Sales Order Processing for Service Parts 

Purpose

You use this business process to process sales orders within Service Parts Management, which allows you to trigger shipping and delivery of the sales order directly in SAP Customer Relationship Management (SAP CRM). If you have activated the corresponding system configuration, the sales order is not transferred to SAP ECC through normal data replication, but rather the system immediately creates unchecked deliveries in SAP ECC. Data such as the requested delivery date and quantity is transferred from the sales order to SAP ECC for the unchecked deliveries.

This business process is particularly useful when you have to process a large order volume. It allows you to process many sales orders, which may contain multiple items, more quickly and efficiently. Amongst other things, you can still change the quantities, ship-to party or location as long as the unchecked deliveries have not been converted into checked deliveries. In normal sales order processing in which data is replicated in SAP CRM and SAP ECC, this is not possible. Here, the order items are locked and can no longer be changed once delivery has been triggered. Additionally, this can improve system performance, as it is not negatively affected by system-wide locking of sales orders.

Note that product configuration is not supported in this business process.

Prerequisites

●      The system configuration for service parts management is active. You can find more information about this in the SAP Implementation Guide (IMG) under Customer Relationship Management ® Transactions ® Basic Settings ® Activate System Configuration for Service Parts Management.

●      SAP SCM Extended Warehouse Management is activated.

●      You use the availability check with SAP SCM Advanced Planning and Optimization (SAP APO).

●      You have set the indicator for Delivery Relevance for the item category used.

●      The sales order has to be complete, without errors or distribution locks.

●      The sales order has to contain an open confirmed quantity.

●      The order item has to contain a location or vendor that is normally provided via SAP APO.

Process Flow

       1.      Create sales order (SAP CRM)

You create the sales order with the corresponding order items. It is also possible to create an order with reference to a quotation that has already been created. The system then copies the items from the quotation.

When creating the sales order, you can use foreign trade checks and letters of credit. You can find more information under Integration of Foreign Trade Checks in the Sales Order and Integration of Letters of Credit in the Sales Order.

       2.      Enter product (SAP CRM)

       3.      System triggers sourcing/ATP (SAP CRM)

The system triggers sourcing for each order item.

       4.      System check sourcing/ATP, route and scheduling (SAP SCM)

       5.      Determine and maintain conditions (SAP CRM)

You can maintain conditions. The system uses condition technique to determine the prices and values of the individual items.

You can allow only certain employees to manually change prices calculated by the system in the sales order. If the employee is not authorized to change prices, the system triggers an approval process. You can find more information under Approval Process for Price Changes in Sales Orders.

       6.      Perform credit check (SAP CRM)

       7.      System performs a credit check (SAP ECC)

       8.      System triggers unchecked deliveries and customer requirements (SAP CRM)

SAP CRM extracts the relevant order data and transfers the sales order data to SAP ECC. The sales order has to be complete, without errors or distribution locks. Furthermore, the sales order has to contain an open confirmed schedule line quantity. After the sales order has been saved in SAP CRM, SAP ECC creates an unchecked delivery based on this data. You can find more information in the SAP Library for SAP ECC under Logistics ® Logistics - General (LO) ® Service Parts Management (LO-SPM) ® Outbound Processing ® Creation and Update of Unchecked Deliveries.

       9.      System creates unchecked delivery (SAP ECC)

If you have activated the appropriate system configuration, the system can create unchecked deliveries directly in SAP ECC without having first transferred the sales document to SAP ECC. The requested delivery date and -quantity are then copied from the sales order.

When you save a sales order in SAP CRM, the system immediately creates an unchecked delivery in SAP ECC based on the order data. Although the sales order is not replicated as a sales order in SAP ECC, the unchecked delivery in SAP ECC is still connected to the sales order.

An unchecked delivery is a delivery document with document status Unchecked. This document contains all necessary data from the sales order. Unlike the checked delivery, all checks that are executed when the delivery is created and could prevent the unchecked delivery from being created are ignored. An example would be the availability check. The unchecked deliveries are connected to SAP CRM and act as communication objects between SAP CRM, SAP ECC, and SAP SCM. In SAP ECC, you can use transaction VL10UC to include unchecked deliveries in a work list depending on certain selection criteria, such as delivery date, and convert them from there into checked deliveries, that is, normal delivery documents.

You can use a scheduled background job in SAP ECC to convert unchecked deliveries into checked deliveries according to their release date. This results in a normal delivery document with Checked status. The checked delivery is the first actual follow-on document of the sales order that can be used to execute follow-on functions, such as picking, packing or goods issue posting. You can also carry out the conversion manually.

For more information, see SAP Library for SAP ECC under Logistics ® Logistics - General (LO) ® Service Parts Management (LO-SPM) ® Outbound Processing ® Conversion of Unchecked to Checked Deliveries.

When the system creates a checked delivery, it returns the data on the checked delivery to SAP CRM. SAP CRM uses this data to change the status and update the document flow. The checked delivery can be carried out without restrictions.

SAP APO and SAP CRM have no information about unchecked deliveries. The quantities of unchecked deliveries are not regarded as delivered quantities in SAP CRM.

   10.      System creates outbound delivery request (SAP SCM)

   11.      System creates customer requirements (SAP SCM)

SAP SCM creates a requirement with reference to the sales order item in SAP SCM’s SAP APO. The requirement in SAP APO refers to the sales order in SAP CRM and not the unconfirmed delivery in SAP ECC. SAP SCM reserves the confirmed quantity of the product concerned for the confirmed date exclusively for the corresponding sales order item or customer.

   12.      Send order confirmation to customer (SAP CRM)

The order confirmations are sent using Electronic Data Interchange (EDI).

   13.      Monitor order status (SAP CRM)

○       Check delivery status

SAP CRM updates the delivery status in the sales order at item level on the basis of the checked delivery. In addition, SAP CRM updates the document flow in the sales order. After the unchecked delivery has been converted, the status values change at item level. If the requested quantity matches the delivery quantity, the order item receives the delivery status Completely Delivered. The system status is only displayed as Complete once the sales order has been completely delivered.

○       Check blocked sales orders

You can use the Credit Analyst Workbench to check and further process sales transactions that were blocked as a result of the credit- and credit rating check. You can find more information under Credit Analyst Workbench.