Supply Chain Event Management (SCEM)

What is supply chain event management (SCEM) and what is SAP Event Management (SAP EM)?

As defined by AMR Research, SCEM “is an application that supports control processes for managing events within and between companies.” It allows you to monitor your supply chain processes, providing visibility within the process and alerting appropriate parties to potential critical situations.
SCEM is a key capability within mySAP Supply Chain Management (mySAP SCM) Visibility. The back-bone of SAP's SCEM solution is SAP Event Management (SAP EM). The SAP EM application provides or improves visibility within your logistics processes for both planning and execution. Due to the flexibility of the solution, you can map, control, and check all required business processes. A role-based approach makes it possible to view the same business process from various points of view. You can use SAP EM to process messages about the events in business processes and thereby notify in various ways those involved in the supply chain network about business events that have occurred. By actively notifying the responsible persons and making them aware of critical situations or exceptions, you can optimize reaction times and improve quality and customer satisfaction.

What is a visibility process and how does it add value?

A visibility process represents a self-contained part of a business scenario.
You can look at transportation, for example, from the seller’s (outbound) point of view or from the buyer’s (inbound) point of view, since transportation forms part of various business scenarios, in this case both the inbound and outbound process.
The fulfillment visibility process represents the business process from shipment creation including warehouse activities such as picking, packing, and loading, through proof of delivery by the customer, including visibility into carrier operations. If the shipment includes an overseas leg, you could build the entire visibility scenario by including the transportation visibility process in addition to the fulfillment visibility process.
A visibility process is a building block that you can reuse to make up a complete scenario. These processes can help you reduce implementation efforts by 40%.

Do I need also SAP R/3 to use SAP EM?

SAP EM is a standalone application and can run independently of an SAP R/3 or any other SAP system. One of the first customers, Canada Post, uses SAP EM together with a non-SAP system, even though they do use SAP software.

Yes, SAP offers a generic interface to our portal solution, SAP Enterprise Portal, allowing easy access to status queries, BW reports, and so on. In addition, SAP EM offers a Web front end (WCL) that allows you to easily exchange information with all your business partners (both internal and external).

How long will it take to implement SAP EM? What costs are involved?

The cost of implementation depends on the use of visibility processes, which can help to keep a project very lean. The more complex the system landscape and the processes, the greater the time and expense that has to be invested for the implementation. SAP recommends that you begin with a process that benefits the most from SAP EM – for example, certain areas of outbound logistics.

Project scope

Number of (third-party) systems connected to SAP EM

Data volume (number of objects, number of messages)

Coverage by the existing standard visibility processes

Complexity of rule set to trigger follow-up actions

What skills are needed within an SAP EM implementation project?

A typical implementation team should consist of one or more application specialists from the customer and an SAP consultant who is experienced in the specific application area. Furthermore, someone who is familiar with the SAP EM configuration and who can also program ABAP needs to be involved. For implementing interfaces to third-party systems, the involvement of an SAP Basis consultant is advantageous. If you use the SAP EM web front end (WCL) and may want to change the user interface provided, a developer with Java programming knowledge is also to be included. Depending on the size of the project, several of the skills mentioned above might be covered by one person.

What is the technical infrastructure of SAP EM?

SAP EM is an application within the product SAP SCM. SAP SCM runs all applications on one system. You can decide whether to implement one or more systems depending on your particular needs. SAP supports both approaches. SAP EM can interface with other systems, including other SAP systems as well as legacy or third-party systems. The application interface to SAP systems is available as of Plug-In Basis 2002.1 for any system with a Basis release of 6.20 and higher, for example, SAP R/3 Enterprise, SAP CRM 3.1, or SAP APO 3.1, and also for SAP R/3 releases down to 4.0B (as part of the Plug-In).

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