I just wanted to share with you a usefull resource for the SAP IS-U Consultants but others can be interested. As the titles says it all, this is the link:
http://www.sap.com/community/pub/events/2007_03_iuc/
What you will find there?
Keynotes
Watch video recordings, download audio files (MP3 format), and view slides from all of the keynote sessions.
Presentations
Download slides from all of the presentation sessions.
News
Read the SAP announcement made at the Sixth SAP International Utilities Conference 2007.
Discussion Forum
Meet online with SAP experts, customers, senior executives, partners, and solution providers to learn about the latest applications and services for the utilities sector.
Monday, June 04, 2007
Sunday, February 04, 2007
Free ABAP Coding Guide from SAP Professional Journal
SAP Professional Journal is publishing a 3 part FREE article series on ABAP coding named "An indider's guide to writing robust, undertandable, maintainable, state-of-the-art ABAP programs". This is a must read for ABAP newcommers and for already established ABAPers. For newcommers, ABAP stands for Advance Business Application Programming.
Part 1 - Fundamamental Rules and formal criteria
Part 2 - Best practices
Part 1 - Fundamamental Rules and formal criteria
Part 2 - Best practices
Saturday, February 03, 2007
Is there a high demand of SAP Consultants?
I my natal Romania, there is a high demand of SAP Consultants like there is for anything else from construction to real estate to trainings or you name it. There is a boom on SAP market right now as I can see hirings ads all over the place. Everybody is hiring SAP Consultants, the local established SAP consultancy companies and also there are other just arrived on the market like Accenture, HP and Bering Point to name a few. This is a good thing but also a bad thing from my perspective.
The good thing is that there is a lot of business going on and a lots of companies wants to implement SAP. Right now there are a lots of major SAP projects in implementation phase. The companies will implement SAP one way or another and they will need qualified people (read SAP Consultants)to implement and then maintain their productive SAP solution.
The bad thing is that there are not too many senior SAP Consultants and that's way they hire juniors with no SAP experience and they throw them directly into the projects after some basic traing. This leads to poor SAP implementations, angry and unsatisfied customers. And this is bad for SAP Consultants because they will be places togher with juniors in the same bucket.
I think this issues are common in each expanding market when demand goes ahead of offer and the gap cannot be closed without taking decision like hiring juniors and throw them into the projects. These leads to another issue I will try to write about in the next posts: When you can say you are not longer a junior? When do you become a senior SAP Consultant?
If you have informations about the demand for SAP Consultants in any market please feel free to comment on this post of on SAP Blog Forum.
The good thing is that there is a lot of business going on and a lots of companies wants to implement SAP. Right now there are a lots of major SAP projects in implementation phase. The companies will implement SAP one way or another and they will need qualified people (read SAP Consultants)to implement and then maintain their productive SAP solution.
The bad thing is that there are not too many senior SAP Consultants and that's way they hire juniors with no SAP experience and they throw them directly into the projects after some basic traing. This leads to poor SAP implementations, angry and unsatisfied customers. And this is bad for SAP Consultants because they will be places togher with juniors in the same bucket.
I think this issues are common in each expanding market when demand goes ahead of offer and the gap cannot be closed without taking decision like hiring juniors and throw them into the projects. These leads to another issue I will try to write about in the next posts: When you can say you are not longer a junior? When do you become a senior SAP Consultant?
If you have informations about the demand for SAP Consultants in any market please feel free to comment on this post of on SAP Blog Forum.
SAP Blog Forum
I created the SAP Blog Forum the perfect place to discuss about SAP. Please feel free to ask any SAP related question and I will try my best to answer it.
SAP Blog Forum - The place to get answers about SAP related issues.
SAP Blog Forum - The place to get answers about SAP related issues.
Sunday, January 28, 2007
SAP By The Numbers
Here there is an interested article about SAP jobs in US. The article is from SAP Cookbook newsletter.
