SAP Hot Topics

Sales and Operations Planning (S&OP) Processes

A properly implemented S&OP process routinely reviews customer demand and supply, resources and “re-plans” quantitatively across an agreed rolling horizon. Getting sales and operations to work collaboratively is often vastly easier in theory than practice. There are a number of strategies that companies can employ to make sure everyone is working from the same page. Whether companies can use KPIs and accountability for sales employees, or link S&OP to the financial management plan, they need to use initiative to achieve accurate planning and forecasting; SAP BusinessObjects tools alongside APO and SAP ERP to help manage the S&OP process; which SAP BusinessObjects tools to use when? the importance of equal focus on people, process and tools in your planning philosophy; change management challenges; understanding APO Supply Network Planning, Production Planning and Detailed Scheduling (PPDS) and Global Available to Promise (GATP) - and understanding how well they are integrated with SAP inventory management systems

Master Data Management

Consistent and good quality master data is the key to the efficiency of a business’ supply chain processes. Although many businesses look for a technological solution to master data integrity, that is only one of the answers, the other is proper planning and governance. With a rush of mergers and acquisitions in the past couple of years, inconsistencies in master data have been exacerbated. Companies need to understand how an upcoming merger will affect their master data; who will have governance over the master data and decide upon a standardised data input; balancing the difference between ownership and governance; streamlining and optimisation to reduce lag time and improve efficiency; dealing with everchanging data; mapping master data between companies and vendors in order to guarantee effective communication and data exchange; recognising the benefits and pitfalls of centralised governance; engaging internal and external users and driving cultural change; adopting an end-to-end training process; what about technology? consider whether implementing Adobe Forms can standardise input; have you looked at portal iViews? SAP’s MDM solution? or assessed third party certified solutions?

Planning & Forecasting

Successful demand planning and forecasting requires accurate and timely information and sophisticated tools. SAP has a number of products available to assist in this, but it is essential for companies to match the tool to their business situation. Using your historical sales data and identifying key trends in the business; identifying the appropriate forecasting algorithm; incorporating all necessary demand information into the system; consider how the SAP ‘Alert Monitor’, SAP’s Demand Planning (DP) functionality and APO might assist in your planning and forecasting; integrating these tools into ECC; what is the next step after APO and DP?

Reporting

Extracting data from your system and monitoring the performance of your supply chain processes is an absolutely invaluable business tool. But with information stored in disparate areas in unrelated formats, achieving accurate reporting can be a minefield. Using the most appropriate standard SAP Reporting and SAP BusinessObjects tools can provide powerful, robust and meaningful information. Engaging users to get real value from reports; standardising reports across a business and getting a consistent look and feel front end; integrating supply chain data from third party tools to extend reporting capabilities - accessing and merging this data with your SAP data; defining supply chain KPIs - learning what to measure and what to do with the results; using reports to assist in your S&OP process.

Inventory Management

With an accurate inventory system, companies can cut costs, prevent erratic stock levels and properly record and track the flow of materials. SAP offers a number of tools in this area to assist on delivering on customer commitments without carrying excess inventory. How can you get the most out of your system with standard tools and reports? And how can using the exception monitor and KPI functionalities improve your processes? Cultural and technical steps to make Materials Requirements Planning (MRP) work in any sized operation - simultaneously planning
manufacturing activities, forecasting delivery schedules and purchasing activities; integrating other stock types such as consignment stock into a company ‘s inventory; properly integrating
inventory management into other parts of your SAP system.

