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Happy Thanksgiving

This is a just a quick post to wish you and your family a great Thanksgiving.  I’ll be taking the next days off, so no new posts.  I hope you’ll be taking the next few days to enjoy time with the special people in your life.

For me, it’s a chance to reflect on how thankful I am for everything I have in my life.  I’m thankful my great friends, many of whom I just don’t see often enough anymore, my wonderful family, most of whom will actually be at our house starting today.  Wow, it’ll be crazy.

I’m thankful for my awesome son, who cracks me up on a daily basis.  I’m thankful our coming soon addition is healthy and I look forward to meeting him/her in just another 6 months (holy cow).  I’m thankful for my loving wife, who generously puts up with my obsession in this new business venture.  God bless her, because I doubt I’m easy to live with =)

I’m thankful for my new company and my new partner.  Together, we’re going places…  we just need to keep plugging away.  Thanks Mike…

And I’m very thankful to all of you.  Until recently, I didn’t think anyone was reading this stuff.  However, I’ve been comments from a lot of you, and I have to say, it makes me feel pretty good.  First, that I’m not doing this for nothing, and second that you spend your valuable time to read my ramblings =)

Anyway, have a great holiday, and I’ll be back on Monday.

Mike

Service Management – Service Order Release Strategy

One of the decisions I often see customers struggle with is when to release the service order.  So I thought I’d give you my opinion on the service order release strategy that I’ve seen and give you some good information to consider before you make your final judgement.

Now, the biggest dilemma I hear is do I release it automatically, or do I wait.  My answer, like any good consultant, is it depends.  The biggest factor that anyone needs to consider in this choice is, do you care when the requirements move to MRP.  What happens is when a service order is released, any planned components will show as a demand in MRP.  Well, if you’re not ready to work on this order for another 2 months, in my opinion, you don’t want the demand going out for the parts as soon as it’s created.  Now, if you’re using all of your dates correctly, and have outstanding capacity planning figured out, you can probably avoid this.  Most places I’ve worked at are not that sophisticated, and don’t have the resources to maintain that level of planning for service.  In those instances, I encourage you NOT to release the service order automatically.  You can control that setting in the service order type configuration:

simply make sure this box is unchecked.  The other cool thing is that you can decide on an order type basis.  So perhaps for your field service or plant maintenance orders you do want them released automatically, but perhaps for your service exchange or even in-house repair orders, you want to manually control this.

As a rule of thumb, I generally set it to be NOT released immediately, unless it is for a Field Service Order Type.  This allows the service planner to review the order, set the dates properly, make sure the correct components have been called out, and decide if it should be added into the queue…  or this one should wait because there is already a backlog of more important service orders to attend to.

Using the system status, it is easy to see what is not released.  Simply look for CRTD to see the unreleased orders.  If it is REL, it has been released.

I hope you found this interesting.

As always, if you need more help in service management or variant configuration please use the contact us button above and let us know how we can help.

I’m also on the lookout for new topics to blog about.  if you have suggestions, please comment on any of my post,

Thanks for reading,

Mike

Challenges of the First Sale

Hi again,

For those of you that follow me, you know that I’m trying to launch my SAP Add-on Applications business.  Well, if you remember, several months ago I announced that my first sale was pending.  Well, it is still pending, and I just wanted to relay some of the challenges I’ve encountered, and some lessons I’ve learned based on my experiences over the past few months (I know, crazy the amount of time it can take for customers to truly decide to buy).

Everything started a couple years ago when I worked at a client, and the need for a service dashboard first popped into my head.  As it turns out, one my clients that consulted for was interested in my dashboard.  Imagine my excitement.  Someone wants to buy what I’ve put nearly 6 months of work into (at that time, since it’s been even more.  lol).  Sweet…  so I scheduled a demo, everyone liked it…  then I waited…  I emailed to check in to see if there were questions I could answer.  I always tried to not pressure my prospect, so I’d just drop an email every 2 weeks or so to see if there were questions i could answer, or anything that would help them decide if my dashboard would be a fit.

