1. Business Process Management and Monitoring
Active Global Support SAP America

2. Topics Definition of Business Process Management
Definition of Business Process Monitoring
Goals of Business Process Monitoring
Scope of Business Process Monitoring
Business Process Monitoring in the Solution Manager
Functional Scope
Monitoring Levels
Alert Graphics
Customizing and Monitoring Session
Release Strategy for Business Process Monitoring

3. Business Process Management
Business Process Management means to have a concept with defined procedures to ensure the smooth and reliable flow of core business processes to meet a company’s business requirements
The concept should include:
Roles and responsibilities for all persons involved in the customer’s support and monitoring organization
Documentation of the core business processes including all relevant process steps, involved interfaces, business process owners, availability requirements, performance and throughput requirements, and functional dependencies
Procedures for business-process oriented monitoring, error handling, and escalation management for a company’s core business processes
(to be continued)

4. Business Process Management
Techniques for integration management regarding interface operation and the interfaces’ impact on business processes to ensure data quality and consistency, interface security, and recovery reliability
Procedures for program scheduling management including the planning, controlling, and monitoring of all system and business-process related operational activities in a distributed system landscape
Methods for master data maintenance regarding the exchange of master data between different software components in a distributed system landscape
Procedures for data management and archiving to check for and correct data inconsistencies and to avoid unnecessary data growth
Definition of Service Level Reporting requirements

5. Business Process Monitoring
Definition of Business Process Monitoring
Business Process Monitoring is the process-oriented monitoring of the most important or critical business processes of a company
It includes the observation of all technical and business application-specific functions that are required for a smooth and reliable flow of the business processes
Goals of Business Process Monitoring
To detect critical situations as early as possible
To enable the customer’s solution support organization to respond to and to solve problems as fast as possible

6. Types of Monitoring Proactive Monitoring Reactive Monitoring
Proactive monitoring activities are performed to prevent critical situations before they occur
Examples:
Database table spaces and free space monitoring
Performance, workload, and throughput monitoring
Reactive Monitoring
Once an error has occurred and detected, additional monitoring activities are required to analyse and solve the problem
Update errors, ABAP dumps, Sys Log entries
Application and due list log messages
Automatic Monitoring
An automatic monitor triggers an alert immediately after an exceptional situation has occurred
SAP Solution Manager, System and Business Process Monitoring (CCMS alert monitoring), EarlyWatch Alert
Workflow for IDoc error handling

7. Insufficient communication Business Process Management
Motivation
Insufficient communication
Business-Department
IT-Department
Result:
Problems that occur on the IT side can‘t be ranked by their business relevance because no-one in the IT-Department knows at what point of this Business Process the error occurred. Therefore it may happen that absolutely critical problems are not recognized as such and no action is taken.
What can you do to get rid of this communication and documentation problem?
Business Process Management

8. SAP’s Offerings for Business Process Management
Within SAP’s Solution Manager:
Best Practice Documents for Application and Integration Management
Solution Monitoring
Business Process Monitoring including Interface Monitoring
Service Level Reporting
SAP Solution Manager
Best Practice Documents
Business Process Monitoring Tool
Service Level Reporting
General Business Process Management
Best Practice for Solution Management
Version Date: February 2002
The newest version of this Best Practice can be obtained through the SAP Solution Manager or the SAP Service Marketplace.
Contents
Applicability, Goals, and Requirements
Best Practice Procedure
1. Creating a Business Process Management Concept
2. Managing the Resulting Documentation
3. Coordinating Management and Monitoring Activities
4. Managing Procedure Handover and Rollout
5. Coordinating Future Procedure Updates and Improvements
Further Information

