With almost 100 live customers, and many implementation projects ongoing, SAP Supply Network Collaboration (SAP SNC) has achieved considerable acceptance in the market and is still gaining momentum. Since the solution's birth as Inventory Collaboration Hub (ICH) 4.0 back in 2003, SAP Germany's Consulting unit has been in the front line when it came to supporting our customers with SNC implementations and rollouts.

Building upon this multi-year experience, SAP Germany's consulting unit has developed a set of SNC consulting services which cover all areas, from business assessments to full-fledged implementations and custom developments. The unit's dedicated team of SNC expert consultants has successfully mastered SNC projects in all major industries, can help avoid typical pitfalls, and knows the solution's strengths and weaknesses very well  - that's why all of the below consulting services are available globally as attractive fixed-price packages. Read on to learn more about the portfolio.

SNC Consulting Services Overview

Complete Execution Services

An experienced team of consultants can make the difference when it comes to a SAP implementation project. With the consulting service SNC01 Introduction to supplier collaboration with SAP Supply Network Collaboration, experts support you through all phases of the project: Blueprinting, Installation, Setup, Testing, and Go-Live. Many customers appreciate the security to go live at a fixed budget.

If time-to-go-live is critical or if a SNC prototype should be built first, parts of the system landscape (PI and/or SNC, for example) can be temporarily hosted by SAP. Settings from the hosted systems can later be transferred into the customer's landscape (SNC04 Ramp-up Application Hosting).

Expert Guidance Services

PLAN phase

Getting good advice in the discovery phase is crucial - SNC is not always the best solution to address customer pain points in the procurement area. SNC03 Elevator Pitch "Supplier Collaboration" tries to discover areas of potential improvement through supplier collaboration. The customer's processes in the procurement area are analyzed and clustered. We help decide which SAP solution (SNC, SRM, consulting solutions) can reap the biggest improvements in which process.

SNC02 "Supplier Collaboration Excellence" goes one level more into the detail. The as-is processes at the customer are analyzed and transformed into more collaborative to-be processes. Based on the findings of a business case, a clear roadmap is developed both from a business and from an IT solution perspective. Regular coaching meetings and follow-ups ensure that the customer stays on track with his efforts to improve procurement activities.

Processes in outsourced manufacturing tend to be more complex than ordinary procurement. However, global trends force more and more companies into outsourced manufacturing relationships. Therefore, SNC12 Readiness Check - Outsourced Manufacturing has a special focus on this topic and helps identify the to-be processes and to-be solution landscape. A coaching approach is included to make sure the defined roadmap is acted upon.

The perfect companion for these PLAN services is SNC00 Rapid SCM-SNC Footprinting. Discussing a potential solution is much easier with the software in front of the group - allowing everybody to experience how SNC acts in connection with the customer's ERP system and master data is priceless. Not priceless, but really affordable, is a prototype with our SNC00 consulting service - for many standard SNC processes, we managed to squeeze the setup time (excluding installation) into just one week!

BUILD and RUN phases

In many SNC implementation projects, our customers identify gaps or missing features in SAP SNC. Not surprisingly, different customers identify the same gaps from time to time... That's why the "most popular" developments by SAP Germany's SNC experts are available pre-packaged at a fixed price tag for the advantage of our customers. These consulting solutions include:

• SNC05 Supplier Backend Integration brings support for a fully backend-integrated SMI scenario to ICH4.1, ICH5.0, and SNC5.1 (SNC7.0 has this in standard). That is, the supplier receives customer stock and demand figures, as well as the min/max values. He can send his planned receipts back from his own backend system.
• SNC07 Expert Solutions consists of an entire catalogue of smaller developments. New key figures in the planning grid, new fields and buttons, new figures in purchasing documents, new alert types - all can be done with surprisingly low effort.
• SNC08 Custom Solution Development and Maintenance is for those customers who do not find what they need in SNC standard or in our consulting solution portfolio.
• SNC13 Returns Management brings a bit more of the real world into SAP SNC. All standard SNC processes end with the successful goods receipt at the customer site - return deliveries and goods receipt cancellations are not considered. SNC13 adds real-time support for those events to SNC, alerting the supplier of the incidents and adjusting the ASN status appropriately.

Looking at integration possibilities, SNC offers a wealth of SAP systems it can be integrated with. Two common integration scenarios are available as a consulting solution.

• SNC06 Portal Enablement for Supplier Collaboration intends to set up the Netweaver Portal as an umbrella for different supplier collaboration solutions. Be it SNC, BW, SRM, or even ITS transactions - the portal serves as a single entry point for a company's suppliers.
• SNC11 SNC & cFolders brings collaboration on documents, bill-of-materials, and drawings from cFolders into the SNC supplier collaboration scenarios. Both standard-delivered integration and custom-specific integration can be part of this service.

Summary and Contacts

As can be seen from the above overview, SAP Consulting offers a broad range of consulting services around SAP Supply Network Collaboration. Our multi-year expertise in the SNC area allows us to offer the service packages at a fixed price, providing our customers with budget security and the benefits of "economies of scale".

The SAP Consulting Services SDN Wiki page offers more detailed descriptions of our consulting services. If you are interested to learn more about our services, please get in touch with the author directly or write to one of the contacts mentioned in OSS note 1000565.