In the first Advent Blog of the year we themed the topics presented around recapping the updates and achievements of this year’s releases. In today’s Week 2 Advent Blog I would like to share with you some of the key guidance sources from the several ones available. We have presented them over this year at one point or another, but in the fast paced and tumultuous information age we find ourselves in, it never hurts to freshen up on these sources. Readers can gleam and learn much for their ongoing or soon to be started projects by simply accessing and reading the provided material. And starting off today’s selection of topics is the fundamental decision on the deployment option.

Measure Twice, Deploy Once

When starting a new project, whether it’s a migration or a greenfield implementation, one of the inceptual decisions that must be made is which version and deployment option one should go for. For both SAP EWM and SAP TM, there are multiple options available to deploy these systems. While the decision to choose a deployment option must always be evaluated on a case-by-case basis and is based on several factors unique to each customer, there are some foundational Knowledge Based Articles (KBA) that can give you a head start. First off, be sure to check out the SAP Note on SAP EWM deployment options best practices. Aside from general recommendations, it also covers different strategic and operational criterial worth considering. On the TM side, I would suggest as an introductory article to start with the SAP Note on SAP Transportation Management deployment options.

One thing to note is that since the inception on SAP EWM and SAP TM on SAP S/4HANA, with each mainline release we provided notes on the restrictions and differences between the new SAP S/4HANA options and the old NetWeaver based solutions. Not only that, but the documents we attached to those documents (found at the end of each note) also provide detailed differences between the embedded and decentral options. For convenience, below we provide a list of these SAP Notes for each solution:

A Project Without a (How-to) Guide Is Like a Ship Without a Compass

After the question of “Which deployment to choose?” is settled, comes the grand task of setting up the new system and configuring every process and data to be used. While there are many Best Practices and consulting services out there to easily cover the most fundamental aspects of the implementation projects, there are also several How-to Guides and KBAs for both SAP EWM and SAP TM that may get overlooked or aren’t even know. However, the information they contain can often prove invaluable to a successful project and can provide answers without the need for additional consultations or services.

SAP Extended Warehouse Management Essential Guides

For many years, the most quintessential sources of truth for our Warehouse Management solution was the SAP Help Portal page, specifically the page on SAP Extended Warehouse Management documentation. While it is still the case that this page is a corner stone of SAP EWM help documentation, we also have created compilation documents with guides and overviews that go into deeper dives for a wide range of topics.

• A list of How-to Guides – in this document we compiled an extensive list of guides on processes and implementations related to SAP EWM. This is an ongoing list, as it continues to expand and receive periodic updates.
• SAP S/4HANA Releases – this list compiles all of the releases for SAP EWM in SAP S/4HANA, with both “What’s New” slide decks and blog posts.

SAP Transportation Management Essential Guides

The help portal provides some useful information for SAP Transportation Management. On the one hand the SAP Transportation Management Help Portal page contains an overview of all the features and processes available in SAP Transportation Management. Besides that, it contains Operations and Upgrade Guides.

As to what other essential documentation could be relevant here, I would like to direct your attention to the list of Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) items. Aside from what can be found on the Help Portal, there are also a number of SOA Knowledge Based Articles for Enterprise Services that may be relevant to your Transport Management needs. It’s all about essential knowledge and how to use it in an integrated setup. Put your focus on (Logistics) Integration. In that context I would like to recommend the Transportation Management in SAP S/4HANA, Private Cloud Edition – Essential Knowledge Base, Learnings and Tools to the interested reader.

Advanced Shipping & Receiving: The House that SAP EWM & SAP TM Built

In the SAP S/4HANA 2020 FPS01 release we delivered a new SAP TM-EWM integration option which we refer to as Advanced Shipping & Receiving (ASR). This more direct integration method does not use the Transportation Unit (TU) anymore, instead using one object for logistics processes, the Freight Order of SAP TM.

Since that release, we continuously delivered ASR updates and published several Knowledge Based Articles, Guides and support notes. Here are some of the highlights:

• SAP Advanced Shipping & Receiving: The New Simplified Integration Between SAP Transportation Management (TM) & SAP Extended Warehouse Management (EWM) – the first blog article dedicated to ASR, this covers the foundational scope and benefits of this integration.
• SAP Advanced Shipping & Receiving: Advanced Shipping Notification on Consignment Level – this blog published roughly 2 years into ASR’s development highlights the lessons learned and its progression.
• Advanced Shipping & Receiving Setup Guide: Basic Version – this guide was created to enable the reader to understand the scenarios for the inbound and outbound logistics based on Advanced Shipping and Receiving.
• Advanced Shipping & Receiving Setup Guide: GTS Version – this guide was created to enable the reader to understand the scenarios for the global trade services integration.
• Improved Location Determination in SAP TM for Stock Transport Order Enablement in ASR Scenario – this guide goes over the integration of stock transport orders (STO) with SAP TM with a focus on the determination of the source and destination locations.

I Got 99 Notes & I’d Like to Share One

Alright, I must admit, in my brief career as an unofficial SAP EWM blogger, this is the first time I lied. We have way more than 99 Notes, and if I could, I would like to share all of them with you. But as I believe that would be unreasonable overwhelming for both you dear readers and for me, I would alternatively like to share with you just a few honourable mentions that were published this year and may have flown under your radars.

FIND OUT MORE!

This blog contains a lot of the enablement content the Logistics Private Cloud Product Management team has created and provided over the years but there is still a lot more to be discovered. For that, be sure to check out the SAP EWM, Private Cloud Edition – Essential Knowledge Base, Learnings and Tools blog page as well as the SAP TM in SAP S/4HANA, Private Cloud Edition – Essential Knowledge Base, Learnings and Tools blog page.

For more information about SAP Extended Warehouse Management & SAP Transportation Management, please follow us on social media, our YouTube channel or our community pages:

• SAP EWM Community
• SAP TM Community
• SAP Digital Supply Chain Channel
• EWM LinkedIn Community
• TM LinkedIn Community
• SAP Extended Warehouse Management Roadmap Explorer
• SAP Transportation Management Roadmap Explorer