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Tuesday, July 18, 2017

SAP Planning Areas Considerations

Without fine tuning your cloud implementation you might realize less than optimum performance without even noticing. This post shares some recommendations that could fine tune an SAP planning view performance.


Sizing
Verify sizing post implementation is accurate after data is loaded as part of go-live activities. Sizing includes data storage, processing memory, data density (number of relevant data output per time period), ex: 1 sale per month, will not be caught in the weekly runs), and safety factors. Processing data on a more frequent basis and keeping the results on the planning view affects the remaining free resources (memory and storage). Sizing should be done during the cloud service acquisition, at end of blueprint, as part of performance testing and after go-live.


Configuration Complexity
Master data types and overall attributes should be kept as minimally as required. Usually clients use 20%-40% of the attributes they have defined in their implementations impacting performance with no true business value realization. Using non-key figure attributes of master data types as root attribute in a planning level is another approach to improve performance. Minimizing the number of calculations that include input levels is another way to improve performance, however care should be taken to avoid the need to increase the number of key figure values needed to store data. On the fly transformations should also be avoided to avoid performance bottlenecks.


Calculations
The approach used to perform calculations can significantly impact performance. Examples are the selection of key figures for a calculation, the calculation chain, stored key figures inputs, key figures base planning levels, placement and configuration of filters among other factors.


Planning Views
Keeping planning views to a reasonable number of rows is a generally recommended practice. Usually setting the rows to 2000 - 5000 does not impact performance negatively. Utilizing VBA-based templates instead of formula-based templates is another approach to improve performance as recommended by SAP. Using filters in templates when saving and opening templates is highly recommended to ensure reasonable load times. In SAP 1708 users will receive a warning message if no filters are defined in a planning view.


Running Operators as User-Defined Scenarios
Algorithms such as multi-stage inventory optimization affect the whole supply chain network. This large run-time can cause time-outs when run in simulation mode. A recommendation is to run these simulations as user-defined scenarios for improved performance.









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