Oct 15, 2025
•3 minute read
SAP MM
SAP MM: Materials Management for Procurement and Inventory Control
SAP Materials Management (MM) is one of the most critical modules in the SAP ERP ecosystem, supporting procurement, inventory management and warehousing for day-to-day business operations. Organizations rely on SAP MM to ensure materials are available in the right quantities, at the right time and without gaps in the supply chain. As SAPinsider research shows, supply chain teams are involved in 52% of ERP migration decisions, reflecting the module’s central role in enterprise transformation. Explore the latest SAPinsider content on SAP MM below.
What Is SAP MM?
SAP Materials Management (MM) is an SAP ERP component that helps organizations manage procurement, inventory and warehousing through a structured master data framework spanning plants, valuation areas, storage locations, purchasing organizations and purchasing groups. Key capabilities include material management, procurement process management, invoice verification and material requirements planning. In SAP S/4HANA, the Material Ledger function is mandatory to support flexible valuation in multiple currencies, while SAP Fiori apps provide improved user experience for goods receipt, purchasing and inventory transactions. Master data — covering material master, vendor master and purchasing info records — forms the foundation for all SAP MM transactions.
What Use Cases Are Referenced?
Coca-Cola Hellenic Bottling Company Reduced SAP Product Launch Cycles by 56%
Coca-Cola Hellenic Bottling Company replaced disparate legacy solutions with an automated SAP MM-driven launch platform that handles 48 material types across 28 countries. The result was a 56% reduction in product launch cycles, improved data quality and compliance, and better visibility for supply chain, marketing and master data teams.
How to Create a Global Template to Configure SAP MM Processes in Implementations and Rollouts
Large manufacturing organizations continuously roll out SAP into new units from acquisitions, mergers and divestitures. A global MM configuration template reduces costs, time and external dependencies by enabling internal IT teams to manage plant creation, purchasing group setup, tolerance limits, Material Ledger activation and foreign trade configuration across new organizational units.
Improve Current Forecast Models in SAP MM
No single SAP MM forecasting model fits all material planning scenarios. Combining standard models using an equal-weight scheme produces more than 6% accuracy improvement over the random walk model based on a 12-month experiment across six models. The combined forecast model approach, using SAP program RMPR1001 and consumption-based planning, improves purchase requisition decisions and reduces planning error.
Improve Your Company’s Production Efficiency with SAP Active Ingredient Management
SAP Active Ingredient Management extends SAP MM’s materials management capabilities for consumer packaged goods, chemical and pharmaceutical industries. By enabling batch-specific unit-of-measure conversion and active ingredient quantity tracking across purchasing, production and inventory, the solution manages production costs accurately at the process order level and supports ATP availability checks and requirements planning.
Role of Data Quality in Supply Chain Digital Transformation
Modern supply chains require managing millions of data points across an increasingly complex landscape of systems. Prospecta CEO Rajiv Bakshi explains how data quality in master data records — the foundation of SAP MM — is critical to running world-class supply chains and achieving successful digital transformation in procurement and inventory management.
What SAPinsider Research Supports This Topic?
Supply Chain Planning in the Cloud Benchmark Research
A SAPinsider benchmark survey of 106 community members found that supply chain planning is evolving from a set of operational tools into a strategic enabler of business agility and resiliency. Cloud enhancements are accelerating this shift, directly impacting how organizations approach materials management, procurement and inventory visibility across the enterprise.
ERP Migration and Transformation 2026
Among 296 SAPinsider community members surveyed, 55% had deployed S/4HANA or S/4HANA Cloud, with supply chain teams involved in 52% of ERP migration decisions. Industrial manufacturing represents the largest respondent sector at 30%, reinforcing SAP MM’s central role in enterprise ERP transformation.
Technology Leaders’ Strategic Agenda for 2026
SAPinsider research on 2026 technology priorities found that 70% of technology leaders cite operational efficiency and cost reduction as their top priority. With 40% planning intelligent automation in core ERP processes and 36% planning SAP-driven process automation, demand for optimized materials management and procurement workflows continues to grow.
See Latest Related Content Below
Key Strategies to Reduce the Cost of Poor Quality In ManufacturingManufacturers are focusing on reducing the Cost of Poor Quality (COPQ) through the integration of Manufacturing Execution Systems (MES) with SAP ERP systems to gain real-time insights into operational deficiencies, shifting from reactive to proactive quality management and ultimately enhancing efficiency and profitability.
