Why is so difficult for SAP Ariba Support to Acknowledge there is a flaw in the system ?

[yaccoulibaly]

SAP is a good tool because there are many possibilities and flexibility and the broad area it can cover, but one of the SAP weaknesses has been the support of customer, especially when it comes to SAP Ariba Support. 

As implementation consultant, one of my activities, is to use the system intensively, and push the system to it limit, which some time I discover lot of issues or bug and usually after multiple check and possible workaround I will report the issue to SAP. In more than 90% of the case, the Ariba Support will mention nonsense reply, and set the case as "Solution proposed" which close your case automatically after few days....

SAP has released a solution that allows to send Storage Location to SAP Ariba using CIG [CP-8143: Inventory reservation for SAP ERP-integrated sites (https://help.sap.com/docs/ariba/sap-ariba-applications-2002-q1-2020-release-guide/cp-8143-changes-to...)]. So, they developed a solution and release that solution, but we don't know how it was tested, but it was released, thus, customer will do the following:

1. in S4 run ARBCIG_MASTER_DATA_EXPORT program
2. select Storage Location (StorageLocation.csv) maybe together with other Master Data object and execute the program.
3. the data is extracted and sent to SAP Ariba via CIG, but because of the missing of StorageLocation.csv missing in Ariba Batch Supported file, the transaction will always fail in CIG no matter if there are or not other data object.

I opened a case, saying this is an error and it should be added, but the support person is clearly refusing to do anything mentioning that there is an article which is saying:

1. The payload for Storage Location master data should contain the StorageLocation.csv file. However, this file isn't included in the 'Import Batch Data tasks' of the Ariba Procurement solution. This means that when this file is sent from ERP to Ariba procurement via CIG, the transaction is likely to fail. This issue is also discussed at https://support.ariba.com/item/view/KB0400688.
2. To import the Storage location master data into Ariba procurement, you may need to utilize the test run option. Following this, execute the report ARBCIG_MASTER_DATA_EXPORT for the Storage location master data, and obtain the StorageLocation.csv file locally. 
3. Finally, use this local file to manually upload it in the Ariba Procurement solution. You can do this by selecting the 'Import Storage Location Data' task under the 'Data Import/Export' option within the Site Manager in Ariba Procurement.

Why do an article instead of fixing the issue, the article was for sure created because many customers faced this issue and opened a case. The purpose of the CIG is to automate import of data, but because SAP always work in silo, the team didn't probably consult any one and release the data without doing an end-to-end test.

In this documentation (https://help.sap.com/docs/buying-invoicing/procurement-data-import-and-administration-guide/data-imp...), it is cleearly mentionned that the storage location file should be at the position #69 of the Batch Sequence, but someone has to add it there, but again, instead of involving the correct team to do the right thing for customer, the Support Team, said the documentation is wrong and therefore he doesn't do anything. 

Honestly speaking...how will you tacle this situation? 

[Anand_Bhat]

We ran into this during our implementation. I'd raised an Improvement Request for 318474 (https://influence.sap.com/sap/ino/#/idea/318474) at the time to get this fixed in the product. For us, storage locations do not change often and I've moved on after the initial manual load to focus on more glaring omissions in the product. SAP has the necessary details to understand what is lacking should they decide to fix this.

[Francois-Xavier]

What you describe here is a story I have heard from so many customers using ARIBA in my network or SAP events. I have discussed it as well extensively with SAP representatives in the past. Unfortunately, there is no magic solution here.... The origin of this is a combination of a lot of different factors under the responsibility of different teams on SAP side and due, as you said, of their silo-ted organization : - feature are released in a MVP version that needs generally refinement afterwards to be really use-able and EFFICIENT. Unfortunatly, those phases of refinement after MVP state rarely happen or way too late (years after). - Most of the time, those missing refinements can be considered as "bugs" by us customer when in fact it is a "design" bug and not a "technical" bug: the feature is working as designed technically but the design has some flaws/issues that make it un-useable. So it is not what support is calling a bug and generally they will ask you to create a customer influence (CI) which make sense in theory but in reality not working due to the CI process (see next point) - The CI platform is generally the way that SAP wants us customer to indicate any improvements in a existing design or propose new idea. And everything is based on customer voting for the different CI. Unfortunatly, not a lot of customers are playing the game and even the very fews playing it does not create enough vote for SAP to consider it or more importantly, generally the "design bugs" or existing flow improvements are not looked at because it is very limited in scope of customers using the flow involved in the CI... There is still some other issues more related to internal SAP: - because of their silo-ted organization, new features and new processes are not taking every aspect into account when the design is done (specifically integration with other SAP platforms) - Most probably the capacity of their internal engineer team is more focus on developping new functionalities than improving the existing ones out of the MVP state. So overall, the key is the customer influence aspect. If every customer was playing the CI game increasing the nb of votes, SAP would have no choice to listen more to this small but key improvements in existing processes...

[yaccoulibaly]

I see Anand, the point is there was another customer who created an influence ticket and it was rejected due to lower votes. But how can we interact more with the CI process as @Francois-Xavier mentionned. Whn an influence ticket is created SAP doesnt sent a notification to the power user to review and vote. Then how people will know?

[Francois-Xavier]

Just a correction but SAP is sending a notification when a CI is created under a specific area but you need to regsiter for it (and almost no body is doing this)...