SRM 4.0 SC Completion/Approval sequence & EU directive Article 32

[Susan R. Keohan]

Hi Mark,

In our current EBP 3.5  environment, financial approvals are completed in EBP on the Shopping Cart 
prior to the transferral to R/3 backend as a requisition.  In R/3, the buyer creates the PO from the 
Req, with 'guidelines' to make changes only in the Purchase Order.  By urging the buyers to make the 
changes only in the PO, not the requisition, we compare the PO to the req, and determine if 
'significant changes' were made.  If so, we have workflow for monetary approvals in R/3 on the PO.
Not the best possible scenario, but it has worked for 3 years.

Now we are upgrading to SRM 5.0, Extended Classic.  Our intent is to have all approvals, financial 
or otherwise, occur on the Cart.  The approved cart goes to the sourcing cockpit, as you no doubt 
already know.  At this point, as the buyer is working on the Cart, our hope is that if any 
substantial financial changes need to be made, the buyer contacts the responsible party before 
creating the PO.  Of course, this is a little fuzzy, and is no more a rule than our 'guidelines' in 
the current state. Once the PO gets created in SRM, there will be a minimum of approvals (by the 
Purchasing Department).

Subsequent changes to Purchase Orders will also have approvals (financial and otherwise) but will 
all take place in the SRM web front-end.  Much nicer for our users.

So, we already do what your client is contemplating, both in our 'as-is' and in our 'to-be', except 
for the Extended Classic approach in the brave new world.

Hope this helps,
Sue

Mark Pyc wrote:

> G'day Wuggers,
> 
> The general recommendation (and the only way I've seen implemented) is
> to invoke the Buyer Completion WF for incomplete carts prior to
> Financial Approval. My current client is contemplating reversing this
> order so that Financial Approval will be confirmed before the buying
> group will be involved in completeing the cart.
> 
> I understand that this will bring in the potential for changes at a
> late stage which will cause the cart to run back round the Financial
> Approval loop.
> 
> Has anyone implemented such a scenario? What comments do you offer?
> 
> I believe this desire has come as a result from the client previous
> experience in EBP 3.5 whereby incomplete carts were approved and then
> sent to the ECC/R3 backend as a requisition. Therefore buyer
> completion took place in the form of conversion from PReq to PO. In
> the new solution the intention is to perform buyer completion in SRM
> so that all carts are transfered as PO's. So although they are
> implementing a new process the desire is to keep the basic sequence of
> Approval prior to Buyer Completion.
> 
> FYI - The intention is to use Classic rather than Extended Classic.
> 
> Any comments??
> 
> Somewhat less technically WF, has anyone implemented SRM Purchasing
> which handles EU Article 32 compliance for Public Purchasing?? This
> directive requires a mini-tender process where framework orders exist
> for the same Good or Service with multiple vendors. The proposed
> solution here is simply to invoke the Buyer Completion WF even though
> the cart will be technically complete.
> 
> Again, any comments warmly welcomed.
> 
> Have fun,
> Mark
> 
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-- 
Susan R. Keohan
SAP Workflow Developer
MIT Lincoln Laboratory
244 Wood Street
LI-200
Lexington, MA. 02420
781-981-3561
keohan at ll.mit.edu