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tridip_chakraborthy
Contributor

Hey SAP Procurement folks, it’s been 2 weeks since we tractioned further on our SAP SRM 7.0 ehP2 blog series, SAP Procurement summit was a great show, don’t know, how many of you made it physically or virtually, but stay tuned for more content from m on the SAP Procurement summit.

1.0 …A short story’: Overview

Today’s topic is extremely close to me personally & professionally, with no more speculation, I would like to state that today’s topic would be about paying it back to mother earth with a term that we all love “Sustainability” with SAP Procurement solutions. SAP has been contributing directly towards a sustainable environment in many ways, their CSR initiative is one of the best that I have witnessed personally and have been a part of.

Procurement is one area that can lead directly into the carbon footprint metric and affect sustainability in a big way, I had started a blog series called, “Introducing an SRM Consultant to terms like Sustainability and Carbon Footprint”, where we picked each SAP Procurement object (Ex PO, Shopping cart etc) and explained, how each of these contributed in a way directly / indirectly to carbon footprint. The graphic below is a shocker.


2.0 Recap of the perspective….

Here is a link to all the 4 sequels on the topic.

Introducing an SRM Consultant to terms like Sustainability and Carbon Footprint - part 1

http://scn.sap.com/community/srm/blog/2010/11/09/introducing-an-srm-consultant-to-terms-like-sustain...

http://scn.sap.com/community/srm/blog/2011/05/04/introducing-an-srm-consultant-to-terms-like-sustain...

http://scn.sap.com/community/srm/blog/2011/05/21/introducing-an-srm-consultant-to-terms-like-sustain...

Introducing an SRM Consultant to terms like Sustainability and Carbon Footprint - part 4

http://scn.sap.com/community/srm/blog/2011/07/13/introducing-an-srm-consultant-to-terms-like-sustain...

That was a slight deviation, but had to be emphasized to get your attention towards today’s blog topic.

Revisiting the Global Trends that are driving change in Procurement practices, Sustainability is key.


3.0 What’s in the Sustainability Box: Enable Sustainability in SAP SRM and SAP ECC?

  1. Enable purchasers with sustainability in supplier management
  2. Enable employees to select sustainable products

        In summary, the following functionality is enabled :


    1. Enhanced SRM-MDM Catalog with sustainability parameters for ‘greener’ product selection.
    2. Enhanced  ECC vendor master and Info record with sustainability parameters
    3. ECC Vendor evaluation to include sustainability scores
    4. Enhanced SRM-MDM Catalog integration to upload sustainability parameters from ERP masters.

I was thrilled to see these bundled inside the SRM and ECC modules that I couldn’t resist from blogging about it, am sure that many customers would like to drive this off their procurement systems to help achieve low carbon footprint procurement processes.

Sustainable Procurement PROCESS Flow: A typical SAP Procurement customer’s Point of View

  The process flow covers the breadth of defining and maintain the Sustainability parameters, using them for evaluation, associating them with the Product-Vendor

combination, making it available in the PR and the SRM Shopping cart(via SRM MDM Catalog) and downstream analytics


Functionalities at breadth – with snippets of the new enhanced UI provided to capture, report and use for Sustainable Procurement inside SAP ECC and SAP SRM (including SRM-MDM Catalog)

3.1 Vendor Sustainability record

Many customers who were hard pressed to provide this KPI while evaluating Vendors, had to develop these all by themselves and somehow incorporate it for the overall Vendor evaluation, now customers would be thrilled that these place holders are available directly to switch on and use.

The standard fields are great, one can also add additional fields as required a specific Sustainability KPI.

Access points

  1. Can be accessed from Buyer role both in Portal and also NWBC
  2. From existing Vendor Master in ECC

Side Panel

  1. This screen is enhanced with side panel to display graphs / analytics
  2. Trend of particular Vendor with respect to sustainable values

3.2 Vendor evaluation Enhancements for Sustainability in Procurement

    1. Main criteria Sustainability added. Along with 1 sub-criteria – vendor is added
      1. Vendor rating [taken from overall score in new Vendor screen]


3.3 Vendor evaluation Info in Purchase requisition



3.4 Sustainability Reports are also provided

  1. New report that lists sustainability values for all Vendors.
  2. By default, only the current record for each Vendor is shown. All records can be selected and listed, too

3.5 Vendor Material Sustainability Info Record

This view on the Vendor master record will be a game-changer in evaluating customers with a new KPI for Sustainability, the Sustainability parameters like Energy rating, Certificates, Emission and waste details to capture how much carbon footprint will be added by using these products contributing to Green House Gases.

Sustainability info records function is also included in harmonized roles (SAP SRM 7.0 EhP2 and SAP ECC 6.0 EhP6)

3.6 Pushing the Data from SAP ECC to SAP SRM-MDM Catalog & using it in PR/Shopping Cart creation process

Once these are maintained in the ERP Vendor Master, they can me moved to the SRM MDM Catalog via the MECCM Report.

The Item Vendor combination can be pushed directly into the SRM MDM Catalog and when you create a shopping cart in SRM, you can see these details upfront while making a green purchasing decision

3.7 Important Notes for Catalog Innovations in SRM-MDM Catalog 7.02 implementation:

  • 1548533 – Explains Technical details of sustainability fields
  • 1548532 – MDM Catalog Repository Info
  • 1641186 - Explains PI Config
  • 1572777 – Secure OCI settings

4.0 How do I achieve this?

Activate Business function: LOG_MM_SUSTAIN_1

5.0 Being Sustainable – In true spirit & character

This might sound off topic, but every individual that uses these solutions should not look at sustainability from a transactional point of view, if that’s the case, we lose the intent of the initiative.

With the global warming index that has led to adverse weather conditions in 2012, it’s a clear alarm that every individual has to do something to pay it forward to Mother Earth.

We do that in our daily lives in many ways by refusing to use plastic bags, using eco-friendly products, lower energy consumption, car-pooling etc. We can do the same way by helping all the customers at our SAP Procurement implementations sites to drive off Sustainability metrics from inside the application. This will help achieve the broader Corporate Social Responsibility Initiative.

6.0 Summary & what to look forward to

…As always, we leave you with the dope of what’s coming next

To cover the entire series for Innovations with SAP SRM 7.0 eHP2 and SAP ECC 6.0 Ehp6, we are left with the following topics:


Please stay tuned in the next couple weeks to help provide a logical ending to the story.


7.0) SAP Procurement social_media outreach channels

Hope to see you sign-up and follow our via all our Social Media Outreach channels

8.0) SAP Procurement handles & Hash-tags to follow









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