SAP SD Questionnaire for Scoping and better understanding of Business Scenario

[former_member187236]

In our day to day life, we face so many challenges which we handle bravely and resolve it, but a little help can do a lot for us.

Same as in SAP scoping and understanding the business scenario and client's requirement is one of the critical part of Implementation or Rollout or Support projects, and if it is not collected or understood perfectly then it could create lot of trouble for us as well as for the client.

I have tried to created a set of Sales and Distribution questionnaires which may be helpful while scoping or requirement collection.

Questionnaire Topics Structure 

1.        SD ORG Structures
2.        Masters
3.        SD Process
4.        Complaint process
5.        Variant Configuration
6.        Make to Order
7.        Third Party
8.        Inter Company Stock Transfer
9.        Stock Transfer
10.        Reports and forms
    

1 SD ORG Structures

• How many Legal entities do you have (company codes)
• Selling entities (Sales organisation)
• Product line (divisions)
• Medium of sales (distribution channel)
• Number of Sales offices and responsible area of selling
• Grouping of sales employees (sales groups)
• How many manufacturing facilities do you have? (plants)
• Number of  dispatching locations (delivering plant/ storage location)
• How many dispatching points in each plant– shipping points
• What is the combination of product line-selling entities and medium of sales

   2 Masters

Customer master

• How do you group your customers account wise (DOMESTIC/EXPORT/WHOLESALES)
• What types of business partners do you have (Ordering /shipping/payer/billing/sales personnel/ sales employee), If multiple partners are there then elaborate the scenario
• How do you categorise the customers by industry, sales region, sales district, sales office?
• Do you have special pricing for a group of customers? Customer group and price group
• Do your customers agree for partial delivery? Do you have concept of delivery priority?
• Do you have POD concept?
• Do you have tolerance concept? How much tolerance does the customer permit?
• What are the payment terms? Inco terms?
• What is your tax structure for the customer?
• Do you have credit limit to customers? What type of credit limits (centralised or decentralised)? Payment terms or value based?
• What are the actions once credit limit is surpassed, do you block? Order or delivery? Explain in brief the credit limit process.
• How do you determine the credit limit, sales area wise or customer wise?

Pricing

• How do you price your product (pricing components involved in pricing the product)
• Pricing methodology for sales process (domestic / export /cash sales)
• Do you maintain pricing records for the products? (customer / material specific/ price list/ scale price)
• What is your discount structure? (based on customer / material/ group/ condition exclusion)
• What pricing information do you capture for statistical purposes? (I.e., it does not alter the price)

Material Master

• Tax structure for material?
• Do you have different UOM for selling and SKU?
• How do you group your products?

  3 Sales process

Pre-Sales activities

                What type of pre-sales activities do you have? (Inquiry /Quotation)

Sales activities

• What types of order processing do you have? (domestic/ export/ institutional/ cash / on-line)
• Explain in detail order scenario
  • Whether order is created with ref to quotation/ inquiry?
  • How do you receive order (FAX/Mail/S Rep/Telephone)?
  • How do you determine customer at SO level?
  • Decide ship to party from Customer master or at order level?
  • Do you have multiple ship to party for single order?
  • What all information do you capture at SO level? Which are mandatory to complete the order?
  • Is availability check done? Explain the scope (Collective or individual), Do you block a sales order if the availability check fails?
  • Do you record minimum delivery quantity. If so, what happens during a sales order if a violation occurs?
  • Do you send letter of confirmation to customers, what media?
  • Do you want to save the incomplete SO?
  • Do you have company defined status codes?
  • What reason would an order or line item be rejected?
  • For sales documents, what information do you consider required and would like to appear on an in-completion log if missing?
  • Product Proposals: If a customer routinely orders the same product or group of products, do you have a process that helps you simplify your order entry? If so, how does that process work? For example, do you record the product proposals by Customer, Customer group, or another grouping?
  • Do you process backorders?
  • Backward and forward scheduling??
  • Do you have lead time concept.
  • If the order is blocked for credit limit, what is the % of deviation and grace period so that it cannot be blocked again.
  • Do you have any sales order approval by higher authorities (status profile).
  • Do you want the credit check performed during entry of each line item or only when the document is saved??
  • If you process Inter-Company orders, do you charge the inter-company based on a specified amount or on a percentage of the item price?

