Customizing and Customizing Projects

The term customizing describes the overall procedure to set up one or more SAP systems. In particular, the aim of the procedure is to:

• Adapt the non-company specific and industry-specific functions shipped in an SAP system to the specific business requirements of your company
• Enhance SAP functions in your company
• Implement SAP solutions in your company in a fast, reliable, and cost-effective manner.

In short, customizing adapts the SAP software to meet a company's individual business requirements by setting up the business transactions the company requires in the SAP system.

To show the kinds of business transactions, an enterprise may need to customize in an SAP system, consider the example of an international company that sells video equipment wholesale. To enable customers at a particular outlet to place a wholesale order for video equipment, the company must customize the SAP system to recognize the company's structure. This could include:

• Defining a sales organization
• Defining distribution channels
• Assigning distribution channels to the sales organization

The example from the figure "What is Customizing?" describes the definition of a sales organization and the distribution channels. This customizing is an example of the definition of the individual organizational structure of a company. This kind of customizing is typically stored in client-specific customizing tables. In general, this customizing is also known as a Client-specific customizing. Client-specific customizing affects only one particular client.

Another type of customizing is customizing that adjusts the execution of programs. This customizing is mostly also client-specific, but some customizing activities insert entries in cross-client tables or generate some repository objects (tables or programs). In general, this customizing is known as cross-client customizing. Cross-client customizing affects all clients in the SAP system.

The following figure shows the technical representation of customizing in the SAP system.

Customizing activities typically create or change entries in multiple tables. This is often done through table views.

A table view is a virtual table, which presents data that is physically stored in one or multiple tables. You can compare a table view with a view that is used in an SQL database. The different customizing tables of a table view can be related to each other by foreign keys.

The table entries created with the help of table views are identified by the key fields of the respective table.

In the figure above, the table view for maintenance Global Parameters of Countries (New Dimension Systems) is shown. The country parameters are maintained with the help of view V_T005_BAS. All the different attributes for a country, for example, Name, Nationality, ISO code, Date format, and Decimal format are maintained. These parameters are stored physically in different tables. For example, general country values are stored in table T005, the country names in different languages are stored in table T005T and the decimal format and date format are stored in table T005X.

The customizing team does not need to care about the technical storage of the customizing, they only have to maintain the information in the table view.

The table maintenance can be accessed directly with the IMG or even with a generic table maintenance transaction (transaction SM30).

An SAP system provides a huge variety of different business processes that can be adapted to the individual needs of a customer by customizing. An SAP S/4HANA Server 2021 for example contains many tens of thousands of customizing tables. The customer is guided through this customizing with the help of the Implementation guide (IMG). An SAP system is delivered with a complete IMG for all processes available in the SAP system. This IMG is known as the SAP Reference Implementation Guide. The IMG can be accessed using transaction SPRO. The IMG provides a hierarchical list with customizing activities in an SAP system. This customizing is grouped by modules and ordered in the sequence in which the individual activity has to be performed.

The IMG provides a hierarchical list with customizing activities in that SAP system. This customizing is grouped by applications and is ordered in the sequence in which the individual activities have to be performed.

The IMG doesn't just show and group all customizing activities. The IMG also provides documentation on each customizing activity. This documentation explains the customizing activity that can be executed in this IMG node. Also each customizing activity is classified into different areas. For example, if you are interested in which customizing activity is cross-client, you can use SAP Reference IMG in transaction SPRO and choose the menu path Additional Information → Technical Data → Client Dependence. There is also a classification on language dependency and on transport type that can be displayed.

As well as these tools for accessing customizing activities, displaying customizing documentation, and displaying customizing classification, the IMG also provides tools for project management and project documentation. These tools support the project administration and project control out of the IMG.

The SAP Reference IMG is split into different areas.

If a customer is setting up a new project for adoption of the SAP system, only some areas are in the scope of this adoption project. For this, the customer can use a Project IMG. A Project IMG is the implementation guide for a specific customizing project. It contains all the customizing activities which have to be performed in that project. You can determine the project scope of a Project IMG by countries, components, or customizing activities. A Project IMG is based on the SAP Reference IMG, which can, for example, be reduced to the project scope by selecting countries and components.

When defining a customizing project, customers select the functions they require in the different SAP areas and components. These functions are used to generate the Project IMG. All relevant customizing transactions, project-specific or cross-project documentation, and project-management information are then located in the subsets of the SAP Reference IMG, the Project IMGs. All customizing activities should be done within the Project IMG.

The Project IMGs can be changed at any time through regeneration. The respective previous IMG is then overwritten. However, status information and project documentation are not lost.

Within a Project IMG it is possible to generate project views that restrict the extent of customizing, for example, to different levels of necessary activities. So it is possible to show within one project view only the activities that are classified as mandatory and in a second project view the activities that are classified as optional.

The Project IMGs are cross-client, that means the Project IMG is visible in all clients.

To access the IMG project definition you can use the transaction code SPRO_ADMIN.