9. Business Process Monitoring Concept
Strategic
Framework
Technical and Integration Design
Technical and Operations Implementation
Cutover
and Start of
Production
Operations
and Continuous
Improvement
Define and
Create
a Monitoring Concept
Implement the
Monitoring Concept
Start Monitoring
Change
Management
in Monitoring
Step 1 Identify core business processes
Step 2 Identify process steps and interfaces
Step 3 Define monitoring objects
Step 4 Define error handling pro- cedures and escalation paths
Step 5 Define monitoring activities
Steps to Define and Create a Business Process Monitoring Concept

10. Aspects Business Process Management
A Business Process Management Concept includes Procedures and Techniques for:
Roles and responsibilities for all persons involved in the customer’s support and monitoring organization
Documentation of the core business processes
Procedures for business-process oriented monitoring, error handling, and escalation management
Techniques for integration management regarding interface operation and the interfaces’
Procedures for program scheduling management
Methods for master data maintenance
Procedures for data management and archiving
Definition of Service Level Reporting requirements
Involved persons usually belong to the customer’s support and monitoring organization.
Includes all relevant process steps, involved interfaces, business process owners, availability requirements, performance and throughput requirements, and functional dependencies.
Monitoring concept contains among others error handling, and escalation management.
Regards interface operation and the interfaces’ impact on business processes to ensure data quality and consistency, interface security, and recovery reliability.
Includes the planning, controlling, and monitoring of all system and business-process related operational activities in a distributed system landscape.
Focuses on the exchange of master data between different software components in a distributed system landscape.
Purpose is to check for and correct data inconsistencies and to avoid unnecessary data growth of transactional data.
Intends to control a stable and safe production environment.
Intention is to ensure the adherence of committed Service Level Agreements.

11. Business Process Monitoring: Scope
Business Process Monitoring includes the solution-wide observation of:
Program scheduling management
Key performance indicators
Business application logs (e.g., application log, due list log etc.)
Data transfer via interfaces between software components
Technical infrastructure and components which are required to run the business processes
Required periodic monitoring tasks
Business Process Monitoring is not only a tool. It rather comprises:
Detailed procedures for error handling and problem resolution
Precise definition of contact persons and escalation paths
Tight integration into the customer’s solution support organization

12. Business Process Monitoring: Functional Scope
Monitoring and alert definition for (effective from SAP R/3 Release 4.0):
R/3 background jobs
Start delay
End delay
Out of time window
Maximum processing time exceeded
Job cancelled
Wrong parallel processing
Job log messages
Transaction performance (effective from SAP R/3 Release 4.6)
Average dialog response time
Update errors for transactions and programs
V1 update errors / V2 update errors
Application log messages
Due list log messages for deliveries and billings
Interfaces (effective from SAP R/3 Release 4.6/4.5)
ALE / EDI
qRFC
All alerts which are configured in RZ20

13. Business Process Monitoring
Solution Manager
Different Monitoring Levels
Business Process Monitoring (and Interface Monitoring)
System Monitoring
Service Level Reporting
Display Alert Graphics

14. Business Process Monitoring
Alert Graphics
Different views
Business process view selected
Linked to System Monitoring
Configurable
Extendible
All components in a Solution Landscape related to the business process
Business process-oriented
First step to a „real“ business process monitoring
Linked to single monitoring alerts
Display Single Alerts

15. Business Process Monitoring
Single Monitoring Alerts
Alert Graphics
Monitoring Session

16. Business Process Monitoring
Customizing Session
Setup and Customizing Session for Business Process Monitoring

17. Business Process Monitoring - Infrastructure
Solution Manager
Alert
Graphics
Service Level Reporting
Continuous Online Monitoring: Critical Alert Situations
Monitoring Session
(“EarlyWatch Alert Knowledge Base”)
Hourly Monitoring: “Complex” Analysis
Monitoring Infrastructure
CCMS Monitoring
Infrastructure („RZ20“)
Service Data Download (SDCC)
Solution Landscape

