Monday, July 19, 2010

Converting client specific requirements into a useful tool

Dear Friends,

I am sure, many of you would have worked on the development for meeting client specific needs. At times it is very easy to hard code everything for client requirements. However, there is a wonderful furctionality called Variants – which can transform a client specific requirement into a tool for meeting broader requirements. Variants allow you to save sets of input values for programs that you often start with the same selections. Variant is like a variable inputs which can trigger varied search / program options for meeting different requirements. It is possible to store different variants for different purposes and even schedule them as required. Variants can be used either in background or via user intervention.

In EH&S such variant options are available in a sub functionality called Specification Informaiton Systems, which can provide you with different search output based on different selction requirements. Name it Set of Hits or drill down reporting or even Sepcficiation report functionality. It would be useful to explore such functionality navigating into Compliance workbench, generating different search options and save those search outputs, save the search criteria as variants and use them for drill down reporting for generating output. Create report outputs using those search outputs like Excel Output, Substance listing etc.

In future if you are into a client business blueprint or technical development sessions, look into the options of proposing the concept of variants for meeting clients current as well as future likely requirements. giving them handy tools to avoid repetitive developments again in future !.

Thanks

Wednesday, July 7, 2010

Carbon Sequestration mapping in SAP Carbon Impact !!!!

Dear Friends,

Fews days back I got a mail from a Research Scientist who is working on Micronutrient management in Lakes and Estunaries in Washington University, who is seeing for information on how to capture forest sequestration related calculations into SAP Carbon Impact - This is where the true difference between a Enterprise Software and a Academic Interest appears. At the onset it may seem very easy to map using some custom activity type and provide calculation to accomdate that request. Is it really required for enterprises to work? Enterprise carbon management mainly comprise of Carbon Accounting, Carbon Reporting and Carbon Management - It might easily fall under the scope of Carbon Accounting, however from a enterprise point of view it may not be relevant. This is where it needs to be seen - unlike other SAP modules - which are Industry specific or cross functional, Green House Gas Management is above Enterprise level, it is of Global in nature - how best it is managed depends on the level of details the information is captured - may be it needs to be seen how SAP reacts to such requirements.

SAP Carbon Impact is a On-Demand module from SAP, used for mapping Company Carbon foot print, identify reduction measures, carry out surveys, check for product carbon, validate highlevel company KPIs. It has three types of functionalities built around - Analyze, Assess and Act. You can Assess inventories, Products, use the Analyze to view the Dashboards and reduction projects and Act - for creation of reports, goal settings and offset inventory management. Tools to create master data like Facilities, equations, input and output and templates for reports. You can export SAP Carbon Impact data into SAP Business Objects Business Explorer - to view multidimentional analysis of the data.

Thanks