[Beginner:] Incorporation of ECC, BI and SCM APO Inquiries

[Former Member]

Hi All,

I would like to seek your help on something I am working on. We have this supplies procurement planning tool that I was helping to create. Our general objective is to create a tool that will give a forecast of supplies that people need to procure from a facility for the future months. I am under BI and I am wondering on the basics regarding BI and SCM APO data flows. Honestly, I am still clueless on this. I have seen from our systems that most loads come from APO going to BI. Is it always that way? Are data from ECC considered as well?

Hoping to hear lots of advises on this. Thanks in advance for sharing your knowledge to a newbie like me.

[former_member220487]

Hi,

As said, BI can be connected to any source. Main sources being ECC, APO, external files.

BI is basically connected to APO for Demand/Supply related informations.

Other info like Finance, Inventory, sales history, etc are mostly collected from ECC.

May be you can browse through your BI system in more details to find data flow from ECC/other source, if they exist.

The decision is based on the use of BI by the business and what info they are using for there strategic/tactical decision.

Hope this helps.

Regards,

Nawanit

[Former Member]

Saging,

Hmmm. It seems a bit odd to be creating a 'forecasting-of-material-procurement' tool, when SAP has so many already built in, either within ERP or within APO. Oh well, I am sure there must be a good reason.

I have seen from our systems that most loads come from APO going to BI. Is it always that way? 

BI type data can come from any source. The most common BI solutions I have seen is where BI data are extracted from the main ERP. However, the beauty of BI is that it doesn't care, SAP builds in functionality to get data from anywhere.

Are data from ECC considered as well?

They can be if you design it so.

You should be aware that most data existing in ERP that are relevant for material planning also usually exist in APO. The Core Interface between ERP and APO is normally set up to natively replicate substantial quantities of Master data and also transactional data. It may be that in your business environment, you really don't need to connect to anything other than APO. However, this is not a limitation of BI, it is just smart programming to try to minimize the number of sources of your data.

Best Regards,

DB49