by Dr. Volker Bätz

Cost pressures figure heavily in the decision to consolidate SAP systems. But corporations and international SMBs benefit from more than just keeping the number of SAP systems and clients to a minimum. Distinctions that need to be made within the system - between countries or product divisions, for instance - can be modeled easily within one client via organizational units (such as company codes or plants). Variations like these need to be documented in SAP Solution Manager's Business Blueprint. But in a standardized model, that's no easy task.

How can international subsidiaries operating independently of one another but all using a single SAP system be modeled correctly and transparently in SAP Solution Manager? Just recently a customer of ours, a large international enterprise, was looking to answer this question.

The task was to create differentiated Business Blueprints that would define the countries with differing requirements and process usage via company codes. The customer wanted an alternative to a tedious, manual solution.

First, they wanted to expedite the work; second, they wanted to eliminate any errors in the documentation of actual system usage. They opted for IBIS Prof. Thome's RBE Plus for SAP Solution Manager.

The tool enabled the customer to closely examine and compare a dozen company codes and create individual Business Blueprints for each. First, the project team generated a system-based template of the Business Blueprint.
Next, it was evaluated several times from the perspective of the subsidiaries. The RBE Plus scorecards, featuring more than 180 key figures, aided in interpreting the analysis results.

The project team applied IBIS Blueprint Designer to the task. Under a partner's guidance, the company was able to leverage the tool to create several individual processes and process steps and assign over 1,500 customer-specific transactions and reports to the model. After six weeks the results were complete, enabling the customer to analyze identical and differing system usage in all subsidiaries.

The enterprise now has SAP-compatible documentation of its solution, which establishes the blueprint of the original elements, allowing the customer to make use of SAP support and upgrades. Plus, the company benefits from the evaluation logic.

SAP BPR (Business Process Repository) bases its analysis not just on the use of transactions. RBE Plus check steps also determine which process variations are really used. RBE Plus makes it possible for the customer to retrace the results of the evaluation at any time.