Business on Demand has been working with ByDesign for the last 3 years and one of the biggest areas of mystery has been using Web-services.

We like most ByDesign partners have been through the mill trying to work with some of the external development community who claim to know more more than anyone else about this particular topic. We have found that on more than one occasion reading the help provided by SAP seems to be all the qualification that sub-contractors need in order to be able to claim to be experts. It is a significant waste of time and financial resources to brief a sub-contractor to find out some time later that they are using your project to learn the product and probably know less than we do!

To this end we have recently embarked on a few projects to implement Web-service communication to SAP ByDesign in a number of different areas of the product and we been particularly successful with this. We now can genuinely claim to be experts in making the connection (to the SAP ByDesign system) and in transforming data both into and out of ByDesign (we are using both the Synchronous and Asynchronous Web-services).

We do however have a problem - SAP ByDesign Web-services seem to be pretty straightforward however the documentation around the different 'fields' and how to use them is sadly lacking. There are numerous places where fields are 'compulsory' but there is no explanation of where to look up this field in the system you are working with.

Most frustrating as once using these (Web-services) transactions become commonplace the use of SAP ByDesign will accelerate further. We would welcome discussion with other members of the community and SAP Development as we believe that this is and area for potential growth.

We will keep plugging away at the transactions where there is little or no explanation as most customers only want to be able to create or amend data from elsewhere and not worry about the SAP pre-requisites - That is our job, making the 'impossible' look easy.

We will be writing again on this but in the meantime if there are more sources of information that have been missed please let me know and we will incorporate these into this blog.

While SAP Business ByDesign has an extraordinary array of out-of-the-box functionality in both breadth and depth, there will always be customer-specific scenarios and use-cases that are not natively handled entirely through standard functionality. Though most ERP systems allow customization to handle these scenarios, what sets Business ByDesign apart is the ability to quickly and easily create custom functionality that can be an integral part of standard processes.

See also: Customizing SAP Business ByDesign to Your Needs

As an example, we will walk through a use-case that we encountered for a medical device manufacturer. Compliance requirements associated with the manufacture of medical devices created the need to manage the procurement of materials and services used in the manufacturing process. Materials used in the manufacture of the devices and the services from third parties involved in the manufacturing process needed to be regulated to ensure that only approved suppliers could supply approved products.

Note that this is intended to provide an example of one approach used to fulfill requirements – your circumstances may be different, and variations to this process are definitely possible.

Before the creation of the customization, this data was managed in Excel and through strict oversight by employees involved in the manufacturing and purchasing processes. Despite this, with any process reliant on human input for validation, the possibility for human error occurs. To greatly reduce the likelihood of errors, the company wanted to utilize SAP Business ByDesignto manage the procurement and manufacturing processes.

The customization contains a custom Approved Supplier List Business Object to store and manage the custom data, an extension to the standard Purchase Order Business Object to execute the validation and store the result, an XML Integration to allow mass-data load and maintenance of the custom functionality and the associated user interface components. Within this blog, I’ll include “How It Works” tips to provide information on how the functionality is actually created.

The User Interface and Custom Business Object

Within the SAP Business ByDesign system itself, we immediately see that our custom Work Center “Approved Supplier Lists” is added amongst all the other standard Work Centers and can be interacted with in a manner indistinguishable from the standard user interface. To an end user, it should appear as if any of the custom functionality is just another standard out-of-the-box module.

How It Works: Assignment of custom Work Centers works in the same way as assignment of standard Work Centers. This means that you can restrict access to your custom functionality by user, in the same manner that you’d restrict access to standard functionality. This is especially important in this scenario due to the strict requirements related to who is allowed to add or update this data.

Within the Work Center, this is a Work List to view existing Approved Supplier Lists and associated data, which can be sorted and filtered like any other standard Work List. We can manually add new Approved Supplier List objects through the user interface using the “New” button, or use the “Edit” button to update existing objects. We can mass-upload this data as well, which we’ll explore later.

How It Works: the basic UI screens are created through the standard “Floor plan with Navigation” option, which will create most of your screens automatically. You can then adjust and refine the generated screens, which saves a tremendous amount of time over trying to build them from scratch. You’ll want to wait until you’ve gotten your associated Business Object built out to the extent you can, as the generated screens will include all the elements and actions that were present at the time. If you add additional elements, you’ll need to go to the screens and add them back in.

When we open an existing Approved Supplier List, we can see a screen that looks and feels identical to standard Business ByDesign screens. Within the screen, we see the relevant information for the Approved Supplier List we opened. You’ll notice that the Supplier ID is read-only – users are prevented from changing it after the list has been initially set up.

How It Works: the read-only property of the field is set to “Advanced” to allow a script to determine the property value. The script retrieves based on a hidden indicator which is set when the Approved Supplier List is saved with valid data for the first time. This means that one element of a Business Object can control user interaction with other elements.

Multiple Approved Supplier Lists for the same Supplier are automatically prevented through an annotation in the Business Object itself. How It Works: the [AlternativeKey] annotation automatically prevents multiple Approved Supplier Lists for the same Supplier to be saved. If an ID is entered which is present on an existing Approved Supplier List, it will raise an error and prevent data from being saved – there’s no additional coding required to enable this behavior.

Below the Supplier ID and Name, there is a “Qualified Supplier” checkbox. If an Approved Supplier List expires or is no longer valid, it can be changed at the entire-list level.

Within the Approved Supplier List, a table of Approved Products appears. Both Material- and Service-type products can be added. Additionally, the Value Helper will distinguish between the “Product Type” and suggest only relevant products. This means that if Product Type “Service” is selected, only Services will be suggested when the user begins to type in the Product ID or when the user clicks the Value Selector icon.

How It Works: when you change a field type to “Value Selector”, you can still configure the public Object Value Selector that you use. As part of this, you can bind a field as an input parameter for the OVS query. The Product Type you see in the user interface is passed as the value to the Product Type parameter of the query. You can do this with multiple input parameters as well, depending on what is supported by the Object Value Selector used.

Pictured below is another example of an Approved Supplier List – in this case, for a Service-type product. Note that “…Changed On” elements are present to allow visibility into the control process behind the maintenance of the lists.

Extensibility of Purchase Orders

We will now explore how the custom functionality integrates with the standard Purchase Order functionality. As we can see, a Purchase Order is created for one of our Approved Suppliers. All the user actions performed for a Purchase Order use the standard screens and processes.

Within the standard Purchase Order screen, we see that there’s a new field in the Item table – “ASL Status”. This status displays one of multiple possible statuses related to the validity of the product for purchase from the particular Supplier. As shown below, the Service pictured has the status of “ASL Check Successful”, which means it’s allowable for Purchase.