Depending on the scope of a customizing project, a lot of different customizing activities have to be done. These customizing activities are usually done by different project members that are working on the implementation of a specific area. To make sure that everyone is working efficiently together, customizing projects need a clear organizational structure and responsibilities.

The customizing and transport tools support the task sharing between the project leader (indicated by the icon in the upper right on the figure above) and the project members (indicated by the three icons in the lower left). The customizing process is based on this with clearly-defined user roles. Each role has its specific areas of responsibility. This structures and organizes the implementation activities:

The project leader is responsible for defining and managing the project. If IMG projects are used, this includes:

• Create the customizing IMG projects and the project views
• Define the project scope and duration of the IMG project
• Assign team members to the IMG project (define who is supposed to check the customizing settings and perform changes)
• Define the IMG project language and type of project documentation
• Define and maintain IMG project options

As you can see, with the use of IMG projects, many general project administration tasks can be done inside the SAP system.

The customizing team members:

• Perform customizing activities within the Project IMG
• Keep records inside the Project IMG

Any number of project team members can be assigned to each project. The project leader makes this assignment. The assigned project team members and new project team member assignments can be managed in transaction SPRO_ADMIN.

As you have seen in this lesson so far, the IMG offers a lot of tools and documentations that can be used for supporting the implementation process. But if you set up and plan an implementation project, you will have to manage all the different project phases which are:

• Project preparation
• Business blueprint
• Realization
• Final preparation
• Go-live support

The process of customizing the SAP system can be controlled and accelerated using the integration of SAP Portfolio and Project Management into SAP Solution Manager. Consequently, the SAP Solution Manager system can act as the platform for the entire project team.

The SAP Solution Manger is the entry point for implementation, operation and continuous business improvement for the SAP applications. SAP Solution Manager provides the following features for implementation projects:

• Project Administration/Project Definition supports you initially in setting up your project during project preparation and enables you to carry out major administrative tasks such as the definition of project standards during the entire project.
• In SAP Solution Manager, you can centrally define and manage your SAP system landscape, relevant for your implementation or template projects, which allows the interaction and navigation into a related SAP system landscape; for example, during configuration and testing.
• The definition and documentation of your project scope in business blueprint is accelerated through the Business Process Repository providing latest available implementation contents. The purpose of the business blueprint is to document in detail the scope of business scenarios, business processes, and process steps of your implementation project from a business and technical perspective.
• During configuration, you have to configure the business requirements specified in the business blueprint phase in the related SAP system landscape. SAP Solution Manager as central platform for your project team provides the access to the related project implementation guides (IMGs) and provides integrated use of other customizing technologies such as Business Configuration Sets (BC Sets) and customizing distribution.
• The customizing distribution used with the SAP Solution Manager helps to centrally control customizing changes across the related SAP system landscape of your implementation project.
• Testing functions support test coordinators to centrally create test cases and test plans reflecting sequence and integration tests. Testers can centrally execute their test packages, also leveraging existing test technologies for automated testing such as eCATT.
• The latest available roadmaps representing the standard SAP implementation methodologies are provided through the Roadmap Viewer (https://go.support.sap.com/roadmapviewer/). With the SAP Solution Manager system, you can track status, issues and/or upload your project-specific accelerators along the work packages and tasks of your implementation project.

Implementation projects in an SAP system landscape today normally affect more than one SAP system (for example, SAP SCM Server and SAP ECC). During these kind of projects, customizing in more than one SAP systems has to be done. The SAP Solution Manager system supports project maintenance and administration in an SAP system landscape. Implementation projects that affect a special SAP system landscape can be defined centrally for this SAP system landscape and then the project IMGs can be created in the different (managed) SAP systems.

The SAP Solution Manager system provides the tools for supporting customizing projects in an SAP system landscape of multiple SAP systems. This function is extended, for example, with the Change Request Management, a collection of tools that enables you to manage your SAP Solution Manager projects from end to end: From change management and project planning, through resource management, to physical transports of changes from the development environment into the productive environment.

SAP Solution Manager tools include the transport tracking and approval tasks that are necessary in a productive system landscape with on-going implementation project and maintenance tasks.

For the implementation of SAP S/4HANA, SAP Activate was introduced. SAP Activate methodology replaces ASAP as SAP’s implementation methodology for SAP S/4HANA and all other SAP solutions. SAP Activate is a framework consisting of the following closely integrated components:

• SAP Best Practices that deliver ready-to-run business processes as well as best practices for migration and integration.
• Guided Configurations (both in the cloud and on-premise).
• SAP Activate methodology that uses agile techniques to implement the SAP S/4HANA solution in the cloud or on-premise.

SAP Activate Innovation adoption framework introduced for SAP S/4HANA that combines SAP Best Practices, methodology, and guided configuration delivered with a reference landscape. The SAP Activate methodology is SAP guidance for implementation, enhancements, upgrades or co-innovation of SAP solutions starting with SAP S/4HANA. It enables cost effective, agile, and fast delivery of the SAP solution to the customer and supports deployments in the cloud, on premise, or in hybrid deployment.