When it comes to finding some unused or inactive materials in SAP master data, there is no direct method which can be easily executed. Users need to go through multiple SAP transactions, Excel lists before they can analyse the statuses of each material. The Camelot Material Data Analyzer (CamelotMDA) is a solution to ease this manual and time-consuming process. Do you want to see the Camelot MDA in action? Watch our webcast.
Inactive objects are always a concern
SAP material master is the central source of information of a material related to several application areas (purchasing, storage, accounting, sales, etc). But sometimes it is hard to find out the relevant master records because the database gets overwhelmed with lots of unused/unwanted or duplicate materials from time to time. These data might have been created by mistake or created a long time ago and are not in use anymore.
Bad data can result in the following problems:
- Business processes are less efficient when decisions are made based on the outdated data.
- Unexpected extra time and workforce required for Data Quality Management (DQM) activities.
- Additional effort needed for S/4 HANA data migration which may results in extension of project timelines or a stressed timeline.
The underlying problem of finding the materials which are not in use is that each material is being referred in various functional areas, for example in the bill of material, in planning, as handling unit etc. Unfortunately, there is no SAP transaction which can bring all these dependencies of a material to a single report.
Finding unwanted objects made easy
To obtain a fast and simple report of unused materials, Camelot provides a solution called Camelot Material Data Analyzer (CamelotMDA). CamelotMDA checks whether a material is used in related master data objects. In addition, the associated transaction data such as sales documents or stock levels are analyzed to determine whether the material still provides an active value contribution for business processes.
As a result, CamelotMDA delivers two lists:
- one with all the materials which are active and
- one with materials which are not active.
Currently, CamelotMDA is created for the following functional areas: Purchasing, Finance, Logistics, Distribution and Quality Management. The scope of the solution can be improvised to meet the requirement.
Use case 1: finding materials to delete during systems archiving
CamelotMDA will help you distinguish materials which can, and which cannot be deleted from the system during archiving. A material is deleted during archiving only if, all business transactions depending on it have been concluded. This can be for example be useful during a S/4 HANA implementation to reduce the amount of data that needs to be migrated. This also leads to significantly lower data cleansing efforts.
Use case 2: reduce effort of data cleansing
Many companies have inventories with materials that are no longer needed. One example case are spare parts for plants in the chemical industry when the plants have already been dismantled but the spare parts are still available. With the help of the CamelotMDA, this can be analyzed regularly and corresponding materials can be phased out promptly. This leads to a significant reduction in storage costs and tied-up capital.
Benefits
How can data owners benefited when they use Camelot Material Data Analyzer?
- Significant reduction of effort and time spent on finding inactive objects which results high efficiency in data management.
- Cost of keeping unused goods on stock can be minimized.
- Bring down the effort of Data Cleansing because of the timely cleaned database.
- Help reduce the scope of the business, thereby reduces the data to govern.
- Increase the quality of data which eventually will lead to an increase in business efficiency.
In a nutshell, CamelotMDA delivers higher material data quality with a focus on data that delivers value to the business.
The Camelot Material Data Analyzer is based on the SAP Business Technology Platform, which allows the solution to be introduced without major implementation effort.
Please feel free to contact us for further information.
We would like to thank Nicy Thekkethala for her valuable contribution to this article.
