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.
Multi-Language SAP Master Data
Author: Paul Gendreau
Site Master Data Migration: What, When, and How To.
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.
Introducing MDA Workbench
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.
MDA Workbench End-to-End Example
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.
Profit Center Number Complexity
Profit Center number decisions that add complexity.
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!
LSMW Master Class
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!
IDoc Definition to Excel
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!
Best Practice for Site Numbers
A best practice in SAP Retail is that the following objects all have the same 4-character number:
- Site Number
- Site Business Partner Number
- Site Customer Number
- Site Vendor Number
- Site Profit Center Number (for Article Master)
This is true for all Sites: Stores, Distribution Centers, and Reference Sites of all flavors.
But this isn’t a system-constraint! Like many things that are described as a “Best Practice,” you can choose otherwise … and pay a price 🙂
Site Master Distribution is Best Practice in S/4HANA
A notable feature of S/4HANA is that, unlike ECC 6.0, a customizing request is not raised when creating or maintaining a Site Master in the Customizing Golden client. Given this, should a Site Master in S/4HANA be considered as master data or treated as customizing?
What’s more – perhaps, what’s worse – your Site Master process design critically depends on the answer to this “debatable” question. You better get this right.