Eventually, I get an email that says my prospect is interested…  Now I’m really excited.  So next begins the negotiations on price.  Well, my first piece of advise, set your bottom price you will accept, AND STICK TO IT.  I failed this first test.  When the prospect came back and gave me the price they thought was fair, it was $5000 less than my bottom line.  What did I say?  “OK”.  What should I have said…  “I’m sorry, but for we can’t possibly sell something for less than X”.  Ok…  so I dropped the first ball, but whatever, I got my first sale, and I just need them to sign my paperwork.  Oops.  I don’t have any paperwork.

So, next mission is come up with all of the terms and conditions.  Luckily for me, I at least had the legal portions of this that I got done a while ago.  But, I still needed the specific purchase agreement document.  Lucky for me, I’ve been a consultant for a while, so I know all about contracts.  I also had my SAP paperwork that had the agreement for my partnership.  This made a perfect starting point, so I quickly put it together, ran it past my partner.  We hashed out the details we could live with and quickly sent it over to my customer.  I’m giddy as a school girl.  I can see my first payday for all the effort that I’ve put into this venture.  I’m already planning my next product that I’m going to sell to this prospect…  it’s awesome.

Well, more waiting…  roughly ever other week, I’d finally get some feedback from the prospect.  The first round was a lot of changes, to both the legal document and purchase document.  So, first order of business is getting my lawyer to look at it and make sure I’m still protected, and won’t lose my software based on the wording from the prospect.  Within a week, I hear back and have my answers.  So I do my markups.  Now the purchase agreement is where the trouble came in…

Now, keep in mind, I’m still excited, this is my first sale, and I can’t wait to make it happen.  But, I start reading the markups and I get a bad feeling in the pit of my stomach.  I vent for a few minutes to my partner, and then calm down.  The prospect is now requiring free training.  Well, it’s a report…  who needs to be trained on a report???  anyway, we decide that training isn’t being given for free.  We’re already selling this at a 60% discount (a  lot lower than I wanted).  Then, the payment terms are suddenly 1/2 now, 1/2 after implementation.  the problem is that implementation from our side is a 1 day event.  But, suddenly 1/2 of the money would be withheld until the prospect decided to implement and receive their free training…  Ugh… Then to top it all off, our business model (and everyone that I’ve talked to who does similar software) charges a yearly software maintenance agreement or licensing for a number of users.  Either way, it’s residual income year after year.  The prospect said no… we don’t want that.

So, I start with my first round of compromises (all of which benefit the prospect).  I did hold firm on no free training.  But I gave in, and say 1/2 up front, 1/2 after 2 weeks…  I made the SMA optional, and I even discounted it… something we originally agreed we wouldn’t do.  And we gave in on most of the legal points…

Two more weeks go by, and we get the next revision…  pretty much asking for more.  Training is required.  and the payment schedule of 1/2 up front, 1/2 after 2 weeks wasn’t acceptable.  We compromised again.  We gave in the training, and said 1/2 up front, 1/2 after a month.  It’s a report, takes 5 minutes to install.  No configuration is required…  so anything more than a week…

Still not good enough…  at this point, I have stopped compromising.  I’ve already agreed to more than I should have, and the possibility of getting the 2nd half at some arbitrary date in the future, was more than I could accept.  So I sent the paperwork back one last time, nothing additional offered.

So, after all this… what did I learn above all else?  Be willing to walk away.  If you keep giving in, the customer is going to keep asking for more.  It’s no one’s fault but my own.  I don’t know if my prospect will sign or not.  And I’m ok with it.    Don’t get me wrong.  I really want the sale, but I’ve already got to a point where making this sale is no longer a financial win for me.  I know this was long winded… but I wanted to let you know that the sale isn’t everything.  Even if it isn’t a physical product, there is still a point where the sale isn’t worth what you’ve given up.  So, stay firm, and don’t get too attached to that sale.

