The cloud ERP SAP Business ByDesign offers powerful functions for resource search. The project manager uses the resource search view for this and receives all the necessary information about the available project resources. The following article shows what options are available here and what the use of the resource search looks like in practice.
Working with the resource search
If you are a resource manager looking for resources such as employees or a service provider in the Cloud ERP SAP Business ByDesign, you can use the Resource Search view. The search results are filtered over a certain period of time. Anyone who uses the Resource Profiles view receives detailed information on the freely available resources for the next six calendar weeks. In this way it is very easy, for example, to assign employees to a project who are actually available for it. It is also possible to use the resource calendar to adjust the work planned for ongoing projects. The cloud ERP SAP Business ByDesign thus provides many functions that make the resource manager’s work easier.
The availability calendar
The availability calendar provides an overview of the work that has been promised for projects in graphic form. The availability calendar makes it very easy to analyze the available resources and to process the promised work. Here you can immediately see which resources are particularly needed or where there is already an overbooking and it is possible to better coordinate the resources. The availability calendar is not only useful for the resource manager. The assigned employees can also use it, for example to see how much time they have already spent on a project.
The resource management business scenario
SAP Business ByDesign provides a business scenario in its cloud ERP with resource management that meets all essential requirements that resource managers who work in companies in the service sector have. For example, there is integrated access to the data of internal employees and the data of external service contract partners. Information on time management as well as skills and availabilities is also available. The resource manager creates an integrated resource database with which he can select the employees with the best suitability and availability.
Edit promised work
The manager searches for resources required for projects SAP Business ByDesign in the Resource Search view. Once resources have been allocated, they can of course be edited again later and across projects. When allocating resources, for example, it is possible to check how many working hours should be allocated to a project. This promised work can also be changed if necessary.
To do this, the manager searches for the resource using the resource search and then selects Edit promised work. A new window opens with information on the start and end of the project and the total number of working hours that have been promised. You can also see which service was used when allocating the resources. After the user has made all changes as desired, he still has to go to Save and Close.
If the user uses the function to search for receipts, he can use the advanced search for this. To do this, he selects the Advanced option in the search. Various search criteria can be defined here, for example in relation to the author, the date of change or the language of the document. Furthermore, the user can enter any keywords here in order to further narrow down the search.
service provider
It is important for buyers and project managers to have comprehensive information on suppliers. Any information relating to the service providers who work for these suppliers is also useful. The service provider view offers ERP in the cloud SAP Business ByDesign all necessary information.
Data on service providers can be created, displayed and updated in the Service Provider view. This includes such essential details as the name of the service provider or the contact person. The user immediately sees which suppliers the service provider works for and which relationships exist with other business partners. The Service Provider view can be accessed via the Business Partner Maintenance, Project Management and Supplier Base work centers.
It is possible to edit the supplier data in the various work centers. This includes address management, for example. With which a change of the postal address and the various communication data is possible.
The duplicate check for business partners is also interesting. This function is useful to track down multiple business partners. Unnecessary data can then be removed from the system. The data hygiene contributes to a more efficient administration of the business partner master data and reduces the effort and the costs.
You can access suppliers via the Business Partner Maintenance, Supplier Base, and Payables work centers. This is always done in the Suppliers view. In the Service Provider view, in turn, the user has access to the data via the Business Partner Maintenance, Supplier Base and Project Management work centers. In both views, the user can find all the suppliers and service providers in the system. The Service Provider view also always shows which supplier the service provider works for.
The resource search in detail
The user can find the resource search in the Resource Management work center. The following functions are available.
If you are looking for employees for a specific project, you are of course interested in existing similar projects and in who is working on them. Using the project number field, it is possible to search for related projects and to display their assigned employees.
In addition, it is easily possible to view all employees or resources with a specific qualification profile. The user enters the desired search terms in the qualification details field. It is also possible to view or search through the attached résumés. To do this, the user enters the desired search terms in the Search systems field.
A function for the determination of all resources of a supplier is also available. To do this, the user enters the name of the supplier in the Supplier field. He can find this in the advanced search. The user proceeds in a similar way if he is interested in all the resources of a particular position. The Job field is available for this in the advanced search. The Earliest Availability field is used to search for resources that are available from a certain date. Finally, the ZIP code field allows the search to be filtered by region.
