Brittany Bardo

MIS2101

Project 2

SAP

This project gives you an opportunity to try SAP, considered to be the industry leader in ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) systems.

The assignment consists of two hands on exercises using SAP for a fictitious company, Chuck’s Bikes, Inc. Using the account and password assigned to you, work your way through two tutorials and answer the following questions. Keep your answers short and to the point.

Exercise #1 - Procure to Pay (P2P)

A tutorial for a Procurement process using SAP is located in the appendix at the end of “Supporting the Procurement Process with SAP”. That tutorial leads the student through a Procurement process that orders, receives, and pays for 20 bicycle water bottles and 30 water bottle cages. Once the tutorial is complete, students should answer the following questions.

  1. Describe your first impressions of SAP.

My first impressions of SAP were that it seemed very detail oriented, you needed to follow the steps correctly, and be very careful when entering inputs for the orders. You need to input the correct data or the whole order process will be messed up. I think the more I practice with SAP, the more systematic the process will feel, but as of right now in the beginning of the project, I feel as if I will need to go slow and pay attention to the steps that need to be done.

  1. What types of skills seem to be necessary to use this system?

The types of skills that seem necessary to use this system could be Data Entry, Technical Skills, Application Knowledge of SAP, Customer-Commitment, Communication, Integration, and of course Basic Computer Skills.

  1. Create a screen capture of an SAP screen. Underneath the image, provide an answer to each of the following questions:
  2. In which of the activities does this screen occur? The activity this screen occurs in is the Order activity.
  3. What is the name of this screen? The name of this screen is “Create Purchase Order With Material Screen”.
  4. What is the name of the screen that precedes it? What screen comes after it? The “Material List Screen” precedes it. The screen that comes after it is “Create Purchase Order Save Screen”.
  5. What actor accomplishes this activity? The purchasing manager accomplishes this activity, or the example in the book, Maria.
  6. Describe an error that this actor may do on this screen that SAP will prevent.

Fewer errors occur with SAP on this screen because the inputs entered here are only entered into one database. Thus, the controls on inputs will reduce any input mistakes made by the purchasing manager. If the purchasing manager mistyped supplier data into the Purchase Order database, the error would be caught by the SAP process.

  1. Make an informal diagram of the four main actors: Supplier (Composite Bikes), Purchasing (Maria), Warehouse (Wally), and Accounting (Ann). Draw arrows that show the data that flowsamong the actors during this process. Number the arrows and include on each arrow what data are included in the message.

4.) Supplier (Composite Bikes)

1.) Purchasing Manager (Maria)

3.)Accountant (Ann)

2.) Warehouse Manager (Wally)

  1. Using the same four main actors as in question 4, this time show with the arrows how the

material (the water bottles and cages) moves.

  1. For this fraud scheme to work, I believe that someone in purchasing would have to take part, for example, Maria’s job. They have the role of approving purchases and completing the order. They are also in charge of the delivery quantity and date of delivery which is why I believe that the purchasing department would have to take part in this fraud because they are the beginning of the whole procurement process. SAP processes could decrease the chance of this type of fraud with real-time internal controls. With SAP’s centralized database, I feel that there would be easy ways to detect fraud and false data as it is all in one database. Another way that SAP decreases the chance of fraud is that each user has their own identification number/user name which can easily be traced back to.
  2. Select any of the main activities or sub activities in the Procurement process: Update Raw Materials
  3. What event triggers this activity? The event that triggers the update of raw materials is receiving the goods and when the warehouse manager enters in the quantity that has arrived.
  4. What activity follows this activity? The activity that follows updating the inventory is receiving the bill in the payment process.
  5. If you entered incorrect data for the received goods or shipment received, the inventory would then also be incorrect. This one erroneous data entry could really cause problems with order accuracy, inventory itself, and even staff productivity.
  6. One control you could put in place is real-time updates with error messages. With real-time updating, the system could prompt the user with an error message that detects a problem with the inventory such as an incomplete order or an order that has inventory that does not belong on an order. The system could also detect quantity and input errorswithin inventory.

Exercise #2 - Order to Cash (O2C)

A tutorial for the Sales process using SAP is included in the appendix at the end of “Supporting the Sales Process with SAP”. The tutorial leads the student through a Sales process that sells 5 bicycles to a customer called Philly Bikes. Once the tutorial is complete, students should answer the following questions..