However, you can see that there are also two materials on the Purchase Order, one ordered To-Stock and one ordered as Non-Stock. For the first To-Stock material, we see the status Product Not Found on ASL, which is one of the status which will prevent us from issuing this Purchase Order. For this particular customer-specific customization, it was requested that Non-Stock Materials (used for internal testing) would not be subject to Approved Supplier List restrictions, so we can see that the second material has a status which indicates that the line on the Purchase Order is allowable, as the Approved Supplier List restrictions are not relevant.

How It Works: “ASL Status” is an element as part of a Business Object Extension, which is used to enhance the functionality of a standard Business Object through the new data elements, the presence of these data elements on standard screens, and additional scripts that can be run when standard Business Objects are modified.“ASL Status” is a custom data-type, which contains a defined list of codes and their related values (the descriptions shown below). The value of this field is controlled by custom code within the Business Object Extension that is run when the Purchase Order Item node is modified.

It’s important to use code-list data types to ensure that the values in the field are kept consistent. Additionally, it is best practices to use a code-list data type to display text or descriptions, as it allows for the ability to easily translate the Description text into other display languages. What this means is that this customization could be developed in English, then translated and used by non-English-speaking users. The ability to export the original and upload translated values is a standard part of the Cloud Applications Studio.

The user will go through the Purchase Order and fill in the relevant information (though in reality the user should stop before this, as they would have noticed that one of the Products cannot be ordered on the Purchase Order).

However, when the user goes to Release the Order, the user is actually stopped and an error message appears. As one of the Line Items violates the Approved Supplier List validity checks, the user is prevented from executing the “Release” action on the Purchase Order.

How It Works: In addition to the code that determines the “ASL Status”, code is added as an “Action Validation” on the standard “Release” action. “Action Validations” are used to allow customer-specific controls to be placed that can prevent standard actions from being executed. In this case, Release is not allowed if the ASL Status is not “Successful” and not one of the “Not Relevant” type statuses.

One extremely valuable component of the customization is that the custom code being performed is related to the Purchase Order Business Object itself (through the Business Object Extension). The association of code with the Business Object (as opposed to screen or transaction) ensures that these validations are used regardless of the method that the transaction is managed – these checks will be performed regardless of whether the data is managed through the User Interface, web service integration from external systems, the upload of data from Excel, or XML integrations used to load data. This is critical for the integrity of data – no matter where the data is managed, it will always be subject to the same checks and validations without the need to deploy code or maintain code in multiple system locations.

In addition to simply allowing or not allowing a Purchase Order to be released, it’s important to give users insight into why, so if data needs to be updated, users can know what to change or request changes to.

For example, if a user tries to create a Purchase Order for a Supplier that has not yet been set up as an Approved Supplier List.

As we can see here, the status tells me that this Supplier has yet to be set up within the Approved Supplier Lists.

How It Works: an example code snippet from the script that determines this data – for example, if the query to retrieve the Approved Supplier List data does not return any results, then the status indicates that no Approved Supplier List was found.

Additionally, we see the purpose of the “Qualified” indicator at both the Approved Supplier List Root and Item level – users can disqualify an Item on the Approved Supplier List without having to remove it from the list completely.

Similar to Item disqualification, the entire Approved Supplier List can be disqualified without having to go through item-by-item. This may be necessary, as Suppliers may only be temporarily disqualified – by enabling a disqualification at the root level, upon requalification the list can be resumed from the last point of qualification.

Below, we see the associated ASL Status which tells the user that, while the Approved Supplier List exists, the Supplier is not qualified.

How It Works: The ASL Status is determined by a set of queries that starts at a broad level, then gradually becomes more detailed. If the script cannot progress any further (for example, due to lack of results or disqualified suppliers or items in the results), based on the point it stops, a status is determined. Pictured below are two reasons that the script would return an irrelevant or not-allowable status.

To simplify the process, a “Reuse” Library can be created within the custom solution. This means that functions can be created with input and output data that can be reused elsewhere. For example, while this currently only effects the Purchase Orders, this functionality could easily be added to Purchase Requests or Supplier Invoices.

Custom Change Log

Also included is a simplified, but highly necessary function – a basic Change log. Not to be confused with the system standard Change Logs (which automatically track this information and can be added through an embedded component for any custom Business Object), the intention of this log is to simplify the reporting of changes over time across the entire array of Approved Product Sales lists. This is used to meet auditing requirements, with the elements that are changed, from / to values and the date and time of changes.

More important than just being able to see a list of changes, this data can be used within the standard SAP Business ByDesign reporting engine to produce audit reports with data from all the Approved Supplier Lists.

How It Works: by using the AfterLoading events (only usable with custom Business Objects) and elements with the [transient] annotation, the value when an Approved Supplier List is entered can be compared to the value when it is saved. If these are different, an entry is added to the Approved Supplier List Changes node.Additionally, a custom Data Source can be created based on any “node” of the object. As the “Changes” are a node within the Approved Supplier List Business Object, it can be used to create a Data Source that contains information from all instances for this node within all the Approved Supplier Lists. Once the custom Data Source is created, it can be joined to existing Data Sources, or other custom Data Sources.

Data Import and Update

As mentioned above, there are ways of importing data to simplify the process of initial data population or ongoing maintenance. An Excel file was created to allow users to create the set of Suppliers and associated Products. For example, to create the lists used in this example, the file would be populated as pictured below.

Upon click of a button linked to a simple Excel macro, the macro that generates an XML file would run and produce a file, such as the one pictured below with the “.xml” extension.

The contents of the file would be in a common XML structure, as determined by the XSD produced from the SAP Business ByDesign file input. This means that, in addition to the use of Excel, any system that can produce data in the necessary XML format can be used to generate the files for use in import.

This file could then be uploaded into the standard “Application and User Management” -> “File Input” interface, and processed through use of a scheduled run.

Additionally, data upload can occur through making the WebDAV location available as a network drive as pictured below, or through external messages. This means that, once created, the mass management of data can be done by users without the need for further partner involvement.

Final Notes

As we can see, this customization, while fairly simple in scope, provides highly important functionality to managing the procurement process related to oversight, compliance and audit.

As with any customer-specific enhancement, the design is intended to be truly customer-specific – the scope and complexity of the custom data that can be managed within SAP Business ByDesign is nearly limitless, and made simple through use of the standard ByDesign development functionality, which can:

1. Provide a familiar user interface to manage data
2. Add extensions to standard functionality to incorporate your data in the out-of-the-box screens and processes
3. Integrate with external sources or systems to synchronize create, update, and synchronize data
4. Report on custom data to provide valuable oversight and analytics

Whether you have similar requirements or something completely different, FMT Consultants is here to help you get the most out of your SAP Business ByDesign system – as we’ve seen time and time again, a small enhancement can make a big difference – so don’t hesitate to ask whether we can help you too.

