Enterprise Dimension Management (EDM):a MDM approach S P

Enterprise Dimension Management (EDM):a MDM approach
S P
Enterprise Dimension Management (EDM):


I plan to undertake a journey of discovery whereby we shall try and use SAP MDM for chart of accounts maintenance- a critical component in EDM. I shall start by outlining the compelling business case for chart of accounts consolidation. Then I shall try and model chart of accounts in SAP MDM. We shall also try and analyse shortcomings if any in the current release (hmm…. hierarchy version creation, syndication of hierarchies need to be explored).


This is the first part of a series on chart of accounts management using MDM. The target audience is beginner level business users and architects in the financial domain.
Background:

The chart of accounts is a list of account names and numbers used in a company's general ledger. It is one of the most important business dimensions that the accounting team manages.

Larger corporations, particularly those made up of dissimilar businesses or that operate in different tax jurisdictions, can have multiple chart of accounts in these business units. Mergers further complicate the picture, since an acquired company almost always will have accounting approaches and systems that diverge from the parent’s. Hence the overhead required to manage this critical dimension increases with corporate growth and success, thus having an adverse affect on the quality of data, resources to ensure accuracy, timeliness of results and compliance with governance standards.

When two companies merge and try to merge their accounting systems that have different charts of accounts, lots of discrepancies have to be reconciled before the merged entity can even know for sure how much money it is making or losing. When the merged company finally agrees on the new chart of accounts, it may be almost impossible to compute performance trends because the historical numbers may not be convertible to the same structure as the current numbers.
Objective & Benefits:

The main objective of harmonizing chart of accounts is to speed-up the consolidation, closing and reporting cycles by reducing the amount of manual work involved. Other benefits include greater transparency and limiting the chance of fraud and errors that are the inevitable by-product of any manual system.

As the basic requirement for all statutory and internal reporting of information stored in the accounting ledgers, key drivers for standardizing the chart of accounts include:

1. Multiple lines of business/geographical operations—consolidation of different G/Ls and ERP systems for comparison reports and group level summaries

2. Organisation reschuffling—efficient chart of accounts management through mergers & acquisitions, restructuring, reorganization, and even new regulatory legislation or management reporting requirements

3. Business Performance initiatives—effective synchronization of chart of accounts reporting with BPM’s key performance indicators and metrics

Hence, taking a MDM approach to standardizing the chart of accounts empowers finance with a best-practice business management process to centralize and directly manage the structure of this crucial corporate data.

The promise of MDM is that by creating a software-defined abstraction level, top-down decisions about the “virtual” chart of accounts can be effected without having to change underlying systems. Moreover, having an abstraction level should enable companies to have parallel rather than sequential or iterative consolidation paths for statutory, management and tax accounting. This would produce a faster, cleaner financial reporting process, simplify and accelerate management reporting, and allow companies to centralize control over financial and managerial reporting if they prefer and manage tax implications far earlier in the closing cycle than is possible today.

Using master data management eliminates the often time-consuming activity related to mapping because it allows reporting directly from local systems. As a result, the management accounting cycle can be cut, often by days. Using MDM to resolve the chart of accounts also can improve data quality. Since it automates the data classification, it enforces consistency in the way data is aggregated so subsequent analysis will be more consistent, too. Reducing the ability to manipulate the system, via efficient data governance can enhance accountability. In addition, enforcing consistency in how data is treated can expose overlooked but persistent gaps in communications between regions, business units and headquarters, an issue all global companies face.
Part1:Chart of accounts hierarchy maintenance in SAP MDM 5.5 SP05

1.1 Lets start by trying to upload a chart of accounts into SAP MDM. The source data is downloaded from SAP R/3 into an excel sheet.

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1.2 Now, since excel is not an updatable data source for MDM, this data needs to be uploaded to a database like oracle, MS Access etc… In a live business scenario, Import manager shall be used in conjunction with SAP PI to import this data into MDM.


So, lets import this excel sheet into MSAccess.

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1.3 Then , lets log into the SAP MDM console and create a hierarchy table and two fields in this table for storing the account number and description

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Now starts the task of importing the chart of accounts hierarchy into this table.

1.4 Log into the import manager and specify type as :Access and provide the path for the access database.

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1.5 After logging in, the source and destination files need to be specified in the pane below the main toolbar. A preview of the source data shall be available in the source preview tab.

image 1.6 We shall select the two fields simultaneously that make up the hierarchy in the source file and right click. Then “create hierarchy field” needs to be selected.

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1.7 In the “create hierarchy” dialog box, the child filed and node name field names need to be selected from the drop down. The parent field needs to be specified as none.

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1.8 On pressing OK, MDM shall create the hierarchy field using the delimiter specified as default.

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1.9 Lets move to the tab “map field/values” and map the hierarchy field to the long text field in destination

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1.10 In the value mapping pane, values in the source file need to be added as child to the main node in destination file.

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1.11 After selecting the import action, records shall be imported into the hierarchy table.

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1.12 The imported records can be viewed in the data manager.

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In the next part, we shall delve into the next steps for chart of account maintenance and consolidation in SAP MDM.



S P is a project manager/lead consultant/sr enterprise architect with over a decade of experience in enterprise applications.



