arafat.farooqui

Business Process Management: An ongoing phenomenon?

Arafat Farooqui — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 13:07:48 GMT

Initially when we proposed to use SAP Netweaver BPM for driving the workflows for human centric data governance processes within the organization, it was not an easy tasks to get the approval as we faced questions ranging from the viability to the ROI of the solution. Once the first project using BPM was completed and the users got the feel of the streamlined business process and the management got its hands on the measurable data points, many prospects started to open up as different process teams got interested after looking at the potential of BPM. We started with implementation of data governance solution for Customer Master which was initially planned for four months but now as I look back after one year, we have already implemented the similar solution for Vendors and Material. Using Netweaver BPM not only provides continuous improvement in business process but also provides significant lower total cost of ownership (TCO) due to reduced development & maintenance costs.

Although we completed the first rollout within four months time but after that nine more months have already passed and we are still in the process of identifying the bottlenecks and carrying out improvements to the process which is still evolving. If I look at the current process being followed, I can see a lot of the changes that have been made to the process over a period of time. For example: Initially we had implemented a three level approval process for creation of a Customer in the SAP system having a sales approval which was being approved by the local Sales team along with a local finance approval taken care by local treasury team and finally the third approval for which we had a global director: This approval scenario created a havoc after within months after being live because the global director was having hundreds of requests pending for his action which he was unable to action due to nature of his job. With the help of key metrics, we identified the bottleneck at global director approval stage and proposed to do away with the global director approval step which eventually translated into lower lead time for creation of a customer in the system. This is one of the several improvements that we realized and were able to implement without any hassles due to the agility of the BPM solution which allows continuous change to the process.

I also think that there should be a strong collaboration mechanism between the BPM team and the Business so that the process improvements can be more meaningful and useful. The users should realize that the BPM solution are ongoing in nature and may reap real benefits only if they are continuously improved over time because it is highly unlikely that we can implement a crisp and clear business process at one shot.

Apart from being beneficial for the client, BPM programs tend to be more favorable for Vendors (ISVs) who have a good chance of getting more business once an initial BPM implementation is completed successfully. As it happened in our case, once we successfully completed the initial implementation of BPM solution, the client realized the benefits & potential of BPM and went ahead by bringing more business processes covered by BPM solution which in turn meant that we had more business coming from the client.

Implementing a Vendor Master Data governance solution based on BPM, MDM & ECC: Part 4

Arafat Farooqui — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 09:09:49 GMT

This part of the blog series will focus on the challenges faced with the implementation of the Vendor Master Data governance solution based on SAP MDM, BPM and ECC. In the beginning we faced several technical issues like MDM PI adapter was not functioning properly leading to Syndication failure; later the issue was fixed with a SP update. Below I have listed some of the challenges that we faced during the course of project:

Mail Notifications: Only after we designed a process using BPM, we came to know about the limitations in customizing the notification mails that are send at each process steps. We went ahead with a custom mail notification that fulfilled the requirements of the business users.

KPI Reporting: One of the main reason for going ahead with Netweaver BPM was the out of the box KPI functionality, later we realized that it was very minimal and did not offer what the client wanted so we had to go for a custom development.

Mapping between tasks: It was a pain doing mappings between the different activities since the auto mapping function failed several times and we had to map them manually.

Limited customization options for BPM Tasks: The client wanted to modify the default appearance of the task option but we were unable to do anything on this front as no public APIs were available for BPM.

Blackberry Support: Client wanted that the business users should be able to complete their tasks using their mobile devices, but that cannot be achieved since BPM is not supported on blackberry yet.

Syndication failures: Since the Global Data syndication from MDM to ECC could fail, so we did not have any control to ensure that Global data is preset in ECC before the local data could be posted. To overcome this issue, we had split the data posting part into two tasks wherein the first one was used to post the Global data and the next one for posting local data to make sure that Global data existed in the system before the local data is posted and there are no failures.