Contact FMT Consultants to learn more about SAP Business ByDesign

Written by: Dan Edelman, Senior SAP Business ByDesign Consultant FMT Consultants 

Ascension is defined as the moving upwards in climbing and mountaineering. We have heard many ascension stories from the bible to the global market on a daily basis. There is no economy in the world without a daily success story of a small and medium size enterprise trying to catapult into the global scene. Many have succeeded in the e-commerce, mining, pharmaceuticals and agricultural industry etc but with disastrous outcome due to rapid expansion which finally leads them to be taken over by already established companies before they reach their actual potential. A dream gone without growing to its maturity and leaving a long lasting footprint on earth.

The ability to manage a global brand could only be achieved by identifying and tailoring your products to each market. Each market or region or country is unique as they have their culture, buying pattern, government or reporting requirement, population, believes, tax etc. Growth is uncontrollable when you have a unique product and the ability to take urgent decisions can make and unmake SME enterprises. Information is the key to efficient management of resources be it human capital to wealth.

An efficient SME positioned for greater heights is one that is running on a fully integrated on- demand enterprise resource planning and business management system like SAP ByDesign(this product I have tested and use) . With high unemployment rates major companies are downsizing but many SME’s are expanding and recruiting. What could be the cause?.... INNOVATION. 

Innovation is defined as a new idea, device or process. Innovation can be viewed as the application of better solutions that meet new requirements, inarticulated needs, or existing market needs.

A good idea or product sells itself, that with minimal marketing, but efficient services or durable product the company keeps growing. Having an integrated system will give the key managers the tool they need to survive in an ever-changing market place. Imagine knowing the accurate sales figure of your product or service by mid-month and having to make adjustments within the month to reach reasonable targets. This information/reports will help the manager to place appropriate resources where needed to achieve his or her target. His pairs in the industry will be calling him a fortune teller or a magician as he is able to predict the market accurately due to the information/reports he is getting from his fully integrated online system (running from sales-purchases-liquidity management-hr-warehousing-communication-marketing-payroll etc)

I believe that with such SME systems currently in the market, at an affordable rate and supported by an efficient cloud team, being an entrepreneur would be interesting…

What do you think?

Hier ist ebenfalls eine deutsche Version des Artikels verfügbar.

I often get the question how long it will take till SAP has finalized his HTML5 version of SAP Business ByDesign.

The simple answer is, just take a look in your system...

There is already an HTML5 version available in every SAP Business ByDesign system, what you have to do to get this is quite simple. You only have to manipulate the URL of your system like that:

https://myXXXXXX.sapbydesign.com/sap/ap/ui/repository/SAP_BYD_UI/HTML5/client.html

Be aware of that this version is still in development and there isn`t all functionality available.

But the fact is that there is coming more and more functionality. Last thing I saw was the availability of Self Service portal including time recording. And in general you will see that the HTML5 version has a essential better performance.

Churn rate is defined as a measure of the number of individuals or items moving out of a collective group over a specific period of time. Invaluable asset is defined as an asset without a quantifiable value. So an invaluable employee is an employee that is invaluable…

The ability to develop an understanding of the employees morale at any point in time is measured by the interaction between the senior management team and the employees. Employee churn rate is the gauge of performance on workers welfare depending on the industry. Restaurants and takeaways have very high churn rates due to the nature of their business, as many of their employees leave once they get something better outside or graduate in the case of students.  Human capital is one of the biggest asset a company can have as it’s developed overtime and an employee departure is valued as a reduction on the payroll but the reality is that it’s a reduction of the company’s invaluable asset/employee.

All companies are valued by their share price but the employees working in these companies are invaluable, so this means that the value of all the companies in the world are incorrect, when you add the human capital developed along the years. Commonly we say when an employee departs” he was an invaluable asset to the company”. The only reason we say this is that the company or his colleagues has now realized the invaluable value of their colleague or friend without thinking of themselves as being invaluable too. Martin Lipton developed the poison pill to save companies from unwanted takeovers but nothing to date have been developed to save the departure of an invaluable employee. Clauses on employee contracts might try to deter the departure but ultimately there is always a way out of the clause.

I think companies should add invaluable asset identifier to the role of the talent scouts or HR. These invaluable asset identifier or IAI would spot invaluable assets in the companies and monitor their development and progress in the company. These invaluable assets/employees are identified by the following ways;

1. Seen as a mentor by colleagues
2. Ability to build a personal network to achieve his or her targets.
3. In a multicultural environment he or she is able to learn languages
4. He or she is a role model
5. He or she is an expert

There are different reasons why an invaluable asset/employee would leave a company, but if the IAI was doing his or her job well the departure of the invaluable asset/employee might be avoided, with little effort or a raise causing the company minimal loss. I cannot advise the IAI on the negotiating ways to keep an invaluable employee/asset. But by finding out the reason for leaving I think with common sense, this can be avoided. The list of invaluable employees is not for the public, shareholders or even the employees/ invaluable assets themselves. This list is for only the senior managers or directors, as there are confidentiality issues here. The HR/IAI must have an unbiased, reputable and non-discriminatory personality for this approach to human capital management to work. If the list is exposed then, you have lost the aim of this approach, as the invaluable assets on the list will be marginalized or discriminated against. Also the morale of the employees that are not on the list might be depleted.

Now for employees, find out if you are an invaluable asset/employee or not?

Keeping your name on the invaluable asset list of a company can only be achieved by continuous update in education, knowledge, personality, patience, hard work etc.

During my interaction with customers and partners, I have realized that effective utilization of ‘Business By Design Cloud Studio’ and following few inter-dependent configuration steps simplifies creation of ‘Tax Content’ in Business by Design.

So through this blog, I would like to clarify the configuration messaging with a simple Do’s and Don’ts step-guide.

At the onset, let us look at the composition of ‘Tax Content’ in Business by Design. The Tax content in Business by Design can be broadly classified into ‘Product Tax’ and ‘Withholding Tax’. The Product tax can be further classified into four elements – Tax type, Tax rate, Tax event and Tax Code with a defined
interrelation among them.

In this blog we focus on understanding effective way of defining ‘Product Tax’

A Simplistic graphical representation of ‘Product tax code’ can be as depicted below:

By following a set of guided principles as below, your product tax configuration process becomes much easier and less error prone.

Do's:

• Use all the configuration elements from single configuration source i.,e  either PDI or all SAP pre-delivered.
• Always create all other 3 elements, if you plan to create any one Tax element in the Studio. Omitting any one tax elements’ makes tax postings impossible.
• Always maintain the mapping of tax event for a created tax type. Missing mappings would make tax postings impossible.
• Always maintain tax procedures to the tax events. PDI currently supports assignment of tax events to tax procedures with ‘Input VAT’ and ‘Output VAT’ only.
• Create new decision tree for automatic determination of Tax codes which are from studio.
• Use valid combination of Tax event-Tax type and Tax type-Tax rate combination for creation of Tax code.
• Tax Deductibity codes can be created in the fine-tuning activity, “Tax Setting and Purchasing”, in the SAP Business By-Design system. You must manually redo the entire process in the customer system.

