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Wednesday, January 27, 2010

About The New, New Automotive Dealer Portal

Did you know that SAP has developed a new and improved automotive dealer portal? It is part of the SAP Business Suite 7.0 and available through ERP 6.0 EhP4.
You may know that previously there was a so-called "dealer portal" by SAP?! Strictly speaking, the dealer portal comprised two release packages by SAP in the past years, named Discrete Industry Web Interface Di-Wi.
The first release, was shipped some time in 2001; it came with a hard coded layout and could only be copied (or modified) to adapt customer requirements. The second release, developed in model-view-controller-technique and BSP, was much simpler to implement and use.  Many Business Add-Ins (BAdis) allowed a modification-free implementation, the copy or modification of the entire package became unnecessary.
But, was it really compelling? Wasn't this or that function missing?  Weren't there useful features that every customer had to develop?
It's here - the THIRD Automotive Dealer Portal*, made by SAP
It is developed using the Web Dynpro for ABAP technology. Here's a glimpse:
automotive dealer portal
Before I start stepping into the details of the new automotive dealer portal*, I will explain the purpose of it:

The Automotive Dealer Portal

The cooperation of dealers and importers focuses heavily on the areas of the vehicle supply chain, spare parts ordering and processing warranty claims. These collaborative processes are often done by sending documents with long lists of vehicles or spare parts order items. A real, on-line cooperation is often not available. Both participants, importers/wholesales and dealers have to keep each others' data and documents redundantly in separate systems and folders. This form of cooperation is ineffective and inefficient, without any value adds and is a particularly a good opportunity for many misunderstandings and errors.
A seamless integration of these business scenarios can be established through the automotive dealer portal. This automotive dealer portal is operated by the OEM, importer or wholesale organization as a web-frontend of their own SAP ERP solution for their retail network. The automotive dealer portal offers role-based and web-enabled user interfaces and functionality of the SAP Vehicle Management System, SAP ERP Sales & Distribution (SD) module and the SAP ERP Warranty module - tailored for dealers.  Dealers require simple internet access and, if needed, a folder for downloaded files.
application view
Three Basic Modules of the Automotive Dealer Portal
Vehicle Sales Management
The automotive dealer portal enables online access by dealers to the importer's/OEM's national sales center vehicle database. Dealers can search for vehicles, configure (using the SAP Internet and Pricing Configurator IPC) and order vehicles. Once a vehicle has been ordered, dealers can track the vehicle in real-time with no gaps in visibility until it's arrived at the dealer's yard and invoiced.
Spare Parts Sales
The purchase of spare parts from the manufacturer or distributor is easy as ordering a book on the web: search in the database of the distributor or catalog for parts, find and select, check for availability and requested delivery date. Save the order and track the order until parts delivery and invoicing.
Warranty Management
Instead of using e-mail technology with attached pre-formatted excel-lists and letters, the dealer portal enables the online creation or upload of (formatted) claim files to the importer/OEM's SAP ERP system. Entered and submitted claims processing progress can be tracked and incoming payments can be easily analyzed.

Where is it, the new automotive dealer portal?

As indicated at the beginning of this blog, it is part of the SAP Business Suite 7.0 and comes through ERP 6.0 Enhancement Pack Four (Ehp4). More information about EhP4 is on the SAP Service Marketplace, login required).
Two business functions need to be activated to launch the full set of functionality:
  • WTY-DP-1 is for Warranty Management
  • AUTO-DP-1 includes Spare Parts Sales and Vehicle Sales Management. The requirement to activate this business function is an active DIMP Switch.
switch framework

What's Next?

We - that's a team of experts from the IBU Automotive and the automotive dealer portal developers - are going to write a four blog sequence to introduce the new automotive dealer portal for you. Check for this blog periodically. The new blogs will be linked here, and also published via the SAP Blog (see category "Automotive")
  • Automotive Dealer Portal: Vehicle Sales Management
  • Automotive Dealer Portal: Spare Parts Sale
  • Automotive Dealer Portal: Warranty Management
  • Behind the scenes - about the technology and adaptability of the new automotive dealer portal.
And while these blogs are in writing, here is the link to the new Dealer Portal documentation and SAP Ramp-Up Knowledge Transfer for ERP.
Stay tuned !
Best,
Ute
*  "Dealer Portal" - a tiny little heads up: many people - including myself - use this term quite often, is indeed a universal term and more related to the combination of business functions  as available in the SAP Enhancement Pack 4. Also, the previous package and releases - the Discrete Web Interface Di-Wi - was not truly a portal; they have provided business functionality that could have been integrated into the SAP Enterprise Portal or other complementary portals. However, don't waste your time with thinking about an alternative term, just be aware that the Dealer Portal is not a package or component by SAP - it is really just a term for combined business functions.



