Status and Tracking System 

Use

The BW-BPS Status and Tracking System helps you to monitor the progress of the different planning tasks within your company. The system keeps a record of the iterations which run through a specific planning task in practice (requirement notification bottom-up, resource assignment top-down) and brings together the planning objects created in the planning environment with the employees who use these objects to process the actual planning tasks.

In the Status and Tracking System, the planning process  is divided into:

●     Subplan:
A specific business subarea of business planning, for example profit planning, balance sheet planning, cost center planning.

●     Planning session:
A single program run of the iterative planning process where every iteration aims to better adjust the deviating plan values (for example, requirement notification vs. resource assignment, sales key figures vs. sales targets). Planning sessions are used in the Status and Tracking System to version the different planning cycles so that the approximation process is documented in the system and can be understood. The status of a particular subtask can change several times within a planning session (for example new, for approval, rejected, for approval, approved). A planning session is completed when all the subtasks contained in it have the status “approved”.

●     Organizational hierarchy:
Part of the hierarchical organizational structure of your company which describes the employees involved in the planning process and how they relate to each other within the business. Each hierarchy node represents an area of responsibility for a specific subplan within the planning process. The hierarchy also serves as a guideline for the approval process within a subplan and for performing status-dependent notification management.

The Status and Tracking System is a Web-based application which is executed exclusively in a Web browser. This means that you can execute your tasks, supported by the system, wherever you are without requiring special local installations on your PC. You perform Customizing for subplans and the associated planning sessions in the BW system.

Integration

The Status and Tracking System acts as an organizational layer above the planning objects (planning areas, planning levels, planning functions) created in the BW-BPS planning environment. The planning environment makes available the basic planning elements that you require while the Status and Tracking System answers the question of how these objects are used and what their status is.

You can branch directly to any of the planning applications specified in Customizing (as long as it is a Web application) from the hierarchical levels of a subplan. For example, this is possible with planning applications created using the BW-BPS Web Interface Builder.

You can use the BW-BPS Status and Tracking System together with BI Integrated Planning. For more information see Integrating BI Integrated Planning.

Prerequisites

●     You have created planning objects in the planning environment that you arrange together from an organizational perspective using the Status and Tracking System.

●     You have activated the Web services used by the Status and Tracking System. For more information, see Maintaining Web Services for STS.

●     The status administration of the Status and Tracking System contains an automatic notification system which is controlled by the current status of a subplan. Notification is by e-mail. Therefore you have to maintain the e-mail addresses of the persons to be notified in the user data in the system.

●     Before you can work with the Status and Tracking System the necessary notifications have to be entered in your authorization profile. For more general information, see Authorizations. For more specific information, see Authorization Objects in the STS.

Features

You can define subplans and planning sessions freely. Each subplan is assigned to one planning area. The planning area contains the relevant data for the subplan. You can assign several subplans to one planning area. This allows you to achieve the general goal of integrated planning more easily than the option of using a large number of planning areas which contain a very specialized set of key figures and characteristics.

Within a subplan and planning session that is to be completed within it you enter the following data for each unit relevant to your organizational structure (along a cost center hierarchy that you have determined which is available in SAP Business Warehouse, for example):

●     Person responsible:
A person who is responsible for planning within the respective organizational unit (for example, a cost center manager). If the required data is maintained in the system and the corresponding Business Add-In designed to read this data is implemented, the Status and Tracking System can determine the person responsible automatically. For more information, see Determining a Hierarchy for the Subplan and Authorization Objects in the STS.

●     Completion time:
The time by which planning in the corresponding planning session must be completed and reported to the next higher-level unit.

●     Planning transaction:
URL of the Web planning application that is executed by the respective organizational unit within the planning session.

●     Control report:
URL of a Web report stored in the intranet that allows you to check the current planning status.

You also maintain a record of header characteristics for each planning session within a subplan. The values that you select for the header characteristics determine the limits of the dataspace within which the respective planning session is planned.

You use the header characteristics to restrict a planning session to a certain version, time frame (for example, 001.2002 to 006.2002), or subquantity of the article groups to be planned (for example, dairy products, desserts). As soon as the planning session is completed, the Status and Tracking System locks the plan data entered for the selection of header characteristics against further changes.

Once configured, you make the Status and Tracking System available to the person responsible for planning. When the status of a subtask is confirmed, the system automatically generates an e-mail to the persons responsible for the next higher-level unit. If the reported plan data is rejected, an appropriate e-mail is also sent automatically with the request for revision to the lower-level unit. You can change the notification texts SAP deliver or replace them with your own texts. See Changing Notification Texts.

 

See also:

Customizing the Status and Tracking System

Overview: Planning with the Status and Tracking System