As you would expect,
we're up across the board from our Dec 29th demand numbers. There are more opportunities right now for SAP professionals than there ever has been. There are two reasons for this phenomenon: 1) more business are running SAP than ever, and 2) the seasonal phenomenon of business spending on Information Technology. That is, things will always slow down starting in November which projects and finance departments go into fiscal freeze periods where no changes are made to accounting systems. No changes to accounting systems means no IT spending. And certainly very few projects are being kicked off during this time, except for the most critical, most tenuous, and most urgent.
In general I expect to see demand numbers fall starting in November, picking back up somewhere around the 1st or 2nd weeks of January. And this year we barely saw a pause in hiring - things have been good. And so here we are toward the end of January, and demand for every major consulting area is back up.
Every consulting area is showing growth - admittedly, some areas are tronger than other - but no area has fallen off of a cliff.
I want call out a couple of areas that are showing an unusually high uptick in demand: SAP CRM and SAP Project Managers. I know CRM is a solid offering from SAP, but what can explain this surge in demand for CRM resources? I don't have an anwser - perhaps someone can help me with this? SAP Project Management is perhaps easier to explain. I don't think that SAP project managers are growing on trees (like many people might claim is the case for SAP Basis, ABAP, and Portals or many other technical areas). And project managers have a skillset that can't easily be "offshored" or fulfilled remotely.
I have always thought that project managers have the toughest job in the world, and my hat is off to anyone out there that steps up to take the reigns of a project - it's the hardest work in the business, heck some of the hardest work period. The more people understand about IT, the understand that this is Software Engineering - and Software Engineering is risky, takes time, and just about 80% of Software Engineering projects fail. In any case, SAP project managers are not growing on trees and this is such a good area of opportunity that I think there is a very real opportuinty for senior SAP functional consultants to step up and take a swing at project management. And project managers set budgets, don't they? They may be in a position to pay themselves the highest rates on a project.
Now I know many senior project managers who would warn you against pursuing a career in project management, but the reality is that moving up the food chain in the world of Information Technology means managing projects - righly or wrongly, and if you want to make it to the most senior levels of management, the project management two-step is one you must master.
| Functional Area | June 21 Demand | Oct 19 Demand | Dec 1 Demand | Dec 29 Demand | Jan 21 Demand | |
| SAP Portals | 578 | 736 | 705 | 698 |  795 | |
| SAP CRM | 684 | 737 | 760 | 809 | 1218 | |
| SAP Basis | 1858 | 1374 | 1572 | 1403 | 1659 | |
| SAP HR | 1094 | 816 | 882 | 829 | 1125 | |
| SAP ABAP | 882 | 951 | 1100 | 1084 | 1094 | |
| SAP BW | 996 | 1035 | 1182 | 1029 | 1188 | |
| SAP FI | 972 | 601 | 1077 | 1042 | 1148 | |
| SAP SD | 853 | 929 | 1016 | 957 | 1099 | |
| SAP MM | 892 | 899 | 1115 | 1011 | 1237 | |
| SAP Security | 913 | 905 | 963 | 814 | 927 | |
| SAP SRM | 293 | 286 | 367 | 334 | 390 | |
| Project Mgr | 1454 | 1331 | 1467 | 1348 | 1613 |
Sunday, January 07, 2007
Thursday, December 28, 2006
Tuesday, December 26, 2006
SAP Best Practices
I don't know if a lot of people knows about SAP Best Practices and the new vision of SAP about SAP implementation. Well, to cut a long story short, this is the new vision: reuse a lot of already configured, documented and tested processe by making "Building Blocks" and integrate those building blocks into a solution for a specific industry. Almost for all industris there are documented and configured proceses called Best Practices. And all of this Best Practices are free and online on the SAP Help portal. You can find here Best Practices for the following industries:
Apparel and Footwear
Automotive
Chemicals
Consumer Products
Consumer Durables & Home Appliances
Dealer Business Management
EC&O
Fabricated Metals
High Tech
Home & Personal Care
Industrial Machinery & Components
Logistic Service Providers
Maintenance, Repair & Overhaul
Medical Devices
Mining
Retail
Pharmaceuticals
Primary Steel
Professional Services
Public Sector
Utilities for SAP R/3
Water Utilities - for SAP IS-U
Wholesale Distribution
Apparel and Footwear
Automotive
Chemicals
Consumer Products
Consumer Durables & Home Appliances
Dealer Business Management
EC&O
Fabricated Metals
High Tech
Home & Personal Care
Industrial Machinery & Components
Logistic Service Providers
Maintenance, Repair & Overhaul
Medical Devices
Mining
Retail
Pharmaceuticals
Primary Steel
Professional Services
Public Sector
Utilities for SAP R/3
Water Utilities - for SAP IS-U
Wholesale Distribution
Saturday, December 09, 2006
ISU Billing : Creating a manual bill
In Utilities billing ofen is necessary to create a manual bill for correcting an automatic bill or for billing special contracts that are hard to bill with a normal billing schema.
