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WINSHUTTLE, INC. 2005

Making Mass Changes to 8AP Data in Record
Time with Minimal Resources
A WHITE PAPER BY
WINSHUTTLE, INC.
1729 208TH STREET SE, SUITE 202
BOTHELL, WA 98012, USA
(800) 711-9798
WWW.WINSHUTTLE.COM

Abstract
Making mass changes to SAP master data or transactional data is a constant requirement
in todays fast-changing business environments. Mass data change projects, however, are
resource-intensive, time consuming, and stressful both for the SAP business users and for
IT analysts. This article describes some of the best practices that many companies have
adopted and are able to make mass changes to SAP data in record time with minimal
resources.


ntroduction
Whether you are an SAP end-user or an SAP functional analyst using SAPs Financials
and Controlling (FI/CO) module, the Human Resources (HR) module, the broad Logistics
(LO) mode, one vexing problem that you most likely have been affected by is the need to
make mass changes to the data in SAP. In todays ever-changing business
environments, mass changes to ERP data have become a fact-of-life. These mass
changes could range from master data changes in material master, vendor master,
customer master, employee records, or pricing conditions, to transactional data updates in
sales order, purchase orders, vendor invoices, or customer invoices.

Despite being a daily challenge, mass data change projects at most companies continue
to be resource-intensive, time consuming, and stressful not only for the SAP business
super-users and functional analysts, but also for the IT support team.

The three options for making mass changes to SAP data at most companies tend to be
(1) Using the SAP mass-change transactions, (2) Making the changes via manual data
entry, or (3) requesting the IT support team to build programs and scripts to automate
such changes. The SAP mass-change transactions are only useful for fairly simple data
change scenarios where one or more fields need to be changed to a constant value for all
records. Most mass changes scenarios are more complex than that and the second and
third options are the ones mostly chosen.

Both the options -- manual data entry and IT support requests -- end up being fairly
resource-intensive and time consuming. Why the first option of manual data entry is not an
ideal-choice is obvious, but there are several reasons why the second option is not ideal
either.

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Writing programs for a single mass data changes in SAP can be a fairly involved process
involving several steps such as, requirements definition, design, coding, testing, and
documentation. Since every mass change request may be different, the entire process
has to be repeated for every such request. Moreover, ITs programming resources tend to
be expensive and may not be always available. The SAP support teams are constantly
struggling at prioritizing such mass change requests among their many other mission
critical projects. Therefore, all-in-all the second option of requesting the IT support team to
build programs also becomes a not so desirable proposition.

Many companies using SAP, however, have adopted some good practices and tools that
are enabling them to make mass changes to SAP data in record time with minimal
resources. These practices are affording these companies the following benefits:

They are saving on data entry resources by eliminating redundant manual data
entry.
They are saving time by updating SAP data instantly.
They are able to reassign the valuable IT resources to more mission critical
projects by reducing programming efforts for mass change projects.
They are reducing data errors due to manual data entry or due to hastily put-
together programs.


The next section of this article describes these best practices for mass changes to SAP
data. This section will be followed by a specific mass data update example and how these
practices are used, and finally some success stories will be presented.

Best Practices for 8AP Mass Changes
This section describes the best practices in making mass changes to SAP data that weve
discovered by interviewing SAP users at hundreds of companies. Using these practices,
these companies were able to make mass changes to SAP data very efficiently and cost-
effectively.

Bring and keep all the data to be changed in Excel spreadsheets
Mass changes to data are carried out most easily when the data to be updated is in a
spreadsheet format, such as in Microsoft Excel files. The ease of use of spreadsheets and
functionality such as bulk copy and paste, referential lookups, and formulas make
spreadsheets an ideal format for making mass changes. Moreover, spreadsheets can be
easily passed around for review and collaborative input.

Most SAP data can be easily imported into spreadsheet formats. The commonly used
SAP reporting functions and data query functions, e.g., SE16, SQ01, ALV reports, job
spools, etc., allow the easy export of data into spreadsheet formats. If the business users
responsible for the mass data update do not have access to the SAP query transactions,
such as SE16, they can use third-party tools such as TablePro from Winshuttle, Inc. to
securely read data out of SAP and download it into Excel files.

Once the data to be changed has been brought into an Excel file and modified as needed,
this data can be then uploaded back into SAP. However, the upload method must be
carefully selected and the practices listed below illustrate the best ways to upload data
from Excel files to SAP.

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Do Not Upload Directly to 8AP tables
Excel files with the updated data should never be uploaded directly into SAP tables. While
this point is very obvious, it cannot be overemphasized. Writing directly to SAP tables
ignores all the data validation and checks and balances that happen when creating data
through the normal SAP transactions. So, we should avoid using any such method that
writes directly to SAP tables.