Request Archiving: All the process data is lost once the process is completed (In CE 7.1.1) so we have to find a way to preserve the data for every request. We designed a archiving solution wherein we made log archive files for all the request to keep a track on the request details.

Although we faced all these issues with the initial version of Netweaver BPM, most of the limitations are not there in CE 7.2 due to introduction of new features like KPI export functionality to BI, improved automatic context mapping, automatic UI generation from process context and improved administration functions like preserving data for completed processes.

Link to Implementing a Vendor Master Data governance solution based on BPM, MDM & ECC: Part 1, Implementing a Vendor Master Data governance solution based on BPM, MDM & ECC: Part 2 & Implementing a Vendor Master Data governance solution based on BPM, MDM & ECC: Part 3.

Implementing a Vendor Master Data governance solution based on BPM, MDM & ECC: Part 3

Arafat Farooqui — Wed, 14 Jul 2010 10:17:52 GMT

This part of the blog series will focus on the Technical architecture part of the implementation of the Vendor Master Data governance solution based on SAP MDM, BPM and ECC.

We will take example of Vendor Master data creation scenario wherein after receiving a request for Vendor Creation, certain approvals are required (like Clearance from Procurement, Finance, etc) before a Vendor record is actually created in the system. So we designed an Approval proces wherein a requester would initiate the creation request by logging onto the portal and filling up and submitting a request for Vendor Creation. This request in turn triggers the approval process that we designed in Netweaver BPM process. We used the MDM Java APIs for performing various CRUD operations for maintaining global data in MDM while used Remote Function Calls to read local data from ECC and PI webservices for posting the local data to ECC.

Below is the block architecture diagram showing various linkages between the components:

MDM web services generator (starting MDM 7.1 SP 04) can also be utilized for generating the web services to minimize the complexity and development time that is required for writing Java API code.

Next part of this blog series is focused on the challenges faced while implanting this solution.

Implementing a Vendor Master Data governance solution based on BPM, MDM & ECC: Part 1 and Implementing a Vendor Master Data governance solution based on BPM, MDM & ECC: Part 2 can be reached by clicking on the part link.

Implementing a Vendor Master Data governance solution based on BPM, MDM & ECC: Part 2

Arafat Farooqui — Wed, 14 Jul 2010 10:17:43 GMT

This part of the blog series will focus on the approach that we used to implement the Vendor Master Data governance solution based on SAP MDM, BPM and ECC.

Lets get started with the overview of the existing process that client was having: Before this solution was realized, the client was having SAP MDM for mastering the Global attributes of the Vendor (Name, Address Data, Contact details) and used to maintain the Local attributes (Purchase Area specific data like Controlling data) directly in SAP ECC system and also had the SAP SRM system in place which was not tightly integrated with MDM. Process flows varied across the organization and local processes were being followed in local sites across geographies.

We started with gathering of inputs on the local processes being followed across the organization and studied the process to propose a common global process for Vendor Master Data maintenance that was not specific to a local site and fulfilled the most core requirements I the initial release. We had to prioritize the requirements based on the impact that it would make and listed out the core feature that were required along with other nice to have features which we agreed to implement at a later stage in form of enhancements to make sure that we are on track and provide the most required functionality to the business within the given time frame.

When we started with the actual realization of the solution, we partly followed the Agile development method wherein we used to develop the core requirements first and demonstrated the working piece to the client to obtain the feedback on the developments. This way we involved the different business teams right through the development stage and accepted changes (not major) during the development and saved a lot of time (in comparison to making changes at a later stage) along with the customer delight. Actually we were able to complete the realization well ahead of the schedule so we went ahead and worked on adding the ‘Nice to have' features which led to a positive customer experience. Once the development finished we had a round of rigorous testing by the functional team and later a User Acceptance test followed by end-user training and finally go-live.

Everything went well during the go-live and post go-live support and we did not receive a single high priority issue for the solution and the solution is working efficiently and helped the Master Data organization to process the requests quickly while maintaining the data quality. Implementing a Vendor Master Data governance solution based on BPM, MDM & ECC: Part 3 of this blog series focuses on the technical architecture used for the solution.

