Determining the problem at hand, finding the most efficient way to solve it, and ensuring customer satisfaction by validating results are just a few of the ways our consultant has led clients to success time after time and has made a name for himself in the SAP environment.
Read on to learn more about the client and how our consultant was able to help them navigate complex coding configurations, issues with tickets and transactions, and complications with a company divestiture.
The Client Skinny
A large electrical and appliance manufacturing company with multiple locations and facilities throughout the United States and worldwide found itself in a continuous battle with changing employee roles and increasing turnover.
And, with so many locations and customers depending on quick and efficient processes, our client was in need of someone who could not only direct employee traffic through business-critical back office operations, but also find new ways to manage and improve the operation of their SAP modules.
From ongoing project management to filling in the gaps for internal support teams, navigating technical issues with master data mining and consolidation, and everything else in between, our client needed someone who wasn’t afraid of a challenge and had the right experience to lead them to success more than once.
The perfect kind of client for our veteran SAP SD consultant…
The Consultant Skinny
With more than 25 years of experience in the SAP arena, our consultant is no stranger to the rain… or client issues with SAP SD configuration, migration, and integration for that matter.
Our consultant was initially brought in to provide backfill support for one of our longest-standing manufacturing clients. However, when internal resources were spread thin across multiple other projects, the experienced veteran was called in to use his creativity, expertise, and innovative mindset to find a quick solution for their inefficient business processes.
As he began navigating ServiceNow tickets, debugging transactions, finding better ways to communicate with team members, and offering total production support to his internal Sales and Distribution team, our consultant surely had his hands full.
Now, more than two years later, he is still providing day-to-day production support, maintaining security roles and permissions amid continuous acquisitions, configuring system solutions to meet business process needs, and creating initiatives to standardize and optimize the SAP ERP system.
This SAP SD functional consultant is a jack of all trades and has continued to show his ability to adapt to change, dig deeper than others to find the right solutions, and build his interpersonal skills to communicate efficiently and effectively with team members.
Navigating Ticketing Issues
Regardless of where your SAP SD needs lie, our consultant has what it takes to lead your team to success every time. Here are a few of the main ways our consultant can support your team:
- Support for ticketing transactions
- Strong communication skills
- Technical business development experience
- Strong SAP module knowledge
- Ability to identify issues and find best possible solution
Our consultant checked all these boxes (and more) for our client and used his extensive SAP experience, technical expertise, and interpersonal skills to find the best way to translate ticketing issues to ABAP developers and solve problems proactively.
The Problem
Our client’s ticketing system was experiencing frequent bugs that not only affected system efficiency, but it also impacted the quality of each transaction. This nationwide manufacturing corporation needed ticket support, and they needed it fast.
Our consultant was tasked with understanding the source of bugs within the ticketing system and finding the most effective solution to fix those bugs.
This SAP SD consultant job would require our consultant to work proactively to find the source of bugs within the ticketing transactions, and use his technical skills and expertise to work with in-house developers to determine the most effective solution for the bugs within the client’s SAP SD ecosystem.
Enter a consultant with extensive experience in navigating tough technical issues throughout Sales and Distribution and various other modules within the SAP ERP system…
Our Consultant’s Solution
The First Step
The first step in identifying the problem at hand and finding the right way to fix it was understanding who the right contact was for each SAP sub-module. At a larger company like this, communication, and specifically open and defined communication channels, are essential to the success of each employee, department, location, and organization as a whole.
Our consultant knows just how important strong communication skills are, so his first task was to find the business experts in each department and area of the SAP environment so he would be able to communicate more easily and solve problems with more complicated technical or functional specifications more efficiently.
The Second Step
Our consultant’s second step in navigating ticket issues was to debug each transaction and work to understand where the bugs originated.
With an extensive background and skillset in technical work, our consultant put himself in the perfect position to act as an extension of the technical development team, allowing both himself and the developers to work together to solve even the most complicated ticket issues more effectively and with improved collaboration among teams.
This top-notch SD consultant is savvy in most areas of SAP Sales and Distribution, which made it easier for him to solve complicated tickets with ease, understand the right steps to take to solve each problem at hand, collaborate with technical development teams, and rely on his own skills and experience to complete ticketing tasks independently and with better quality.
Consolidating Company Codes
Our consultant is always up for a challenge, even those that require complicated data migration and code consolidation skills, processes, and leadership.
Our client needed someone who could not only lead themselves through data complexities, but who also had the right expertise and skills to lead a team through the same issues and find success in doing so. And, luckily for them, our consultant fit the bill.
The Problem
In navigating various mergers, acquisitions, a vast business landscape, and a complicated C3000 divestiture, our client needed techno-functional help with consolidating company codes. The consolidation of company codes was part of the client’s “simplification initiative”, but the actual consolidation process wasn’t so simple.
Our consultant was first tasked with identifying dormant “Z-objects” within the SAP system and understanding why those objects became obsolete in business requirements and changes. His second task required him to determine and define changes within the SAP S4 system and outline which elements were relevant for the client’s SAP system and other external operating systems and integrations.
Our Consultant’s Solution
With these tasks, our consultant was not only focused on maximizing the efficiency of Sales and Distribution processes specifically, but he also found a way to optimize overall business processes within the SAP system and beyond. Here are a few of the main ways our consultant helped the client solve code consolidation and navigation issues:
- Mining of essential business data
- Managing and migrating data between applications and systems
- Analyzing the impact of data cutover
- Managing the amount of orders flowing in and out of SAP system
- Running reports to keep up with data and order flow
- Working with developers to identify and remove obsolete “Z-objects”
- Writing queries to assist with data merging (e.g., SQVI-based work)
Code configuration, various data and sales order management processes, and consistent collaboration were the keys to success for this project, and our consultant led himself and his team to success through every single one.
