.
Above Fig-1 shows , Overall Trade Promotion Management process.
In SAP CRM, Accruals are calculated for particular Trade promotion based on various “spend types” like Display, BB Scan etc.
Manufacturers of products (retails), gives lot of promotional schemes to increase sales, get growth volume, launch new products etc.
Retailers (Shops) gives sales orders to get possible discounts and to get promotional scheme benefit. During month end lot of such orders are placed by the customers to the sales persons of Manufacturer.
It is observed that , the volume of such sales orders are relatively higher during end of scheme, as retailers are keen to get qualified for particular discount or promotional fees. ( Ref. Fig.2 )
Fig.2
1) Possible issues During Month end.
We are referring here, a typical standard SAP CRM-TPM Landscape, where SAP CRM is integrated with Backend ECC System.
In typical post-go-live support scenario, it has been observed that, there is increase in number of Sales order from Retailers either during month end or end of Promotion period.
Issues frequently occurs for various Trade promotions,
1) - Accruals not calculated for reserved amounts
2) - Accruals posting not done to ECC
Accrual calculations are very important as it is the amount retailer will get, for participating the trade promotion for particular period.
Since, retailers are placing lot of sales orders during month end, they want to utilize the Accrual amount for trade by putting claim for accrual amount.
Fig.3
Fig.3 shows , Accruals calculations are very important to various stake holders .
1) 3) Proactive steps to handle such issues:
Below are some proactive steps taken by SAP CRM admin /functional.
i. In order to accrue the amount properly, we need to run/execute following programs in sequence at the end of business hours. It can be achieved by scheduling the background jobs in proper sequence. For best results, work out these steps every day, for 3 days till actual month end date.
Fig.4
ii. Check if all jobs are executed successfully without any errors.
iii.Please ensure after one job is executed, then only next subsequent job is executed as per sequence given above.
Below diagram ( Fig 5 ) shows Accrual is calculated properly
Fig.5.
After executing these jobs successfully, check in SAP CRM, if there are any BDOC errors -
- SMW01: to find any BDoc in error state /successfully processed
- SMQ1: Out bound Queue in SAP CRM
- SMQ2: In-Bound Queue in SAP CRM
It has been observed that, by following steps above mentioned, the number of issues related to accrual are reduced significantly during month end period, in post go live support project.
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