18. Overall Monitoring Infrastructure
Solution Manager System
Local R/3 System(s)
SAP Solution Manager
RFC
SDCC
Solution Repository
Background job
SDCC Data Collector
Setup Business Process Monitoring Session
Business Process Monitoring Session
RFC
Local Customizing Information Pool
Local Monitoring Information Pool
RZ20 Data Collector
Central Customizing Information Pool
Central Monitoring Information Pool
RFC
Central
RZ20
Local
RZ20
RZ20 Data Collector
RFC

19. Business Process Management in Practice
Business Process Management answers the following questions:
Who is responsible and checks for background job scheduling and monitoring of programs RBDAPP01, SAPMV50S, and RV60SBT1?
Who monitors proactively and verifies throughput, performance, and response times of dialog transactions VA01, VL04, VL02N, and VF04?
Who monitors and checks for update errors (SM13) and application log messages (SLG1)?
Who has to be contacted in case of the occurrence of an unknown error? Where can I find this information?
Create Sales Order
SAP R/3
CRM
Create Delivery (SAPMV50S, VL04)
Create Sales Order (RBDAPP01, VA01)
Create and Print Invoice (RV60SBT1, VF04)
WMS
Perform Picking
Send Pick Confirmation
Post Goods Issue
(VL02N)

20. Business Process Analysis
Create Sales Order
SAP R/3
CRM
Create Delivery (SAPMV50S, VL04)
Create Sales Order (RBDAPP01, VA01)
Create and Print Invoice (RV60SBT1, VF04)
WMS
Perform Picking
Send Pick Confirmation
Post Goods Issue
(VL02N)
Generic Information
Business Process
Business Process Owner
Process availability
Business Process Step
Volume information
Business requirements (time restrictions)
Interfaces
Application-specific Information
Business Process
Usage of critical functions such as variant configuration, backorder rescheduling etc.
Business Process Step
Typical interfaces such as external tax software, WMS
Specific functions such as rush orders
Incident situation is always the business process. So in order to have a useful business process management concept it is absolutely vital to analyze the business process thoroughly. For the business process always ask for the generic information (that have to be asked for every business process) and the application specific information (that have to be asked only for this specific business process).
In the following slides, using an example the analysis of a business process is explained in detail

21. Business Process Example: Step 1
Create Sales Order
SAP R/3
CRM
Create Delivery (SAPMV50S, VL04)
Create Sales Order (RBDAPP01, VA01)
Create and Print Invoice (RV60SBT1, VF04)
WMS
Perform Picking
Send Pick Confirmation
Post Goods Issue
(VL02N)
Going step-by-step through the business process you can identify the points of interest for BPM (here done for the steps in the SAP R/3 system).
For the step „Create Sales Order“ you need to know in what modes the step will be executed. What dialog transactions or background jobs will be used to execute the step? What interfaces are used and what kind of input is performed? Are the used transaction or programs SAP standard?

22. Business Process Example: Step 2
Create Sales Order
SAP R/3
CRM
Create Delivery (SAPMV50S, VL04)
Create Sales Order (RBDAPP01, VA01)
Create and Print Invoice (RV60SBT1, VF04)
WMS
Perform Picking
Send Pick Confirmation
Post Goods Issue
(VL02N)

23. Business Process Example: Step 3
Create Sales Order
SAP R/3
CRM
Create Delivery (SAPMV50S, VL04)
Create Sales Order (RBDAPP01, VA01)
Create and Print Invoice (RV60SBT1, VF04)
WMS
Perform Picking
Send Pick Confirmation
Post Goods Issue
(VL02N)

24. Business Process Example: Step 4
Create Sales Order
SAP R/3
CRM
Create Delivery (SAPMV50S, VL04)
Create Sales Order (RBDAPP01, VA01)
Create and Print Invoice (RV60SBT1, VF04)
WMS
Perform Picking
Send Pick Confirmation
Post Goods Issue
(VL02N)

