Support for SAP/BPC...•Migration to SAP BPC 7.5. –Perfect time to switch hardware and...

Stream BV | December 2010

Support for SAP/BPC

Functional and Technical Management

How to manage Calls, Metadata Requests and Deployments?

Paul van Erk Stream B.V.

Gerben Beekhof SHV Holdings N.V.

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Content

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Introduction SHV Holdings

Challenges @ SHV Holdings

Setting up support processes and procedures

Bluewater for SAP/BPC

Bluewater for SAP/BPC - Looking to the future

Contact details

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SHV originated in 1896 in the Netherlands from a merger between a number of large coal trading

companies, some of which had been active since the 18th century. After the decline of coal as the

primary source of energy, halfway through the twentieth century, SHV decided to move into other

business areas. SHV is a privately-held family company.

SHV's activities now involve:

• trade in and distribution of LPG (SHV Gas)

• cash and carry wholesale (Makro)

• provision of private equity (NPM Capital)

• exploration and production of oil and gas (Dyas)

• investment in sustainable energy solutions (The Clean Energy Company)

• heavy lifting and transport solutions (Mammoet)

• industrial services (ERIKS)

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SAP BPC @ SHV Holdings - Timeline

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• 2007: SAP BPC (version 5) implemented for Annual Reporting.

• 2008: Budget and Quarterly Reporting.

• 2009: Monthly Reporting.

• 2010: Source systems (Exact) linked to SAP BPC.

Management Reporting (STAR Cube).

Starting to use Bluewater for SAP BPC.

• 2011: Roll out SAP BPC Version 7.5 to Business Units.

SHV GAS will be using his own application / cube.

Roll out Bluewater for SAP BPC to Business Units.

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SAP BPC @ SHV Holdings - Facts & Figures

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• Around 170 Reporting Entities

• Around 140 Legal Consolidations Groups

• Also consolidation on Regions, Currency,

CBS and Ad Hoc

• 77 million records in Finance Table

• Size of databases 43 GB

• Every night a full optimize.

• Nightly script for shrinking transaction log

• Delete Private Publications after 4 days

• 20 service requests per month

• 15 changes per month

• Software / Platform:

• 3 Terminal Servers (Load Balancing)

• MS Hyper-V (Virtualisation)

• MS-SQL Server 2008

• Microsoft Office 2007

• Tools used for Functional Management:

• Teamviewer

• Bluewater for SAP BPC

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Challenges @ SHV Holdings

What were the challenges we had to deal with last year?

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• Define tasks, roles and responsibilities.

– How to act in an environment with a potential conflict of interests of the stakeholders?

• Migration to SAP BPC 7.5.

– Perfect time to switch hardware and pre-required software (MS SQL-Server 2008).

– How can we efficiently set up a Development / Test / Acceptance / Production environment?

– How can we stay in control of the DTAP street?

• Usage of SAP BPC increases. More users and more frequently reporting.

– How can we handle user requests more efficiently?

– How can we stay in control of metadata requests?

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Challenges @ SHV Holdings - tasks, roles and responsibilities

How to act in an environment with a potential conflict of interests of the

stakeholders?

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Challenges @ SHV Holdings - DTAP

DTAP is common practice.

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Challenges @ SHV Holdings - DTAP

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Forget about DTAP. Now it`s time for DTAPP`.

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• SAP BPC is used for:

– Monthly reporting

– Yearplan

– Annual Reporting

– Ad hoc analysis

– Management information

– CBS (Centraal Bureau voor de Statistiek)

– DNB (De Nederlandse Bank)

• What we need is an integral approach to manage all these different processes!

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Challenges @ SHV Holdings - User Requests and Metadata changes

SAP BPC is used for more than just the Annual Reporting. More user requests

gives more pressure on the Reporting department.

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• User requests can be categorized into:

– Inputschedule / Report

– Add/Modify User

– Security

– Dimensions

– DTS packages / Data Upload

– Folders

– Data

– Business Process Flow

– Ownership

– Rates

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Setting up support processes and procedures - ITIL

IT comes with a set of processes based on ITIL which is quite technical.

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Setting up support processes and procedures - PAM

Process- and Application Management processes are based on BISL which

places the end-user in the center of attention, not IT.

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• Metadata Management: Metadata Management deals with the changes in metadata (dimension members) requested by end-users like goodwill items or bank codes. To effectuate these changes in SAP/BPC, the application needs to be processed.

• Call Management The aim of call management is to register, plan and monitor incoming calls and problems of users and assign these calls to a functional manager. Knowledge that has been built up over the years can be unlocked by the knowledge base in which knowledge calls can be classified and published.

• Change Management Change Management aims to ensure that standardised methods and procedures are used for efficient handling of all new implemented features which are defined in a project.

• Deployment Management Deployment management facilitates the DTAP migration. Changes need to be processed separately on the different environments. The Deployment management process provides insight on which environments the changes are processed, who made the changes and who tested the changes.