For creating a manual bill there is a SAP ISU transaction EA16 which from my point of view is not so user friendly and the user can be confused with all the fields that must be fill.
Another alternative to EA16 transaction would be a custom ABAP report where you can create some templates to create certain types of bill. To create a manual bill from an ABAP program there is a standard function module ISU_S_MANUBILL_CREATE.
Here there is a SDN post where you will find an example of how to fill the imput parameters of this function. Become a SDN member.
I will definetly use this function module in my current project in order to create some kind of bills.
Please visit SAPDocs if you are looking for a specific SAP Book.
For creating a manual bill there is a SAP ISU transaction EA16 which from my point of view is not so user friendly and the user can be confused with all the fields that must be fill.
Another alternative to EA16 transaction would be a custom ABAP report where you can create some templates to create certain types of bill. To create a manual bill from an ABAP program there is a standard function module ISU_S_MANUBILL_CREATE.
Here there is a SDN post where you will find an example of how to fill the imput parameters of this function. Become a SDN member.
I will definetly use this function module in my current project in order to create some kind of bills.
Please visit SAPDocs if you are looking for a specific SAP Book.
SAP Blog :: Live again!
Sorry for beeing so quiet lately but I have some excuses:
- my first ISU go live
- a new ISU project in electricity.
My First ISU go live.
For those who don't know I work as a ISU Billing Consultant. Durring October we set live a gas ISU implementation with Unbundling (2 contract model), monthly reading and billing and 400.000 customers. The night when we start the billing and invocing run and then RDI printing was a marathon (30 hours with no sleep) followed by only 4 hours sleep and the back to work for anoter 12 hours from 6:00 pm to 6:00 am when we delivered the RDI files (400.000 invoces) to the printing provider. It was a lot of work but also a lot of fun, because we are a fine team of young and ambitious people. This ISU project is the first ISU project in Romania and I'm proud that I had a small contribution to its success.
A new ISU project in electricity
Since some time we also started a new ISU project in electricity which from the Billing point of view is much more challenging with complicated rates and some development I need to do for energy losses computation. I will also do the EDM module with a help of a coleague. I will try to update this blog with the status and the achivements I hope I will have on this project.
Please visit SAPDocs if you are looking for a specific SAP book.
- my first ISU go live
- a new ISU project in electricity.
My First ISU go live.
For those who don't know I work as a ISU Billing Consultant. Durring October we set live a gas ISU implementation with Unbundling (2 contract model), monthly reading and billing and 400.000 customers. The night when we start the billing and invocing run and then RDI printing was a marathon (30 hours with no sleep) followed by only 4 hours sleep and the back to work for anoter 12 hours from 6:00 pm to 6:00 am when we delivered the RDI files (400.000 invoces) to the printing provider. It was a lot of work but also a lot of fun, because we are a fine team of young and ambitious people. This ISU project is the first ISU project in Romania and I'm proud that I had a small contribution to its success.