As always, learning things the hard way so you don’t have to =)

thanks for reading,

Mike

 

Managing your Time – Avoid Getting Overwhelmed

Hi everyone,

Today I want to talk about something that is hitting me dead square in the nuts.  Time management.  For my friends, they know that I tend to be a little of a driven personality.  I see a goal, and do everything possible to meet that goal.  it’s a good trait…  as long as you can manage your goals 🙂  right now, I’m looking at all the things I have on my plate, and starting to realize that I just can’t keep up.  let me give you an example.  Currently, I’m a small company, so that means I wear MANY hats.  Right now, I’m working on doing a major overhaul to our new product Proximity, I’m trying to write 5 blog posts a week, I recently finished my first autoresponder class for SM, I have my “day” job that takes 40 – 50/hrs a week (a lot more hours than my previous couple of contracts).  On top of that, I have marketing materials for my current products that need to be created, web pages that need to be added, and I still need to maintain the day to day business paperwork.

When I read the couple of sentences, it really doesn’t sound that bad.  But then I look at my to-do list (BTW, I still recommend Remember the Milk if you don’t already have a system), and it’s up over 20 items every day.  What does that mean?  it means i can’t keep up with the schedules I’ve set for myself.  It’s becoming a good day if I can get my list under 15…  and I’m ecstatic if I can get it under 10.  Accomplishing everything, just isn’t happening.  that means, I haven’t estimated very well, and I’m fall behind. there’s a very simple solution to this…  I need to re-evaluate everything I’m working.  Is it reasonable to do 5 blog posts a week?  is starting a new auto-responder course worth my effort right now?  What am I losing by not having my marketing materials up to date on my website?

Now, for me, I often have a hard time admitting that I can’t accomplish it all.  But I’ve been running at this rate for the past month, and I’m working till 1AM every night and then getting up at 6:30am every morning to start again.  No one can keep this up forever (at least I know that I can’t…  I’ve already noticed I’m cranky and have been getting more headaches).

So this post for anyone out there trying to get stuff done…  Focus on the most important tasks first…  but if you have too many tasks and you’re starting to notice you can’t get anything done…  it’s time to put some things on the back burner.  it doesn’t mean it won’t come back… but it’s important to hit the most vital tasks, and do them right.  then come back to the other tasks when you have the time to devote to them.

Hope this helps you out,

Mike

 

Putting together my first Autoresponder

For those of you that know me, you know that I am far from a sales/marketing type person.  I’m an engineer/computer programmer.  So this journey of sales and marketing has been a challenging.  My friend Justin and I have been doing this on-line program called the remarkable marketing blueprint.  All of the information is solid, and useful.  The hard part as been trying to apply it to what I do.  I’m not really a writer, or a hard-core blogger.  I don’t sell small products or services for the masses.  I do highly specialized service and applications for a LARGE computer program.  What I have found is that there is more in common than I ever expected.

Because of that course, I actually took the time to put together my first auto-responder course.  Sounds easy right?  just spew out stuff that know by heart, and drop it into mail program.  Well, for me, that was hardly the case.  In order to try to make the content worthwhile, I spent a lot of time coming up with the topics to talk about, getting screen shots and collecting all the relevant data to the subject.  In short, I spent about 10 times longer building this than I expected.  Don’t get me wrong, I would do it again.  Even sharpening my skills (and like so much of this blog) it’s a notebook to remind me how to do things if I forget =)

Well, I’ll touch a little on the technical side as well.  I chose to build a web page for each of my E-Course Lessons.  I then did a small email with the first paragraph or two from the auto-responder with a link to the page.  I did this for 2 reasons, and my thinking may have been flawed.  So if anyone reading this actually knows how to do this stuff, please feel free to give me some constructive criticism (go easy on me…  it’s my first time).  First, I wanted to get people to my website, so they could see everything I had to offer, including the blog, newsletters, and of course my products.  Second, Mailchimp has this really cool feature that tells me if anyone clicks on a link from my email.  This gives me a heads up if anyone is actually reading the stuff, or if just getting the emails.