Don'ts:

• Don’t mix up tax elements from different sources of creation. Always chose to use either ‘PDI’ or ‘SAP pre-delivered tax codes’ for all elements of ‘Tax code’ creation.
• Don’t assign multiple tax types to same tax event
• Don’t assign multiple tax types to same tax code

While creating Tax code, Usage of valid Tax event-Tax type and Tax type-Tax rate combination is mandatory. A simple example use-case is provided below for quick reference.

For example:

New Tax types and Rate types: Taxtype1 -- Ratetype1

                                                         Taxtype1 – Ratetype2

                                                         Taxtype2 -- Ratetype1

                                                         Taxtype3 -- Ratetype2

New Tax events:   Taxevent1 -- Taxtype1

                                 Taxevent2 -- Taxtype2

                                 Taxevent3 – Taxtype3

                                 Taxevent4 – Taxtype2

New Tax Code:

Valid Tax codes:

• Taxcode1-- Taxevent1 -- Taxtype1 – Ratetype1
• Taxcode2-- Taxevent1 -- Taxtype1 – Ratetype2
• Taxcode3 -- Taxevent2 -- Taxtype2—Ratetype1
• Taxcode4 – Taxevent3 – Taxtype3—Ratetype2
• Taxcode5 – Taxevent4 – Taxtype2—Ratetype1

Invalid Tax codes:

• Taxcode1--Taxevent1--Taxtype2—Ratetype1 because Taxevent1--taxtype2 combination does not exists in the Tax event
• Taxcode1--Taxevent1--Taxtype2—Ratetype3 because Taxtype2—Ratetype3 combination does not exists in the Tax type BC Set.

Invaluable assets are assets that the value cannot be ascertained. Such assets are employees and consultants working for an entity. The value of the entity can only be fully ascertained when these assets are given a nominal value on the financial statement (or balance sheet as previously called). Most employees/consultants have a redundancy value, which is an agreed nominal value. Currently this figure is not included in the statement of financial position, which makes the current state of the statement of financial position incorrect and not reflecting the true position of the entity.

PROPOSAL:

I PROPOSE THAT EMPLOYEES AND CONSULTANTS SHOULD BE ADDED AT AN AGREED NOMINAL VALUE ON THE STATEMENT OF FINANCIAL POSITION FOR ENTITIES AS INVALUABLE ASSETS UNDER NON-CURRENT ASSETS. THE CURRENT REDUNDANCY COST OF EACH EMPLOYEE/CONSULTANT INCLUDED AS A LIABILITY BUT PAID OUT OF THE INVALUABLE ASSET AMOUNT. SO THEREFORE THE DOUBLE ENTRY FOR INVALUABLE ASSETS WILL BE REDUNDANCY PAYMENTS. FURTHERMORE, IAS 19 AMENDED TO REFLECT THIS CHANGE.

The share price of an entity is currently the only parameter to judge the value of the entity and this proposal (if accepted by the worldwide accounting bodies) will change the way employees and entities are been valued. This will not only change the valuation process but will also change the way employees and consultants are treated. This is because their invaluable value will be more appreciated if the entity or employer wants to keep their current value. As a reduction or increase in the value of the invaluable assets, will be permanently visible on the statement of financial position for everyone to see. This gives the true picture of the entity and in the event of a sale or liquidation the value of the entity can be easily ascertained.

The nominal value to be assigned on the statement of financial position will be based on a specific parameter agreed upon by the accounting bodies like redundancy payments. These parameters are listed below;

1. Qualification of Employees.
2. Experience of the Employees.
3. Number of skilled and unskilled Employees.
4. Industry parameters.
5. Industry achievement of Employees.
6. Current redundancy value.
7. Employee Salary.
8. Location.
9. Number of years with the entity.

This value is not redeemable on the sale or disposal of the company, as it will be transferred to the new owner. Whereas in the case of the entity being closed down/ liquidated or employee leaves the entity the value will be paid to the employee/ consultant as redundancy payment/compensation for their invaluable value to the entity. Thus, knowledge and experience gained over the years will be carried to his or her new Employment.

This blog is intended to provide some tips and tricks for creating custom reports or data sources in SAP Business ByDesign. It’s aimed at users that don’t have a reporting background, so if you’re used to building SQL-based reports, just bear with me. This isn’t an end-to-end guide from data source to report, but serves as a reference to use if you’re just getting started, or have gotten stuck trying to figure out how to do something.

In this blog I’ll cover:

• Display Repeated Texts
• Zero Suppression
• Understanding Results Rows
• Show Attributes
• Create Your Own Data Sources
• Joined Data Sources
• Restricted Key Figures
• Calculated Key Figures
• Exception Aggregation
• Combined Data Sources

1. Display Repeated Texts

If you would like to export data from SAP Business ByDesign to use within Excel, you’ll find the option “Display Repeated Texts” very useful for anything VLOOKUP-based. For example, if we have data in this format:

We go to Settings -> Table

And check the Display Repeated Texts indicator.

Now, each field in each row contains a value, allowing you to use functions like VLOOKUP or SUMIF without having to manually populate these fields.

2. Zero Suppression

If you want to exclude zero or missing values within a report, you can use options to exclude these rows or columns. For example, within the report below, we have a few rows that have zero values only and a few columns that have zero values only.

If you go to Settings -> Key Figures

Then select the General tab

You can apply Zero Suppression to rows, columns, or both.

Note that there are two types – “Suppress When All Results Equal Zero” will apply suppression when the totals for a row or column equal zero, even though there may be individual values. For example, if you were reporting on manual journal entry vouchers by month, and you wanted to exclude months in which all the journal entry vouchers that had been posted had also been reversed in the same month, you’d select “Suppress When All Results Equal Zero.”

The other option is “Suppress When All Values Equal Zero”, which is stricter – it will only suppress a row or column when there are no non-zero values. So, in the above example, even the months with a net value of zero would still appear. In the below example, we can see how we’ve reduced the number of rows and columns.

3. Understanding Results Rows

Let’s say we want to see subtotals by account in the example below:

In order to do so, you’ll  need to go to Settings -> Characteristics

Now, everyone’s first impulse is to say “I need a subtotal by account, so I’ll set the account results row to show."

However, if you set this and click OK, you won’t see a subtotal by account.

Why is this? It’s because the results row shows the total of all the values within that characteristic. By thinking of the results row using the words of all will take the guesswork out of your results row.

So, if we have accounts and months as our row characteristics, I ask myself:

Do I want a subtotal of all accounts? No.