Contract Management

SAP offers a suite of contract management tools ranging from the simple use of outline agreements to execute agreed pricing to the full use of E-Sourcing to assist in sophisticated strategic sourcing projects. Businesses need to match their level of procurement maturity with the appropriate contract execution tools from SAP; understanding where you are and where you are heading in your procurement journey to select the optimum contract management tools to support that position; implementing an integrated contract management solution; comparing the capabilities of E-Sourcing, SAP Supplier Relationship Management (SRM), SAP Contract Lifecycle Management (CLM) and even the Materials Management (MM) purchasing module of SAP ERP for your enterprise contract management; integration points for each tool; the use of outline agreements as service contracts and for vendor evaluation

E-Business and B2B

The past decade has seen much activity in the E-Business and B2B spaces, particularly impacting sourcing and procurement. Many companies are realising the benefits of supplier enablement
solutions using paperless data exchange and process automation. Choosing the right E-Business solution for your business - are solutions industry specific? mitigating the potential business risk of integration; examining the capabilities of SAP’s Supplier Self Service (SUS) and Supplier Network Collaboration (SNC) tools; integrating these tools into the system; consider how to integrate your order, delivery and invoice documents electronically with your suppliers to deliver business benefits; using Optical Character Recognition (OCR) technology for paper documents; dealing with missing information; the journey necessary to manage all stakeholders during and after implementing such tools.

Warehouse Management

Warehouse management is absolutely crucial to the efficiency of a supply chain. With a proper management system, businesses can cut down on warehouse costs, respond more quickly to demand and provide accurate inventory levels. Examine how SAP’s Warehouse Management System (WMS) can drive your inventory accuracy; consider how technologies like voice picking can improve your warehouse efficiency; achieving almost 100% accuracy with solutions based on inexpensive wireless IP telephones and network-centric speech technologies; achieving seamless integration with SAP ERP; getting key users on board and the role that ergonomics can play in usability.

Services Procurement

There is significant value available to businesses that run robust service procurement processes; evaluating new ways of managing service procurement from the ground up; achieving a simplified user experience and improved process, spend and contract compliance; improving safety performance and reducing costs; collaboration between Procurement, HR and HSE business functions; process integration and performance using recent innovations in ‘cloud computing’; consider using customised outline agreements for service contracts; engaging end users’ influence over both purchasing behaviour and safety performance.

Sourcing Solutions

Many companies are interested in the advantages that a sourcing solution might provide. SAP presently markets three different solutions that touch upon various aspects of procurement processes. While SAP Supplier Relationship Management (SRM), E-Sourcing and the ERP Materials Management (MM) purchasing module provide many similar features, they also provide markedly different capabilities. Understanding the basic features, functions and footprint; what can each tool do? what can’t they do? Matching a solution to your business requirements and identifying a business case for these technology enhancements

Rotables and Repairables

The ongoing push to increased asset performance at a lower cost is driving a growing need to define and manage rotables (individual repairable items) and repairables (families of repairable items) and track their usage, performance and costs over time. How SAP functional elements are used in orchestra to represent, plan, execute and manage a holistic rotable and repairable management solution; rotable and repairable data representation; production engineering of maintenance tasks; rotable and repairable maintenance planning using SAP’s Inspector’s Workbench; rotable and repairable maintenance execution; rotable and repairable induction in service organisations.

Strategic Supply Chain Topics

Augmenting the SAP-centric topics, an exciting addition to this year’s program are ‘big picture’ topics dealing with Business Alignment and Education, Selling Supply Chain, and Sustainability & Corporate Social Responsibility.

Business Alignment and Education

Understanding how your supply chain really works; considering your contemporary business model post-GFC; finding new ways of responding to customers with your supply chain; examining the ‘dynamic alignment’ model; selecting, nurturing and supporting your people; ensuring you have competent and professional staff acting in accordance with the company’s values, culture and protocols; strategic recruitment - considering non-procurement people for your team; internal development plans; documented processes and guidelines; creating leadership roles; achieving connectivity with other departments within the organisation

Selling Supply Chain

One of the biggest challenges facing supply chain professionals is getting management to understand the importance of the discipline. Starting with a self-awareness of the value of supply chain, we must be almost like marketers in our approach to selling the concept and the importance of supply chain. In order to take the larger transformational steps refocusing the way a supply chain department works, supply chain executives need this stakeholder engagement from the higher echelons of management within any company; creating an incentive of Return on Investment (ROI) for the business; exploring all commercial opportunities; using the SAP reporting functionality to support the initiatives; constantly refreshing the pipeline of ideas for the future