                       Do you have the concept of sales commission? If yes how it works

Material Determination

• If a product is packaged differently for a special event (e.g., Thanksgiving), do you want the system to automatically substitute the special packaging when the product is ordered?
• What are the different reasons you would substitute one product for another or one packaging for another?
• Do you want the originally ordered product or the substituted product information to be printed on the output?
• Do you want the product substitution to occur automatically or should Data Entry personnel be offered a selection screen for substitutable products?
• Do you want Data Entry personnel alerted when a product is automatically substituted?
• Do you want the substituted product to be listed as a sub-item to the originally ordered product or should the substituted product completely replace the original product?

Material Listing and exclusion

• Do you require that certain products or customers must be pre-specified on a “Material List” before a customer can place an order for the material.
• What Master Data fields will make up the key index for the “Material Listing” table?
• Do you require that certain products or customers must be pre-specified on a “Material Exclusion” table to block selling that material to the customer?
• What Master Data fields will make up the key index for the “Material Exclusion” table?

Free Goods

• Do you have the concept of free goods (inclusive and exclusive)

Sales promotions

• Do you have any schemes like sales promotions

Bills of material

• Do you have a products based on components (Laptop and charger/bag etc)
• How do you explode the bill of material (Delivery and pricing at what level)l

Delivery Processing

• Do you maintain factory calendar for Plant and dispatching point
• Do you have single dispatching points for all plants or plant specific?
• Do you check the availability of product during delivery time? If yes, then explain the scope of Availability
• How are freight charges handled? What shipping documents are generated?
• For delivery document what information do you consider required and would like to appear on an incompletion log if missing?
• What happens when the Delivery Quantity exceeds the Order Quantity?
• Do you use batch or serial number?

Shipment Document with transportation functionality

Billing and Invoicing

• Do you combine multiple deliveries in single invoice?
• Do you utilize periodic billing by for rental contract type documents?
• Do you utilize milestone billing for make to order type documents?
• How do you recognize price changes that occur between the Sales Order and Billing time frame? 
• What are the reasons you would ever block a delivery from creating an invoice? (POD confirmation required). How do you track the delivered material in transit?
• What types of text are required on your billing documents?
• How you are processing the incorrect invoices (Cancelling/correction/ cr/dr memo)
• Do want to send invoice list periodically to customers?

Rebates

• Do you offer rebates to customers? If so what type (Value, volume or QTY based)?
• Time interval for settlement cycle monthly basis, quarterly , yearly ( fully or partially)

Account determination

• How do you book your sales revenue and deductions?
• How do you book your TAX?

Outline agreement :-

Contracts

• Do you have contracts with customers? What are the types (Service / Quantity/ Rental/ Value)?
• What is process to be followed once the target is achieved / Validity ?
• What all information do you capture in the contract?
• Can your customer in the order be different than your contract customer?

Scheduling Agreement

• Do you have a scenario of periodic delivery for customers?
• What all information do you capture in the agreement?

Consignment

• Do you have consignment process?
• Do you allow customer to keep stock but the ownership of stock remain with the company?
• Does the customer place the order for material or do you ship on regular basis.
• What method you are following for determining when to bill the customer for consumed material.
• How will you be notified when customer/consignee has sold the material?
• Are unused or unwanted materials returned to your location from consignment location?
• What is your consignment return delivery process?
• Who will bear the fright charges for the consignment?
• Do you have consignment scenario where customer directly order company for material, and delivery is done by the consignee point, and invoice is raised by the company directly to the customer?

Free of charge or Sample orders

• How do track the value of free/sample good? (in terms of cost or sales revenue)
• Who will bear the freight and packing charges (in case of sales revenue)

Rush/ Cash  orders

• Do you have scenario of cash / rush sales?
• Are they regular or one time customer?
• Do you have employee sales? How do you manage the employee sales, by creating customer code for all employee or one time customer?
• Do you want to book the revenue directly to petty cash or cash clearing?

4  Complaint process

Physical Returns

• Explain the return process
• Whether returns are against invoice or order. Is it mandatory or optional?
• What are the reasons for returns
• What are the information captured in return request.
• How do you process return material (thru quality or rework or scrap or directly to unrestricted)
• Are you going to give replacement(FOC) or a credit memo ( based on delivery or order)
• Do you want approval for credit memo in case of return?
• How do you track returnable packing material?