Do I want a subtotal of all months within an account? Yes.

By answering these questions above, I can set up my result row options as shown below.

4. Show Attributes

While most reports contain the characteristics that you need, you may have occasion to want to include particular data of a characteristic that you use within the report.

Generally, this will apply to informational data only, in the sense that the data we bring in will appear alongside the other characteristics, but we don’t want it to influence the grouping, sorting, or any of the data we see.

For example, let’s say we’re looking at historical sales order volume, and we’d like to know what the lifecycle status is for the accounts that we’re seeing.

I don’t want to exclude blocked or obsolete accounts, nor do I want to group or sort by the lifecycle status – I’d just like to know what it currently is. In this case, I’d use an attribute of a characteristics. To do this, I go to Settings -> Characteristics

You’ll see that there’s an “Attribute Shown” column on the far-right. Click on the value selector.

In the value selector I can see all the additional attributes I can include for the associated account. I can see that Status is an attribute that I can use. I select that row, then click on the > arrow.

Now, when I look at my account data, I see that in addition to the description and ID of my account, I have an informational status column.

5. Create Your Own Data Sources

Users will occasionally want reports that go outside the standard SAP created reports. This most frequently occurs when they want to bring together data from different functional areas of SAP Business ByDesign, or when they want detailed data on a variety of different objects within similar areas of ByDesign.

To be able to do this, you have the ability to create your own data sources – either a joined data source or a combined data source. One of the types of question I get most frequently relates to the differences between a joined and combined data source.

When trying to determine which will be right for your purposes, consider this:

You’ll usually use a joined data source when you expect not only the types of characteristics to be the same, but that they also refer to the same thing.

Whereas a combined data source is used when the types of characteristics are the same, but they mayrefer to different things.

While there’s some good information that describes the differences between the two types within the SAP Business ByDesign documentation, my rule of thumb to use (at least as a starting point) is as follows:

Will there be a problem if data gets replicated?

If the answer is “Yes”, then I will start with a combined data source.If not, then I’ll start with a joined data source.

There are other questions you can ask to help steer you in the right direction, which I’ll touch on in the section on combined data sources.

Here’s an example:

One of our clients wanted to be able to estimate project revenue by project task for fixed fee projects. In order to do this, we needed to maintain an estimated billing rate for each employee on the project.

While I could enter a billing rate at the project staffing screen, this would only allow me to estimate revenue at a total project level.

So, I needed to create a data source that would contain both my estimated billing rates and project task hours detail data.

I identified my two data sources, then had to decide how to bring them together. So I ask the question – will there be a problem if data gets replicated?

Because the estimated billing rate for the combinationof project and team member could relate to multiple project tasks, I’m going to have to replicate data – I’ll need to transfer a single combination of project and team member estimated billing rate to multiple project tasks.

Here’s an example for a combined data source:

A client wanted a data source to contain detailed data from both sales orders and outbound deliveries.

I identified the sources to use (sales order items and outbound delivery items) – and because these data sources potentially contained multiple items for a sales order or for an outbound delivery, I needed to merge them carefully.

So I ask the questions – will there be a problem if data gets replicated? Well, because a single sales order Item could potentially be fulfilled with multiple outbound delivery items, trying to join the two sources means that I’d have the data for that single sales order item replicated for each outbound delivery item – so, any other key figures (like net amount) would also be replicated, leading to inaccurate key figure values. So yes, there will be a problem if data gets replicated.

This rule will not always lead you directly to whether to use a joined or combined source, but it’s a good starting point.

6. Joined Data Sources

For this blog, I’ve added an extension field for the “Estimated Billing Rate”. For how to do this, see the blog post on Customizing SAP Business ByDesign Part 1.

Now, it’s time to create my custom data source. I’ll get into which type to use under different circumstances later in the blog post – for now, just know that we’re creating a joined data source. I go to Business Analytics -> Design Data Sources

Then, click on New ->Joined Data Sources

First, I provide a name and description – it’s good to make these detailed enough to understand the purpose of this data source if you, or someone else, has to come back to it at a later point in time.

Next, you have to pick a “Join Type”. You have one of two options:

A “Left Outer Join” means that you will see all the data from the “source” data source you add (this will default to the first one), but you will only see data from the second data source if the two share the same values of the characteristics you specify to join (we’ll get to that in a second).

An “Inner Join” means that you will only see data when both data sources actually have data within the characteristics you specify to join.

So, to start, we click on “Add Data Source”, then we search for the data source we want to use. In this case, we specify “Projects, Baselines, and Snapshots”, then scroll through and select the characteristics and key figures that you want to use, then click “OK”

Click “Add Data Source” again, then add the project team member data sources and select the characteristics and key figures you need from there as well.

Now, we need to specify our joins.

First, we join project and project – this means that I want to associate the data from a particular project in the “Projects, Baselines, and Snapshots” with the same project within “Project Team Member”.

Likewise, I join service responsible and team member – while the characteristics names are different, they are actually referring to the same thing. Additionally, this join means that I want to associate data from project team member (in this case, the estimated billing rate) with the “Projects, Baselines, and Snapshots” when the project is the same and the service responsible/team member is the same – so essentially, this allows me to associate an expected billing rate with things such as actual work hours, provided the two joined characteristics are the same for both.

If you’re finding this difficult to understand, there are a huge amount of resources on the web – essentially, what I’m talking about is very similar to SQL joins and SQL unions – so, searching for those topics may yield other explanations that you understand better.

7. Restricted Key Figures

At this point, we’re going to take a slight detour to the key figures. After all, we’re creating this data source so that we can use existing key figures to generate new key figures.

A restricted key figure allows you to take data and apply filters to that key figure only (as opposed to the selections you make in the report, which apply the filters to all data).

For our example, we’ve created our data source that joins the project hours data to the project team members data.

However, as the data source we used contains data not only from the current project values, but the baselines and snapshots as well, we’ll need to restrict the data that we use in our new key figures.

To start, we’ll go to Business Analytics -> Design Key Figures

Within this work list, click on “New”.

We’ll start by giving the key figure a name and description – make sure you do this now, as chaining multiple key figures together can really get confusing if you forget what one of them was for.

Then, you need to specify the data source that we’re adding it to – in this case, it’s our custom data source, so type that in to the “Data Source Name” field and select the ID that appears.

Now, we select the key figure we want to restrict – in this example, it’s the actual work (in hours).

Then click “Next”.

The next screen allows us to specify the characteristics we use to restrict the key figure. These are from the same list of characteristics that we chose when creating the data source.

In my case, I know that the projects, baselines, and snapshots key figures are separated by the “Source of Data” characteristics, which identifies what the value relates to.

So I select source of data as a characteristic. You can add multiple rows here to restrict by multiple characteristics.

You also have two options for the “Restriction Type”.

