When you enter a sales order in CRM Enterprise, you may require the following information:
● Whether the products are available and ATP requirements are to be transferred to materials planning. For this purpose, an availability check (ATP check) is carried out for the items in a sales order.
● Whether the products can be delivered on time. For this purpose, shipment scheduling and transportation scheduling are carried out for the items in a sales order.
These functions are carried out in SAP Advanced Planning and Optimization (SAP APO). The availability check in SAP APO is also called the Global Available-to-Promise.
For shipment and transportation scheduling you need SAP APO 3.0A or a higher release.
Integration of SAP CRM and SAP APO ensures that the required data is transferred from CRM Enterprise to SAP APO, and that the results of the availability check and shipment and transport scheduling are transferred to CRM Enterprise.
Business Application Programming Interfaces (BAPIs) in CRM Enterprise and SAP ECC. The following illustration shows the BAPIs used:
There are two processes for posting requirements in SAP APO so that they are relevant for materials planning. The process you use depends on where you carry out material requirements planning:
● Availability Check and Planning in SAP APO
● Availability Check in SAP APO, Planning in SAP ECC
Systems
You need the following systems:
● CRM Enterprise
This is where the sales orders are entered.
● SAP SCM (Component SAP Advanced Planning and Optimization / SAP APO)
This is where the availability check and scheduling takes place.
We recommend that you use the latest SAP SCM release.
● SAP ECC
This is where the products are stored. SAP ECC carries out subsequent functions such as delivery and billing.
Master Data
● Product- and business partner data can be created or changed in SAP ECC and then be forwarded to CRM Enterprise
● Product- and business partner data can be created or changed in CRM Enterprise and then be forwarded to SAP ECC.
○ If you create the product master in CRM Enterprise, this data must be transferred to SAP ECC before it can be used in a sales transaction.
○ If you create the product master in CRM Enterprise, you must maintain additional views and fields in SAP ECC
Therefore, we recommend that you make sure that the product master data is maintained in SAP ECC.
If you make any changes in the product master data in SAP ECC, you need to deactivate and reactivate the SAP APO Core Interface (APO-CIF) integration model.
For more information, see Set up SAP APO-CIF Integration Model.
For more information about maintaining and transferring product data, see SAP Library for mySAP Customer Relationship Management at Quotation and Order Management ® Master Data ® Products ® Functions ® Distribution of Business Partner Master Data and Uploading CRM Product Data to ERP Systems.
The following basic methods of availability check used in SAP APO are supported in CRM Enterprise:
Options include:
○ Product substitution
○ Location substitution
After the availability check, details for each item are transferred back to CRM Enterprise, such as:
● Delivering country (for tax reasons) and region (U.S.)
● Confirmed quantities
● Confirmation dates
● Globally unique identifier (PosGUID or GUID - used for requirements in SAP APO)
● item category usage
Restrictions
For information about restrictions, see
● Availability Check and Planning in SAP APO
● Availability Check in SAP APO, Planning in SAP ECC
● SAP Note 872118 (CRM5.0 ATP with APO: Collective Note/Settings/Restrictions)
For more information about the availability check and shipment and transportation scheduling, see SAP Library for SAP Supply Chain Management at Advanced Planning and Optimization (SAP APO):
● Global Available-to-Promise (Global ATP)
● APO Global Available-to-Promise (Global ATP) ® Shipment and Transportation Scheduling