25. Solution Monitoring Expectations Availability Performance Accuracy
Redundancy
Performance
Response times
Throughput
Workload/resource Management
Accuracy
Data integrity
Data currency
Recoverability
Scheduled maintenance
Security
System users
System resources
Access control
Intrusion detection
Responsibilities / Viewpoints
Systems
Business Processes
Interfaces
Time Schedule
hourly tasks
daily
weekly
monthly
Alert Monitoring “Keep the business running” tasks
Service Level Management & Reporting Continuous improvement, planning tasks
Business Scenarios and Components
The customer uses a variety of Business Scenarios and components. Of these he expects a certain availability, performance, accuracy and security. In order to ensure this, he needs to look at the areas where problems may occur, i.e. at the systems, the business processes and the interfaces. And the different tasks have different intervals, at which they have to be carried out. E.g. critical issues like availability have to be checked repeatedly while may ...
The term customer solution describes all parts that make up the whole landscape of the customer, including ( but not exclusively ) the SAP software.
mySAP Logistics,
mySAP Financials
mySAP Customer Relationship Management
mySAP Supply Chain Management
mySAP Business Intelligence
SAP Basis System
...
SAP ITS
SAP LiveCache
Business Connector
Databases

26. Business Process Monitoring in Solution Manager
Definition of Solution Landscape
Definition of Core Business Processes
Information Collection and Alert Configuration
Generation and Activation of Alert Configuration

27. Definition of the Solution Landscape
CRM
SAP R/3
WMS
Server prdd1312
Server wdtt2435
Server hgtt6779
Server hgtt6788
Server wdtt2244
Server wdtt2674
Incident situation is always the business process. So in order to have a useful business process management concept it is absolutely vital to analyze the business process thoroughly. For the business process always ask for the generic information (that have to be asked for every business process) and the application specific information (that have to be asked only for this specific business process).
In the following slides, using an example the analysis of a business process is explained in detail

28. Definition of the Core Business Processes
Focus on the core or critical business processes.
Determine for each business process:
Business process owner
Business requirements
Dependencies on other business processes
Process availability
Process time constraints
Document volume to be processed
Process restart ability
Create Sales Order
SAP R/3
CRM
Create Delivery (SAPMV50S, VL04)
Create Sales Order (RBDAPP01, VA01)
Create and Print Invoice (RV60SBT1, VF04)
WMS
Perform Picking
Send Pick Confirmation
Post Goods Issue
(VL02N)

29. Definition of the Core Business Processes : Identify Process Steps
Business Process Example: Internet Sales
Create Sales Order
SAP R/3
CRM
Create Delivery (SAPMV50S, VL04)
Create Sales Order (RBDAPP01, VA01)
Create and Print Invoice (RV60SBT1, VF04)
WMS
Perform Picking
Send Pick Confirmation
Post Goods Issue
(VL02N)
Determine for each business process step:
Execution mode (dialog transaction, program or report etc.)
The corresponding software component
Process step time constraints
Dependencies on other process steps
Related interfaces

30. Definition of the Core Business Processes : Identify Interfaces
CRM
SAP R/3
WMS
Create Sales Order
Create Sales Order (RBDAPP01, VA01)
Create Delivery (SAPMV50S, VL04)
Perform Picking
Post Goods Issue
(VL02N)
Send Pick Confirmation
Create and Print Invoice (RV60SBT1, VF04)
Determine for each interface:
Interface technique used (RFC, ALE / EDI etc.)
Involved middleware (if any)
Document volume to be processed
Time constraints

31. Information Collection and Alert Configuration: Define Monitoring Objects
Create Sales Order
SAP R/3
CRM
Create Delivery (SAPMV50S, VL04)
Create Sales Order (RBDAPP01, VA01)
Create and Print Invoice (RV60SBT1, VF04)
WMS
Perform Picking
Send Pick Confirmation
Post Goods Issue
(VL02N)
Define appropriate monitoring objects for each process step / interface:
Performance and throughput (dialog transactions)
Update errors
Application log, due list logs, error logs
Program Scheduling Management (background jobs)

