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On Friday July 18th, 2014 the new ST-A/PI 01R 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. The plug-in contains (besides others)

  • New types of delta throughput key figures for Order to Cash
  • New key figures for vendor invoice processing scenarios like Financial Shared Service Center scenarios
  • New Automation rate key figures
  • New business workflow related key figures that bring business documents and technical workflow information together
  • New Exception key figures for Cost Object Controlling (CO-PC)
  • SAP CRM key figure enhancements

The new ST-A/PI 01R 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)

Remarks:

  1. On slides 2,3 and 4 (Table of Content) you can find hyperlinks where you can directly access the respective chapter of interest.
  2. For application related key figures you find some of the listed Selection Options in bold letters. Those Selection Options are available as "Group by" fields in Business Process Analytics.

Key figure news summary for selected areas


New monitoring objects and key figures have been developed for Order to Cash throughput measurements, that require more granualr information than just on a daily basis. Those key figures are collected with some delta mechanism and can aggregate the throughput data in 5, 15, 30 or 60 minute buckets:
  • Sales documents (created, delta)
  • Outbound deliveries (created, delta)
  • Goods Issues for Outbound Deliveries  (posted, delta)
  • Outbound delivery items (created, delta)
  • Sales invoices (created, delta)

Attention: For those key figures it should be ensured that the corresponding housekeeping mechanisms of Business Process Analytics are activated.

New monitoring object "Changes in Documents" has been developed with a new key figure:

  • Changes in Sales Documents (measures all changes on header, item and schedule line level that are reflected in change tables)

New key figures for Purchase Requisition items, Purchase Order items, MM Invoices (AP), FI Postings, Open items (FI-AP) related to approval processes which are supported by business workflows:
  • WF: Purchase Requisitions with Workflow in process
  • WF: Purchase Requisitions with erroneous Workflow
  • WF-Lead TIme: Purchase Requisitions WF Creation --> WF Approval
  • WF: Purchase Orders with Workflow in process
  • WF: Purchase Orders with erroneous Workflow
  • WF-Lead TIme: Purchase Orders WF Creation --> WF Approval
  • WF: MM Invoices with Workflow in process
  • WF: MM Invoices with erroneous Workflow
  • WF-Lead TIme: MM Invoices WF Creation --> WF Approval
  • WF: FI Postings with Workflow in process
  • WF: FI Postings with erroneous Workflow
  • WF-Lead TIme: FI Postings WF Creation --> WF Approval
  • WF: Parked FI Postings with Workflow in process
  • WF: Parked FI Postings with erroneous Workflow
  • WF-Lead TIme: Parked FI Postings WF Creation --> WF Approval

Remark: The business workflow key figures are only working for workflows that are defined based on standard SAP business objects, i.e. BUS2105, BUS2012, BUS2081, BKPF and FIPP).

New automation rate key figures were introduced for Deliveries and Payments (vendors & customers):
  • Automation rate: Inbound Deliveries  (how many inbound deliveries are created automatically vs manually)
  • Automation rate: Outbound Deliveries (how many outbound deliveries are created automatically vs manually)
  • Automation rate: Vendor payments (how many FI-AP items are cleared automatically vs manually)
  • Automation rate: Customer payments (how many FI-AR items are cleared automatically vs manually)
Besides the workflow key figures for MM invoices and parked FI documents as well as automation rate key figure for vendor payments (all mentioned above), further key figures were introduced especially to support vendor invoice processing scenarios like Financial Shared Service Center scenarios:
  • MM invoices in status 'parked' (status of related business workflow can be included)
  • Overdue MM invoices with open FI-AP items
  • Purchase Order related invoices as % of total invoices
  • Overdue documents FI-AP in status 'parked'

New exception key figures were introduced for Cost Object Controlling (CO-PC):
  • Exceptions in Actual Result analysis (Sales Order) (related to transaction KKAK)
  • Exceptions in Actual Result analysis (Internal Order) (related to transaction KKAI)
  • Exceptions in Actual Result analysis (Project System) (related to transaction KKAJ)
  • Exceptions in Actual Settlement (Project System) (related to transaction CJ8G)
New key figures were introduced for SD invoices, Delivery items and Open items (FI-AR):
  • Exceptions due to billing block (shows especially those outbound deliveries that cannot be billed, because the corresponding sales order is blocked)
  • Missing fields in SD documents that hinder billing (shows especially those outbound deliveries that cannot be billed, because the corresponding sales order is incomplete)
  • Delivery items overdue for billing (next to delivery information also corresponding sales order item information about billing block and net value is provided)
  • Overdue documents FI-AR in status 'parked'

Enhancements for SAP CRM key figures:

  • All CRM Sales and CRM Services key figures have been enhanced, so that "User status" can be used as "group by"-field for Business Process Analytics.

Further reading

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 under http://wiki.sdn.sap.com/wiki/display/SM/FAQ+Business+Process+Monitoring andhttp://wiki.sdn.sap.com/wiki/display/SM/FAQ+Business+Process+Analytics respectively. The following blogs (in chronological order) provide further details about Business Process Analytics and Business Process Monitoring functionalities within the SAP Solution Manager.