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Setting up support processes and procedures – Deployment Management process

Nice overview, but can we see a detailed view of the deployment

management process?

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Setting up support processes and procedures - Deployments

Good process, but how can we use it in our day-to-day life?

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• What is our monthly reporting cycle?

• A deployment can be a:

– Release – a release is planned at the end of every month and is deployed during the scheduled downtime at the end of the month.

– Patch - a patch could be implemented every day. In order to keep downtime of SAP/BPC as low as possible you would like to plan a patch every week at a predefined time. If there is a high priority issue, you can implement the patch at your daily patch time. Once more; you want to keep downtime .

– Fasttrack – a fasttrack is meant for those issues which do not involve processing of the applications (like reports or users). A fasttrack can be done at any time and processing is not necessary (so there will be no downtime).

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Setting up support processes and procedures – Bluewater for SAP/BPC

How can we easily manage these processes?

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Bluewater for SAP/BPC:

• Portal

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• Workflow

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Bluewater helped us to facilitate the PAM processes so we can ...

• Control our deployment process.

– Have an overview, at any time, of all changes and planned changes. Now we know which changes are implemented on the different environments.

• Manage our metadata change requests.

– Collect the changes and implement them at once. We do not have the hassle anymore about storing dossiers full of paper RFCs or excel sheets, but we have one place where we can easily create, maintain and search our RFCs.

• Reduce the pressure on our help desk with the Self Service Portal.

– Users can register their own incidents and keep track of them. This saves us both time and effort. In addition our end users can gain access to a Knowledge base to try and resolve simple issues themselves.

– End users are being informed by automatic email notifications.

– Manuals can be added to the Portal.

• Effectively communicate with CPMview Consulting and other external parties.

– External support parties can easily get access to Bluewater for SAP/BPC. A call can be redirected to an external party in order to solve the call. All information regarding the Call is available in Bluewater. It's no longer necessary to send emails back and forth which can easily be lost.

• Get insight in our call and change request history. We use these for analysis purposes.

• Store all knowledge in one place.

– Solutions and answers which are given in the past can easily be accessed. Administrator documentation is stored on the Wiki.

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The use of Bluewater is very simple ...

• 100% web-based, no local installations required;

• All our data in one location;

• No worries about backups or hardware;

• Extensive reporting options and monitoring of KPIs;

• Authorization and settings per users;

• Wiki to store documentation in one place including version control and track of

changes;

• Frequently Asked Questions for end users;

• No high maintenance costs, we only pay for what we use.

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The demonstration will show you the Portal and Workflow.

• Submit, trace and handle: – Metadata requests; – Calls and Service Requests (Call Management); – Deployments.

• Reports – Users can easily generate reports to see what changes are planned or implemented in a release.

• Frequently Asked Questions

– CAF can easily add FAQs for end-users. A full editor and upload of images is available.

• Wiki (only available for certain role) – Administrator documentation can be maintained on the Portal. A full editor, upload of images and easy

creation of links are available.

• Documentation end-users – Documentation for end-users can be placed on the portal. End-users have access to the latest version.

• Full Text Search – Users can perform a full text search on the Portal.

• Knowledge Base – Functional Management can decide to place a call in the knowledge base. The knowledge base consists of call

which can be interesting to multiple users.

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Bluewater for SAP/BPC – Looking into the future

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When a excel report or schedule is modified, it can be hard to keep track of

the changes and who is the author of the changes.

How to manage changes in schedules and reports?

We are investigating the possibility to use a repository to store all schedules, reports and their

changes.

Characteristics:

• The eExcel folder will function as a repository.

• All changes (with the author and timestamp) are logged by the system.

• You can easily open two versions of a report next to each (side by side) and the changes are

highlighted.

• The User Interface integrates seamlessly into the Windows shell (i.e. the explorer).

• The status of every versioned file and folder is indicated by small overlay icons. That way you

can see right away what the status of your working copy is.

• Revert to an earlier version.

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Bluewater for SAP/BPC – Version Control

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So how will this version control work in our daily life?

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Contact details

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G.J. (Gerben) Beekhof CAF Department

SHV holdings N.V. Rijnkade 1, 3511 LC Utrecht, The Netherlands P.O. box 2065, 3500 GB Utrecht, The Netherlands T +31 30 2338230, F +31 30 2338264 [email protected], www.shv.nl

Paul van Erk

+31 (0) 6 14 961 329 [email protected] www.streamconsulting.nl

Stream BV Molukkenstraat 200 B-9 1098 TW Amsterdam +31 (0) 20 7723926

Process Oriented Solutions

mailto:[email protected]



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About Stream Stream is an independent consulting and services company specialized in fast creation of business process solutions. Stream was founded in 2008 as a result of several years of research and development in process management software. Our aim is to deliver working Business Process Solutions in the shortest possible timeframe.

Stream BV Molukkenstraat 200-E2 1098 TW Amsterdam Netherlands

www.streamconsulting.nl

Support for SAP/BPC...•Migration to SAP BPC 7.5. –Perfect time to switch hardware and...

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