Customers with numerous subsidiaries and installations often want to establish an SAP system landscape based upon a common standardized core, otherwise known as a global template, which reflects all of the R/3 settings and data that are specific to a corporate entity. Descriptions of common company processes, instructions regarding how (and how often) subsidiaries should implement (and update) the template, transport files, customizing settings, test descriptions, and test plans are all fair game for a global template. Some of these elements address the methodology that must be adhered to by subsidiaries as the corporate headquarters location rolls out the template, and some, particularly the customizing and testing elements, are about concrete R/3 settings and data. It’s this latter category of elements — the ones that require you to capture specific customizing settings and then, through proper testing, ensure that they can be properly invoked at subsidiary locations — that I will address in this article. Even if you are not undertaking a global rollout, this article provides valuable information that can be applied in other customizing contexts.
Matthias Melich
Dr. Matthias Melich studied English Literature at the University of Rochester (New York) and Mathematics and English Philology at the University of Cologne. He also received his Ph.D. in Computer-Based Language Learning at the University of Cologne in 1993. Matthias joined SAP in 1995 as a member of the Common Objects and Modeling team, and a year later he joined the Archiving Solutions team. In 1998, he became responsible for Product Management of Customizing Tools. In January 2005, Matthias became part of the Service Solution Management organization, where he is Manager of the Global SAP Solution Manager Product Management team. He is also the author of “Computer-Based Training for R/3 Archiving” and the SAP DocuSet “Data Modeling with the Data Modeler.”
You may contact the author at matthias.melich@sap.com.
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