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:
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).
- 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).
