Analogy Pedagogy - Situations Handling
This too shall pass! Fast forward few years, COVID-19 will be nothing more than a speck in human history. What will pass the test of time & not change are only 2 constants: Change itself & traffic jams!
In our modern lives we are always busy. An interesting survey on “Busyness” conducted by Gallop revealed that people are busier than the year before in each consecutive year since 1987. This also implies that we have extremely low buffer time when it comes to planning our commuting journeys. Any slight delay caused by any element in the system (self, family, pets, phone calls, traffic jams etc.) could result in our late arrivals at destinations.
Cometh the hour, cometh GPS! GPS and more specifically Google Maps in most countries comes to the rescue. Before commencing a road trip, often people check the most efficient navigation route to reach their destinations. Why are such navigation systems so important? Firstly, they provide the most efficient route. Secondly, and more importantly they sense real time context and provide suggestions to the users to navigate via alternate routes to reach their destinations in the most efficient manner. This feature of being always ON, sensing the environment, context aware, alerting the user on certain events and even suggesting alternate options is extremely valuable and is the new normal while commuting.
Let us relate this to our enterprise world. Imagine that in addition to performing normal operational processes viz. finance, procurement, sales, inventory etc., the ERP system is ALSO always ON, sensing the environment, context aware, alerts the user on certain events and also suggest alternate options to perform the processes in the most efficient manner. For example, in a procurement process imagine that the system is suggesting improvements to the user like assigning a newly created contract to an open purchase requisition, alerting the user that an item is pending supplier confirmation since long, informing finance team to remove the payment block on invoice as the cash discount is at risk etc. Ignoring or not being aware of such exceptions would certainly lead to additional costs in terms of time, resources, complexities etc. in the downstream processes.
Here is where Situations Handling can help. It is a framework that helps to increase the quality and the efficiency of business processes by signaling exceptional circumstances and providing heads-up information as well as suggestions wherever applicable. It is deeply ingrained in SAP S/4HANA (all deployment models – Public Cloud, Private Cloud, On-prem) across all LoBs and available to our customers at no additional costs. There are close to 50+ pre-built Situations Handling templates which SAP provides. Activating various situations templates is also just a matter of hours/days than weeks/months.
As always, our intent in this blog series is to provide you with a high-level overview of the concept and share relevant links for further reading. More information on Situations Handling can be found here:
Use Cases & Videos: SAP Help Portal
Detailed information: Blogs
Till now, Situations Handling has been like one of the hidden treasures which not many customers/partners are aware of. It’s time we amplify the message regarding its benefits and the value that it can provide. For sure, it is one of those low hanging fruits which can help our customers accelerate their path to becoming an intelligent enterprise. Hey, did we say path? Need navigation and real-time guidance? Use Situations Handling ??!