So far, I have about 4 people that signed up.  You have to start somewhere 🙂  if you’re interested in learning how to improve your SAP SM, give it a read.  You might just learn something,

thanks for reading,

Mike

Service Management – Bringing in a General Task List

One of the really nice features in service orders is the ability to default in a General Task List (routing).

If you are familiar with transaction OISD, you already know that you can assign a general task list by plant/service material.  However, one of the things I often run into with clients is that the task lists aren’t specific to a service material (DIEN), rather they are specific to a material or group of materials. For that reason, SAP is so kind to provide a user exit:

IWO10020 (I believe)

this exit lets you impose your own logic on the general task list selected for the service order.  In our case, we a looked at the material in the task list header.  If the servicable materials = material in the header of the task list, bingo, add it to the service order.

You may have other rules that are more generic, product hierarchy, material group, or whatever you use to make a general group.  This way you have the ability to create the task list one time, and have it automatically pulled into every service order that matches your criteria.  This will help your planning and save your service technicians the time of entering in this data every time.

Hope you found this useful,

As always, if you’d like more help in SM, please contact us.  We will be happy to do anything we can for you.

Mike

IWO10020

Finding a New Audience

Well, since I like to be diverse, I’m jumping back to some of my marketing efforts.  Once again, some of my best ideas come from talking to my good friend Justin.  We were recently chatting, and he put the idea in my head of the “guest” blog post.  this is a concept out of the Remarkable marketing Blueprint.  We both signed up for this, and it has been so helpful to have another perspective.  Well, the idea of the guest post I pretty much wrote off.  Who would I guest post on?  I’ve looked, and I can’t even find any other blogs talking about SAP Service Management.

Justin, in his great way of playing devil’s advocate with me brought up the idea that posting on SDN is just like a guest blog post.  it is a new audience, new readers and another place for me to try to jump start my readership.  So…  for that reason, you’ll notice that I’m only going to be posting 4 times a week.  I’m going to start moving one of those posts over to SDN.  If you’re one of my readers, I’d love it if you could follow me out there as well.

Michael Piehl on SDN

Anyway, thanks for reading, and please feel free to forward me onto your friends or colleagues that you think might benefits from some good SAP knowledge =)

Mike

Variant Configuration – $Root, $Parent and $Self

If you didn’t know better, you’d think this was some strange post about psychotherapy.  Well, it’s just one of the underlying concepts you need to understand for variant configuration.  this is one of the concepts that is easier to describe with a picture.  So let’s start with one.  $ROOT, $PARENT and $SELF are the different ways to refer to the characteristics in your model.  Each of them works a little differently.

Now, what you’ll notice is that we have several nested KMATS at multiple different levels.  Now to start this conversation, we’re talking procedures.  Using the picture, let’s do a simple table to show you

Configuration $SELF $PARENT $ROOT
Level 4 Level4 Level 3 Level 1
Level 3 Level 3 Level 2 Level 1
Level 2 Level 2 Level 1 Level 1

Now, if you look at the picture, we only call out the BOM level at the bottom.  In reality, there is a BOM level for each configurable material, but it would be redundant to go through that.  The important things to realize is that $ROOT and $SELF always points to the same place.   Only $PARENT changes.

there is an exception to this rule, and because of that, I suggest avoiding $ROOT.  The exception is when you take a KMAT that was not part of another configuration, and suddenly add it to the BOM.  As soon as you do this, $ROOT suddenly points to a new level.  Personally, it’s not a method I like to use.  Prefer to use $PARENT, and then I make sure to pass the values from level to level if needed.

This pic comes straight out of SAP help.  It’s a little bonus for this blog post to help explain how constraints can deal with the separate levels.  In a constraint, the concept of $SELF, $ROOT and $PARENT don’t exist.  Everything is about classes and if they are part of each other.