A new ISU project in electricity
Since some time we also started a new ISU project in electricity which from the Billing point of view is much more challenging with complicated rates and some development I need to do for energy losses computation. I will also do the EDM module with a help of a coleague. I will try to update this blog with the status and the achivements I hope I will have on this project.
Please visit SAPDocs if you are looking for a specific SAP book.
Friday, September 22, 2006
Blog of an ABAP Consultant
This is the blog of an ABAP Consultant based in US and has a lots of articles about SAP and ABAP.
Sunday, September 10, 2006
SAPTips.COM
SAPTips.com is a very good SAP resources site, in fact is a PDF magazine. Bad news is it is not for free. But you can requet a free issues here. Here is the TOC of the free issue.
How to Align MM and FI Document Numbers in Logistics Invoice Verification
In SAP Release 4.6C and above, Logistics Invoice Verification (LIV) replaces conventional invoice verification for invoices related to purchase orders. The author explains how the change in invoice verification methods leads to different MM and FI document numbers, and how to align them.
Here is the full article.
Here is the full article.
Thursday, August 10, 2006
Agent Determination for ISU Printing
Today I worked around with agent determination for Print Workbench.
What is agent determination for Print Workbench?Some Print
Workbench formulars (transaction EFRM) has some standard structure for agent determination. For example, the bill for has an agent determination for organization unit.
When to use this?
For example when you have many call centers and you have a logic of allocating a call center to an business partner then you can print information about the call center on the invoice using the agent determination.
To cut a long story short this is how it works.
There is a standard task in the workflow system: TS20500112. This task is called in the bill form to get the agent determination.
The TS20500112 is linked to a standard role 2050039 where you can make agent determination relationship (assign organizationl based on container elements values).
If anyone is interested in this topic please let me know because I prepared an document where I have put all the steps for configuring the agent determination for bill form. Email me: danieltoba @ yahoo.com.
What is agent determination for Print Workbench?Some Print
Workbench formulars (transaction EFRM) has some standard structure for agent determination. For example, the bill for has an agent determination for organization unit.
When to use this?
For example when you have many call centers and you have a logic of allocating a call center to an business partner then you can print information about the call center on the invoice using the agent determination.
To cut a long story short this is how it works.
There is a standard task in the workflow system: TS20500112. This task is called in the bill form to get the agent determination.
The TS20500112 is linked to a standard role 2050039 where you can make agent determination relationship (assign organizationl based on container elements values).
If anyone is interested in this topic please let me know because I prepared an document where I have put all the steps for configuring the agent determination for bill form. Email me: danieltoba @ yahoo.com.
Friday, August 04, 2006
Asking for help and guidance
Many of my reader are asking me question about how to start a career with SAP. I'll post in this blog some of my answer in case anyone has the same questions.
This is the email I received from Sin Ong Chea from Malaysia:
"Hi there
I get your e-mail address from your site: http://sapro.blogspot.com/ I am new in SAP world and i hope i can have a friend who has a good knowledge in SAP like you. :-)
Please let me introduce myself. I am an IT fresh graduate from Malaysia, thinking to start my career in SAP. I just recentlly took ABAP Workbench course and i passed the exam. Now, I have another chance to take new course(FICO, SD, MM, BASIS or HR) for free.
I have a few questions as below:
a. What is the basic difference between SD and MM?
b. If you have a chance to take the training or certificate exam, which one will you choose? (or you prefer any other choice i stated up there)
Thanks. I hope that you can help me as I am a newbie in SAP.
Thanks.
Regards,
Sin Ong"
This is my reply:
"Hi Sin
I'm glad that you wrote to me asking for help. I like to tutor fresh starters in SAP.
Now back to your questions.
