The functional view
Currently within many organizations, many process maps are created based on the hierarchical functional view of the business areas like Sales, Procurement and Finance.
These process map can be used for the synchronization towards SAP Solution Manager (SSM) to create a functional decomposition within the SSM blueprint structure.
This works fine if you have only have one scenario (like standard order) but gets difficult if you want to include other scenarios (like third party order, consignment order).
If you want to include these other scenarios within the SAP solution manager you get multiple entries for the same process within the blueprint structure of the SAP solution manager.
This can be resolved by using the shortcut functionality, but still you end up with multiple entries for the same process within the SAP solution manager.
Another way to resolve this issue is to create a PSD (Process Selection Diagram) which enables you to map scenarios against required processes. In this way you get only one occurrence for every process within SAP Solution Manager.
You also get an overview of all the scenarios within your business area, which helps you to control the scope of the scenarios and processes.
The business View
An E2E business scenario has a starting event (e.g. a customer calls) and go through the different business areas (Sales, Production, Purchasing, Finance) until the customer gets the required product or service.
Therefore an E2E business scenario uses multiple scenarios and processes (Sales, Purchasing) from different business areas across the whole organization.
The E2E business scenario map can help you to get an overview of all the business scenarios within a specific business group.
Within every business scenario you can include the organizational units which gives you an overview of the hand-over points within a specific business group.
Functional testing versus E2E business testing
The functional test within the SAP SSM test workbench, SAP TAO or HP QC are mostly based on the functional decomposition (similar as SAP BPR (Business Process Repository)).
These functional tests concentrate on the testing of the SAP functionality and are mostly performed by the SAP consultants and sometimes by the business key-users.
The E2E business scenario testing is more appealing to the business key-users, because the E2E business scenarios reflects the actual way of working within the business groups.
The ARIS E2E test scenario composer can be used to create integrated E2E business test cases, which are based on the actual E2E business scenarios. These E2E test cases can be used for integration, acceptance and regression testing.
During the E2E business scenario testing all possible business issues can be addressed and the E2E business scenarios can be updated based on the input from all the key-users.
The mapping of the products and services to the scenarios
Not many companies make a mapping between the products and services a company sells, to the scenarios required to do so. In my opinion this mapping is essential to:
- Get an overview of all products and services sold by the business groups and identify the differences between the business groups.
- Identify whether the all business scenarios are captured within the E2E business scenario map and create a better understanding of the utilization of the business scenarios.
- Start the interaction with the product management department and create an awareness of the business scenarios within the E2E business scenario map.
- Makes sure that the ICT department gets a better understanding of the business priorities related to the business scenarios and this enables the ICT department to better facilitate the business groups.
Therefore a corporate process model should always include the mapping of the products & services to the scenarios, as a final check that all processes are captured and accepted by the business groups. Which is essential to make sure that business and ICT alignment actually works.
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