SAP Event Management

Businesses today can operate in a highly distributed, outsourced and networked environment. Globalization is upon us which means that we have to be more intelligent with the way we operate. We have to collaborate efficiently and effectively. We need to ensure that regulations are enforced during the entire process. How do we do that?
We need to track and trace our products across the supply chain measuring performance and reacting to deviations to the plan. We need complete visibility of our end-to-end processes across all the geographical and partner boundaries. We need the ability to quickly adapt to changing conditions in our process. We need to head off issues before they become an issue...

SAP Event Management

SAP Event Management (SAP EM) is an application within the component SAP SCM that belongs to the mySAP Supply Chain Management solution. SAP EM can be connected to other mySAP Business Suite components such as SAP R/3, SAP CRM, and SAP BW. It can also be connected to non SAP systems using BAPI or XML / XI calls. IDocs are also a popular way to get data to your SAP EM system.

With the SAP Event Management application your company can monitor and manage events across your distributed processes involving partners, inventories and assets. It captures events from your system and your partners systems, analyzes them against it's predefined plan and alerts or workflows a response to the required people to react of deviations are found. It comes integrated with SAP NetWeaver BI and SAP Auto-Id Infrastructure (RFID enabled scenarios).

Some Key Points

• Provides monitoring capability (visibility) to any business process
  • Partners - See how your partners are performing and react to deviations to planned partners performing certain events in your process
  • Locations - If your process is intended to have Event A end up at Location A but it arrives at location B then raise exception!!
  • Measurements - You're transporting frozen goods from point A to point B and the temperature must not go above 10 deg. If it arrives at point B at 11 deg then raise exception!!!
• Tracks status changes to YOUR business processes
• Matches the planned process with the actual process (TO UNCOVER EXCEPTIONS)
• Real time notification of events
  • Alert framework
  • Workflow engine
• 2 Types of events:
  • Those that you expect to happen (the plan)
  • Those that actually happen (the actual)
    • Regular event => Events that occur within the planned period
    • Early / Late event => Events occurring outside the planned period
    • Unexpected event => Events that you never planned for
    • Unreported event => Event that you expected to occur but never did
• Manage the sequencing of your events
• Provides both operational and analytical reporting capabilities
  • Operational => Web GUI application - Where are my issues now?
  • Analytical => SAP NetWeaver BI integration - How well did I do and where are my improvement points?

Where can I find SAP EM?

• SAP Supply Chain Management (SCM)
• SAP Transportation Management (TM)
• SAP Auto-ID Infrastructure (AII)
• SAP Object Event Repository (OER) - Works in conjunction with SAP® NetWeaver PI
• SAP ECC 6.0 add-on component

Who is using SAP EM?

• Mill industry: Fulfillment, including production, delivery, .and billing
• Hi-tech: Tendering and visibility for logistics execution
• Industrial machinery and components: Sales order processing in a distributed environment
• Retail: International sea transportation, including customs processing
• Automotive: Returns process
• Logistics service providers: Handling units in outbound shipment
• Aerospace and defense: Spare parts delivery and tool management
• Postal services: Single item tracking; outbound delivery with nested handling units
• Chemical, apparel and footwear, consumer products, telecommunications: Procurement, including transportation and invoicing
• Chemical, mill industry: Rail car management

Why are businesses using SAP EM?

•  Read this article on the benefits Intel received when implementing SAP EM for usage in their Capital Prompt Payment initiative - Wispubs Article

Risk mitigation

• Increased regulatory pressure
  • EU General Food Law Regulation 178/2002
  • Bioterrorism Act 2002 (US)

Real-time notification of exceptions

Management by exception 

Supply chain visibility

• Sustain and increase customer satisfaction
• Significant challenges in an outsourced environment
• Cost reduction
• Transparency
• Managing across distributed processes

Limited visibility to process status both inside and outside the company

Expensive troubleshooting caused by unexpected delays

Maintenance of manual tracking of processes is expensive

Delayed feedback from business partners effects customer service levels / satisfaction

What is the difference between SAP EM and Solution Manager's BPMon?

View the details of the differences on this page.

In short BPMon is used to uncover bottlenecks at key points in your process whereas SAP EM is used to actually monitor the status of an end-to-end business process matching up the planned events and measurements with the actual events and measurements to uncover exceptions.

Both tools uncover different exceptions at different levels but use similar mechanisms in alerts and workflows to notify people of these exceptions. They can be used in tandem and both would be beneficial to the business to highlight potential issues with the business.

What happened to SAP BusinessObjects Event Insight?

Previously we described the differences between SAP EM and SAP BOBJ Event Insight but SAP has subsequently decided to abandon support for it and rather switch focus to SAP Sybase ESP  (Event Stream Processor) to provide it's CEP (Compex Event Processing) capability.

Guides

• #1 - Useful SAP EM Transactions
• #2 - SAP EM Naming Conventions
• #3 - SAP EM Activity Coding
• #4 - SAP EM Data Model

Tips

• #1: Using Multiple Tracking IDs
• #2: Sending the Overdue List of SAP EM in the Background
• #3: Useful OSS Notes

Useful Blogs

• SAP EM Blog Series #1 - What is SAP Event Management?
• SAP EM Blog Series #2 - SAP EM as part of the Extended Supply Chain
• SAP EM Blog Series #3 - SAP EM as compared to Document Flow
• SAP EM Blog Series #4 - Describing SAP EM Events
• SAP EM Blog Series #5 - Events vs. Messages
• SAP EM Blog Series #6 Part A - The benefits of SAP EM (issues)
• SAP EM Blog Series #6 Part B - The benefits of SAP EM (benefits)
• SAP EM Blog Series #7 - The history of SAP EM
• SAP EM Blog Series #8 - The sizing of an SAP EM server
• SAP EM Blog Series #9 - Deciding on what parameters to use
• SAP EM Blog Series #10 - What Web Services are available?
• SAP EM Blog Series #11 - Troubleshooting tips
• SAP EM Blog Series #12 - Benefits of SAP EM as it relates to an Order to Cash process

• Configuring an End-to-End SAP EM scenario (1/3) - Scenario Description and General Config
• Configuring an End-to-End SAP EM scenario (2/3)  - ECC Configuration and Development
• Configuring an End-to-End SAP EM scenario (3/3) - SCM Configuration and Development