Part 1 of this series can be found Implementing a Vendor Master Data governance solution based on BPM, MDM & ECC: Part 1.

Implementing a Vendor Master Data governance solution based on BPM, MDM & ECC: Part 1

Arafat Farooqui — Wed, 14 Jul 2010 10:17:29 GMT

In this series of blogs, I will talk on how we went ahead with implementation of a Vendor Master Data governance solution for a large client. The blogs will focus on the scenarios that we implemented and the methodologies used to realize the solution, I will also try to focus on the architecture part of the solution and the tradeoffs between various alternatives. Goal of the project was to have a globally defined process with proper checks and controls to ensure that people are held responsible for their actions, enable monitoring of the key performance indicators to identify the bottlenecks and continuously optimize the process, maintain high quality data and restrict access to relevant information.

The aim of the project was to provide the management with proper metrics and streamlining the Vendor maintenance process across the organization. Initially the proposal was to go ahead with the MDM workflows integration with Netweaver Portal to realize the approval functionality, but later on BPM was chosen due to several limitations in the MDM Workflows like unable to extend the workflow to ECC system was not possible.

This blog will outline the agenda whereas Implementing a Vendor Master Data governance solution based on BPM, MDM & ECC: Part 2 of this blog series will focus on the approach that we used to implement the solution, Implementing a Vendor Master Data governance solution based on BPM, MDM & ECC: Part 3 focuses on the technical architecture and Implementing a Vendor Master Data governance solution based on BPM, MDM & ECC: Part 4 will focus on the challenges faced during the implementation and how did we overcome them. I have already published a blog with some learnings from a similar project and can be found here: Learnings from a Netweaver BPM and MDM implementation

Some more useful blogs related to a similar implementation are listed below:

Custom KPI measurement solution for BPM

CMDM scenario using BPM & MDM

What different users wanted from Netweaver BPM/MDM solution?

Data Governance with Netweaver MDM and BPM

Why choose BPM over Guided Procedures?

Arafat Farooqui — Wed, 14 Jul 2010 10:17:11 GMT

This is one of the most frequently asked question when making a decision to implement a solution involving Portal based workflow. I have tried to put together some points on why to go with a BPM solution:

Why to go for BPM when same functionality can be implemented using Guided Procedures?

> There are numerous reasons for going ahead with BPM solution but I have listed some of them which are more important in my view:

1. Features: Yes we can design a robust workflow spanning across various SAP and Non SAP systems using BPM and Guided Procedures but BPM has a big edge over GP in terms of lower time to implement and being agile at the same time. BPM provides lot of pre-delivered functionalities (like Automatic Notifications, KPI Monitoring, automatic UI generation from Context, etc.).

2. Time to market: With lots of the standard pre-delivered content and starter kits reduces the amount of Custom Development required and hence leading to reduced timelines to realize the solution.

3. Agility: Today we need agility in our businesses to keep the competitive edge and BPM provides that by supporting agile Business Process (Changes can be made easily) and continuous process improvement. On the development side, BPM provides a pictorial representation of the Business Process that can be easily understood either by a Business guy or a developer.

4. Business Rules Management: BRM integrated with BPM helps in automating the high-volume low-impact decision making which can lead to greater efficiencies by eliminating the human interaction in such scenarios. Also the decision logic is not coded into the applications and can be modified easily.

5. Support: With Guided Procedures having official support till 2013, it is also an area of concern and I think slowly the guided procedures will move towards BPM.

6. Better Returns: SAP Netweaver BPM helps in increased ROI by monitoring key performance indicators, enhanced process agility and continuous process innovation.