Data from Excel to SAP should always be uploaded via the pre-configured SAP
transactions or via specific SAP provided business interfaces known as BAPIs. SAP-
provided tools such as BDC, CATT, or LSMW, or third-party tools such as TxShuttle from
Winshuttle, Inc. allow the upload of data via SAP transactions instead of writing directly to
SAP tables.
Avoid programming to upload the updated data into 8AP
With the several non-programming choices available to easily upload Excel data to SAP,
custom programming in ABAP or VB should be the absolute last resort for ad-hoc
uploading Excel data into SAP. Not only is programming expensive and time consuming,
but also the fact that such a program may be used only once or even once a year is
particularly wasteful. Further, creating robust programs require a fair bit of testing and if a
program has not been well-tested, it could be dangerous and cause irreparable data
damage.

Therefore, we recommend using a scripting or a non-programming approach as much as
possible. SAP provided tools such as BDC, CATT, LSMW, and third party tools such as
Winshuttles TxShuttle will allow you to avoid programming to a large extent.

Use a record-map-run strategy
A record, map, and run strategy generally involves first recording the SAP transaction
required to upload your business specific data. The recording step is followed by a
mapping step where the SAP data fields captured during the recording are mapped to the
Excel fields. Finally, the transaction is run over and over again with the different rows of
data in the Excel file. A Record, Map, and Run strategy is similar to recording and running
macros for automating routine tasks.

The advantages of choosing a record, map, and run strategy are that (a) it is very general
and can work well for many different upload tasks and many different SAP transactions,
even with custom transactions, (b) it is a very easy and intuitive approach and saves a lot
of time making a mass data update, (c) it is something that even the business users can
do themselves without requiring much IT support.

A record, map, and run strategy should be used for uploading data from Excel to SAP.
Again, the SAP provided tools, such as BDC, CATT, and LSMW all support such a
strategy and can work for many different upload applications. The TxShuttle tool simplifies
the recording and mapping tasks by a huge margin, making business users job much
easier. Also, TxShuttle is equipped with features that allow it easily handle applications
that require upload of transactional data containing header and line-items, such as journal
vouchers, invoices, purchase orders, sales orders, etc.

Choose a secure and 8OX compliant method
Make sure the mass update method you choose is secure and preserves SAPs role-
based security to comply with the Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) regulation. One key aspect of
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SOX Section 404 is checking that rights and duties are separately assigned to different
individuals so that no individual has the power to divert business or transactions in a
fraudulent manner. One of the most common open SOX audit issues is that users in the IT
departments have very broad access to production data in SAP. Therefore to ease
compliance with SOX, any mass changes to SAP data should ideally be performed by the
business users who are already authorized to make the data change.

To allow business users to perform the upload via SAP-provided tools, CATT & LSMW,
the users would need extra authorizations and would also need significant training in the
use of these technical tools. Alternatively, the use of Winshuttles TxShuttle product may
be much more appropriate since the tool lives outside the core SAP system and generally
does not require extra authorizations. At the same time this tool is very easy to use for
business users and these users can become proficient in it very quickly.

Empower business users to make the mass change themselves

On a final note, one of the best practices in making mass changes to SAP data is to
empower business users to do the data update themselves. The business users are the
ones who know much more about their own data compared to the IT resources and are
much better positioned to carry out these mass changes. The choice of the right tools for
the business users which will enable them to easily upload data without requiring any
programming will go a long way to freeing up IT resources for more mission-critical tasks.
Letting business users take control of their own data also makes SOX compliance easier
as mentioned earlier.

Easy-to-use products such as Winshuttles TxShuttle and TablePro, empowers
business to carry out mass changes to SAP data all by themselves, creating a win-
win scenario for business users as well as the IT departments.

Mass Change Example
This section gives an example of a mass data change scenario where the best practices
described above are utilized. The example described here involves the changing of MRP
Controller and Purchasing Group for several Material Master records in SAP.
Step 1: Download SAP Data into Excel. The first step involved in making the mass
change was to use Winshuttles Tablepro software to download the material records and
their current values of MRP controller and purchasing group. Using Tablepro, a simple
query was created to download the fields -- material number, MRP controller and
purchasing group from the MARC table in SAP. Figure 1 shows a screenshot of the
TablePro application and its field selector window being used to download the shown
Excel file containing the required fields.
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Figure 1: Downloading SAP data from the MARC table into an Excel file using the TablePro software.

