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Lesson 4 of 6

Business process monitoring

9 min

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Integration and job monitoring tell you whether the plumbing works. Business Process Monitoring tells you whether the business is flowing: how many orders are stuck, how many deliveries wait for goods issue, how many invoices are overdue for billing. It is where run teams and process owners meet, and where KPIs from sap-pow-302 become live operational signals.

Prerequisites

  • For SAP S/4HANA and Business Suite 7, the ST-A/PI add-on above version 01U_731, kept current, with the SAP Notes that SAP lists for your ST-A/PI support package.
  • API credentials (client ID, secret and host) for the SAP Cloud ALM API, used by the managed system to push data.
  • The Process Monitoring Administrator role to switch data collection on; collection is off by default.
  • Housekeeping: single executions kept 7 to 30 days (at most half the aggregate retention), aggregates 14 to 365 days.

Choosing KPIs that matter

SAP delivers KPI content per business process, and you can add custom KPIs. Start from the process, not the catalog. For order-to-cash, ask Maria which situations cost Contoso money or customer goodwill when they pile up, then find or build a KPI for each. A KPI is only operational when it has a threshold, an owner and an action.

KPI (Contoso, illustrative)Why it mattersThresholdOwner and action
Sales orders blocked for credit longer than 2 days, sales area 1710 / 10 / 00Fleet customers wait; revenue slipsMore than 15 ordersCredit analyst reviews blocked orders
Outbound deliveries without goods issue after 24 hours, shipping point 1710Trucks wait; inventory and revenue misstatedMore than 20 deliveriesMarcus checks EWM warehouse tasks
Deliveries due for billing but not billed after 1 dayRevenue and cash delayedAny for Great Lakes Fleet ServicesBilling clerk runs the billing due list
Inbound ORDERS IDocs in error older than 2 hoursCustomer orders not in the systemAnyTheo's team reprocesses after fixing
Purchase orders over $25,000 waiting for approval more than 3 daysSupply risk for rotorsMore than 5Omar escalates to the approver

Illustrative course data: Contoso's first business process KPIs, each with a threshold, owner and action.

KPIs hang off a business process; crossing a threshold turns a number into an action for a named owner.
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Setting it up

  1. Confirm ST-A/PI level and notes on CMP and CMR; create the API credentials and enter them in the managed system setup.
  2. In Business Process Monitoring, select the business process (for example order to cash) and the KPIs from SAP content for it.
  3. Scope each KPI to Contoso's organizational units: sales area 1710 / 10 / 00, shipping point 1710, plant 1710 and 1720 as appropriate.
  4. Add custom KPIs where the content does not fit, for example the IDoc backlog for partner 17100001.
  5. Switch on data collection (Process Monitoring Administrator) and set the measurement frequency.
  6. Set thresholds and events with owners; review values for two weeks before turning on alert emails.
The objects behind a monitored KPI: process, KPI, scope, threshold, event rule and owner.
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Weekly reviewLow impact, slow: aged open quotations
Daily reviewHigh impact, slow: billing due but not billed
Hourly, inbox onlyLow impact, fast: minor output warnings
Hourly with alertHigh impact, fast: ORDERS IDocs in error, deliveries without goods issue
Measurement frequency and alerting follow impact and speed, not habit.
The Sign-Off Table · thesignofftable.com/academy/sap-alm-304

Where do the KPI ideas come from? Process owners already defined many in sap-pow-302, and process mining (sap-pow-306) shows where cases get stuck. Business Process Monitoring is the operational end of that chain: it measures the same situations continuously in production and tells someone when they cross a line. Keep the definitions aligned, so a KPI in the steering report and the same KPI in the monitor do not disagree.

Business process KPIs also give the run team a baseline. After two months of production, Contoso knows the normal range of each KPI by weekday and month end. That baseline is the key to lesson 6: after a release, a KPI that leaves its normal range is the earliest sign that the release changed business behavior.

What would you do?

Maria wants an alert whenever any sales order in sales area 1710 / 10 / 00 is on credit block. On a normal day about 40 orders are blocked for a few hours and released routinely. What should Sam propose?

Key points
  • Business Process Monitoring needs ST-A/PI, API credentials and the administrator role; collection starts off.
  • Start from the process owner's pain points; every KPI needs a threshold, owner and action.
  • Scope KPIs to Contoso's organizational units and test them with known data.
  • KPI baselines become the reference for post-release verification.

Check your understanding · not graded

Lesson check

  1. 1. Which add-on does Business Process Monitoring need on S/4HANA?

  2. 2. What makes a KPI operational?

  3. 3. What is the default state of data collection for a new process?

  4. 4. How should a new KPI be tested?