Discovering Business Process Steps and Apps for Resource Management

Objective

After completing this lesson, you will be able to analyze and apply the roles, apps, and steps of business process for proficient resource management

Introduction – Decentralized Staffing through Scope Item J11 in SAP S/4HANA Cloud

Decentralized Staffing is carried out entirely within the SAP S/4HANA Cloud solution within the Plan Customer Projects app as part of scope item J11. It's the default staffing method.

SAP S/4HANA Cloud Professional Services Project Lifecycle stages: project planning and setup, project staffing, time and expense, project economics, and billing and close. The project manager is responsible for planning, staffing, economics, and billing, while team members handle time and expense.

The process is as follows:

  • Role is planned on the customer / internal project, in terms of
    • Role (for example senior consultant)

      Team roles are activity types setup with the cost center category C (Professional Service) in the master data. A configuration expert must use the configuration activity Map Resources to Resource Types to assign such activity types to the resource type 0ACT.

    • Effort (for example 160 hours)

      The distribution of the effort can be defined by clicking the pencil icon next to the Effort box. By default, the effort will be distributed evenly over the current & future months of the work package.

      Note

      Distribution is only possible by month.
    • Service Organization (for example US Service Organization) – Optional
    • Skills (for example Artificial Intelligence) – Optional

      Skills are free text entry but previous entries are provided as options as the user types the desired skill to minimize redundant entries.

    • Staffing Instructions (for example Internal employees only) - Optional

      This is a free text box allowing up to 1000 characters.

  • A resource search is carried out for staffed resources. Search results can be filtered.
  • A resource is selected

    If multiple resources are selected, the role will be multiplied by that number of resources – that is only one resource may be staffed to a role via this method.

  • The role is staffed

    The Confirm toggle must be set to Yes to finalize the assignment.

Applications

Plan Customer Projects

You can use this app to manage customer projects for which you are responsible. This app allows you to search for projects, copy existing projects, and edit your projects to plan work packages, efforts, resources, and billing, recalculate cost and revenue, and analyze financial KPIs (key performance indicators).

Key Features

You can perform the following tasks if you are a project manager for customer projects:

Note

Your ability to display or change projects depends on your authorization for the service organization, company code, cost center, profit center, and permissions to access private projects.
  • View a list of projects for which you are the responsible, as a project manager or any other project responsibility.
  • Filter the list of displayed projects.
  • Manage your list of favorite projects.
  • Search for projects using the project ID, or the name of the customer, the project, and the project manager.

    The results are displayed based on your authorization.

  • Create new customer projects
  • Analyze the financial performance of projects for which you are responsible.

    However, the profit center cannot be changed if it is registered for an organizational change or has been reassigned to the project due to an organizational change.

  • Manage the billing process that must be used to invoice the services and expenses planned in the project. You can change the billing process only for projects that are in the In Planning stage.

    Note

    Although you can choose between two different billing processes, it is recommended that you use the new billing solution for all new projects and projects that are still being planned.

    Update the profit center for the project, but only as long as no actual cost or revenue has been posted.

    However, the profit center cannot be changed if it is registered for an organizational change or has been reassigned to the project due to an organizational change.

Hint

For details on this application see course ISR20 - Exploring Fundamentals of SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition, Professional Services.

Manage Team Resources

You use roles to plan the profiles required to fulfill the scope of work planned in a work package. Once this is done, you staff people from your internal and external workforce. This role planning can be carried out on either the Team tab or the Work Packages tab by clicking into the work package.

Note

Team roles are activity types setup with the cost center category C (Professional Service) in the master data. A configuration expert must use the configuration activity Map Resources to Resource Types to assign such activity types to the resource type 0ACT.

To plan a team resource, follow these steps:

  1. Choose a work package to add the team resource.
  2. Choose Add Team Role to create a new entry.
  3. Select a role and enter the effort required.
  4. Choose Add. The new entry is displayed at the top of the list. On saving the changes, the new entry moves to the end of the list.
  5. Select the delivery organization for the resource and specify the skills as needed, to help you find a suitable match. You may enter up to five skills.
  6. Select a work item if necessary.
  7. Maintain staffing instructions as needed, to help the resource manager find the right resource.
  8. Use Billing Control Category to decide if the resource is billable or not.
  9. Choose Add Resource to add a team resource to the role. You can search for a resource using the name of the person, the role name, or skills.
  10. You can also use the Add Role and Add Resource options in the Team tab to add roles and resources to a work package.
  11. Confirm the staffing of resources when the project stage is set to In Execution stage. This confirmation results in staffing the resource as per their availability for the work package.

Searching for a Resource

You can search for a resource using the person's name, role name, or skills. You can also use the following filters to refine the search:

  • Delivery Organization

    If intercompany restrictions are maintained, then only the relevant delivery organization IDs are displayed here based on intercompany check.

  • Cost Center
  • Include External Workers
  • Company Code

    If no delivery organization is maintained in the resource plan, the company code of the project is selected here by default.

  • Service Cost Level

In the search results you can view the following details of the person:

  • Name, role name, photo, skills, and employment type. You can also view the previous roles of the person, if any.
  • Availability based on employments within the duration of the work package, where each employment is also indicated by its corresponding cost center. In the Team tab availability is calculated based on the duration of the project.

    The search result also indicates whether the employment would end before the end of the work package.

  • Availability per month (in hours or days), for the calendar year.