Introduction to SAP Netweaver BPM: Part 6

Arafat Farooqui — Wed, 23 Jun 2010 03:51:05 GMT

In earlier parts of this series of blogs, we have learned to create a BPM Process, deploy it and import it in our Web Dynpro Java Component. This part focuses on the invocation of BPM process from our Web Dynpro Java application using java code. Sample code to invoke the adaptive web service model is given below:

ModelName objModelName = new ModelName();

Request_Name objRequest = new Request_Name(objModelName);

StartOpName objStartOpName = new StartOpName(objModelName);

// Set the values for the Details Node (Cardinality is 1:1)

DetailsType objDetailsType = new DetailsType(objModelName);

// Set the value for attribute Name, String type (Check for Null)

if (wdContext.currentDetailsElement().getName() != null)

objDetailsType.setName(wdContext.currentDetailsElement().getName());

else

objDetailsType.setName("");

// Set the value for Age (No check as by default it will be 0 if not already set)

objDetailsType.setName(wdContext.currentDetailsElement().getAge());

// Set the values for the Details Element

objStartOpName.setDetails(objDetailsType);

objRequest.setStartOp(objStartOpName);

// Bind the object

wdContext.nodeRequest_Name().bind(objRequest);

// Execute the model

wdContext.nodeRequest_Name().currentRequest_NameElement().modelObject().execute();

Above code is just for demonstration purpose and proper Naming/Coding standards should be followed while coding business applications. Remember we need to send the values for all the nodes which has a cardinality of 1:1 or 1:n failing which the model will throw errors and the process will not be triggered. Also verify that you do not send any null values for any string attributes, otherwise a null pointer exception will be thrown.

Introduction to SAP Netweaver BPM: Part 5

Arafat Farooqui — Wed, 23 Jun 2010 03:50:55 GMT

Part 1-4 of this series ‘Introduction to Netweaver BPM' were published in August 2009, since then I saw many requests coming from people on how to invoke the BPM Process from Web Dynpro Java. Part 5 will be focusing on how to import the Adaptive Web service model into a Web Dynpro development component whereas part 6 will be focusing on the code to invoke the web service using java code. We will require the WSDL URL from WS Navigator for importing the model into our development component. For steps on how to get this are listed in Part 4 of this series available here (Introduction to SAP Netweaver BPM: Part 4). Below are the steps to be followed in order to create the model by importing a WSDL directly from remote server: *1. Navigate to Models in your Web Dynpro Component, right click and select ‘Create Model' from the context menu* *2. From the Model Type popup that opens, select the ‘Adaptive Web Service Model' and press next* *3. Give a model name and package and select ‘Remote Location / File System' option from Available WSDL sources* *4. Paste the URL that we got from WS Navigator*

Customizing the task name in Netweaver BPM

Arafat Farooqui — Sun, 20 Jun 2010 01:30:45 GMT

I have seen so many people asking if this is possible in BPM to generate custom task names to be shown in UWL, so I though maybe I write a blog on this so that it will benefit people interested in learning BPM. This blog guides through the process of generating task (human activities) with a customized name by including values from the Process Context (such as Employee Name or a Request Id). Below is the step by step procedure on how to do this:

1. Open the task and navigate to User Texts as shown below

2. Click the Add button available on the Right side to add a variable

3. Rename the variable as required and then click on the Edit button available on Right to map it to context attribute (From where the value should come)

4. Follow steps 2 and 3 to add require variables

5. Now change the task name that should appear in the UWL by including the variables created above (Include them in curly brackets)

After completion of these steps, save-build and deploy the Process Composer project. Once you invoke the new deployed process, task should be generated with the customized names. Make sure that while mapping the variables, you should map the variable to the UIRequest since this will have the incoming data for the process context while UIResponse would be blank at the time task is created.

Custom KPI measurement solution for BPM

Arafat Farooqui — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 11:53:20 GMT

In this blog I will quickly talk about the custom KPI reporting solution that we implemented as part of a master data governance solution based on SAP MDM and BPM.

