My first experience with Extended Computer Aided Test Tool (eCATT) wasn’t much fun. In fact, I still cringe when I hear or say “eCATT.”
It would be fair to say that I still dislike eCATT. But the best SAP Functional folks are the best, in part, because they’re aware of every tool in their kit. And sometimes eCATT is the right tool for the job. In rare cases, it’s the only tool for the job.
You should know a bit about eCATT, even if you plan to avoid it, as I do.
Of all that you’ve likely read on the topic of S/4HANA Business Partner, it’s typically not clear – or simply said – that Customer and Vendor Masters fully exist in S/4HANA, exactly as they did in ECC 6.0. They’re just hidden behind Business Partner.
What’s more, and to the point, SAP S/4HANA Sales and Distribution (SD) and Materials Management (MM) modules — and many others — remain blissfully unaware of Business Partner. They continue to use only plain old Customer and Vendor Masters.
Full stop! What does that mean for your Business Partner master data design in SAP S/4HANA ERP? It means that you’re more responsible than ever for the maintenance and outcome of Customer and Vendor.
Years after introduction, plain statements such as these about the S/4HANA implementation of Business Partner – practical implementation advice for SAP Architects and SAP Master Data practitioners – remain in short supply. Written hot on the heels of surviving the crucible of multiple implementations of S/4HANA ERP in 1709 and 1809, this document aims to mitigate that deficiency.
Let’s take a good, long peek behind the curtain, shall we?
It’s a self-serving notion with the added benefit of being true!
Sure, it’s the unique business processes of Retail and Fashion Vertical Business that prompt these Industry solutions. But if you get the foundation wrong — if you fail to grasp what’s special about SAP Retail master data — then you can forget about effectively executing business processes.
This post captures a few quick notes about supporting multiple languages in your SAP implementation, and perhaps a surprise or two if you haven’t been down this road before.
Creating master data (and customizing, without customizing requests!) is a serious matter. Your data migration process better be executed properly and accurately. For one thing, it’s a tedious mess to clean up (archive) if things goes awry. Of course, as a Master Data Aficionado reading this article, you now have a plan for success.
Let’s begin by recognizing that your Site Master business process design dictates where and when you’ll be executing Site Master data migration.
Site Master Distribution is Best Practice in S/4HANA. If you’ve adopted that architecture then plan to execute Site Master data migration only in your Development Customizing Golden client. Then use Site Master Distribution to distribute those Site Masters to downstream systems-clients that require Site Masters.
This sweet application for SAP functional (and technical!) resources is the product of a decade of thought, development, and constant revision based on real-world project experience.
Until now, MDA Workbench was shared only with a close circle of SAP Master Data practitioners, whom I affectionately refer to as fellow Master Data Aficionados.
While I wrote (and still write) the code, a friend and colleague named Gregory Baase contributed mightily. For years now, and still, Greg asks super-smart questions and makes totally unreasonable demands.
A consequential example: Huh? What’s that, Greg? You want MDA Workbench to actually create the LSMW object so that you don’t have to? Yeah, okay … right away.
Watch an end-to-end demonstration of using MDA Workbench to create a full set of data migration deliverables, including an LSMW object.
This 23-minute video is a good tour of the basic functionality of MDA Workbench.
Your decision for Profit Center numbers can add ongoing operation costs and complexity, especially in SAP Retail.
We’re talking strictly about Profit Centers in Material Master that are assigned for each Plant (MARC-PRCTR).
The Best Practice in SAP Retail is that only one Profit Center per Plant (Site) is relevant for all Materials (Articles), and that the Profit Center number is the same as the Plant number.
Profit Center number = Plant number. Simple. But why is this Best Practice? What pitfalls await those who deviate? And how is Best Practice implemented? Spoiler alert: it isn’t standard, and that’s standard!
Many months after SAP prematurely announced the death of Legacy System Migration Workbench, we know that our old and reliable friend remains relevant in S/4HANA!
It’s essential for SAP Retail. And it remains useful for functional SAP Master Data tasks in general. What’s more, you’re only three short videos away from becoming an LSMW expert!
Do you create SAP functional specification or mapping documents?
Forget standard T-Codes such as WE60. Watch this 5-minute demonstration of downloading the definition of an IDoc from an SAP system and saving it to Excel.
What’s more, the output contains help text of associated data elements and other details that you can’t easily display from one or many standard transaction codes.
MDA Workbench is free, simple, and a productivity booster for SAP practitioners!