The first is “Fixed”, which means that you can specify how the key figure is restricted here, and it can’t be changed, except by going back into this screen to edit it.

Alternatively, you can specify “Variable”, which means you can allow users to pick the restriction when the report is run (you can also make this mandatory). This will cause a special field to show up in the selections area, but that field will only affect the single restricted key figure.

In our case, we’re going to use a “Fixed” restriction type. Once we’ve specified this, click on “Set Fixed Value Selections”.

A pop-up appears where we can specify the values for the selection – in our case, I use “Source of Data” = 13 – Project Time Confirmation, which will restrict the actual work hours to only be those from project time confirmations (i.e. team members’ time sheets). This restriction ensures that I will exclude baselines and snapshots actual work hours.

Now, click on “Next”, then “Finish”.

8. Calculated Key Figures

Now that we have a restricted key figure to give us only the current actual work hours, we want a key figure to multiply these by the estimated billing rate – this will provide us with our estimated revenue.

Again, I go to Business Analytics -> New Key Figure

Within the screen, I specify my name, description, and data source. I specify that this key figure will be calculated, which means I don’t have to select a key figure (like I did with the restricted key figure).

Upon clicking “Next”, I’m able to set the key figure calculation. On the left side of the screen, I see my list of key figures, including the custom ones that I’ve created.

So, for this calculation, I take my custom restricted key figure for “Current Actual Work” and specify that it is multiplied by the “Estimated Billing Rate”. Then, I click “Next”, but not “Finish” quite yet.

The last step is that I need to specify “Exception Aggregation”. I’ll explain why next.

9. Exception Aggregation

Exception Aggregation allows you to adjust the behavior of key figures when they’re aggregated. The main use for this is when the aggregation of a key figure should calculate differently compared to when the key figure is not aggregated.

For example, in our “Current Estimated Revenue Contribution”, we calculate this by taking a team member’s actual work hours from a project task, then multiply this by the estimated billing rate.

This works perfectly fine in a non-aggregated scenario.

But, what if we aren’t looking at the amounts on a team member by team member basis? Let’s imagine I just want to see the total “Current Estimated Revenue Contribution” for the project task.

What SAP Business ByDesign will first do is aggregate all the current actual work hours and also aggregate all the estimated billing rates for all of the team members within that task.

Then it will multiply them together.Which won’t work.

For example, if I have a project task “A”, with three team members, who each worked 10 hours and had estimated billing rates of $100, I’d end up with the calculation of 30 current actual work hours multiplied by the sum of $300 total estimated billing rate, leading to $9,000 current estimated revenue contribution, where instead it really should be $3,000.

What Exception Aggregation allows me to do is specify that when SAP Business ByDesign is calculating this key figure, and aggregating multiple team members, ByDesign should instead total up the individual calculated values for each team member (that is, calculate the current estimated revenue contribution for each team member individually, then just sum up the resultant calculated values).

10. Combined Data Sources

An additional question that may steer you to the use of a combined data source instead of a joined data source is this: Are the two data sources closely related? If the answer is "No", then chances are a combined data source might make more sense.

The reason is this: You can combine the data source characteristics into a common characteristic. For example, if an opportunity has a “Month/Calendar Year” to identify when it was expected to end, and a sales order had a “Month/Calendar Year” to identify when it was opened, then I can combine them together into a single characteristic for my reports that will show either opportunity end date or the sales order start date.

Here’s an example. Note that this isn’t really something you’d use for real report, but it serves to demonstrate a point.

You create a combined data source in a similar manner to a joined data source – you go to Business Analytics -> Design Data Sources -> New ->Combined Data Source

However, with a combined data source, I can specifying that I want to group the data from the two sources as long as the types of characteristics are the same, even though the actual values themselves do not have to be identical between both data sources.

For example, in the above, if specify that the type of characteristic “Month/Calendar Year” is combined for both opportunities and sales order – this means that while the types of values I see for this characteristic are the same, they actually refer to two completely different things. For example, for “Month/Calendar Year” if a row is an opportunity, this would refer to the expected end date of that opportunity, but if a row is a sales order, it refers to the entry date, even though I would see both in the same column.

As I can see, within January 2010, I only see opportunity expected value. However, within December 2010, I see sales order net value alongside opportunity expected value.

Another example would be to combine opportunity ID and sales order ID – this means that I can pull an “ID” type characteristic into the report, and see either the opportunity ID or sales order ID alongsideeach other in the same column.

Obviously, because of this, you have to be careful when creating and validating your own data sources – you may end up with unexpected results.

And remember, the guidelines within this blog are simply something to use as a reference point. You may have circumstances or requirements that result in a data source that is combined in a scenario where it may normally be joined, or vice versa. So, keep that in mind – if you can’t get one type of data source to show you the correct data, try the other one.

The best way to learn, though, is to try it out - and if you get stuck, well, you can always ask an expert!

Feel free to contact me for more information or if you need help with SAP Business ByDesign.

Read more SAP Business ByDesign articles here.

Written by: Dan Edelman, Senior SAP Business ByDesign Consultant

FMT Consultants is a leading SAP Business ByDesign partner and consulting firm serving all of the US and Canada.

I have written 10 best practices for implementing 3PL for your BYD project.   I have grouped as "Programming" or "Testing" where these bset practices are to be used.  (BTW, I meant to number the bullets but the blog bulletting is a bit unwieldy.)

• Programming – Correctly mapping to the XML WSDL. 

The documentation for each message type needs to be read thoroughly by the development team.  Attention must be paid to the TypeCode within
the message, since a message can be used for multiple purposes.  Eg for an IDEC (inbound delivery confirmation) message, the codes are allowed:

1563 Customer Return

1564 Intracompany Confirmed Inbound Delivery

1566 Supplier Confirmed Inbound Delivery

to denote what the IDEC is for.  Similarly each field has a range of valid codes, and the developer should not use any invalid values (such as 1567, etc).

• Programming - The sequence of the XML blocks.  The 3PL is pretty rigid as tothe sequence of the XML blocks (eg <ID> followed by <TypeCode>,
  etc)

• Programming – Getting the right formats needed in XML fields – datetime fields (ISO standard), message ID numbers.

• Programming – The developer team should use soapUI tool.  The development team must use this independent tool to validate and test their own XML.  Full ownership of this task is important, and not rely on SAP support.  This item is very important.

• Programming – Sequencing the multiple line items properly in the XML.  Errors occur when the same item number is used twice:
  (Item block should have ID – 10, 20, etc)

            <Item>

                <ID>10</ID> 

         <ID>10</ID> 

• Message ID numbering must be unique. Generally the confirmation messages (IDEC, ODEC) allow for the 3PL partner to do the numbering.  The numbering pattern is unique to warehouse.

