Insights

SPMalot - a legendary tale!

19 Jan 2012

Oops Sorry - SPAMALOT is the legendary tale, in fact it is an absolutely glorious musical which in their website's own words is "lovingly ripped off from the motion picture MONTY PYTHON and the HOLY GRAIL". SPMalot is not a musical or a rip-off of an awesome comedy film, but it was the recent project I was involved with to implement SAP Spend Performance Management (SPM) from scratch and it certainly felt like a crusade at times (albeit minus the swords, killer rabbits or the Knights who say "Ni").

Why embark on an SAP SPM crusade?

The project I was working on had Supply Chain as part of its business and had a wealth of information available regarding Invoices, Purchase Orders, Contracts but was not making the best use of this data, primarily because there were several disparate reporting solutions each with their own challenges and issues but from a higher level these solutions could not provide a consolidated view across spend or provide the level of detail that the business actually wanted. 

SAP SPM is a solution that can be rapidly deployed with a very user-friendly interface and can be used to show spend across multiple dimensions and hence ensure that the procurement strategy and goals are current and correct.  For example, reducing cost as well as consolidating the supplier base.

What is the SAP SPM Grail?

The film ends in a mass riot and abruptly ends without the Grail actually being reached.  The implementation of SAP SPM did not result in such "silliness" as Monty Python's version of King Arthur would attest.  In fact, a solution is live where a Grail of sorts was achieved. (Or for the more conventional, the following values were achieved)

Return on Investment from a technology and business perspective:

• We were able to leverage an existing investment of SAP ERP and make use of the pre-delivered content extractors.
• An immediate benefit is the old classic "Single Version of the Truth".  The data being reconcilable and accurate.
• Flexible analytics: SPM provides a front-end tool that has an easy and intuitive nature and was readily deployed to category managers and other business users.
• A series of pre-defined standard reports as well as provision for the creation of ad-hoc reports, dashboards and briefing books were made available to cover various aspects of Spend Reporting such as Committed, Invoiced and Contracted spend.
• The use of the out-of-the-box model removed the requirement of risky manual transformations and handling of data leading to an increase in the quality of derived business intelligence.
• Reduced lead time to deliver meaningful insights to the business, to enable it to make critical decisions, i.e. Procurement has the transparency and visibility needed to effectively enable accountability across their Operating Companies
• Visibility of spend and identification of savings opportunities across a range of characteristics such as supplier, material category, spend type, geographical or business area as well as being able to drill down to the Purchase Order or Invoice Line Item.

Shorter Project timescales due to the following:

• The out-of-the-box data model which is built to EDW Best Practises and Principles made it easier to implement in an SAP BW environment conforming to the Layered Scaleable Architecture (LSA) approach. 
• The out-of-the-box data model objects with their own namespace meant that the model could be deployed within the BW system alongside existing BW projects without dependence or impact on these objects.
• Integration with any existing Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software and hence supports both SAP and non-SAP.

SAP SPM also comes with the ability to integrate to SAP E-sourcing, or with other Web services enabled sourcing solutions.  Please note, this integration is in the form of being able to be to launch the sourcing initiative.

So is SAP SPM a symbol of divine grace? Well, that might be pushing the theological boundaries a tad, but with its ease of rapid deployment and wealth of intelligence it can provide, it is certainly a tool that will help the Supply Chain function immensely and forming a major part of any procurement initiatives.

I invite you to consider your Supply Chain function and the intelligence platform or solution you use and ask yourself does it support your strategy and goals? Is the information relevant and accurate and obtainable in a timely manner? Is it a Dead Parrot? Bereft of life? Ceased to be? One last Monty Python based quote then: "…Now for Something Completely Different…."