I hope this make sense,

If you need more help, click the contact button above, and let us know how we can help you,

Mike

Variant Configuration – Passing Values between Nested KMATS

In this age, having a model without nested KMATs (multi-level configuration) is a thing of the past.  Because of that, I wanted to do a quick post about transferring values between the different levels of the bill of material structure.  There are 2 methods to accomplish this (at least using the standard ERP functionality).

1.  Procedure:  $SELF.X = $PARENT.X  or $SELF.X = $ROOT.X

2.  Constraint:
Object:
mod1 is_a(300)  mod,
mod2 is_a(300) mod,
Assy is_a(300) mod_component

Condition:
part_of (Assy, mod1, ‘0100’) or
part_of (Assy, mod2, ‘0100’)

Restricitons:
Assy.X = mod1.X,
Assy.X = mod2.X

Inferences:
mod1.X,
mod2.X

This rule is a very generic way to show you how to pass values down to a lower level cstic.  This variation goes one step further and actually checks to make sure that the nested KMAT is a at certain position in the bill of material.  This is not required, but can be very handy if is the same class exists in multiple positions in the BOM.  Notice, we copied down, but you could just as easily copy back up by reversing the restriction.  While not a common practice, the option is still there.

You’ll notice that the first method is far more simple, and will do the trick.  the constraint is more complicated to write, but has more power.  Personally, I’m a constraint kinda guy, so I tend to use that method.  But you need to use what fits your situation best.

Now, whenever you need to transfer characteristics between levels, you NEED to test early on in the process how it behaves in a sales order, planned order, production order and sales order costing.  Many times the behavior that works great in CU50, doesn’t translate the same way in a production order.  You may have assign the constraint/procedure at a different configurable material in order to get the rules to fire in all scenarios.

Happy configuring.

Remember, if there is anything we can do to help, please click the contact us button at the top of this page.

Mike

Service Management – Adding Multiple repairs on the same repair sales order

Now, if you’ve been doing this for a while, I’m sure you’ve encountered this issue.  The customer sends back multiple repairs for the same order, however, service notifications can only contain a single material/serial number.  Now, I’ve heard rumors that in EHP4 or EHP5 there is something that can be activated to allow for multiple serial numbers, but I haven’t seen this yet, and for most of us, it isn’t an option anyway.  Because of that, we resort to alternate processes 🙂

Adding another repair to the same sales order is pretty easy.  You must need to make sure you fill out 4 key fields.  Material (this is the service material/DIEN), qty, Servicable Material (this is the material you are fixing), Srv Qty (this is the qty of units you are repairing in a single service order).  That’s it.  As long as all your master data is properly setup, you’ll be good to go.

Now a couple of words of warning.  First, your notification will not track to any additional line items you enter on the repair sales order.  By that, I mean that if you do a lot of work/information gathering at the notification level, the document flow may not be reflected accurately.  This is because in SAP, the notification number is at the header level, even though the actual repairs are at a line item level.  Certainly not the end of the world, but it can be confusing, especially if you rely heavily on document flow (like I usually do).  Another point on this is if you are dealing with warranty/service contracts.  Only the material/serial number entered will be checked.  So if there are 5 items, only 1 of them will be checked automatically by the system if you do it all in a single notification.

Second, I always encourage using a quantity of 1 for every repair.  There are exceptions, but often the clients I deal with want their units back as quickly as possible.  If they send you 5, and 1 of them takes 2 weeks extra, they want the 4 that are done.  Well, if you load the qty of 5 in the sales order, that means you only get 1 service order, 1 inbound delivery, etc…  You could get fancy and split things up after the fact, but it will get messy and much harder to trace.  If you were to set up 5 repair line items, you could should them each as they are completed (or you could even do complete delivery).   The important thing is you have the option.  If the group of materials sent back are only useful as the qty 5, then by all means, do a single line.

Those are the quick ins and outs.  We are have an SAP app that does have one approach of connecting multiple notifications to a single repair sales order line item.  The drawback is that the document flow still only works from the notification.  If you are interested in learning more about it, please contact us.

Hope this was useful and as always, if you need additional help, please let us know.

Mike