Critical Role of Manufacturing Execution Systems (MES)As supply chain challenges increase due to increasing supply chain complexities, organizations are increasingly looking at leveraging data and analytics tools and technologies to help them address their supply chain challenges. Manufacturing plays a crucial role in supply chain networks, and recent events have emphasized its importance in building supply chain resiliency and agility. This has been emphasized in our recent supply chain research reports, Supply Chain Planning in The Cloud and Process Automation in Supply Chain. SAPinsiders are increasingly evaluating their portfolio of manufacturing systems and technologies and looking to upgrade to align with the requirements of modern manufacturing. SAPinsder's April 2022 report, Manufacturing Management and Planning Benchmark Report, will explore the pain points SAPinsiders are experiencing with their current systems, the key drivers they are experiencing that are bringing those pain points to the forefront, and their technology roadmap to address those pain points. Digital twins capability has been consistently highlighted by SAPinsiders as key to building resilient, agile, and optimized manufacturing capability. Manufacturing Execution Systems (MES), play a key role in digital twins. This article explores why they are central to manufacturing information systems architecture.
Oct 18, 2022
•3 minute read
Role of Data Quality in Supply Chain Digital TransformationQuality Data Lays the Foundation As supply chains become increasingly complex, so does the associated data landscape. Millions of data points must be managed in modern supply chains today due to the wide gamut of systems used. From Enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems that manage an organization’s basic processes to customer relationship process (CRM) systems […]
Oct 28, 2021
•7 minute read
Learn how Coca-Cola Hellenic Bottling Company Reduced SAP Product Launch Cycles by 56%Before implementing a cohesive automation solution for its SAP launch processes, Coca-Cola Hellenic Bottling Company needed to maintain disparate legacy solutions, some of which could not be updated to meet changing business needs. This situation slowed down product launches and made it difficult for business teams to get visibility into launch status. These factors, along with a rapidly increasing launch volume, drove the company to find a better way to automate the creation of SAP materials and other related data needed to manufacture products. The session will cover how Coca-Cola Hellenic Bottling Company enabled its supply chain, marketing, and master data teams to move faster while improving data quality and compliance.
Attend this session to:
- Learn how Coca-Cola Hellenic Bottling Company built a launch platform that can handle 48 material types and different process and data needs across 28 countries
- Identify some of the common data and process challenges and solutions in the context of SAP Materials Management
- Learn how to manage product launches and changes in SAP ERP more efficiently
- See a demo of Winshuttle’s new product introduction solution designed to digitize and accelerate any launch process type
Jan 21, 2021
•1 minute read
Logistics and SCM: Case study: Filling the gap: How A.O. Smith uses pre-structured SAP tools to accelerate material extensions and improve data qualityLearn how A.O. Smith applied process automation techniques and a pre-structured set of SAP tools to overcome the challenge of extending a large number of materials to multiple plants and warehouses simultaneously and accurately through an intelligent rules-driven process. SCM2017_Gabor_Casestudyfillingthegap Stephen Gabor If you have comments about this article or publication, or would like to […]
Mar 5, 2019
•1 minute read
Supply Chain: Solving Stock Transport Order (STO) ProblemsA common challenge experienced by users in the supply chain functions of a business who create stock transport orders (STO) in SAP ERP Central Component (SAP ECC) is that once they have done so, they are not able to create an outbound delivery for the STO. These problems are common to all types of STO processes, such as intracompany, intercompany, and STO at storage location level. This article describes several business problems faced during the STO delivery processing and then explains how to solve them.
May 16, 2018
•12 minute read
Benjamin Moore Mixes Up Its Product Pricing
In 2014 Benjamin Moore & Co. found itself limited by an aging legacy pricing system that stymied its ability to scale its paint and stain manufacturing business. It turned to Vistex for a new automated pricing system that transformed the pricing process, leading to more accuracy, better analytics, and increased customer satisfaction. Now it is poised for better profitability and growth.
May 16, 2018
•8 minute read
Improve Your Company’s Production Efficiency with SAP Active Ingredient ManagementLearn about the Active Ingredient Management processes using SAP Materials Management, Production Planning, and Financial Accounting modules. Get details about the main customizing settings to be done in the system from a financial point of view. Key Concept Active Ingredient Management affects all of a company’s business processes that contain at least one concentrate or […]
Dec 29, 2017
•19 minute read
How to Configure and Implement Global Percentage Bidding for External Service ProcurementLearn how global percentage bidding (GPB) is configured and implemented to accelerate the management of service specifications for external service procurement. Discover how this functionality reduces the time and cost of procurement in organizations. Key Concept Global percentage bidding (GPB) is a request for quotation document type in an SAP system that is used to […]
Dec 28, 2017
•20 minute read
Configuration Tips for Using Automated Flexible Product Prices with SAP Pricing ScaleLearn how to gain market share by configuring and implementing SAP pricing scale with different automated flexible price strategies and appropriate business scenarios. Key Concept Organizations have requirements to implement automated scalable price models that can enable them to respond competitively to their customers and prospective customers’ purchasing power. SAP has provided some functionalities such […]
Aug 31, 2017
•27 minute read
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