You have configured your SAP Sourcing system and are ready to go, but have thousands of materials, vendors and other master data in your ERP backend? Why not simply load all this master data into your SAP Sourcing system? There is no need to set up SAP NetWeaver Process Integration (SAP PI) for now, no need to discuss all the required network settings to make sure it is secured! It works independently if it on premise, on demand or hosted! You might have everything you need already in your SAP ERP system; otherwise, you simply apply some OSS notes and are ready to go (SAP Note 1609987 – “overview of extension of ERP extraction report for Sourcing” provides a good overview of all related SAP Notes).
You might already be familiar with the report BBP_ES_CUSTOMIZINGDATA_EXTRACT which allows extracting the following data
- Company codes
- Payment terms
- Material group (product category)
- Plant
- Price conditions/condition types
- Purchasing organizations
- Purchasing groups
(Price conditions are supported from SAP Sourcing Wave 8 release onwards)This report generates an XML file that can also extract data in multiple languages, so it is not required to create multiple files for different languages.
SAP has extended this report following customer feedback, and additionally the following master data can be extracted into an XML file:
- ERP regions
- Incoterms
- Vendor account groups
In addition, because there is no XML importer in SAP Sourcing yet for certain objects, a new report (BBP_ES_CUSTOMIZINGDATA_EXT_CSV) is available which
generates a simple CSV file for the following data:
- Unit of measure ISO codes
- Unit of measure categories texts (language dependent)
- Unit of measure categories
- Unit of measure
- ISO codes for currency
- Currency
The first cell of the CSV file for UOM texts contains #DataType[common.localized_resource], when importing this kind of CSV files you have to manually import it as object type = Localized Resource and unit categories as Value List Value, e.g. use the preview feature to check if all data was recognized successfully.
Last but not least another report (BBP_ES_MASTERDATA_EXTRACT) has been created for extracting materials and vendors and importing them into SAP Sourcing (to be released via OSS note within the next weeks!). This was already possible, but required a configured PI system. To speed up the process and projects SAP provides this new report via the SAP note 1601150 - Material and vendor data extraction into xml file that every customer can load data as quickly and easily into SAP Sourcing as possible. This report has several selection criteria because not all materials and/or suppliers should get loaded and this should provide some flexibility.
Importing XML files into SAP Sourcing
It is quite convenient to import an XML file into SAP Sourcing, just click Setup, navigate to the System Administration tab and you will find the link Import data in the Import and Export Tools area.
Dependencies
Some dependencies are obvious, but not all. Let me try to provide an overview, hopefully missing not too many. When a contract or an RFx award should be published to an SAP ERP system there is a check that each used unit of measure (UOM) and the currency has an ISO Code, thus when creating or importing a new currency or UOM first the ISO codes should be imported. Always import the ISO Codes first and afterwards import the UOM and/or currency file itself. Do not forget to import the Unit of measure categories texts and Unit of measure categories itself before trying to import the unit of measure.
Each vendor in ERP is assigned to a vendor account group and could also have a region assigned. First import the account groups and (ERP) regions; otherwise, the import of suppliers could fail. A vendor record in ERP could also have a payment term and/or Incoterm. Similarly for a material that contains information about plants, the plant itself has a relationship to a company code and purchasing organization. Furthermore a plant can have a region assigned and thus the regions must be imported first.
I would suggest first importing simple master data like payment terms, ERP regions or Incoterms, but even a region contains a country which should be imported into SAP Sourcing via the standard workbook import, otherwise first the country needs to be created! Next you can import the ISO codes followed by currency and UOM. Afterwards, import company codes, plants, purchasing organizations and groups.
Further Tip
The generated XML file can be saved to a local folder or directly onto the server. If the folder on the server is setup to be imported automatically, the XML files get automatically imported and no further manual steps are necessary. Alternatively you could create a batch job in ERP (using Tx.SM37) for the different reports and different variants.
SAP provides some categories for the different master data objects at help.sap.com because some data will change more frequently than others. I believe it is difficult to provide a general guideline on how often such a batch job should be scheduled; some customers will add or change a payment term or a plant more frequently than others. While it makes sense for some customers to plan this batch job bi-weekly or once per month, others might run it once per quarter or even less.
I am sure some of you have created their own report to extract certain data or perhaps you would like further data to be extracted – please share your experience or questions! I will keep updating this blog depending on your feedback.
- SAP Managed Tags:
7 Comments
