Difference between SOP in ECC and Demand Planning in SCM

[Former Member]

Hi Guys,

I'm been using SAP for a few months now and been on a few SAP courses such as SAP-01, TERP10 and SCM100 and have a fair understanding of how things work in ECC and SCM. However, I am struggling to get my head around the differences between SOP in ECC and DP in SCM. The main thing I want to know is what advantages does one have over the other? And why would a company decide to use DP instead of SOP or vice versa?

Any help would be much appreciated

Regards

Mark

[Former Member]

Hi Mark

SAP ECC has two flavors of SOP - Standard SOP and Flexible SOP. DP is conceptually similar to Flexible SOP, but with more advanced functionality as Sandeep indicated. Some of the other advanced features include characteristics based forecasting and DP BOM's.

Companies implement DP for one or more of these reasons -

1. They like the advanced functionality offered by DP.

2. They like the flexibility/ scalability/ performance offered by DP due to its technical architechture.

3. DP integrates well with other SCM tools such as SNP, GATP, etc.

4. They think they can improve their Sales & Operations Planning process by implementing DP.

5. DP is SAP's tool of choice for Demand Planning. Which means DP will get development resources and incremental improvements over time. SOP will not receive the same attention.

Rishi Menon

[Former Member]

Hi guys,

Thanks for the responses to this.

This has helped me immensly and I think I understand the difference now espicially after playing around in our sandbox system for a bit.

Thanks very much

Mark

[Former Member]

Dear Mark,

Technically, APO has some advanced features, like for example Planning in LiveCache.

Using Live cache u have better performance experience in planning related activities.

Data is not stored in tables as in R/3, it is pulled/copied from infocube to Livecache and planned there.

Functionally, you have some scenarios in DP, which are not available in Standard SOP, like Promotion planning and Life cycle Planning. And DP Forecasting tool is not comparable with ECC and it is advanced in SCM.

Techically, you can define, all the chars/key figures and macros in ECC in Flexible planing and run it. But, DP has advanced ways of doing these things.

Regards,

Sandeep Kumar. S