From an IT perspective, it makes sense to store infrequently or rarely accessed SAP data on a more cost efficient storage layer outside the SAP environment by using SAP’s data archiving technology. It reduces the total cost of ownership (TCO) and data redundancy significantly. Archiving can also improve performance. Many mature SAP systems, including SAP CRM, contain years of historical data. It is not uncommon to find that 70% to 80% of data stored in the SAP CRM database has not been accessed in the previous six weeks.

To business users, however, transparent and seamless access to information (whether it is online or archived) is highly important. To them data is more than just “data.” Without access to “their” data, there is no access to information. Without information, there is no insight. Without insight, the business cannot execute the correct actions.

When you start an archiving project, you should determine what data you really need and what data you can archive. For example, what is the percentage of closed business data in your CRM system? When you use Campaign Management, do you need all the data from completed campaigns online? Do you really need all the completed activities of all past years?

It is important to align the goals of different stakeholders such as IT and the business or user in your archiving project. You must also know the limitations of standard retrieval methods and the integration aspects of these methods to eliminate perceived hurdles to accessing the data.

With that approach you can bridge the gap between IT goals (reduce the data growth and size and maintain system stability) and business needs (integrated and transparent access to information). This approach follows the Information Lifecycle Management (ILM) strategy. You can read more about ILM in the sidebar “Why You Should Consider an ILM Strategy.”

Let me show you the factors to consider when you start an archiving project, based on my experiences with archiving in SAP CRM. First, I’ll explain a common archiving pitfall that could doom your project. Then I’ll go over the factors you need to consider to make your archiving project a success. I’ll also share two methods my team and I developed to help ensure user acceptance of archiving. I’ve successfully applied the methods in this article to SAP CRM 2005 and earlier.

A Common Archiving Pitfall

In all the archiving projects I executed in the past years, I noticed that the IT manager or IT department initiated data archiving in SAP, rather than the business or key users. It’s a fact of life that data archiving often starts as an IT-driven project. If your organization considers data archiving to be an IT area, or if the IT department raises the issue of archiving (and the business departments or users are not committed or involved sufficiently), the future success of your project may be in danger.

Why could an IT-driven approach be dangerous in this case? An IT-driven approach focuses mainly on managing the CRM data volume and growth. However, you also have to focus on the availability and transparent access to historical information because the end users are focused on information, not on data management. The business users want to access all the relevant information at the right time in the right place. If important stakeholders cannot access archived information in an acceptable way, they won’t accept the archiving project and it will not go live.

Critical Success Factors

When you start a data archiving project, one of the first questions you can expect from users is “Can SAP give us full and transparent access to all the information we might need if we archive SAP data?” This question is often not without a reason — in many SAP areas, integrated and transparent access to archived data is not well developed.

Here you have to be alert to how the business and end users perceive the project. If they feel that the project does not fit their requirements, you may not be able to go live with archiving or you may be allowed to archive only a limited amount of data. Therefore, it is wise to consider at least three important questions concerning the retrieval of archived business data in SAP CRM:

• How is the archived data displayed and accessed? Is it complete and transparent as displayed to users?
• Is it possible to integrate and present online and archived data as one business view?
• What are the business transactions in which you need to have access to archived data?

Let’s investigate these three questions in more detail.

How Data Appears to Users

In general, SAP CRM presents archived data with the same look and feel as transactional data, which is still online. This is not always the case in most other SAP software, such as SAP ERP, Advanced Planning and Optimization (APO), or SAP NetWeaver Business Intelligence (SAP NetWeaver BI).

When you start an archiving project, figure out how standard your CRM environment is — that is, how do your system enhancements fit standard SAP archiving methods? For example, in SAP CRM 2005 and earlier, you have to pay attention to enhancements such as the use of custom fields in SAP CRM. (The system stores these fields in tables CRMD_CUSTOMER_H and CRMD_CUSTOMER_I). However, you may find that the system does not archive these tables properly. Check on this before you start with operational data archiving.

The same could be valid for the integrated access to unstructured content, such as documents and attachments (e.g., surveys). Your end users probably want to have access to this information when they retrieve this data from the archives. To find out more about how to handle issues with archiving if you have enhanced your SAP CRM 2005 or earlier system, refer to SAP Note 928532 (“Customer Enhanced Fields are not archived”). To learn more about accessing documents and attachments after archiving in SAP CRM 2005 and earlier, refer to the SAP Notes in Table 1.

Access Paths to Archived Data

Let’s discuss two available access paths in SAP CRM that allow you to search for and access archived business data: People-Centric User Interface (PCUI) and SAP Archive Information System (SAP AS).

PCUI. In PCUI you can search for business transactions in the database or in the archive. This interface is user friendly, so your end users will likely accept it and use it to search for archived data.

You can choose the data source in the advanced search for a business object type. In the initial screen for service orders, for example, you can open the advanced search and in the field Search In choose the data source. If you choose an archived business transaction from the hit list, the system displays it in its original display.

The question is, do your end users normally work with PCUI? In my experience, not all companies use it or they prefer Interaction Center (IC) WinClient transactions such as CIC0. If this is the case, you have a challenge because in transaction CIC0 you cannot access both archived and online data as you can in PCUI in IC WebClient. If your organization prefers not to use PCUI, or if power users use the IC WinClient interface, then you need to use SAP AS.