First of all it'a a good thing that you learned ABAP and you are comfortable with programming because it will help you a lot in your SAP career especially if you choose to became an functional SAP consultant (that is to learn one or more SAP modules).
Basic difference between SD and MM:
SD manages the sales part of a company. Here you manage sales order, bills and invoices, shipping of the producs, pricing procedures and so on. So it manage the interface with the company's customers.
MM manages the inventory part of a company. In MM you manage request for quotation, quotation, purchase orders, good receipts, invoices and stock inventory. This is the interface with the vendors (purchasing part of MM) and the inventory management of stocks.
Q: If you have a chance to take the training or certificate exam, which one will you choose? (or you prefer any other choice i stated up there)
A: It depends on what you like and what expertise do you have. For example for FI/CO you must know accounting and controlling otherwise you will not undersand anything.
SD and MM can be aproached withouth any business knowleadge but you must learn not by yourself you must have a tutor to teach you the basic processes of this modules and how they apply to the real business.
Good luck and we keep in touch.
Daniel"
Feel free to ask me any SAP related question. If I cannot answer I can ask others for an answer.
This is the email I received from Sin Ong Chea from Malaysia:
"Hi there
I get your e-mail address from your site: http://sapro.blogspot.com/ I am new in SAP world and i hope i can have a friend who has a good knowledge in SAP like you. :-)
Please let me introduce myself. I am an IT fresh graduate from Malaysia, thinking to start my career in SAP. I just recentlly took ABAP Workbench course and i passed the exam. Now, I have another chance to take new course(FICO, SD, MM, BASIS or HR) for free.
I have a few questions as below:
a. What is the basic difference between SD and MM?
b. If you have a chance to take the training or certificate exam, which one will you choose? (or you prefer any other choice i stated up there)
Thanks. I hope that you can help me as I am a newbie in SAP.
Thanks.
Regards,
Sin Ong"
This is my reply:
"Hi Sin
I'm glad that you wrote to me asking for help. I like to tutor fresh starters in SAP.
Now back to your questions.
First of all it'a a good thing that you learned ABAP and you are comfortable with programming because it will help you a lot in your SAP career especially if you choose to became an functional SAP consultant (that is to learn one or more SAP modules).
Basic difference between SD and MM:
SD manages the sales part of a company. Here you manage sales order, bills and invoices, shipping of the producs, pricing procedures and so on. So it manage the interface with the company's customers.
MM manages the inventory part of a company. In MM you manage request for quotation, quotation, purchase orders, good receipts, invoices and stock inventory. This is the interface with the vendors (purchasing part of MM) and the inventory management of stocks.
Q: If you have a chance to take the training or certificate exam, which one will you choose? (or you prefer any other choice i stated up there)
A: It depends on what you like and what expertise do you have. For example for FI/CO you must know accounting and controlling otherwise you will not undersand anything.
SD and MM can be aproached withouth any business knowleadge but you must learn not by yourself you must have a tutor to teach you the basic processes of this modules and how they apply to the real business.
Good luck and we keep in touch.
Daniel"
Feel free to ask me any SAP related question. If I cannot answer I can ask others for an answer.
Monday, July 31, 2006
Job Opening: Experienced ISU Consultant with Deregulation Skills
My company is looking for an experienced ISU consultant
who can give us IUTW45 Payment processing in deregulation
training.
We are in the process of implementation ISU and would like to
receive some training from an experienced consultant who had
implemented ISU with deregulation.
You can get a high paying rate and the chance to visit Bucharest
which is a great city from some points of view:
has the cheapest and the BEST beer and the best looking girls.
If anyone is interested send me an email to danieltoba at yahoo.com
who can give us IUTW45 Payment processing in deregulation
training.
We are in the process of implementation ISU and would like to
receive some training from an experienced consultant who had
implemented ISU with deregulation.
