Benefits Of Change Management Software For SAP

The manufacturing of products always has one overall goal that prevails over the other goals: generating profits.Therefore, it is anything but uncommon with manufacturing plants to adjust the products. You often want to fix bugs, optimize the product, or save costs by changing it to maximize your business profits.

When changes are made to the product with manufacturing companies, this has usually far-reaching consequences, even if it seems only a matter of small changes. A variety of departments can trigger changes in products – through an idea for developing a product further, for example, or to eliminate a flaw. It’s obvious that companies want to maximize profits with product changes like these. But these changes often lead to discrepancies, because they were not cleanly evaluated, approved, and documented. That problem is easy to eliminate with digital change management in SAP^®.

The challenges with sap change management

When there is a desire for a change, a game of telephone starts in the company. Employees in Purchasing, Controlling, Production, and Logistics phone or send emails to each other. Mistakes can happen here. For example, Purchasing notices that a material can only be obtained at significantly higher costs. Or an incorrect or missing calculation ultimately leads to a change not being profitable and even costing the company money.

A request for making any changes submitted by the customer and/or by the company’s own product management department initiates a complex change process that extends over and includes all involved locations, plants, and specialist departments of the company, such as the Purchasing, Logistics, Product Management, Construction, and Production departments.

Once the change request submitted by the customer is forwarded to the manufacturing company, it is necessary to thoroughly check the effects this might have on both the production process and on material management.

Depending on the modifications made to the product, other materials or components might have to be purchased, new quantities might be required, it might be necessary to change the machine settings, and it is also possible that product catalogs have to be adjusted. The changes have to be thoroughly evaluated, approved, and finally documented in order to be able to inform the customer at any time. SAP objects, such as bills of materials, may only be modified after approval has been completed.

Coordinate your digital change management in SAP

The challenge in this case consists in involving and providing information to all the specialist departments involved. If changes are implemented prematurely, companies often make avoidable errors, some of which have fatal consequences. Such errors might lead to materials being impossible to purchase or being available only at significantly higher prices so that making changes to the product ultimately results in higher costs instead of maximizing the company’s profits.

Also, thorough implementation of the changes into the SAP system is often a problem. If, for example, changes to the material master file are not correctly updated in SAP, this might lead to the required materials, for example, not being procured in time or in the wrong quantities or to the materials being bought at excessive cost or even being ordered twice.

Many companies use tools like “Excel” to map the change process. However, this fails to do justice to the level of complexity resulting from a change process or to the duty of documentation. In addition, no adequate process transparency is achieved.

Vorteile eines digitalisierten Änderungsprozesses

• Automatische Prozesskoordination für Abstimmungen und Genehmigungen einer Produktänderung
• Dynamische Einbindung aller beteiligten Abteilungen
• Validierung der (Stamm-) Daten
• Einfache und individuelle Oberfläche: Jeder sieht, was er benötigt
• Zentrales Prozess Monitoring für Optimierungspotentiale im Änderungsmanagement
• Automatische Anlage von Änderungsnummer, Klassifizierung und Dokumenten in SAP^®

Benefits Of Change Management Software For SAP

The use of a change management software program can help and make life easier for all the individuals involved. It can serve as a useful supplement to the change management process in SAP for it maps the change process in SAP and coordinates it – from the change event via an evaluation from a technical and commercial point of view and the related approval to the adaptation of the change on the SAP system and/or the SAP MM (Material Management), SAP PLM (Product Lifecycle Management), or SAP PP (Production Planning) modules. A change management software program makes it possible to support change processes based on automated workflows. In this context, the following advantages play a particular role:

Reduced Error Susceptibility Thanks To Structured Change Management

With the help of the appropriate software program, the individual action steps that have to be taken during a change process are clearly defined. This way, it is ensured that no step is omitted and that changes will be implemented after both the inspection process and the approval process have been completed. This significantly reduces the risk of errors.

Avoid media discontinuities and information gaps in SAP

With EASY Enterprise Change Management, you avoid errors caused by media disruptions and information gaps, a d you save time, because departments are automatically coordinated in the change process. Documents such as technical drawings and calculations are also part of a decision. These are stored in document info records in SAP^® and automatically linked with the change number.

Transparency For All Departments Involved In The Change Process

The action steps included in the change management process are clearly documented. Any and all associated information, such as calculations or drawings, are stored in the SAP system, including the appropriate change number, so that media discontinuation and information gaps will be avoided and all individuals involved have the same level of knowledge.

Approvals for the product change in SAP

Only when all approvals for the product change are available will the affected SAP^® objects, for example the bill of materials or work plan, actually be changed in the SAP^® ERP. The process will be transparently available even years later through a process journal, so that you can track past decisions and services can still be provided.

Rapid Implementation Of Change Requests

Processes are not only clearly defined which means that they provide for transparency and a lower number of errors; automatic coordination of departments in the change process also contributes to faster implementation of the change.

Cost Savings Through Software-Supported SAP Change Management

In conclusion, a change management software program makes it possible for you to obtain transparent, fast, and correct change processes that not only reduce unnecessary costs for your company because unnecessary errors are avoided, but that can also significantly simplify the every-day work of employees affected by this.

Flexible Change Management Processes in SAP

By using appropriate software programs, standard and individual processes can be easily displayed without the need for programming expertise and can be adapted at any time, whenever changes occur.

SAP change management for the process flow and process interface

We offer a best practices version with our Process2Go. Of course, we can also adapt your change management to your needs and desires. This also applies to the process flow and the process interface, which can be expanded with your necessary fields and tabs. Our Process2Design solution is SAP^® certified and 100% integrated into your SAP^® system. The interfaces are web-based (Web-Dynpro, Fiori) and can be integrated with your intranet or an SAP^® portal with no trouble. SAP^® search help, validation tables, and permissions can be used without difficulty.