Defining Customizing Projects

Objective

After completing this lesson, you will be able to define a Customizing project

Implementation Guide and Customizing Projects

The image depicts a meeting on SAP implementation with questions about procedures, system settings, and matching requirements, categorized under project managers, end users, and responsible personnel.

This training course focuses on the functions and options provided by the Customizing Implementation Guide, and how to work with customizing projects.

All key functions for the project work are set out using the Customizing Implementation Guide, which leads you through the system settings that have to be made.

Customizing Goals

Definition of Customizing

The image highlights aspects of system settings, emphasizing its role in supporting project control and documentation, while noting it is not used for modifications.

The Customizing Implementation Guide (IMG) is divided by application areas into a structure that reflects the hierarchy of the application components.

The IMG enables the following actions:

Manage, process, and analyze implementation or enhancement projects.
Configure the functions of SAP S/4HANA in your company quickly, safely, and economically.
Tailor standard functions according to the specific requirements of your company.
Document and monitor the phases of implementation using project management tools.
Automatically transfer Customizing settings and configuration information from the quality assurance system to the production system. The transfer gives you the assurance that the settings are consistent in all systems. Transporting the settings also prevents you from having to maintain data multiple times.

Definition of a Customizing Project

Project Management

You create a Customizing project by selecting countries and application components or by manually selecting nodes or individual functions based on the Implementation Guide. Using the Customizing project, you can call up the Customizing activities and edit the project documentation (notes) and project status information.

Definition of an Implementation Project

Definition of a Project View

The image demonstrates creating a new project view in SAP for purchase orders, with options for defining the view by activity, project, customizing, legal changes, or transport request.

The figure shows the structure of an additional project view that contains only the activities for configuring the release procedure for purchase documents and purchase requisitions.

Project Work

The graphic illustrates the role of Project IMG in coordinating SAP documentation, project documentation, tasks, and project management, including planning and external connections.

You can call and process the individual Customizing activities from within the project IMG. It is structured by components.

The system provides attributes for the individual activities.

The attributes are:

Status of the activity (status, key words, and employees)
Necessity for the activity
Classification as a critical or a noncritical activity
Assignment of the activity to the ASAP (Accelerated SAP) roadmap
Country assignment
Assignment of the activity to application components
Business Add-Ins (BAdIs). With this information, you can find out where SAP allows customer-specific function enhancements
Existing business configuration (BC) sets for an activity
Technical data (client dependency, language dependency, and transport type)

Structure of the Project IMG

The image displays the structure of the SAP Customizing Implementation Guide, detailing various modules and activities such as financial accounting and materials management, with task requirements indicated.

The figure shows you a structure of the project IMG.

You call up additional information within implementation guides using the menu option Additional Information. In the structure shown in the figure, the Necessity of the Activity was selected for the additional information.

Business Configuration Sets (BC-CUS) enable you to group together Customizing settings. The grouping accelerates and simplifies the implementation process.

BC sets also provide the following advantages:

A global rollout can be carried out more efficiently.
Industry systems are easier to create and maintain.
To a large extent, Customizing can be carried out at a business level.
Change management can be handled faster and more safely.
The upgrade process is simplified.

Enhancement Packages and Business Functions

Some features (e.g. down payment processing in materials management) have to be activated via Business Functions. Each business function integrates documentation and test cases that allow you to configure and test that function quickly and easily. In Customizing, go to Activate Business Functions (SFW5).

Note

In ECC 6.0, Business Functions were delivered through enhancement packages. Some Business Functions can no longer be used in SAP S/4HANA. They are marked as obsolete in transaction SFW5. In SAP S/4HANA, new Business Functions are delivered with the major releases (normally one per year) or through feature packs (normally two per year).

The diagram illustrates how SAP business functions and feature packs, like Multiple Account Assignment (LOG_MM_MAA_1), connect to user interface, functionality, and enterprise services.

To find out new functions and changes, use the SAP Help Portal.

How to Create and Assign a Customizing Project

Define a Customizing Project

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