While this example is very simple and all the data to be changed resides in one SAP
table, the Tablepro software can be used to create queries consisting of data from
multiple tables as well.
If data thats needed in the Excel file is not stored in any table, but is only visible in
dynamic structures while running SAP transactions, then the TxShuttle software can also
be used to download data from SAP transactions to Excel fields.
Step 2: Carry out the mass update to the Excel data. Using lookup operations and
copy and paste operations, the MRP controllers and purchasing group fields are updates
easily in the Excel file. Once all the data has been changed, to be updated is in an Excel
file, the changes can be carried out in the Excel file, the data in the Excel file is ready to be
uploaded into SAP.
Step 3: Record and Map a transaction into which the data will be uploaded to
SAP. Now using TxShuttle, we record one SAP transaction into which the data needs to
be uploaded. This step would show TxShuttle how to run the SAP transaction, what
screens to go to and what fields to populate. An example with the MM02 transaction (to
update material master records in SAP) is shown in Figure 2.
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Figure 2: In this recording of the MM02 transaction, we went through two screens -- The Initial Screen
and the MRP1 screen and we entered data in 1 field on the first screen and 2 fields on the second
screen.
After recording, we map the SAP fields captured during recording to our fields in the Excel
file. The EasyMapper tool in TxShuttle makes this mapping process very simple and
intuitive. Figure 3 shows the use of the EasyMapper tool for mapping fields captured
during our recording to Excel fields.


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Figure 3: The EasyMapper Tool The top half of the EasyMapper shows all fields we touched during the
recording while the bottom half shows a preview of the Excel file that we wish to upload. With
EasyMapper, you can drag and drop the Excel fields to the SAP fields to create the mapping.

Step 4: Run & Upload. After the recording and mapping is complete, the recorded and
mapped script can be run in batch using data from our Excel file using TxShuttle. Each
run executes the recorded SAP transaction one time or thousands of times depending on
the number of rows in the Excel file. Messages returned from SAP are logged
conveniently into the same Excel file along with data records making this a complete self-
documented record. The same recording can be run on a different Excel file of the same
format. The result of our run for the material master update is shown in Figure 4. If one of
the records cannot be uploaded into SAP due to errors in the data, the error message is
displayed in the log column for that record, but TxShuttle continues to upload data for the
remaining records.

Data loading from TxShuttle to SAP is very similar to manually inputting the data.
From the SAP perspective, the TxShuttle user is just another user who is entering
data at an enormous speed.

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Figure 4: All the records in the Excel file (each record with 3 fields) were uploaded into SAP using the
TxShuttle recording and the messages returned from SAP are conveniently logged into one of the Excel
columns, with one log per record.

As you can see from the above example, the process of making mass changes to
SAP data is very straightforward when using Winshuttle tools, TxShuttle and
Tablepro. This process can be easily entrusted to business uses and the IT support
team resources are freed-up in the process, while SOX compliance is made easier.

8uccess 8tories
Hundreds of companies have used Winshuttle tools in conjunction with the other best
practices outlined in this document to efficiently make mass changes to SAP data. Here
are a few success stories from some of these companies.
For one single project, Canada Post, the Canadian national postal service, was able
to save over $40,000 in programmer time and six months time by empowering the
business user to make a mass change in multiple job evaluation points for over 8000
job positions. One business super-user was able to complete the entire project from
start to finish in less than two weeks.
Supply Chain Management business users at California-based Kubota Tractor
Corporation were able to make price changes in 200,000 records in less than 5 hours
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using TxShuttle without relying on any IT resources and at the same time saving the
company at least 6 months of data entry resources.
One west-coast apparel company used TxShuttle to make tax rate changes in 49,000
records in just over one hour. Tax rate changes are applied on a monthly basis and
they are looking to TxShuttle as their tool of choice to keep their tax rates in SAP up-
to-date.
One Canada-based technology company was able to make mass changes to 3000
payroll records in 2 hours saving about 8 days of manual data entry.
For logistics data maintenance, one Tennessee-based retailer is able to reduce their
IT departments support involvement from 20 hours a week to 30 minutes a week.
Next 8tep - Try it yourself
Winshuttle offers a FREE 15-day trial version of their software that can downloaded
directly from their web site. Within minutes you can install the software and be running with
it on your own SAP system.
To download the trial software or to learn more about Winshuttle software TxShuttle and
Tablepro, please visit the Winshuttle web site www.winshuttle.com
About Winshuttle
Incorporated in the state of Washington, WinShuttle, Inc. is a privately-held software
company and has been providing innovative software tools to the SAP business users
worldwide since 2000. Winshuttle has over 150 customers in 24 countries. Their
customers are in several industry sectors and even in public sector organizations. Some of
their customers include, Procter and Gamble, Roche, Novartis, Advanced Micro Devices
(AMD), Research-in-motion (RIM), eBay, Tetrapak, Kraft Foods, Daimler Chrysler,
Canada Post, and UNESCO, among many others.

In the Americas, contact Winshuttle direct at

1729 208
th
St. SE, Suite 202
Bothell, WA 98012
Phone: 1-800-711-9798
Website: www.winshuttle.com
Email: info@winshuttle.com

In the European Union, please contact Winshuttles partner -

ADAR Group Europe
Maisons-Alfort, Cedex, France
Tel:+33 (0) 1 48 93 71 71
Website: www.adar.fr
Email: info@adar.fr