SAP CRM-Intellectual Property Management (SAP CRM-IPM) licensed sales contracts are usually large, with a sizeable number of intellectual properties (IPs) that are sold as products. These include rights scopes (i.e., information about media, territory, language, and the time frame in which they are sold) and royalties scopes (i.e., information about pricing, billing, and revenue distribution). Often, the release dates or regions to which an IP is sold are prone to changes. You might also want to change the license fee amount of IPs that belong to a particular IP type — for example, feature films. Manually maintaining these values in the contracts can become cumbersome and time consuming.

Instead, you can use a tool to mass maintain dates or media, territory, and language values on the rights scopes, as well as financial information on the royalties scopes. The mass change tool delivered as part of SAP CRM 7.0 enhancement package 1 includes scenarios referred to as templates to apply mass updates to specific components in sales contracts. Following are the steps you can take to build templates, which must be done before you can apply mass updates to CRM-IPM sales contracts.

Templates for Mass Changes

You can access the mass change tool from the Licensed Sales screen by clicking the Mass Change: Sales Contracts link (Figure 1).

Figure 1

The licensed sales contract screen and the link to access the mass change tool

SAP provides a standard mass change template of object type BUS2000230 – CRM License Sales contracts (Figure 2). You can create additional templates for different scenarios, such as changing the license fees of royalties scopes (template ZC01) or changing the rights dimension of the rights scopes (template ZC02), by copying the standard template.

To access the standard templates, follow SPRO menu path SAP Customizing Implementation Guide > Customer Relationship Management > Industry Specific Solutions > Media > Intellectual Property Management > Basic Functions > Mass Changes > Define Mass Change Template Types (Figure 2).  

Figure 2

Mass change templates available to copy

You can apply security access to templates so that only users with certain business roles can access certain templates with authorization object CRM_Mass. For example, you could set up security so that users with contract processor or administrator roles have access only to template ZC02, while users with a finance role can access template ZC01.  

Available Functions for Mass Changes

The SAP CRM-IPM licensed sales contract is made up of the following components:

• Deal header
• IPs (products)
• Royalties scopes
• Rights scopes
• Advance groups (for certain IPs, pricing involves the collection of advance amounts prior to releasing them to a licensee, such as a customer)
• Holdback scope (a component that is used in an IPM sales contract, this guarantees the specific rights dimensions mentioned in the holdback scope are not sold to any other licensee)

The mass change tool allows users to change the dates, status, organizational data, and parties involved (partner functions), as well as cancel components in a contract.

After you click the Mass Change: Sales Contracts link in Figure 1, the system prompts you to select a value in the Background Execution drop-down field (Figure 3). Usually, users select No as the value so that they can preview the mass change before confirming it. However, you can select Yes if you are sure of the objects you are mass maintaining and you don’t want to preview the change before confirming it.

Figure 3

Background job selection for processing mass updates

After a value is selected in the background execution field, you proceed to create templates by selecting any of the components mentioned above as a series of steps. Figure 4 shows how to start creating steps by clicking the New button.

Figure 4

Click the New button to build scenarios, or steps, for mass changes

The system displays a pop-up dialog where you can select the function or Node (i.e., what to mass change) and the Operation (select, add, delete, or change) that you would like to perform, as shown in Figure 5. You must repeat this step multiple times until you create the template.

Figure 5

The Node and Operation available for selection when building the template

Click the F4 search icon next to the Node field to display or use all the functions that can be selected, as shown in Figure 6, to build the template.

Figure 6

Functions available for mass change of components within an IPM sales contract

Based on the functions selected, you can create templates. Users need to keep selecting each function shown above to create the templates (i.e., place the cursor on the Change Header – Status and click the New button). Figure 7 shows an example of building a template.

Figure 7

The steps to build a template

In the above example, I want to change the header status of all contracts. This template is created step by step by selecting the nodes as shown previously in Figures 5 and 6. You save the template you created by clicking the Save as Template button (Figure 8).

Figure 8

Saving the template

Once a user clicks the Save as Template button, the system displays a pop-up dialog where you enter a Template ID and Description (Figure 9). I entered the Template ID as Chg_Head_Stat and the Template description as Change Header Status. I then clicked the save icon. Now the template is ready to use. When you are ready to mass update, search for the template you created by navigating to the Sales Contract Mass Change: Entry Screen shown in Figure 3. Click the search option, F4, in the Template ID field in Figure 3, which takes you to Figure 9, where you can search for the saved template.

Figure 9

User can select from the list of templates created

Now the user can apply the mass change by clicking a template in Figure 9, clicking the Next Step button, and following the steps in the template (Figure 10).

Figure 10

Apply the template by clicking the Next Step button

The system then displays a search screen (as shown in Figure 11) in which the user can select the contracts to mass update. After these contracts are entered, the system displays a green checkmark next to the step, which confirms that the step is complete. Now, you can search for the contracts that were entered by clicking the Search button.

Figure 11

Select and search for contracts

You can select the header status that you want to use for these deals by clicking the Next Step button (Figure 12).

Figure 12

Select the status to which the sales contracts need to be changed

After this step, apply the mass update to the sales contracts by clicking the Apply button. The system saves the updates to the contracts when you click the save icon on the template (Figure 12). If you are not happy with the mass change, click the Undo button and the system will not apply the change to the sales contracts.