Enterprise Dimension Management (EDM):a MDM approach
S P

MDM Import Manager capability Ravi Kumar

MDM Import Manager capability
Ravi Kumar


In my previous project we had a requirement of running matching strategy for finding duplicate Material master. The matching rule was pretty simple based on Material Description but the repository size was in tune of 500K with around 250 attributes.

to enable better matching results we had used lots of transformations on Material Description field for normalizing and standardizing of data. We were using combination of two rules in the Duplicate matching strategy:

1. Rule1: using functionality equal(on Material Description transformed field)

2. Rule 2: token equal( on Material Description field)

On an average the description was having 1.5 tokens per record. We found that performance was very poor as we had both token equals and a huge list of transformations( few of them were replacing string XXX to AAA, deleting blanks, other special characters etc etc). Even after restricting the total number of records considered for matching( we used Material group for Clustering) it was taking 20-40 mins for matching results.

Solution: We improved the data quality by re importing the same set of records which was used for initial load from ECC but this time MDM Import manager capabilities were harnessed to reduce number of transformations.

HOW: After mapping Material Description field apply value conversion filter on the mapped field and we have almost all excel based powerful functions available like replace, Append, Prepend. We can have even multiple such conversion rules applied on the same mapped field.

We also made Keyword normal for field Material Description, which optimized token based comparisons.

This effectively reduced our number of transformations from 22 to 5 and increased matching strategy performance.



Ravi Kumar is Consultant with Infosys.

MDM Import Manager capability
Ravi Kumar

SAP MDM integration with R/3 system Ravi Kumar

SAP MDM integration with R/3 system
Ravi Kumar


•We all know what are the different It scenarios supported by MDM, namely:
Master Data Consolidation

*
– Cleansing and de-duplication
*
–Data normalization including categorization and taxonomy management
*
–New interactive consolidation capabilities

•Master Data Harmonization

*
–Automated synchronization of globally relevant master data information
*
–New interactive distribution capabilities

•Central Master Data Management

*
–One-stop data maintenance
*
–Ongoing master data quality

In this Blog I will try to cover the different steps required for integrating MDM with R/3 system which is the source of Master data.After cleansing and de-duplication of Data in MDM all changes/ updates will be reflecting back in SAP R/3. this step by step procedure should help in understanding the procedure for implementing MDM IT scenarios. :)



Different settings required for doing this are:

* Settings in R3
* Settings in XI
* Settings in MDM
* MDM console
* Import Manager
* Syndication Manager

MDM Process flow









Process Flow: Trigger Idoc containing Masters from R/3.XI converts these Idocs to XML files and places in ready folder for Inbound port. Files received by Import Manager into MDM and after changes etal via Syndicator Manager xml file placed in Ready folder of outbound Port from where it will be picked by XI and sent to R/3 using the Idocs.





Setting in R/3:

Step 1



T.Code: SALE

Define Logical System





Sender Logical System:





Receiver Logical System:



















Step 2: T.code: SALE



Assign Client to Sender Logical System:







Step 3:

Create RFC destination of type ‘3' for SAP XI system using transaction - SM59





Step 4:



Create a Distribution model through T.Code: SALE/BD64



Here we need to mention Sender Client (DEVCLNT500) and Receiver Client (XICLNT100) and Message type (MATMAS)









Step 5:

Using T.Code: WE21



Maintain Ports for IDoc Processing



















Step: 6



Maintain Partner Profile using the T.code: WE20









Step 7:

Using BD12/BD10 T.code to Send Customer IDoc or material IDoc











Using T.code WE02 we can confirm or see the message transformations.







Now we are able to generate IDoc from R/3 containing the master data.

Settings in MDM:

Select the repository for which you want to do the settings.









Go to "Admin" and select "Client Systems" and right click on it and create your client system















Then go to "Ports" for creating a Port for Client System







Here you are defining the Outbound Port for the Client system (MDC R/3) defined in previous step.

You have an option of processing the data Automatically/manually.





After Saving the "Port" and "Client System" you need to ensure the folders in respective repository has been created in server.







Because "Ready" is the folder where all the files get exchange from.



Similar steps should be repeated for Inbound Port.





MDM Import Manager: Assuming that all the settings are done in XI also we move to Import manager where we will select the file to be imported and steps to be followed for import of Data into MDM



Step 1: Login to Import Manager and connect to Source file. Select type as PORT. System automatically connects to the Inbound Port of the repository logged into.







Step 2: Do all Field mapping and value mapping in Map Field/Value tab.we can use the standard maps provided in Business content or do all mappings manually and save the map.







Step 3: Go to match records Tab select the Field used for Matching records and select the import action. PS : For each record we can manually override create/skip as import action.











Step 4: After all mappings has been done and import action is Ready to Import in Import status tab execute the import









This will import the records contained in the xml file from the Ready folder into MDM.GO to Data manager and check all records created from R3.





Syndicator Manager MDM:



Any changes made in MDM data manager based upon the validations/Assignemnts and Business rules the changed record should be syndicated back to R3 which is Data source.



Step 1: Login to Syndicator Manager giving the repository name. select File> Destination Properties and select Port as shown:



Select the remote system R3 in this case

Select the Port which we have created for Outbound port where the Syndicated file can be placed in XML format.











Step 2: Do all the mappings again. Use the standard maps provided in Business content or do it manually like in Import manager. We have the options of selecting few records based on search parameters. We also have the option of Supressing all unchanged records in map Properties. This will select only those records which has been changed in Data manager instead of all existing records.









Step 3: In Destination Preview we can actually see all records with the values for fields before syndicating. This should be always done before executing to reduce the erroneous /incomplete data flow. Once you have all the details execute the syndication.











Step 4: Check the IDoc list in SAP. In case of status 51 do the further analysis why it has failed.











RESULT: data changed in MDM Data manager will be updated in SAP R3 system provided all the mappings are correct.

Ravi Kumar is Consultant with Infosys.

SAP MDM integration with R/3 system
Ravi Kumar