    Note

    Availability is calculated based on the working hours per week defined for the person and staffing in other projects. If advanced resource management has been activated, the availability is based on the daily working hours maintained for the person.
  • You can view additional details of the person such as contact details, employment details, and project assignments in the employee fact sheet that you can access by choosing the name of the person.

You can customize the search results using the Settings option.

Plan Internal Projects

You can use this app to manage internal projects for which you are the responsible project manager. This app allows you to search for projects, copy existing projects, and edit your projects to plan work packages, efforts, resources, and recalculate cost.

Hint

For details on this application see course ISR20 - Exploring Fundamentals of SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition, Professional Services.

Manage Team Resources

You use roles to plan the profiles required to fulfil the scope of work planned in a work package. Once this is done, you staff people from your internal and external workforce. This role planning can be carried out on either the Team tab or the Work Packages tab by clicking into the work package.

Note

Team roles are activity types setup with the cost center category C (Professional Service) in the master data. A configuration expert must use the configuration activity Map Resources to Resource Types to assign such activity types to the resource type 0ACT.

To plan a team resource, follow these steps:

  1. Choose a work package to add the team resource.
  2. Choose Add Team Role to create a new entry.
  3. Select a role and enter the effort required.
  4. Choose Add. The new entry is displayed at the top of the list. On saving the changes, the new entry moves to the end of the list.
  5. Select the delivery organization for the resource and specify the skills as needed, to help you find a suitable match. You may enter up to five skills.
  6. Select a work item if necessary.
  7. Maintain staffing instructions as needed, to help the resource manager find the right resource.
  8. Use Billing Control Category to decide if the resource is billable or not.
  9. Choose Add Resource to add a team resource to the role. You can search for a resource using the name of the person, the role name, or skills.

    You can also use the Add Role and Add Resource options in the Team tab to add roles and resources to a work package.

  10. Confirm the staffing of resources when the project stage is set to In Execution stage. This confirmation results in staffing the resource as per their availability for the work package.
Interface used to add resource to project role.

Searching for a Resource

You can search for a resource using the person's name, role name, or skills. You can also use the following filters to refine the search:

  • Delivery Organization

    If intercompany restrictions are maintained, then only the relevant delivery organization IDs are displayed here based on intercompany check.

  • Cost Center
  • Include External Workers
  • Company Code

    If no delivery organization is maintained in the resource plan, the company code of the project is selected here by default.

  • Service Cost Level

In the search results you can view the following details of the person:

  • Name, role name, photo, skills, and employment type. You can also view the previous roles of the person, if any.
  • Availability based on employments within the duration of the work package, where each employment is also indicated by its corresponding cost center. In the Team tab availability is calculated based on the duration of the project.

    The search result also indicates whether the employment would end before the end of the work package.

  • Availability per month (in hours or days), for the calendar year.

    Note

    Availability is calculated based on the working hours per week defined for the person, and staffing in other projects. If advanced resource management has been activated, the availability is based on the daily working hours maintained for the person.

  • You can view additional details of the person such as contact details, employment details, and project assignments in the employee fact sheet that you can access by choosing the name of the person.

You can customize the search results using the Settings option.

Project Staffing Analysis App

With this app project managers can view and analyze the staffing situations in projects for which they are responsible. You can view information about resource requests, whether staffing has been fulfilled, the resources assigned to a request, the distribution of planned and staffed effort across months, and the cost.

SAP Project Staffing Analysis interface that allows project managers to view and analyze staffing situations for the projects they are assigned.

Key Features

You can use this app to:

  • Filter and search for resource requests. By default, the app displays resource requests that are pending and overdue.
  • Personalize the display of information by creating your own views. By default, the list displays resource requests only from projects for which you are responsible, or assigned as the project partner, project controller, or project accountant. However, you may use the Project or the Work Package filters to view resource requests from other projects.
  • View resource requests and the status of staffing
  • View whether resource requests have been fulfilled, are overdue, or due in the future
  • View the progress of staffing per resource request
  • Display an overview of the project, especially information such as:
    • The total planned cost for the project, and a comparison between the planned cost of resources and the cost after staffing
    • The overall progress of staffing within the project
  • Display detailed information for a resource request, such as the duration, planned and staffed hours, resources staffed to a request, skills of the assigned resource, the delivery organization of resources, and the cost per resource. You can also view how the staffed effort is distributed across months.

    Note

    The name of the resource manager is displayed only if you've activated Advanced Resource Management - Project-Based Services (1KC) or if the information is provided by an external system, for example SAP S/4HANA Cloud for projects, resource management.

Manage Workforce

With this app, you can create and update workers (employees and contingent workers), including work agreements, and change employment situations. It is with this app that employee’s skills tags can be updated directly.

SAP Project interface to create and update both employee and contingent workers to include their agreements and any change to employment situations.

Key Features

Note

You have limited write-access when your Entry Source is not the Manage Workforce app. When your Entry Source is the Manage Workforce app, the only editable field is the Tag. You need to edit your HR workforce data in your integrated external HR system. This is to avoid data inconsistency.

You can use this app to do the following:

  • Create workers directly in the app.
  • Edit personal or employment details.
  • Create work agreements and assign company codes, cost centers, and so on.
  • Change employment situations: global assignment, concurrent employment, transfers, or rehires.

In addition, the app supports the following technical features and options:

  • Go to theMaintain Business Users app to assign a business user and business roles to your worker.
  • Go to the Business Partner app to enter business partner details of each worker, such as private address or bank account.
  • Go to the Fact Sheet object page to view worker-related information, such as project or payment details.

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