Mass Maintaining Royalties Scopes Data

In this example, I have SAP CRM–IPM contract 3010718 with the details shown in Table 1, and I want to mass update some of its components.

Table 1

Contract details

As you can see in Table 1, I have three IPs maintained in the contract: Test SAP 1, Test SAP 2, and Test SAP 3. The dates when the IPs are sold are from April 30, 2012 to April 30, 2015. The license fees are USD $100,000, $50,000, and $100,000. To view the sales contract, navigate to the main License Sales screen (shown in Figure 1) and click on the Sales Contracts link under the Search assignment block. The Search: License Sales Contracts screen (shown in Figure 13) then appears where you can search for contract 3010718.

Figure 13

Search for the IPM sales contract that needs to be mass changed

Once you click the contract 3010718 in Figure 13 you can see its components with IPs, royalties, and rights scopes as shown in Figure 14.

Figure 14

An IPM sales contract maintained with IPs, royalties, and rights scopes

Let’s say that you want to mass change the licensee fee amount on the royalties scopes of two IPs — Test SAP 1 and Test SAP 3 — from USD$100,000 to $150,000 using the mass change tool. In the sample contract, I have maintained just three IPs, but in real-world scenarios, IPM sales contracts may have hundreds. Users may want to change or update the licensee fee amounts for a large number of royalties scopes.

As mentioned earlier, you need to build a template to make the mass update. In this case, you want to update the royalty rates on a royalties scope. To start building this template, first select the contract you need to mass update. As shown in Figure 15, choose Select Contracts from the Procedure Overview section.

Figure 15

Start the process of creating a mass change template

Next, select the IPs. Click the New icon and a pop-up dialog displays the nodes that you can select (Figure 16). In this case, I selected IP as the Node and Select as the Operation. Click the OK button.

Figure 16

Select the Node and Operation to build the steps

You can build on the template by adding steps as shown in Figures 5 and 6 to select the royalties scopes for which the license amount needs to be updated (Procedure Overview in Figure 17).  

Figure 17

A sample template built to change the license fee amount on the royalties scopes

Once the template is built, save it with the name Changing of License Fees of Royalties Scopes and click the Save as Template button. As I mentioned, you can limit access to this template based on security roles. For example, users with finance roles could have access to this template to make changes to license fee amounts.

Now that you have built the template, you can use it to mass update the license fees on the royalties scopes of the two IPs (Test SAP 1 and Test SAP 3) from USD$100,000 to $150,000. Select the template Changing of License Fees of Royalties Scopes you created earlier and provide data for each step as shown in Table 2.

Table 2

Data for the template

After entering the above data for each of the steps described in the section Available Functions for Mass Changes, the scopes that need to be updated are displayed. Enter the amount 150,000 in the Rate Set section and click Apply (Figure 18).

Figure 18

The template for changing the license fee amount

The system updates the royalties scopes rate to $150,000. However, this data is not yet updated in the sales contracts. The mass change tool provides a preview area where you can view the change or update before applying it to the contracts. After you click the Save icon, the change or update is reflected in the sales contracts, and the license fees on the royalties scopes of IPs Test SAP1 and Test SAP 3 are updated to $150,000 (Figure 19).

Figure 19

The template displaying a preview of the change in the license fee amount

If you are not happy with the change, click Undo and the system will not apply the change to the royalties scopes. If you do click the Save icon, the mass changes are applied. When you navigate to contract 3010718 (by clicking Sales Contracts in Figure 1), you see that the licensee fees on the royalties scopes of IPs Test SAP 1 and Test SAP 3 have been updated to $150,000 (Figure 20).

Figure 20

The sales contract displaying the updated licensee fee amounts

Mass Maintaining Rights Scopes Data

You can mass update rights scopes data in a similar way. For example, if you want to extend the valid to date of the rights scopes in this sample contract, you need to create a new template, Changing the Valid To date of Rights Scopes (Figure 21), as described in the section Available Functions for Mass Changes.

Figure 21

Template for changing the valid to date of the rights scopes

For example, perhaps you want to extend the rights scopes dates of IPs by six months (i.e., update the rights scopes dates of Test SAP 1, Test SAP 2, and Test SAP 3 to December 31, 2015). Based on the template built, you need to enter the data shown in Table 3 for each step.

Table 3

Data to enter for rights scope

After you enter this data for each step, the system displays the rights scopes that need to be updated. Enter 12/31/2015 in the Set field of the Change Rights Scope – Date To assignment block and click Apply (Figure 22).

Figure 22

The template displays a preview of the change to the rights scopes

If you are not happy with the change, click Undo and the system will not apply the change to the rights scopes. If you click the Save icon, when you navigate to contract 3010718, you see that the Valid To dates of Test SAP 1, Test SAP 2, and Test SAP 3 have been updated to 12/31/2015 (Figure 23).

Figure 23

The sales contract displaying the updated valid to dates

You can similarly mass update various data in the rights scopes, such as parties involved, statuses, and rights group (media, territory, and language dimensions), using the mass change tool. You can also build or maintain templates to mass maintain contract header data.

Goutam Gopal

Goutam Gopal is a senior consultant at Capgemini US LLC with more than 14 years of consulting experience in the IT industry. He has extensive experience in implementing SAP CRM solutions as a functional consultant for the high-tech, retail, manufacturing, and media industries. Currently, he is involved in implementing an SAP CRM–IPM solution at one of the leading studios in California.

You may contact the author at goutam.gopal@capgemini.com.

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