You can get a high paying rate and the chance to visit Bucharest
which is a great city from some points of view:
has the cheapest and the BEST beer and the best looking girls.
If anyone is interested send me an email to danieltoba at yahoo.com
Tuesday, May 02, 2006
Tech Books for Free
I just want to share this nice site which has a lot of free tech books,
http://www.techbooksforfress.com.
Also if you want to buy a SAP book do it from
I will get a commision from the price you pay and this can help me keep this blog updated.
http://www.techbooksforfress.com.
Also if you want to buy a SAP book do it from
SAPDocs.com
I will get a commision from the price you pay and this can help me keep this blog updated.
What is ISU EDM - Energy Data Management
I had a presentation on SAP Utilities - EDM (Energy Data Management) module and I want to share some info about EDM.
What is EDM?
EDM is a special module part of SAP Utilities Industry Solution to manage the energy data of a utility company such as load shapes and standard load profiles. Based on this data we can make Real Time Pricing and Settlement.
What is EDM Repository?
EMD has a Repository where all types of energy and energy-related data can be managed especially measurements in euidistant time interval ( 15 minutes, 30 minutes, 1 hour, 1 day).
What is Real Time Pricing?
Real time pricing is special type of billing based on load shapes. Basically we can bill each time interval (15 mins, 30 mins, 1 hour, etc) with a different price, for example the spot price. This type of billing is used for really big customers which have huge energy consumption.
What is Settlement?.
Settlement in EDM means settlement of energy quantities. All input data required for settlement comes from EDM Repository. For example we can calculate the total load of a grid and send it to a market partner.
EDM module is implemented by all big utility companies to help them achive better energy data management, to forecast the consumption and to settle the energy quantities supplied trought a utility network.
If you have questions on this topic do not hesitate to contact me or leave a comment.
What is EDM?
EDM is a special module part of SAP Utilities Industry Solution to manage the energy data of a utility company such as load shapes and standard load profiles. Based on this data we can make Real Time Pricing and Settlement.
What is EDM Repository?
EMD has a Repository where all types of energy and energy-related data can be managed especially measurements in euidistant time interval ( 15 minutes, 30 minutes, 1 hour, 1 day).
What is Real Time Pricing?
Real time pricing is special type of billing based on load shapes. Basically we can bill each time interval (15 mins, 30 mins, 1 hour, etc) with a different price, for example the spot price. This type of billing is used for really big customers which have huge energy consumption.
What is Settlement?.
Settlement in EDM means settlement of energy quantities. All input data required for settlement comes from EDM Repository. For example we can calculate the total load of a grid and send it to a market partner.
EDM module is implemented by all big utility companies to help them achive better energy data management, to forecast the consumption and to settle the energy quantities supplied trought a utility network.
If you have questions on this topic do not hesitate to contact me or leave a comment.
Tuesday, April 18, 2006
Wednesday, April 12, 2006
Utilities Industry
Hello there,
It's been a while since I post on this blog, and now because I have some spare time I want to write about Utilities Industry. That's because I work as a SAP IS-U (Industry Solution for Utilities) Consultant. I want to gain more business process / best practice experience for this industry, but I didn't find any good internet resource so far. If there are fellow readers who want to share some business experience for utility industry I would be glad. My main focus is EDM (Energy Data Management), RTP (Real Time Pricing), Billing, Energy Settlement.
So please drop me an email at danieltoba@yahoo.com or post a commnet on this post.
It's been a while since I post on this blog, and now because I have some spare time I want to write about Utilities Industry. That's because I work as a SAP IS-U (Industry Solution for Utilities) Consultant. I want to gain more business process / best practice experience for this industry, but I didn't find any good internet resource so far. If there are fellow readers who want to share some business experience for utility industry I would be glad. My main focus is EDM (Energy Data Management), RTP (Real Time Pricing), Billing, Energy Settlement.
So please drop me an email at danieltoba@yahoo.com or post a commnet on this post.
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