SAP and I

I believe people who work in manufacturing or distribution know what SAP stands for. SAP stands for Systems, Applications and Products. It is so simple because it only requires three simple words, right? No, that’s not the case! From what I’ve been hearing from people who have to deal with SAP every day, SAP is a program that ruins people’s lives and makes their lives miserable. Some people even leave their job after SAP is implemented in their company. I’m not kidding!

Is SAP really that difficult to understand and work with? Based on my personal opinion and experience, it could be if you don’t follow the rules and if you don’t understand how SAP works. To thoroughly understand SAP, you need to understand the structure of it so you know where, who and what to look for when errors occur.

The first time I learned about SAP was in my sophomore year in college. I don’t even know why I picked SAP R/3 Configuration as one of my elective courses. The textbook was basically a manual with pure black and white content. I passed the class and put the book aside but didn’t forget about it. Years later, after I had graduated from college, during an interview for my second job, I was asked if I had SAP experience, and I was brave enough to answer yes. I was hired as a sales assistant who needed to work with SAP every day. Then, I realized the SAP I had learned from class was different than what I had to work with daily. There is a huge difference between an end user of a program and having to make the program work for a business.

In the past ten years of my career, I have been fortunate enough to be a part of the SAP implementation and training project. The first training project I had was in 2008, when I was working for a chemical company. I joined the SAP team in China to provide training for the inventory control and logistics department. It was a 3-week training, and we had to train end users on how to run various T-codes such as generating cycle count sheets, entering count, recounting, posting count, etc. We also showed the users how to run a report either in SAP or BW report to extract data for the root cause analysis. In addition, we also redesigned the process flow according to the roles of employees. The training was successful as there was not a single delay on inbound and outbound shipments, and the cycle count was done on time; accuracy stayed above 90% and continued to improve.

Last year, I was appointed as a super key user for an SAP implementation project to about 15 different sites in North America and Europe. This is a huge project that will last about three years, divided in five different phases. Every department has a core member and multiple super key users who are responsible to provide support to the end users when the system goes live.  

This project has opened my eyes and changed my perceptions on teamwork. Teamwork is not a group of selected people to meet and talk. Instead, teamwork is all about trust,listening, and sharing knowledge. When we listen, we listen carefully, and when we have our concerns, we deliver our messages precisely and straight to the point. During the design phase, we spent most of our time on gap analysis. During this period of time, we had a “wish list” for the developers and we told them what we wanted. However, you can’t expect to get everything you want because SAP has its own standard that will not allow too much customization. Getting accurate data and loading to the system is a time-consuming and challenging task. If we don’t do a good job on this part, our lives will be miserable. For example, if we do not have the accurate net weight of every single product loaded to the system, what do you think will happen? The total weight on the bill will be inaccurate. Now, if the weight is inaccurate, what will this affect? Yes, the freight rate! Not only will the freight rate be inaccurate, but the cargo will probably get stuck in customs, which will cause a delay in reaching the consignee. Therefore, maintaining meaningful and accurate master data is crucial and we are expected to spend more time on this part of the job.

I have many reasons to love SAP, and I’ll name one or two to you in here. There is a great trace ability in SAP - with one transaction code, you can get all the information you are looking for. For example, when you display a sales order (TCode : VA03), you can see who and when the order was entered, transportation mode, material specs, material availability, shipping instructions, etc. In addition, on the document flow, you can get all the information from the moment the order was entered all the way to when the shipment ended and was invoiced. To me, this is the beauty of SAP; it is a “one stop” world-class service that all supply chain management should have. In addition, the business warehouse report that links to the SAP provides a tremendous amount of data for us to do some analysis.

I’m not an expert, but a learner. There are so many things in SAP I want to learn, especially how to make things work behind the scenes (coding). Maybe one day, I will take some ABAP courses to gain more knowledge on how things work so I can be a better trouble shooter.