Working with the availability calendar in detail
As described above, the availability calendar serves as a graphical overview, on the basis of which the resource planner can see which employees are assigned to which projects with which working hours. The functionality of this resource planner is aimed at project managers and superiors in companies. The relevance of the calendar depends on who wants to use it.
Resource manager
When it comes to assessing supply and demand, the availability calendar provides the resource manager with valuable services. He can also fill tasks and determine the required resources. He flexibly adjusts promised work via the resource manager. It is also possible to identify short and medium-term capacity bottlenecks early on. The availability calendar also shows the resource manager how high the utilization of the various resources is and where there is high demand and possible overbooking. The availability calendar allows the resource manager to optimize resource utilization. The resource manager calls the availability calendar in the Resource Search view in the Resource Management work center.
supervisor
The availability calendar is useful for supervisors because they can use it to directly control the workload and availability of the employees who report to them. In addition, the supervisor here again processes the promised work. The manager calls up the availability calendar in the My Area of Responsibility work center under My Team and under My Department.
Project manager
The project manager uses the availability calendar to comprehensively manage his various projects. This relates to the aspects of budget, staffing and resources as well as time frame and quality. The promised work can also be edited here. The project manager calls up the availability calendar in the Projects view in the Project Management work center.
Employee
The employee also uses the availability calendar productively. He can use it to reduce his idle times, for example. He can optimize his own workload by editing the calendar by helping to balance the promised work for future projects. Employees call up the availability calendar in the Project Management work center in the Projects view.
Use the availability calendar for committed work
The availability calendar records the work already done in a project and thus the actual work as well as the work that has been promised in the future. Editing is also possible so that the resources and their allocation can be adapted to the progress of the project. In total, the calendar shows four main data elements to give the user an overview of the promised work.
All committed work
Here the user can see how many hours or days the project has been promised from a certain resource in total.
Scheduled
Here the ERP shows how many project hours are planned in total from the beginning to the end of the project.
Remaining
This is the total agreed work minus the hours already worked. Again, the information relates to a specific project.
To be planned
That is the remaining committed work minus the scheduled committed work. The user can see immediately how many hours he still has to plan in the project. Positive values indicate to the user that the number of hours planned still needs to be increased. If the value is negative, these would have to be reduced. A positive value can result, for example, if employees have previously worked less than planned.
The address management
For every business partner in the cloud ERP SAP Business ByDesign Create, display and edit all data required for communication. In order to add postal address data it is necessary to select a country first as it is a country specific field layout for the postal address. Furthermore, data such as a PO box number and the time zone can be added.
The address management saves the telephone number, the fax number and the e-mail address as well as the web address as communication data, but this is only done for companies. Mobile phone numbers can also be saved for people. In addition, it can be determined which method of contact the user prefers.
It is possible to create several addresses for a business partner, to delete addresses again and to save the customer’s credit card holder addresses for the address verification of the credit card service provider.
The duplicate check in detail
The duplicate check is always available to the user in the Business Partner view if he wants to create a new business partner. The function is also available when creating business partners via Excel. The user selects from the two options automatically and manually. With the automatic check, the program always executes this when the user saves his data. Otherwise, the user has to start the check himself using the Duplicate Check button.
The duplicate check supports a number of search criteria such as the search for the first name, last name and date of birth of the business partner as well as the search for the name of an organization. Street, house number and postcode as well as country and city are taken into account, as are the telephone number, e-mail address and mobile phone number. The duplicate check therefore uses the many different business partner data from address management.
It does not matter whether the data entered is partially incorrect or inaccurate. The duplicate check uses the fuzzy method to avoid such typographical errors or inaccuracies.
After the search is complete, the check determines the probability that two entries are duplicates. In the case of a tough test, the similarity must be at least 85 percent so that the entries are displayed as duplicates. For the medium exam, 80 percent are sufficient and for the weak exam 70 percent.
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If you would like to take your resource management to a new level, we would be happy to help you with the implementation of SAP Business ByDesign . As a SAP partner, Bradler GmbH specializes in SAP Business ByDesign and has many years of experience in the implementation and consulting of Cloud SAP solutions for medium-sized companies. In addition, we offer you tailor-made operational software solutions and support you in the digital transformation of your company. Just talk to us!
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