For example,
SGN-201209040002 – is a message from the Singapore warehouse.  The use of the date with a sequence (0002) guarantees uniqueness for up to 9999 messages in 1 day.

If a ODEC ID is re-used, there will be an error.  Attention must be paid to use the right format and unique sequencing.

• Testing – Start using simple examples for each message (ODER, ODEC, etc).  1 order with 1 line item

• Testing – Designing the full spectrum of test cases.   For each pair of XML messages (ODER, ODEC), full testing of each type code must be tested – this co-relates to the functional testing of the 3PL system.

For example, an ODER should be tested for normal shipping , return to manufacturer and other functional codes.  In addition, the dimension of 1 item and multiple line items must be tested also.

Also, testing must be done for the negative case.  In other words, testing should be done for invalid sales orders,  invalid 3PL ODERs,  invalid quantities to confirm the system handling.

• Testing - With multiple 3PL warehouses, there can be a rush-to-judgement that if it works for 1 warehouse, it must work for all.  However, the same range of test cases should be repeated for every 3PL warehouse.

• Testing – Using the Business Communication Monitoring (BCM).  The development team should have access to BCM tool in BYD, and rely on this as one of their core tools for development and testing. 

For any nonworking message, the team should get the payload XML and diagnose the issue using multiple methods, including soapUI (see item 4)

• As a bonus best practice, the requirements of 3PL must be clear up front.  If kitting or serial number functionality is needed in 3PL, my recommendation is that functionality can be added AFTER the basic 3PL is fully validated and working.

I hope this tips help your 3PL implementation.  I welcome your feedback and of course, your likes.

Tim.

Hi everyone,

As the new general manager of SAP Business ByDesign, I wanted to introduce myself in this important community on SAP SCN. To give you a concise overview of my role and the strategy around SAP Business ByDesign, we have recorded a short video that should address some of the most important questions you might have around ByDesign. If you don’t have time to watch the video, here are the three main points I would like you all to take away:

• We will evolve the ByDesign go-to market model to be more partner driven
• We will continue to develop the solution, and will make it even easier for partners to build solution add-ons.
• We will act as one team with our partners to help them to translate their micro-vertical-industry knowledge into customer value

I’m looking forward to bringing together all the different teams across SAP areas.  This will include sales, partners, pre-sales, field services, marketing, but also operational support and development, as well as all of the supporting functions we have working day-to-day on SAP Business ByDesign.

Our SAP Business ByDesign go-to-market strategy is a proven concept we have successfully applied to SAP Business One and SAP Business All-In-One, and I am sure it will work great with SAP Business ByDesign.

So much for now. I hope you enjoy the video and I look forward to your comments and contributions.

Michael Schmitt

SVP,
General Manager SAP Business ByDesign

Wednesday, 15th October 2014– Invenio are pleased to announce we are hosting an event at the new Experience SAP Centre to showcase our area of expertise on SAP Financials.

Attendance as a delegate is free of charge.

Our ‘must attend’ event is tailored and guaranteed to be interactive and hands-on, specifically developed for Finance Managers, Finance Directors and Chief Finance Officers.

Join us for a fully interactive, physical, emotional, and digital experience that explores new possibilities using the latest innovations SAP has to offer. All you need is an open mind.

Agenda

09:30 – Arrival & breakfast
10:00 – Introduction & Welcome: Invenio & Varik Torsteinsen, Head of Innovation – SAP, Experience SAP – Why, How and What?
10:20 – James Willis, SAP, Demo and presentation on Massive Simplifications on SAP Financials
11:00 – Coffee Break
11:15 – Invenio
11:30 – Q&A
12:15 – Lunch
13.00 – Exclusive Tour of the Experience SAP Centre
14:00 – Close

Event Date: Wednesday, 15th October 2014
Event Time: 09:30 – 14:00
Event Address: SAP Experience Centre, London

Register here>>>>http://lf1.me/KEb/SCN

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:

Application Identifier on Bar Codes in SAP Business ByDesign

Detailed Material Description in SAP Business ByDesign

Actual Freight on Customer Invoice in SAP Business ByDesign

Material-Specific Lead Time in SAP Business ByDesign

Related articles:

SAP Business ByDesign Customization Use-Case: Approved Supplier Lists for Medical Device Manufacturer

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.

Hi folks,

I thought I'd post the link to the short video interview between Rainer Zinow and Dennis Howlett regarding SAP Business ByDesign status and outlook.

I look forward to your comments and questions. Click on the link below to load the video.

Rainer Zinow and Dennis Howlett at TechEd 2014

Best regards

CHHO

A college of mine passed a Training at SAP Austia and send a summary of these two days.

Regards Manfred

• Bei Kundenpräsentationen kann man im Browser simulieren, dass man sich auf einem mobilen Endgerät befindet.
• Visitenkarten mit dem Handy/tablet fotografieren und daraus wird dann ein Kunde im System angelegt
• UI Switches: auf rollenbasierende UI einstellen
• Business Rule: anhand einer Business Rule wird das Page Layout verändert z.B. Parking: No keine weitere Eingabefelder erscheinen, Yes: es erscheinen durch diesen Feldwert weitere notwendige Eingabefelder um weitere Informationen zu eruieren !Diese Einstellung funktioniert nur mit HTML5 und nicht mehr mit Silverlight bzw. in Zukunft auf HTML5/Fiori
• Adaptation Mode: hier können neue Workcenter definiert werden, bzw. die Bezeichnungen aus SAP an die Unternehmenstermini angepasst werden sowie Erweiterungsfelder adaptiert werden
• C4C gibt es jetzt auch in Arabisch
• Zusätzlicher Testtenant nach Go-Live kostet 10.000€ p.a. ist aber wenn nicht explizit vom Kunden gefordert nicht notwendig
• SDK Programmierung: entweder im SDK des Kundensystems direkt, oder im eigenen SDK als Solution Template, dieses kann dann auf mehrere Kunden ausgerollt werden.
• Installation Upgrades für den Microsoft Installer for SAP Cloud App Studio sowie weitere Informationen zu SDK findet man unter https://support.sap.com/swdc
• Es exisiteren im C4C folgende UIs:
  • WC: Workcenter
  • WC Views
  • OWL: Object Work List
  • TI: Think Inspector
  • QC: Quick Create
  • QV: Quick View
  • OVS: Object Value Selector: Wertehilfe
  • FS: Fact Sheet

Es müssen in den Eigenschaften der UI die Tags eingestellt werden, auf welchen Endgeräten diese angezeigt werden sollen (Browser, Mobile)