  1. How is the Sales process in SAP similar to the Procurement process in SAP? In what important ways are they different? The Sales process in SAP is similar to the Procurement process in many ways. First, the Sales process has many of the same benefits. There is more accurate and up-to-date pricing and inventory data which is just like the benefits of the Procurement process. The Sales Process also includes the same three actors with many of the same duties in which they all use a single database—another similarity to the procurement process. The sales order screens in the sales process also have many of the same features of the purchase order screen that is in the procurement process in SAP. Another way that the two processes are similar is that the relationship between CRM and customer-facing processes in the Sales process is the same as the Procurement process. Some differences in the two processes is that instead of a purchasing department there is a sales department who is in charge of creating a sales order and anything sales related rather than purchasing orders from a supplier like in the procurement process. The primary activities in the sales and procurement process also differ as the Sales process’s primary activity is sales, marketing, and customer service whereas the Procurement process is inbound logistics, outbound logistics, and operations. The efficiency objectives were a bit different as well as in sales they focused more on the percentage of cancelled sales whereas in the Procurement process they focused on minimizing errors and inventory turnover.
  2. Create a screen capture of an SAP screen. Underneath the image, provide an answer to each of the following questions:

a.In which of the activities does this screen occur? The Create Sales Order activity is where this screen occurs.

b.What is the name of the screen? This screen is the “Create Standard Order Overview” screen.

c.What is the name of the screen that precedes it? What screen comes after it? The screen that precedes it is the “Material List” screen. The screen that comes after it is the “Standard Order Number” screen.

d.What actor accomplishes this activity? Sue in sales would be the actor that accomplishes this activity since she is the one who creates sales orders.

e.Describe an error that this actor could make on this screen that SAP will prevent. If Sue were to accidently create multiple versions of the same order, SAP would prevent this because it will show a prompt on the screen and the user will have to correct the mistake.

  1. Make an informal diagram of the four main actors— the Customer (Philly Bikes), Sales (Sue), the Warehouse (Wally), and Accounting (Ann). Draw arrows that show the data that flows between each of the actors during this process. Number the arrows and include on each arrow what data are included in the message.


  1. Using the same four main actors, this time show with the arrows how the material (the bikes) moves.
  1. I believe that for this instance of fraud, crediting a fraudulent account would involve the accountant, or for example, Ann. She would be the one that specifies the customer has paid the amount owed and that the amount is placed in the right account. She has the duty of making sure payments are allocated to certain accounts which is why I believe she would be the one who would be most involved out of everyone at CBI. SAP processes could have real-time fraud detection which would monitor suspicious activity and patterns that would occur from the users. For example, if there was consistent suspicious activity with Ann, or within the accounting department, the system would monitor her activity in real-time and detect anything that seems suspicious and from there it would be investigated.
  1. Select any of the main activities or sub activities in the Sales process and: Packing Goods

a.Removing and picking the materials from the finished goods inventory is the event that triggers this activity to occur.

b.Following picking and packing the goods, data is inputted into the outbound deliveryscreen and then the goods are shipped once the truck leaves the warehouse.

c.If the user were to incorrectly calculate a price discount, this could really mess things up for their best customers and other orders. This could cause more cancellation in sales which is the main focus of the efficiency objective.

d.I think that the system should have price discounts stored and if the same discounts are being given to the same customer frequently, the system should remember the data. Even though the SAP system creates automatic price discounts, it is possible for the user to use the wrong discount, and there could be a way to prompt the user to double check and make sure the discount applied is correct with the order.

  1. Having completed one or both tutorials, make two suggestions about how:

a.SAP could make their software easier to use by automatically saving the data entered instead of the user having to manually save it at the end. Another way that SAP could make their software easier to use is to also come up with a way where the system stores or remembers order numbers for future use rather than having the user right it down—it is very easy to forget to write down order/customer numbers.

b.The tutorial could be improved tremendously to help new students learn about the processes and SAP. First and foremost, the tutorial in the book needs to be updated to the latest version that the student would be using or there needs to be a tutorial posted elsewhere that will be more current. In the book, the tutorial used diagrams and arrows to show where data needed to be inputted and where the user needed to navigate. I think that the arrows needed to clearer and the pictures in the tutorial needed to be zoomed in or bigger. Certain steps in the process were very specific whereas some other directions in the tutorial were not. I think that the tutorial needs to be more detailed with the directions even if that means it needs to include more pictures and steps to get through the process. It’s easy to miss a step or detail when following a very detail-oriented process so I believe the tutorial needs better step-by-step directions.