No system is perfect

In large data-processing systems, quick and complete identification of exceptions is very important, as they cost a company time and consequently money. A large part of the processes runs in the background at night. Mostly without errors.

But only almost. A small number of processes, but which in total can cause considerable financial damage to a company, are not processed. Exceptions can have different reasons. Be it due to incorrect data or invalid states.

With Business Process Exception Management (BPEM), SAP offers a framework for identifying and resolving these exceptions. BPEM is available license-free on all SAP solutions based on FI-CA (Contract Accounts Receivable and Payable).

BPEM is based on the previous product called Emma. This has existed for over 13 years. It was developed from scratch in an object-oriented way. At first glance, however, the user sees little of this. Most of the work has been done "under the hood". New transactions indicate the change to the user. The revision has had a positive effect on performance in particular.

Why exception management?

The SAP consultant and trainer conveys the necessity of the framework:

In SAP Industry Solution for Utilities (IS-U), the most important processes revolve around billing and invoicing. If exceptions occur, the process stops and the invoice is either created late or not at all.

Even if this is only a small percentage in relation to the total, these exceptions have a direct impact on liquidity, interest income or charges, and thus indirectly on profits.

Therefore, the invoices that have not been processed and the data errors behind them must be found as quickly as possible. Measures must then be taken to resolve the exceptional situation, correct the erroneous data and continue the process so that the invoice is created correctly. Currently, this is usually a laborious, manual process.

This process usually consists of painstakingly finding the errors using logs provided by the system. These logs contain all the information about the processes, both successful and faulty objects.

The logs are very extensive, difficult to read and often inconsistent. The latter prevents automatic evaluation. Likewise, a quick overarching view of the exceptions is made difficult.

As a rule, the logs are usually downloaded via Excel lists and then distributed in a cumbersome manner to the agents for resolution. The records in the Excel list contain very technical information based on the error messages from the logs.

The distribution of work in the form of Excel lists usually requires additional coordination and control effort, which increases the more processors are involved. The feedback must also be processed, since the data in the Excel list no longer has any reference to the system. It is impossible to get a current processing progress. This is time-consuming, inefficient, IT from the 1980s and no longer up to date.

BPEM can provide a remedy. It enables an automatic and structured analysis of the application logs. Exceptions are identified, enriched with helpful information and automatically distributed to agents. Likewise, processes without logs can be connected to BPEM.

The so-called clarification case is the central element in BPEM. It encapsulates an exception of a process and supports its solution by providing helpful information, data objects and functions precisely targeted to the exception that has occurred.

The person in charge should thus have all the tools at hand to be able to process the problem directly in case of clarification. He should not first have to branch to third party data objects or functions.

The clarification case

Any meaningful data and data objects can be displayed in the clarification case. For more complex constructs a screen extension is available. The solution of the clarification case is done by the so-called solution processes. A clarification case usually has several of them. The solution processes are usually transactions or functions that support the processor in addressing and resolving a specific error situation. A distinction is made between manual and automatic solution processes. The automatic solution processes can be processed by the system in the background.

BPEM process in two steps

The actual BPEM process consists of two steps. In the first step, the application logs, in which each standard process stores its status information and exceptions, are evaluated and prepared. In the second step, the exceptions determined are compared with the BPEM Customizing of the so-called clarification case categories and a clarification case is generated accordingly.

The case category represents more than just a template for generating the clarification cases; it encapsulates all objects, properties, the data environment, the solution processes, the generation conditions and the agent determination.

As already mentioned, the clarification case represents the central object with all information about the exceptional situation and the data environment. Furthermore, it has all the necessary functions and transactions for resolving the basic problem. The agent determination with automatic distribution to the correct agents and further settings, such as avoidance of duplicates, can also be set in the clarification case categories.

The processors use the so-called clarification case lists with shortcut keys as inbox. The clarification cases are sorted into different folders in the lists. The criteria for this are customer-specific and can be implemented using different techniques depending on requirements.
Introduce BPEM correctly

The central integration of BPEM into the SAP IDEX Common Layer in 2012 has prompted many utilities to take a closer look at the topic. However, the implementation projects have mostly focused on the Common Layer processes and not on BPEM.

This can lead to large backlogs, lack of user acceptance and increased workloads. To use BPEM correctly, it is important to understand the philosophy behind it. Likewise, the technical and functional possibilities must be understood and should be comprehensible.

BPEM offers different approaches to extension, you have to weigh yourself which way is the right one. One should always keep in mind that BPEM is not a ready-made out-of-the-box solution and this was never the intention.

Rather, it represents a framework that must be expanded and adapted through project work or a third-party solution. Maintenance and further development must also be planned for.

Customers often have the same requirements because the standard does not cover some functional areas or the function is not suitable for the intended use. For example, clarification cases can only be forwarded to individual users.

In practice, however, the organizational plan usually works with groups of users. In the system, these are often mapped as positions. Accordingly, the possibility of an assignment to the same is required.

Likewise, there is no comprehensive overview of the situation of the individual customer or point of delivery, since the standard focuses on the object of the exception. These are just two of the examples that need to be considered in a BPEM implementation.

Add-on Emmax

One approach to closing functional gaps and establishing centralized exception management is the Emmax product from Excimp. It is successfully in use at many German and international utilities. The official SAP add-on can be regarded as an additional layer based on the BPEM standard.

Among other things, it provides a customer-oriented view of exceptions in the SAP IS environment. The BPEM standard is purely exception-oriented and therefore it is not possible to find and display a complete overview of all exceptions related to a customer (or point of delivery or contract account) without Emmax.

Exceptions see

The main advantage of Emmax is that the information is interpreted and presented in an improved way. Exceptions of a customer are visible at a glance and automatically linked to the customer and other master data.

The exceptions can be corrected and closed immediately at the customer level. If available, multiple exceptions can be closed on the same object at the same time.

This speeds up the time to case completion enormously and enables correct process completion. This is because there is often more than one exception that blocks an invoice, for example. Emmax extends a wide range of standard BPEM functionality, significantly improving usability, efficiency and performance, and filling the gaps in standard functionality. There is a solution database with over 70 automatic solution processes for the most common problems.

Maintenance is done by pure customizing and can be taken over by the customer. In addition, Emmax provides functions to identify all unbilled contracts, helps to bill them and significantly improve the process in the future.