Ute Gramann is in the IBU Automotive and Solution Manager for Automotive Sales &Service read more

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SAP SD (Sales and Distribution) Configuration Hints and Tips

Many useful SAP SD hints and tips to assist those consultant supporting the SAP Sales and Distribution module.

What is mySAP SD?
The SAP sales and distribution is part of the logistics module that support your customers, starting from quotations, sales order and all the way towards billing the customer. It is tightly integrated with the MM and PP functional modules. It allows companies to input their customer sales price, check for open orders and forecast etc.

The most important basic functional features in the sd module are:
- Pricing
- Credit Management
- Output Determination
- Tax Determination
- Text Processing
- Material Determination
- Availability Check
- Account Determination

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Thursday, January 14, 2010

Common SAP MM Questions

Can any one tell me what is MM closing and what is FI closing? How can I know if period is closed?

MM closing means that you can not post materials document. In MM area you have two open periods current and previous.
If you do not set other in MMRV - here you can check which are the open MM periods for company code. If you check Allow posting to previous period - it will forbid MM posting in previous period.

FI open period (ob52) allow to post FI documents. As I know you can allow postings for some accounts - for example forbid material accounts for previous period in order to prevent MM posting until you finish all FI documents.
*--Monika Hubanova

How to add an attachment to a Purchase Order in SAP?

You can attach manually any document to PO without using Document Management System ( DMS ) in SAP 4.6C.

But you cannot attach document while you create PO in T/Code ME21N
Save you PO ( ME21N ) and again open with change ( ME22N ) then you can attach document through Service for Object button. Service for Object button available down side of Command screen ( in your PO screen ME22N )
Click your Service Object button -> Create -> Create attachment
then select your window directory ( which file you need to attach) select your file Now your system shows message Service "Create attachment" is started.
Save again your PO. You can see (open) your attachment in same field ( Service for Object ) select and Create and check attachment list. You can attach as many document in your PO.

Note: This is only information for internal or you can print separately this document for sending to vendor ( fax ) System will not print automatically along PO print out.

What is the difference between Blanket Purchase Order and the Framework Order.

In general the Blanket POs are used for consumable materials such as Xerorx papers with a short text (does not need to have Master Record) with Item Category ' B' i.e.limit, where in the PO validity period as well as the limits are to be mentioned for the simplicity of procurement.The doc type is 'FO' (Framework Order).
The GR or Service Entry for the PO are not necessary in case of Blanket POs as well as one need not to mention the account assignment category during creation of PO it can be 'U'-unknown & can be changed at the time of IR.

Abhiji JOshi.

I have two issues:
1) Auto P.O.: In MMR & Vendor Master Record (Control data) I have checked 'Auto PO'....I have created the Purchase Req for the Material.....Now I want to know how the automatic PO will come into force...I mean what steps to do after creating PReq.

2) Source List: I have checked 'Source List' In Purchasing view of MMR...Have two vendors for this material for which source list is also maintained(ME01)....While creating PO..the system takes by default the first vendor....I tried to assign the second vendor (made sure that validity period are in range)..but couldn't do so...Can you suggest how the system will tell me to select one of the vendor I want to assign to the PO.

1. For Auto PO , yo should proceed as follows:
* Auto P.O.: In MMR & Vendor Master Record - checked(MM02/XK02)
* Maintain Source List & select the indicator for source list record as MRP relevent.(ME01)
* If more than one source list records are generated, make one of them as fixed.
* Run MRP , the PR's generated will be preassigned with the source of supply.(MD01)
* Enter T Code ME59 for automatically creating PO's from PR's.

2.* Check if the assigned Source in PR is not fixed in Source List.
* Check if the info record for source not assigned, is having valid conditions.

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