Blog Focus

This blog is focused on the advanced planning areas of SAP. This includes the planning capability in SAP ECC as well as in SCM, but has also lead us into areas such as BI, PLM and PS. This blog attempts to strikes a balance between providing specific data on SAP SCM design and configuration and providing consulting opinion from real world experiences. The posts are not designed to make the process of configuration appear easy or straightforward. We post the screen shots and comment on the problems faced with setting up and using the system. This site is not affiliated with SAP. The blog has two objectives, the first is to serve as an on-line configuration database for its authors, the second is to help other users of SAP SCM.

Protected Posts

Many of the posts on this blog are not available to the general public. There are several reasons for this:

1. The information may be very new and considered particular intellectual property and part of what they are reselling to their clients, for the consultant writing the post
2. The post is not yet completely verified and or may be missing a screen shot or a review
3. The post is for the private use of the author

The reason that protected posts are published is that a person collaborating on the article needs to see what is being published and it also serves to communicate the research areas of this blog. As time passes, some but not all of the password protected blogs become available. If a prospective client is interested in knowing more they can contact the blog editor. Generally we do not answer consultant’s questions on this blog, although anyone who registers is free to comment.

Changing Nature of Posts

The posts on this blog are never complete. For this reason, the publication date on articles (which is typically assigned during the original publication date) does not mean very much. The authors can and do go back and add screen shots, change phrases, update posts. Due to improved knowledge or system changes, all of this is in an effort to keep the individual posts and the overall blog as current as possible. Within several years every SAP post is dated simply due to new versions of software. This blog serves as an on-line database for several consultants, so its purpose is different than say a publication where an article is complete and stays static after publication. So don’t be surprised if you return several months after reading a blog an noticed it has changed.

Organization

The blog is organized several ways.

1. By most recently published. The first page shows the most recently published post
2. By subject area. Down toward the right side there is a subject column and a subject cloud. Each have different advantages. The subject cloud shows where the most and least publications are located. Their is a subject cloud as well as a tag cloud, which is method of providing more fine detail of categorization
3. By search (the upper right hand search box)

Interrelated Posts

The web is a perfect environment for technical information. This is because topics can be interrelated. We have attempted keep posts from becoming too lengthy by hyperlinking between related posts. When we started maintaining this blog we had a number of very lengthy posts, however, we found it easier to both comprehend and write if very long posts are broken into different related mini-posts. A high degree of linking between posts allows for the development of what we call diagonal knowledge. In SAP, there are a number of concepts that cut across modules, so being able to link basic concepts to multiple modules through linking is a significant advantage to understanding the system.

Master Steps Post

This is a new concept and has not yet been implemented very frequently on this blog. The concept is one post outlines and explains the overall configuration procedure where each step is a related post with a hyperlink. This way the reader can have the sequence of hyperlinks and a brief explanation of the linkages all in one place. The logic is that configuration is better broken down into “bite-sized” pieces.