Price settlement

• Is there any scenario of price difference? If any difference then do you refer main invoice or not?
• How do you release price settlement request? (authorisation or Dr/Cr block)

5  Variant Configuration

• Do you have configurable material?
• Do you use variant for your materials (eg. Automobile industry)?
• What are the characteristic and its values. How do you determine the pricing for the variant material?
• Do you have the variant material with several components, if yes then how do you process it?

6 Make to Order

• Do you have a make to order scenario?
• If yes manufacturing or assembling?

7  Third Party

• Do you sell goods that you purchase from a vendor? Are these materials always purchased or just on certain orders?
• Does the vendor send the goods directly to customer or it comes to your store and dispatching to customer?
• Do you send rejection letters to vendors losing bids? Are quotes selected for purchase order creation?
• Will shipping notification create expediting documents?
• Do goods receipts have storage location determination?
• Is there blocked stock quality inspection, or other types of received stock?
• Do you charge third-party accounts right away or make separate postings?
• Are you going to raise the customer invoice without booking the vendor invoice

8 Inter Company Stock Transfer

• What is the process of stock transfer?
• Do you bill inter company stock transfer?

9 Stock Transfer

• What is the process of stock transfer (one way or two way)

10 Reports and forms

Forms

• Quotation
• Proforma invoice
• Sales order acknowledgement
• Delivery note
• Picking/Packing list
• Invoice

Reports

• SO list
• Pending SO’s
• Sales Register
• Price report
• Delivery Monitor

This post may or may not be in detail or in depth but I hope this will help many consultants for startup of understanding the Scoping and Requirement Collection's basic questions.

Regards

Parag Pandya.

[former_member216232]

Dear Parag,

This is really a good post and i am sure it will help many people.

Thank you for sharing your knowledge and experience.

Regards

Subhash.

[former_member187236]

Thank You Subhash.

[nilesh_soni]

Good one parag.

[former_member187236]

Thankyou Nilesh....!

[former_member216231]

this really helps a lot

Great...

[former_member187236]

Thankyou pratik.

[former_member183501]

Excellent post! Surely these tips would help in Implementation Projects.

I am learning SD its really helpful for me to understand what business process related tasks to be asked to client.

Any tips for me? As I am learning SD thinking to give next three months on it along with current job.

Thanks for sharing such a useful process.

Regards

Kamlesh

[former_member182378]

Parag thanks!

This document has so many points, to study these in depth will take me around 12 months.

I see one short coming though, this document is full of SAP SD "jargon" and a SD consultant when interacting with customer during an implementation project has to translate these jargons in to business language, so that the discussions/work shops with customer become fruitful.

To "translate" SAP terminology into business language one needs domain knowledge and more importantly clarity about the functionality or concept.

Coming to getting value from this document, we should (I will) regularly read it and take small portions and then study the theory in detail and think about it from practical business side.

In one of my project, I had to implement a new process, in the requirement gathering stage, I touched upon many functionalities like account assignment group for those materials, i.e. account determination; pricing, output, document types,item categories etc.

Setting up a process was like an "anchor" (a target) , I could then learn (select) the necessary things from SD to implement this process. If you want to learn without an "anchor" the information is so vast, that it might get overwhelming.

I will be posting more comments, as I take each part and study in more details.

keep posting!

TW

[former_member182378]

Advising the SAP SD design is an important activity of a SD consultant. From the workshops we gather that there are 10 product lines, but how many divisions should be created in SAP is a decision of consulting team and the business process owners + management of the customer. Is it is not a simple input from customer/business and that is designed in SAP.

TW

[Former Member]

Very useful document Mr Parag. Keep continue the good work.

[former_member187236]

Dear Kamlesh,

Thakyou for your positive reply, I can suggest you one thing that keep on studying and reading SD books and do as many as possible practicals, because just reading will not help you, you have to experience the various scenarios by practicing. Try to get in in-depth of everything becasue SD is a module which is connected to almost every module it's like web of a spider and SD is seating in the middle.

Wish you all the very best for you future.

Warm Regards

Parag.

[former_member187236]

Dear TW,

Thanks a ton for such a motivating and encouraging post.

As you said and i am also agree with it that this doc is going to help many peoples, and yes this post includes many topics which one should need to understand and then he can start studying.

This doc can be treated as a guide book for so many freshers to cover max possible topics in SD.

I appreciate your comments.