Initially while choosing the technology to implement the Master Data Governance solution at the client place we understood that BPM provides out of the box KPI functionalities (this was back in May 2009 when we started the implementation with CE 7.1.1) which was one of the plus point for choosing the BPM + MDM combination. Later on we realized that the process reporting is very minimal in the current release and would not serve the purpose of the clients Business requirements. So we proposed a custom application built in Web Dynpro Java which had strong request tracking and KPI reporting functionalities and it was accepted and implemented.

The solution captured the details of each request/approval step in the process along with other details that are required for the reporting purpose, additionally the solution captured the start and end time for each process step and calculated the total time taken to process a given request and then measured it against defined SLAs. Functionality of archiving request data (for SOX compliance) was also implemented for each request which can be retrieved at a later date in case of conflicts. For reporting purposes we also provided a facility to export the request into an excel sheet which may be downloaded and saved on client machine.

Below is the screenshot showing the custom KPI solution:

SLA violations were highlighted and total violation percentage was included for clear understanding of the business team. Till date the solution is very successful and we received a very positive feedback form the business. With much powerful reporting functionalities in CE 7.2, I think the new implementations can easily use the out of the box functionality provided by SAP, especially the ability to export to BW for reporting purposes would be very interesting and easy to use and it would definitely save the effort that we had put in implementing the custom solution.

CMDM scenario using BPM & MDM

Arafat Farooqui — Tue, 08 Jun 2010 22:59:46 GMT

Yesterday I went through a very interesting blog written by Ravi Kumar titled ‘Can we use SAP MDM for Central master data management?’ and that inspired me to write this blog. Here I would like to talk about a CMDM scenario which involved heterogeneous landscape including SAP MDM, SAP ECC 6.0 and SAP PI. We implemented a Master data governance solution for Customer Data maintenance which included Global as well as local attributes for the customer which included General Data, Controlling data and Sales Area Information for the Customer.

Since MDM workflows had several limitations as rightly highlighted in Ravi’s Blog, we chose the Netweaver BPM for implementing the Workflow functionality for various Customer Maintenance scenarios such as Create/Change/Extend & Block. BPM helped us to create a workflow that had:

Dynamic approvers based on various criteria (e.g., Process Based, Customer Type based, Sales Org based)
Ability to support Parallel Approval flows
Dynamic number of approval steps as required for different customers
Automated email notifications at each step of the approval process
Ability to measure KPI’s
Role based access to the applications
Flexibility for approvers to send back the request for correction
Request Tracking Mechanism
SLA Violation measurement
Request Archiving Functionality
Several other functionalities, the list goes on

In my humble opinion, SAP Netweaver BPM can almost solve all our workflow related limitations and whats more this has been the center of attraction for a while. With CE 7.2 coming out with much improved features, I am hoping that 7.3 would be even better J.

What different users wanted from Netweaver BPM/MDM solution?

Arafat Farooqui — Tue, 08 Jun 2010 12:58:28 GMT

Having completed two end-to-end implementation projects for Customer Master and Vendor Master Data governance solutions using Netweaver BPM and Netweaver MDM in the last one year we were consistently getting different requiremnts for the Workflow solution. Different type of users laid emphasis on different things and it was a herculean task to satisfy all the requirements, so we made some tradeoffs and arrived at the final solution which more or less satisfied the ‘critical' needs for all the users. Below are some of the requireents that came up from different type of users:

End Users: These were the users from the field force of the customer organization and had very little to nil technical knowledge. Their main concern was the availability of the solution over the PDA/Smartphone/Blackberry, reason given was that they are always carrying mobiles and it will be very user friendly and they do not necessarily have their notebooks connected to internet every time or while travelling. We had to turn down the request citing the technical feasibility as BPM is currently not supported on mobile devices.

Master Data Stewards: Master Data Steward team that owned this solution wanted that all the requests should be archived and the data processed in a particular request should be permanently stored somewhere physically or in electronic document format. Initially we did not plan anything in this regard but later we proposed a solution for generating PDFs for each request and storing it.