Managing Divestiture Complications
“How do we extract the exact set of data into the new environment without messing anything else up in the system?”
This was the main question our consultant was tasked with answering throughout this divestiture project. He needed to find out what data needed to be transferred to the new system and how to keep that data authorized and protected throughout the divestiture.
The Problem
The client also required our consultant’s help on a complicated divestiture project within their company. The company had a divestiture plan for their lighting division, but with a corporation this large, with so many moving parts, they needed the help of an SAP expert.
This is where our SAP SD consultant came in. He was tasked with opening and analyzing jobs and reports in the system, determining the impact of specific system changes, and building a plan for migrating data in and out of the systems.
Here are a few of the main issues our client was facing before our top-notch SAP SD consultant was called in to help:
- Complications with authorization orientation
- Managing acquisition requirements and processes
- Carving out specific areas of the SAP system for each process
- Careful management of system access permissions
- Reporting, analyzing, and protecting business transactions
- Protection of reports within SAP
- Outlining and completing data extraction and migration processes without impacting other areas of SAP system
- Determining what kind of data (i.e., open orders, history, financials, etc.) comes to the new system and what stays
- Decommissioning objects and removing them from the system
Our Consultant’s Solution
One smaller, but important nonetheless, issue our consultant was tasked to solve throughout the divestiture project was the management and analysis of reports, projects, and data that would be carried over into the new system after the merge. With this, he was able to determine business-critical data and maximize the productivity of data migration processes.
On a larger scale, our consultant was also tasked with determining and outlining system access and authorization for employees, managers, and company executives within each of the systems. This project required him to report on specific transactions to ensure that necessary data remained secure, but accessible.
Our Consultant’s Keys to Client Success
Any consultant knows that each project comes with its own set of unique challenges and complications. But, the key to consultant (and, in turn, client) success is understanding the problem at hand and working diligently to solve it in the best way possible.
Here are a few of the main challenges our consultant faced, as well as his main keys to success to resolve these challenges efficiently and effectively:
- Efficient communication: Understanding the proper communication channels and business experts within each SAP module to streamline processes. From Day One, our consultant remained committed to keeping lines of communication open and finding the right resources to complete tasks at hand.
- Balancing self-sufficiency and collaboration: Being self-sufficient and finding solutions to problems on your own is an admirable characteristic of any employee, but it’s also important to be able to collaborate with other employees and teams, especially when managing processes across multiple modules, departments, or systems. Walking the line between independence and collaboration is no easy feat, but our consultant understands the value of both and worked diligently to complete individual work effectively and lead others to do the same to maintain business process efficiency and optimization.
- Leveraging remote work: When it comes to supporting tickets and managing transaction issues, remote work has simplified this process by cutting out external distractions and helping employees get straight to the point of the issue or solution. Without co-workers continually knocking on your door to ask a “quick question” or asking for help on non-documented tickets, remote work has made creating and completing tickets within the SAP system more optimal and efficient for users.
- End-user issues: Anyone who has ever completed any type of customer-related work understands that stubborn customers and miscommunication between parties can make the job a little more complicated sometimes.
Our consultant knows this and built a “checklist” for ensuring problems are understood and fixed properly: confirming transaction and sales documents, understanding location of transaction in the system, contacting the right people for clarification, diving deeper into technical aspects and functions of the issue if necessary, validating results, and ensuring the results match the ticket or transaction. This way, customers can rest easy knowing their problem is understood properly. - Process testing and validation: Testing and validating potential scenarios is essential in determining the best ways to answer system requests, build efficient solutions, and create quicker solutions for the end-user. Our SD consultant focuses on doing things the right way, the first time, and process testing is no exception. Using the best possible resources to test solutions, customize operations, and build uniform business processes are just a few of the many ways our consultant leads teams to success in the long run.
- Taking the right approach: Rather than simply telling someone how to complete a task within their SAP system, our consultant understands the importance of working with the end-user to not only complete the task more efficiently, but also reduce the risk of recurring issues in the future. He addresses problems directly, asks questions to ensure he understands the issue, and walks the end-user through the solution to help them feel more confident in completing the steps without his help. This way, once he’s gone, the team will continue to operate effectively and efficiently, even when problems arise.
- Rescheduling processes: Through his projects with this client, our consultant has placed an emphasis on the rescheduling process. He states that it’s hard for planners to understand their own stock issues, so by modifying the system, planning and scheduling processes throughout SAP SD are easier. Our consultant leverages modified V_V processes and custom logic to update Customer Promise Ship Date (CPSD) fields and get quick results for customers without affecting the SAP landscape.
Getting Started with Our Consultants
Whether you need an SAP SD functional consultant to help with business process optimization or a technical SAP guru to build configurations and help you navigate technical requirements and system specifications, Surety Systems is here to help.
Our SAP SD consultants have the skills, experience, and expertise you need to complete projects the right way. Our team has extensive knowledge of the SAP system, other ERP systems, and general computer science principles, and our consultants understand just what steps to take to lead your team to success — the first time.
How Can We Help?
Do you need someone who can handle even the most complicated SAP SD consultant roles and responsibilities? You’ve come to the right place!
Surety Systems has a team of senior-level SAP consultants like this one that are here to solve all your SAP problems — the first time. With extensive experience in every SAP module and application, our team is here to help you, regardless of what kind of SAP SD consultant jobs or projects you need help with.
Contact us today to learn more or get started with one of our SAP experts.
