Collaborating on Provisional Specifications

There are many reasons why a product developer might need information from a supplier about a specification. For example: change of regulations, modified or new product, tryout of a sample, change of supplier, and so on. With the help of Collaborations, suppliers can provide data directly in the SAP system.

Provisional specifications are objects that exist only in the cloud, and therefore are separated from the master data in the source system of the company. Data can be loaded from raw material specifications to provisional specifications, and then transferred back. This way, the whole specification exchange process is separated from the approved specifications that the company already uses.

The following diagram shows the most important steps during the specification exchange scenario:

The specification exchange scenario goes as follows: the product manager creates Collaborations for each supplier and invites them. The product developer creates a provisional specification request and shares it in the Collaborations. The supplier then copies the request to create an offer, adds data, and shares the result over the Collaboration. The product developer reviews the offers, asks for more information if needed and, after all information is available, selects the best offer. Then the product developer transfers the data back to the source system as a raw material specification. The Collaborations that are not needed anymore are closed.

The following table shows the participants of the specification exchange scenario in more detail:

Authorizations for Product Specifications

Role

Respective Role Template

Related App

Actions

Administrator

SpecificationAdministrator

Load Value Sets for Specification

Load all value sets

Specification - Data Security

  • Data anonymization

  • Data export

Configure Provisional Specifications

  • Create and maintain property groups for templates

  • Define templates for the Manage Provisional Specifications app

  • Provide additional information for suppliers on properties

  • Enable long text input for certain property fields

Manage Provisional Specifications

  • Display all

  • Delete provisional specifications

Product Developer

SpecificationDestinationEditor + SpecificationEditor

Manage Provisional Specifications

  • Display all

  • Create new

  • Copy (with same or modified template)

  • Update

  • Load data from source system

  • Transfer data to source system

  • Attach specification to Collaboration

Supplier (external)

SpecificationExternal

Manage Provisional Specifications

  • Display own specifications

  • Display specifications that are assigned to a Collaboration the supplier is involved in

  • Copy own specifications (with same template)

  • Copy specifications that are assigned to a Collaboration the supplier is involved in (with same template)

  • Update own specifications

  • Attach own specifications to a Collaboration that the supplier is involved in

Watch the following videos for a complete overview of the specification exchange scenario:

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Link to video in SAP Media Share

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Link to video in SAP Media Share