32. Information Collection and Alert Configuration: Define Error Handling Procedures
Business Process Example: Internet Sales
Create Sales Order
SAP R/3
CRM
Create Delivery (SAPMV50S, VL04)
Create Sales Order (RBDAPP01, VA01)
Create and Print Invoice (RV60SBT1, VF04)
WMS
Perform Picking
Send Pick Confirmation
Post Goods Issue
(VL02N)
Define error handling procedures for each monitoring object:
What has to be done in case of an error or problem?
For instance, what has to be done in case of an aborted job? Is it possible to reschedule the job immediately (or the day after) or can I proceed and start the dependent succeeding job?
Problem solution roadmaps
Who has to be contacted in case of an unknown problem?

33. Information Collection and Alert Configuration: Define Escalation Paths
End User
Problem occurs
Key User
Solves Handling Problems
Answers ‘How to‘-Questions
Application Support (2nd Lvl.)
Ownership of functional messages
Reproduction in test system
Solving of functional issues
Search for SAP Notes
Maintenance of solution database
Face to face
Telephone
Support Line Feedback
User Help Desk (1st Level)
Logging problems into ticket system
Completing initial message information
Problem solving
Search for solutions in solution database
Categorization of messages
Technical Support (2nd Level)
Ownership of technical messages
Solving of technical issues
Implementation of SAPNet Notes
Business Process Owner
Providing expert knowledge concerning the business process
Solving of complex customizing problems
SAP Support Desk (Solution Manager)    

34. Information Collection and Alert Configuration: Define Monitoring Activities
Create Sales Order
SAP R/3
CRM
Create Delivery (SAPMV50S, VL04)
Create Sales Order (RBDAPP01, VA01)
Create and Print Invoice (RV60SBT1, VF04)
WMS
Perform Picking
Send Pick Confirmation
Post Goods Issue
(VL02N)
Determine the monitoring activities for each monitoring object:
What has to be monitored by whom, when, how often, with which tool, what is the error indication, what is the error handling procedure, and whom must be contacted in case of an unknown error?
I.e., monitoring object, time, frequency, tool, indication, error handling procedure, escalation path

35. Solution Monitoring - Infrastructure
Solution Manager S2 S1 S3 S4 S5 S6
R/3
APO
Warehouse
Alert
View
Service Level Reporting
Continuous Monitoring: “Simple” Alert Situations
Monitoring Session
(“EarlyWatch Alert Knowledge Base”)
Hourly, daily, weekly: “Complex” Analysis
Monitoring Infrastructure
CCMS Monitoring
Infrastructure („RZ20“)
Service Data Download
Solution Landscape
Catalyst
R/3
APO

36. Integration of Third-party System Management Tools
Solution Manager
Third-party
System monitoring
tool
Third-party system management console
SAP Solution Manager triggers console in case of an alert
Mailing lists,
External call
tracking system
etc.
CCMS Monitoring
Infrastructure
Monitoring agent reports alerts to SAP CCMS
(Interface provided by SAP; realization by software partner)
Third-party monitoring agent (e.g. for interface monitoring)
Solution Landscape
Catalyst
R/3
APO
Monitoring agent monitors third-party product or interface

37. Solution Monitoring - Business Process Monitoring
Alert Graphics
Single Monitoring Alerts
Alert overview
Monitoring Session

38. Solution Monitoring – Service Level Reporting
Performance and Alerts by SAP System based on SAP EarlyWatch Alert
Performance and Alerts by Business Process

39. Business Process Monitoring: Release Strategy
Software requirements for the SAP Solution Manager to make full usage of the Business Process Monitoring features (SAP Note ):
SolMan Release R/3 Basis Release SolMan Tech. Release
C 02D
D 03D A
(GA later 2003)
Software requirements for the local R/3 Systems that will be monitored:
Latest version of the TCC Basis Tools (confer SAP Note )
Basis transport regarding the monitoring infrastructure (data collectors etc.)

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