thinking beyond the possibilities of sap event management with sap brf+
TRANSCRIPT
Thinking Beyond The
Possibilities of SAP Event
Management with SAP BRF+
Gopi Chandrakesan
SAP Event Management
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Business Rule Workflow
AgendaIntroduction
What is SAP Business Rule Framework Plus (SAP BRF+)?
Scenario examples
Include SAP BRF+ functions in SAP Event Management
interface
Example of Steel Scenario
Business Rules
SAP BRF+ Decision Table
Performance Considerations
Benefits of using SAP BRF+ in SAP Event Management
Conclusion
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Introduction
In everyday life we experience rules in our lives, for example;
stop the car at the red traffic light signal, drop the children at
school at 8AM, pay the credit card bill on or before the due date,
etc. Violation of certain rules can lead to costly fines, interest
payments, or worse. Similarly, every company has several
thousands of business rules in various formats depending on their
business process and model. For example; Customer A receives
material A at the price of $2000 US dollars and their delivery time
will be 1 week if the order quantity is >= 100 units. Customer B
receives material B at the price of $3000 US dollars and their
delivery time will be 2 weeks if the order quantity is >= 90 units.
Customer C receives material C and their delivery time will be 3
weeks if the order quantity is >=80 units. The business rule
violations in companies leads to fines for breaching service level
agreements and thresholds, potential cancellation of orders etc.
But in certain circumstances, violation of business rules can lead
to losing customers permanently. These types of complex business
rules can be easily handled through SAP Business Rule Framework
Plus functionality.
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SAP Business Rule Framework
Plus (BRF+) is a component of
the SAP Netweaver platform
and provides a comprehensive
application programming
interface (API) and user
interface (UI) provided
through SAP Web Dynpro ABAP
technology. It allows us to
define, edit and process
business rules effectively. It
provides functionality to
model business rules in an
intuitive way and to reuse
these rules across different
applications.
What is SAP Business Rule Framework Plus (SAP BRF+)?
Image Source: SAP AG
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The logical steps can be described as
follows:
1. Create an application.
2. Create a function.
•Create and assign Context Data Object
•Create and assign a Result Data Object
•Assign Top Expression to the function
3. Create and assign Ruleset(s).
4. Create and assign Rules.
•Create and assign Expressions
•Create and assign Actions
5. Activate the objects.
6. Simulate the function.
7. Integrate the SAP BRF+ function with
SAP Event Management Function.
Business Rule Workflow
Image Source: SAP AG
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Examples of scenarios where we can use SAP BRF+ in SAP
Event Management
Validation of sales orders, delivery and shipment data prior to triggering any
expected and unexpected events.
Matching suitable sales organizations, customer groups, customers, material
groups, materials and locations before triggering actual events.
Calculation of shipment delivery lead time based on different sales
organizations, customer groups, customers, material groups, materials,
locations and storage temperature.
Import and export customs declaration lead times subject to countries and
any cross-border restrictions.
Customer-specific estimated time of arrival (ETA) tolerances featuring
deviations, for example; ±7 days.
Customer material-specific estimated time of arrival (ETA) tolerances
featuring deviations, for example; ±5 days.
Material=specific estimate time of arrival (ETA) tolerances featuring
deviations, for example; ±3 days.
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Include SAP BRF+ functions in SAP Event Management
interface
The following logical steps outline the process required are as follows:
1. Create a custom function module for Expected Event Extractors or create
SAP Event Management Relevance Functions (application object types) or SAP
Event Management Relevance Functions (Event Types) Functional Module.
•Include SAP Business Rules Framework Plus Application, Function ID and
Function Name in the custom functional module.
•Build the input parameters and statically call SAP BRF+ in the custom
functional module.
2. Assign the custom functional module to the following:
•Expected Event Extractors
•Define Application Object Types
•Define Event Types
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Example of Steel Scenario
The client has 100 material groups in their company. Each material
group contains 1500 products. Each product has 3 to 5 variants,
including length, height and width. Some customer specifications
and requirements are different from the standard variant
configurations.
In calculating the number of elements, we can see the following
potential problem:
100 material groups x 1500 products = 150,000 products.
150,000 products x 3 product variants = 450,000 approximate
product options.
450,000 product options x customer custom requirements =
Exponential numbers.
When a shipment is created to fulfil an order, business rules
determine the subsequent expected events in SAP Event
Management, for example; loading begin, loading end, proof of
pickup and departure.
Source: World Steel Org
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Business Rules
1. The loading begin event should happen for X, Y and Z material group
within 1 week.
2. The loading begin event should happen for A, B and C material group
within 2 weeks.
3. The loading begin event should happen for D, E and F material group
within 3 weeks.
4. The above rules do not apply for specific materials M, N and O and in this
case, the loading begin event should occur within 5 days and trigger an
email notification to the respective customer service representative.
5. When customers G, H and I are placing an order, a high priority email
notification alert to the customer Account Manager should be triggered
and the loading begin event should occur within 3 days.
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SAP BRF+ Decision Table
The above rules are easily accommodated in SAP BRF+ through the implementation
of embedded functionality entitled Rules and Rulesets, Rule Flows, Decision Tables,
Decision Trees, Formulas and Scorecards. It should be noted that this is not limited
and SAP BRF+ can also accommodate more complex business rules as well.
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Benefits of using SAP BRF+ in SAP Event Management
•Complex business rules can be handled easily through the use of expressions, including
functionality such as the Decision Table, Decision Tree, Formula and ABAP function calls.
•It’s possible to trigger actions such as send email notifications, write a log entry and
execute a workflow task from SAP BRF+ for unreported and unexpected events, if
required.
•Custom expressions and actions can be created to handle highly complex business rules
for SAP Event Management.
•A bulk activity user interface has been provided to allow user to simply perform
multiple operations against a number of objects at the same time.
•There is no hard coding required for business rules.
•It is possible to edit the business rules without very much technical knowledge and
activate the business rule again once the changes have been applied.
•New event handlers for expected events are automatically determined based on
modified business rules.
•It’s possible to maintain business rules catering for expected and unexpected events
through Microsoft Excel.
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Performance considerations using SAP BRF+ in SAP ERP,
SAP TM and SAP EM
Most of the time when formulating a solution for customers, the business rule
validation process occurs on the SAP Netweaver platform, but we perhaps do not
consider system performance. With hundreds or thousands of business rules
defined in SAP Event Management, even just a single second delay in certain
business process event scenarios could incur the company a large expense.
Performance measurements are mostly dependent on hardware, memory, network
and any other processes that are running on the system. SAP BRF+ rules are
executed by calling a function via the Application Programming Interface (API).
When calling a function, the appropriate class name and the class is loaded into
the ABAP memory. The loading of this class takes less than 100KB and overall
doesn’t have a large impact on the total memory usage. It’s better to design the
environment with scalability in mind, ensuring that enough memory, CPU and
system resources are provisioned, mitigating any potential performance impact
once the SAP BRF+ and SAP Event Management system is fully up and running at
peak usage.
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Conclusion
Integrating SAP BRF+ into SAP Event Management brings
many advantages in terms of defining complex business
rules. However, whilst there is no standard SAP BRF+
function defined in SAP Event Management, a customized
solution and integration can provide many benefits to the
business.
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THANK YOU
Gopi Chandrakesan – SAP Event Management Consultant
Reach me @ [email protected]
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