Cost Planning 

Use

This process allows you to carry out cost planning for a campaign or campaign element directly in the Marketing Planner, transfer your campaign with its corresponding activities to R/3 PS, transfer the planned costs as a budget back into PS and then execute your campaign.

Prerequisites

You need to make the following settings in Customizing:

·         Set up RFC connection to R/3 under Customer Relationship Management -> Marketing Planning and Campaign Management -> System Landscape -> Define RFC Connection

·         Define a planning profile group under Customer Relationship Management -> Marketing Planning and Campaign Management -> Key Figure Planning -> Define Planning Profile Groups. Here you need to enter the planning type Cost Planning and set the indicator New KPI Flag.

·         Maintain the settings for distribution under Customer Relationship Management -> Marketing Planning and Campaign Management -> Key Figure Planning -> Maintain Value Distribution

·         When you are setting up your planning layout for this key figure planning, note that you can only use one planning layout. This can include several planning functions or sequences but these must be part of the planning layout. These planning functions will be shown in a drop-down box on the tab page.

Procedure

Here is the procedure for showing this tab page for a campaign:

·         Create a campaign with description and ID

On the Basic Data tab page, enter the following information:

·         Enter a planning profile group

·         Enter start and end dates for the campaign

·         Enter a currency

On the Costs tab page, enter the distribution information such as sales area and product information, to determine how the costs are distributed.

Choose Dist. Transfer. The results are shown in the lower half of the screen.

Once you have done this, cost planning receives the distribution dimensions, dates and currencies and displays them dynamically. On the Costs tab page, the screen is now split and you can enter your budget and split the costs between the selected dimensions. The CRM customizing for distribution is validated against the SEM planning layout definition.  It is not possible to maintain planning values if the distribution customizing does not match the SEM planning layout.

When you have entered the planned figures, you can then release the campaign and transfer it to R/3. You trigger the transfer to R/3 manually. To do this, go to Marketing Project -> Transfer to R/3 -> Marketing project with hierarchy. The marketing elements are then mapped in R/3.

Before the budget transfer can start, the data is uploaded to BW using the standard InfoSource 0WBS_ELEMT.

To be able to transfer the budget information in R/3, the system needs specific master data information for the WBS element which it retrieves from the InfoObject 0WBS_ELEMT, InfoObject 0CRM_MKTELM and 0CRM_MKGUID in BW. In SAP BW, the budget is derived from the total costs of a marketing element. This has to be a key figure and planning profile in the infocube. The link between the key figure and the budget transfer can be customized in SEM.

Secondly the plan data need to be linked to the WBS element in the infocube. That means the infoobject for the WBS element (0WBS_ELEMT or 0CRM_MKTELE) has to be in the infocube. Generally it has to be derived in an extra step since during the planning phase the WBS element corresponding to a marketing element has not been created yet. A standard SEM planning function can do this (Repost characteristcs relationship).

The next step is the transfer of the planned costs to R/3-PS as budget. This is a SEM planning function of type EXIT. To ensure the derivation of the WBS element from the marketing elements before the budget transfer is started, both functions should be combined into a SEM planning sequence.

Execution in PS can then take place. In this case, execution means, for example, the ordering of TV airtime, for example. Using the appropriate WBS element, the total costs of an activity are checked against the budget of the corresponding WBS element.

To keep track of your marketing activities, you may want to look at versions of your planning data from various different stages, for example, at the outset and then two weeks into a campaign and compare them. You can define these versions in Customizing for Marketing Planning and Campaign Management under Key Figure Planning -> Version Management.