SOX Compliance Team: SOX Team came up with several requirements for additional controls to restrict the access and track the changes done to that data. On of the major thing that they wanted to get implemented was to maintain a log of changes at all levels in a process (If we have four approval steps along with one request step, then they wanted that one PDF is generated and stored at each step). Maintaining such a huge volume of data for requests would have been a nightmare and so we agreed for a more logical solution by mutual agreement.

Business Users: Business wanted the master data to be created as early as possible and if they were given a choice, they would have removed all the approval steps from the workflow and would have loved to create the data directly without any approvals.

Management: For management, the most important information coming out from this implementation was a way to measure the Key Performance Indicators. Management wanted to measure the KPIs against agreed SLAs to identify and remove bottlenecks, run improvement programs and make proper decisions. We proposed a customised KPI reporting solution to the client which had request tracking, comprehensive search capabilities and reporting features.

We arrived at a consensus by clearly showing the tradeoffs in cost vs benefit and we simply left requirements that were 'Nice to have' and not critical to the business.

Learnings from a Netweaver BPM and MDM implementation

Arafat Farooqui — Thu, 20 May 2010 11:17:30 GMT

More than a year has passed since I started to work on the Netweaver BPM, during the last one year we have completed three master data governance solutions based on Netweaver BPM and SAP MDM. During this period we faced a lot of challenges in terms of new technology, various product limitations and client specific issues. I have listed some of the important learning from this implementation:

Business to be involved from the beginning to define a globally accepted Business Process - Initially the process was defined in the Blueprinting workshops but at the time of User Acceptance test we faced a lot of resistance from local entities over the global process as people were not really willing to accept a change

Responsibilities for different actors should be clearly identified and SLA should be agreed - For example the ownership for the Payment term was debated for long and still the debate is continuing on the ownership

Proper trainings should be arranged for end users - Initially we planned a brief user end user training which in the end seemed not to be sufficient for the end users to be comfortable using the new tool as most of the end users were using such applications for the first time.

Multiple challenges faced on BPM Technical front due to its limitations like inability to change standard mail template, very limited KPI Report Functionality provided out of the box (Netweaver CE 7.1 EHP 1)

Initially only Web Dynpro Java was supported for user interface

Netweaver BPM does not support Blackberry/PDA integration which was one of the requirement for the client

MDM PI Adapter caused syndication failures initially and were fixed only after SP03 patch update

These were some of the issues that we faced in the initial Customer Master solution but later on we were able to have a smooth ride for Vendor Master Solution by capitalizing on these learnings (since the UAT for Vendor Master is going on smoothly, I am able to find some time to write this blog J).

Assigning potential users for Task/Lane using expressions in Netweaver BPM

Arafat Farooqui — Mon, 12 Apr 2010 11:17:58 GMT

For quite sometime, I have been running busy with the implementation of Vendor Master Data Governance solution using Netweaver BPM due to which I wasn't able to post new blogs. In this blog I will be focusing on a simple scenario for assigning potential owner for a task using expressions for use in real BPM scenarios. This blog is targeted for people who have just started/or want to start learning Netweaver BPM.

How it will work?

We will create an attribute of type string in our Web Dynpro Component and map it with the Process Context. This attribute will store the Unique ID of the Portal User which we will use in our expression to assign potential user for a Task/Lane. We can have the decision logic for selecting the potential owner in our web Dynpro component and this can also be fetched from any backend storage such as database table based on some dynamic conditions (i.e. Selection of a particular type of Product; we can maintain approvers for different products in a database table). I am not providing the logic for fetching the appropriate user here, but we will take a sample user approver1 for this example.

Use the below code to fetch the Unique ID of a Portal User:

public String getUniqueIdFromUserId(String strUserId) throws UMException, NullPointerException

{

try

{

if (strUserId == null)

throw new NullPointerException("getUniqueIdFromUserId() called with a null User Id.");

IUserFactory userFactory = UMFactory.getUserFactory();

IUser user = userFactory.getUserByUniqueName(strUserId);

if (user == null)

throw new NullPointerException("User not found in UME.");

return user.getUniqueID();

}

catch (UMException e)

{

e.printStackTrace();

throw e;

}

After getting the unique ID for the potential user, set it in the context attribute that we have created and it will be used further in our expression for potential user assignment.