SAP AS. Access SAP AS by going to Archive Administration (transaction SARA), and clicking on Information System. Or you can reach it directly via transaction SARI. In SAP AS you can adapt the search criteria for archived data to suit your needs because it allows you to use your own archive (search) structures in addition to the standard archive information structure. After you define the search criteria in Archive Retrieval Configurator (transaction SARJ), you can create an archive InfoStructure (or archive index). With Archive Explorer (transaction SARE), you can search according your own criteria in archived SAP CRM data.

The End User Experience

Back to the end users — what is the look and feel of working with SAP AS in SAP CRM? Is it user friendly? Let’s look at an example. Imagine you are searching for CRM activities in IC (transaction CIC0). You notice that transaction CIC0 does not display the archived activities. To access the archived activities, you need to execute the following steps:

Step 1. Start transaction SARE. The screen in Figure 1 appears. Click on Archive Explorer to jump into the selection screen for archived data search (Figure 2). Enter the relevant archiving object and InfoStructure, in my example CRM_ACT_ON and Z_CRM_ACT_ON, respectively.

Figure 1

Click on Archive Explorer to access the screen to enter the archiving object and InfoStructure

Figure 2

Enter the archiving object and InfoStructure

Step 2. Enter your search criteria. Click on the execute icon in Figure 2 to enter the selection criteria screen in Figure 3. In this example, I am searching for archived activities of Partner Number X.

Figure 3

Enter the search criteria

Step 3. The system now displays the archived activities. After entering the relevant selection criteria in Figure 3, click on the execute icon to see the results (Figure 4). Then select one of the rows in Figure 4 by double-clicking on it and the system displays the archived activity.

Figure 4

The system displays the archived activities in the search result list

In the next dialog step, select how to view the archived data (Figure 5). Select the display function that you prefer and then click on the enter icon. A business user typically selects the first option (the business view). In the screen that appears, the archived business activity looks the same way as it did prior to archiving (Figure 6).

Figure 5

Select how you want to display the archived content

Figure 6

The archived business activity

This example addresses two important questions. First, is the access path to archived SAP CRM data always user friendly? Second, does the end user have seamless and integrated access to both online and archived CRM data? As you can see, if the answer is no, you can fix this issue with some minor adaptations.

Optimize Integrated Access to Online and Archived CRM Data

In the previous example, I identified two areas that can negatively influence users’ acceptance of data archiving and retrieval in SAP CRM: the limited integration between online and archived data and the many steps necessary to execute the search for archived business data in transaction SARE.

For some clients, my team and I applied an effective and relatively simple, two-step method to address these issues. With this method we increased user acceptance, which allowed us to apply archiving over a larger area of SAP CRM.

Step 1. Set up easy access to retrieval transaction SARE. If you use IC Win­Client, no integrated access exists to both online and archived data in IC.

To fix this, we developed a custom action box (using transaction EWFC0 or SPRO) and named it Archive Retrieval. The action box triggers a custom Business Object Repository (BOR) method, calling transaction SARE by using custom ABAP coding (Figure 7).

Figure 7

How to “glue” online and archive data retrieval transactions

You should discuss the scheme shown in Figure 7 with your ABAP developer team because it knows how to develop the business object and object methods, including the coding needed. After theses items are developed and tested, you can create the new action button. Call transaction EWFC0 and a screen similar to the one in Figure 8 appears.

Figure 8

Configuration for the action box

In Figure 8 you can define an action box including its description and the transaction or business object (method) the system should call when triggering this action box. In my example, I need to create a new action box (e.g., archive) to refer to my new developed business object and method, which eventually calls the archive retrieval transaction SARE. The Archive action box appears as a button in the CIC0 screen (Figure 9).

Figure 9

Archive action box added in transaction CIC0

Step 2. Avoid unneeded process steps when calling transaction SARE. In this step you eliminate many dialog steps that would normally occur when you call transaction SARE. As shown in Figure 3, users must enter a lot of information in transaction SARE (such as the relevant archiving object, archiving InfoStructure, and the selection criteria) before they can view the archived data.

You can eliminate these steps by reading memory variables, or field values, and parameters from the CIC0 screen to fill these fields in the dialog steps of transaction SARE. When you trigger the Archive action box, the BOR method triggers a call transaction command that calls transaction SARE. The system then passes the relevant parameters and values and skips the dialog screens displayed in Figures 2 and 3. The user sees the list of archived CRM data directly.

The results? These adaptations result in more optimized access to archived business activities. If the system doesn’t display all the activities in transaction CIC0, the user just triggers the action box and has instant access to the archived data of the relevant business partner.

Nico J.W. Kuijper

Nico J.W. Kuijper is an archiving/ILM solution specialist for ST- Addons, a company specializing in SAP-certified solutions for ILM, automated SAP system management, and IT cost controlling. Based in the Netherlands, ST-Addons specializes in the process of aligning IT and business needs in relation to SAP decommissioning, data archiving, and data integration. Nico has worked in the ICT industry since 1989 and with SAP technology since 1995. He has conducted more then 25 SAP data archiving projects for large companies and multinationals in Europe. His archiving experiences cover archiving in R/3, SAP ERP, APO, CRM, IS-Utilities (IS-U), and SAP NetWeaver BI/SAP BW. He also developed overall archiving concepts for SAP environments with more then 10 terabytes of data.

You may contact the author at nico.kuijper@st-addons.nl.

If you have comments about this article or publication, or would like to submit an article idea, please contact the editor.