Regards

Parag.

[former_member187236]

Thnx Siva.

[former_member187236]

I am in total agreement with you...

[Former Member]

Good knowledge sharing.

[former_member183501]

Thanks Parag,

For your response!  Yes I am focusing on studying Glynn C williams and TSCM60 and 62 and trying to practice in Sandbox on daily basis but one concern is that I use to practice only standard configuration and test it from end user point of view like. Configuration of Listing Exclusion,Material Determination,Partner Determination,Free goods,Consignment Process and so on.

I have one doubt that how to get Master level understanding and knowledge in Pricing Configuration?

Thanks in advance.

Regards

Kamlesh

[former_member187236]

Dear Kamlesh,

I am not saying that Pricing is easy, but it is not that tough even...buy this is true that in SD pricing is one of the most discussed topic becasue many people find difficulties in it.

I suggest read more about pricing and you should have proper understand of 16 fields of pricing. Whoever has understood those 16 fields i can say he/she is SD exper.

As far as in my career, I have heard from my senior colleagues and friends from industry that "If a SD consultant knows and understands Pricing he knows 70-80% of SAP SD"

Now this may or may not be true but the fact is pricing is one of the critical and important element of SD.

So i can suggest you that first finish all the SAP SD Book practical, but go indept of every step and proces....

Regards

Parag

[former_member183501]

Hi Parag,

Thanks a lot for sharing from industry point of view! Indeed 16 fields in pricing are more interesting and difficult too. :wink: .  It would definitely help to build knowledge if we get different scenarios from business but unfortunately practicing along with standard functionalities might only help to get some idea about the fields.And you are right "Condition technique" in pricing is one of the largest technique used in Sales and distribution understanding it will help to configure some other components of SD.

Regards

Kamlesh

[former_member182378]

Kamlesh,

SAP SD standard is the most important. If you have a good understanding of standard (talking about all functionalities, not only pricing) other things will become much easier. Custom development will give you exposure but it is standard that gives you that rock-hard, solid foundation. Standard SD is as vast as topics in an encyclopedia.

In pricing for example (in addition to 16 fields) - special functions, condition types.

To be an expert in any thing - one needs time, exposure (good quality work), hard word and self learning.

TW

[Former Member]

Hi Parag,

Really this article is very much useful.As i am a new born baby in to sap sd, i refer this in my daily business activity.

Regards

Bijay

[former_member183501]

TW Sir,

You are absolutely right! Standard SD is vast and to cover it in a better way will surely take a lot of time,commitment,hard work etc. However,after reading the Glynn C williams it helped me to understand the concepts in a better way, as far as standard functionality is concerned I think TSCM60 & 62 is one of the best to read.What do you say?

And surely your suggestions would help to learn nicely.

Any tips to learn the processes and get better level in Configuration & Customization?

Many thanks in advance.

Keep on sharing suggestions.

Regards

Kamlesh

[Former Member]

Parag,

Thanks for sharing, Good work.

[former_member182378]

Kamlesh,

I agree with you TSCM60 and 62 are great books. Recently I was reading the packing instructions setup from these books.

To learn SD processes, read the theory, participate in process related questions in forums, divide a process into parts and then studying each part is the key.

This blog does a great job, it has divided concepts into parts, now the difficult part :wink: of studying each part with patience and perseverance is our duty.

TW

documents, blogs

success in interviews - part 1: Process

success in SAP SD - essentials: business process

Returns - comprehensive analysis

threads

Triangular Deal

Cash sale order- PGI reversed after invoice

[former_member182378]

Kamlesh,

one more pov I would like to add - Don't think of getting better...think of learning, gathering SD processes everyday :smile:

I am trying to follow this...lets see

TW

[former_member183501]

TW Sir,

Many thanks for your reply and for sharing the links.

But I have one doubt as follows.

divide a process into parts and then studying each part is the key.

Can you please explain about it with real time concepts and examples?

However, these days doing configuration with the help of "building blogs" and its increasing my configuration level and confident.

Thanks

Regards

Kamlesh

[Former Member]

Hi Parag,

Thanks for sharing....

Regards

Ananth

[former_member227476]

very much informative, good doc

[Former Member]

great work

[Former Member]

Thanks Parag for the detailed questionnaire. This is really helpful!!!

 

 

[former_member404354]

dear, thank you very much for sharing. best, Tilen