Follow the below steps to assign the potential users:

1. Open the properties tab after selecting the Lane and select the Potential Users Tab and click on the Edit Button beside the expression field to open Expression Editor

2. Select the function getPrincipal(String strUniqueId) from the inbuilt functions list and pass the Context attribute where we are storing the unique Id of the portal user

3. Save the process and deploy

Note: Make sure that proper Unique ID of the user is stored in the context, otherwise tasks would not be generated without the potential approvers.

Data Governance with Netweaver MDM and BPM

Arafat Farooqui — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 09:35:32 GMT

I was trying to find some time to write on this subject for a long time and also share my thoughts after completing an implementation involving Netweaver MDM and Netweaver BPM but was unable to do so. In this blog I have tried to put forth my view on importance of Data Governance and its benefits. Lets get rolling with a brief introduction of Data Governance:

Data governance relates to the management of Data, Data Quality and Business Process Management surrounding the handling of data within the organization. It is a set of processes made to ensure that important data assets are managed formally and people are held accountable for the data quality. Since the data quality directly affects the decision making, a decision based on a low quality data can be disastrous. In today's environment more and more companies are putting more emphasis on better data governance by using different tools available in market, defining the policies & guidelines for data maintenance, defining the process for data management and defining data ownership.

Master Data Management suite offered by SAP helps in data governance by providing a framework for Data Management. But data management alone is not sufficient, we need to have a process in place for data management with clear separation in data ownership and responsibility to maintain better data quality. Among other features SAP MDM provides Workflows for defining the process, Validations to ensure proper data entry, Matching Strategies for tackling data redundancy and user management for accountability. MDM Workflows are good but not suitable for very complex scenarios involving Delegations/Escalations, workflows involving multiple SAP and Non SAP systems. Here SAP Netweaver BPM comes to rescue and it can be leveraged to design a robust business process using a graphical process modeling tool which results in an agile business process which can easily accommodate complex workflow scenarios involving dynamic parallel /sequential approvals, escalations, automated email notifications. Other benefit of using SAP Netweaver BPM for defining the process is that the process can be easily understood by both IT and Business people due to its pictorial representation of the flows. Bottlenecks in the business process can be easily identified and removed easily by changing the process without much impact and effort.

Netweaver BPM can be used to define user centric processes which uses combination for manual tasks (such as data input in an online form) and automated activities (such as MDM Webservices to create Master Data in MDM). Web Dynpro Java can be used for designing the User Interfaces for the Human Activities/Tasks that require user interaction and we can use validations here to improve the data quality also external validations can also be consumed within the Web Dynpro applications for further quality improvement. For Example, while creating the Master Data for a Customer we can make sure that the VAT Registration number is mandatory if it's a EU customer (which is a legal requirement) and further validate the VAT Number using the external services provided by some authorities (e.g. Europa VAT Validation Service)). Netweaver BPM helps to monitor and report Key Performance Indicators against the SLAs set for the organization, though KPI functionality is limited in current version of Netweaver BPM but it will be enhanced in coming versions.

So if we combine SAP MDM along with SAP Netweaver BPM/BRM then we can have a robust business process that spans across systems, can handle Escalations/Delegations, complex business scenarios and rule based decision making which helps in better data governance and better data quality which directly affects the efficiency and profitability of an organization. Using Human activities we can ensure that data is maintained by the data owner and not anyone else and that he will be held accountable for the task (e.g If we need to update the credit information of a customer than a person from Credit and Collections department is the best person to update this set of data). Apart form that, BPM - MDM combi takes lesser time to market as compared to MDM/GP solution by utilizing the standard web services delivered by SAP for performing CRUD operations in MDM.

Wish you a Merry Christmas and a very Happy New Year!!