• Will man UI übersetzen so geht das über das Tool: Virtaal
• Ist einmal eine UI angelegt und aktiviert, so kann diese nicht mehr verändert nur mehr erweitert werden
• Fiori for C4C: erster draft mit dem 02/15 Release, dann mit jedem weiteren Release optimiert
• Cloud for Service bekommt mit dem 02/15 Release auch eine offline Version für den Laptop
• C4C schaltet automatisch bei Verbindungsunterbrechungen in den offline Modus. Besteht danach wieder eine Verbindung zu Internet muss man noch manuell wieder in den online Modus schalten und auch die Daten manuell synchronisieren, dass soll aber voraussichtlich sich mit 05/15 ändern und automatisiert werden
• Neue Funktionalität im C4Service: „Get next ticket“ aufgrund einer definierten Logik bestehend aus Datum und Priorität, wird automatisch dem ServiceMA das nächste ticket geladen, diese Logik ist customizable
• In der mobile App zu C4Service werden die Ticketdetails vom System vorgelesen, so kann sich der ServiceMA unterwegs auf den bevorstehenden Incident vorbereiten ohne vom Verkehr abgelenkt zu sein
• Für die Integration der Cloud Solutions mit dem on premise ERP braucht man mindestens ein ERP 6.0
• Informationen zu Integration unter https://cloudintegration.hana.ondemand.com/ Dokus in C4C Version 1411
• Material- und Mitarbeiterstammdaten werden nicht automatisch aktualisiert zwischen den Systemen
• C4Marketing: sehe die Klickanzahl ingesamt auf ausgesendete Kampagnen bzw. auf einen Kunden, was hat er geklickt in dem Kampagnenmail, bekomme dazu auch eine Notification um die Kundenaktivitäten zu tracken und dementsprechend darauf zu reagieren

We love it when we’re able to give our customers and partners a shout out when their work receives formal recognition in the industry. That’s why today I wanted to put out this post to congratulate Roland Berger Strategy Consultants for winning one of this year’s Beacon Awards for IT business innovation.

Each year, only three to five businesses worldwide achieve this recognition, which surely makes it an honor for Roland Berger. The awards recognize enterprises that have made measurable progress toward becoming digital businesses by positively impacting the future of their company, their industry and their customer/partner ecosystems through the use of innovative technologies. Last year, Hilti Corp. was one of the winners for enabling subsidiaries to implement key business management and reporting capabilities.

With over 50 offices in 36 countries, Roland Berger has been experiencing significant growth in a spectrum of new and developing markets. They needed to move quickly into these new markets, set up consulting teams, and implement an application infrastructure in a short amount of time that would easily support management of the new business. In addition to needing an application that was easy to implement, learn, and use, they also had to reduce the risk of transitioning into new markets by minimizing up-front IT costs. The itelligence customer Roland Berger uses the SAP® Business ByDesign® solution, SAP’s cloud solution, to provide its 2,700 business consultants with quick and effective access to all the necessary management tools.

Roland Berger was able to do all of this by leveraging a modular, flexible and low-cost cloud-based business management solution, giving them a healthy competitive advantage when executing global projects and initiatives. With their processes in place, Roland Berger saw significant improvements and cost reductions with business process management, communications, sales as well as customer support.

It’s no wonder that Roland Berger is among the top consulting firms in Europe and one of the top ranked across the global strategy consulting market. We wish them well and are looking forward to our continued partnership. Please join me in congratulating them!

Michael Schmitt

SVP,

General Manager SAP Business ByDesign

If you encounter a problem in the application, you can search existing knowledge bases for a solution. If no solution is available, you can report an incident to request help in solving the problem. (Help Center: Working with Incidents).

It is of highest importance that you open the incident exactly where you encountered the issue. To do so, click  HELP CENTER> Solve Problem or Report Incident . Background: The system will automatically collect technical information and attach it to the incident. This information will help SAP Support to provide a solution faster.Further details at: https://wiki.sme.sap.com/wiki/display/AMI/Customer+Support

In order to process and analyze the problem issue efficiently, it is also very important to provide detailed information about your incident situation:

Detailed steps to reproduce the issue

• With which user does the issue occur?
• Which Work Center do you refer to?
• Which View do you refer to?
• Which events or actions led to the issue?
• Which document(s) or object ID(s) do you refer to?

Issue Description

• What is the system behavior (e.g. error message)?
• What do you expect instead?
• Include attachments / screenshots where helpful

The terms "cloud ERP" and "SaaS" are everywhere.  People and businesses are looking to the cloud in increasing numbers so much so that if enterprise software companies have not offered "the cloud" as a central option, they are missing a huge opportunity.

SAP Business ByDesign is the centerpiece of SAP's cloud go-to-market strategy, and as such, is becoming more and more powerful with each new release.  Regardless, there are rumors in the marketplace, made popular by SAP's fierce competitors, like Netsuite, that just simply are not true.  But don't take it from us.

Recently, during the 2014 SAP Business ByDesign Users Conference, held in Las Vegas, October 26-29, 2014, we had the incredible opportunity to sit down on record with Michael Schmitt, Global General Manager for SAP Business ByDesign.  In the video below, Schmitt discusses the goals for SAP Business ByDesign, both in terms of who ByDesign is designed for, as well as where he sees the ever-growing cloud-based software going over the next 3-5 years.

Navigator, SAP's #1 Global Partner for SAP Business ByDesign hold FREE, LIVE web demos every Friday, starting at 11:00 AM EST.  To learn more and register, click here.

Fiscal law was introduced in Croatia to increase the control of retail sales and tax income.

This helps  to increase the tax income to the government, helps tracking of working hours in companies,  make business premises registered to the government tax authorities and  also tracks the staffs who issues the invoices.

Fiscalization is seen as an efficient way to control grey economy and government can use the increased tax income  to improve living standards and improving and maintaining public facilities.

Now Business ByDesign offers fiscalization in Croatia.

The salient  feature are the following.

• A communication arrangement is set up with Croatian tax authority
• Every business location can be registered at fiscal authority along with details of the billing machines  and the operator names and his OIB number.
• Invoices  can be created only from those business premises approved by the Croatian Tax Authority.
• All point of sale transactions involving cash or credit card are sent to Croatian tax authority for authorization and approval.
• Creates issuer protection code to ensure data integrity.
• ZKI number is generated  using MD5 Hash  and electronic signature by private key
• Once the invoices are approved by Croatian tax authority, JIR or Unique Identifier of the invoice received as response from the tax authorities will become part of the invoice.

Business By Design  supports summary invoicing feature and this can be scoped for customers in Japan which follows summary invoice business practice.

The main features are:

• Allows to maintain business partner hierarchy  based on payer, recipients and customers
• Configuration is provided for Closing date patterns with closing days and payment terms
• Configuration is provided for Grouping Units
• Assignment of Closing date patterns to the payers
• Automatic due date determination based on closing date pattern
• Scheduling of summary Invoice runs with multiple payer range
• Summarisation based closing date and due date
• Creation of Monthly invoices and Summary invoices
• Printing of Monthly and Summary invoice  forms