Upload data from Excel to SAP: 7 best practices
Even with the standardized business processes and centralized data warehouses provided by SAP, much of corporate data still resides in spreadsheets. Taking data in these spreadsheets and putting it into SAP remains one of the thorny challenges facing many corporate IT departments. Many business departments are
wasting resources by manually re-entering this data into SAP while errors are introduced due to manual data entry. Functional and technical analysts in IT departments are inundated with requests from business users to automate the upload of data from Excel to SAP.
o Are you an SAP business user looking to reduce manual data entry for bulk uploads or massive changes to SAP data, especially when the data already exists in Excel?
o Are you an IT technical or functional analyst looking for ways to serve end-user data upload requests more efficiently?
o Are you looking for ways your company can save time and resources managing SAP data?
If you answered “Yes” to any of the above questions, then this article is for you. This article describes 7 Best Practices to Automate Excel Upload
data in SAP. Adoption of these best practices will alleviate much of the pain that business users and IT analysts face when loading data from Excel into SAP.
1. Avoid programming. With the various non-programming options available for connecting Excel and SAP, custom programming in ABAP or VB should be the absolute last resort for ad-hoc data upload from Excel to SAP. Not only programming
expensive and time-consuming, a program that will be used only once or even once a year is particularly wasteful. Also, creating robust programs requires extensive testing, and if a program has not been well tested, it could be dangerous and cause irreparable data damage.
Use a scripting or non-programming approach as much as possible. Tools provided by SAP like BDC, CATT, LSMW and third party tools like Winshuttle’s TxShuttle will allow you to avoid programming to a great extent.
2. Do not upload directly to SAP tables. Although this point is very obvious,
cannot be overstated. Writing directly to SAP tables avoids all data
validation and checks and balances that occur when creating data through the
normal SAP transactions. Therefore, avoid using any method that you write directly in SAP
tables.
Always upload data via pre-configured SAP or BAPI transactions. Again,
the use of tools such as BDC, CATT or LSMW, or TxShuttle will allow the loading of
data through SAP transactions instead of writing directly to SAP tables.
3. Choose a Record, Map and Run strategy. A record, map and execute strategy
usually involves first recording an SAP transaction where the data needs to be
uploaded The registration step is followed by a mapping step where the SAP data
the fields captured during the recording are mapped to the Excel fields. Finally,
the transaction is executed over and over again with the different rows of data in
the Excel file. A Record, Map, and Play strategy is similar to recording and
Run macros to automate routine tasks.
The advantages of choosing a register, map and execute strategy are that (a) it is
very general and can work well for many different loading tasks and many
different SAP transactions, even with custom transactions, (b) it is very easy
and intuitive and saves a lot of time when doing a massive update of data, (c)
is something that even commercial users can do themselves without the need for
lots of IT support.
A record, map and run strategy should be used to load data from Excel
to SAP. Again, SAP provided tools, such as BDC, CATT, and LSMW, all supported
such a strategy and can work for many different charging applications. Tea
The TxShuttle tool greatly simplifies the tasks of mapping and recording maps and
makes it even easier for business users. Also, for applications that require
upload transactional data containing header and line items, such as journal
vouchers, invoices, purchase orders, sales orders, etc., the TxShuttle tool has
features that make it really useful.
4. Choose a safe and SOX-compliant method: Make sure the method you choose
it is secure and preserves SAP role-based security. in these days of
Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) audits, this point cannot be overstated. A key aspect
of article 404 is to verify that the rights and duties are assigned separately to
different individuals so that no one individual has the power to entertain business or
fraudulent transactions. One of the most common open SOX audits
problems is that users in IT departments have very broad access to production
data in SAP. Therefore, to facilitate SOX compliance, any bulk changes or uploads
Ideally, this should be done by business users who are already authorized to
Make the change.
To allow business users to upload via SAP
transaction-based tools, they would need additional authorizations to use these
tools. If your company is unable to provide such authorizations, the use of
Winshuttle’s TxShuttle product may be more appropriate since you live abroad
the central SAP system and usually does not require additional authorizations.
5. Keep data in native Excel format. If the data to load remains in
Excel’s native format, rather than being converted to comma-delimited format or
tab-delimited text file formats, makes the upload process much simpler. One
Less step for users to worry about.
Using Winshuttle’s TxShuttle product allows users to keep their data
in native Excel format.
6. Select an outside-in approach: The two approaches to bring in external data
in SAP are: (a) an inside-out approach where the data import tools live inside
SAP are used to bring external data into SAP, and (b) an outside-in approach
where tools that live outside of SAP are used to bring external data into SAP. Year
the inside out approach usually requires all data import scripts and programs
to live within SAP and therefore need to be maintained as SAP versions are
updated, even when the scripts are single use. Therefore, these single-use products
scripts clutter the SAP system when using the inside-out approach. an outside in
approach offers a cleaner alternative that can be used with existing user
security profiles.
The announcement of the joint product of Microsoft and SAP, Mendocinno,
recently validated the importance that both companies give to an outside-in
getting closer. Other add-on products, like TxShuttle, also take an outside-in approach.
approach to connect to SAP.
7. Empower Business Users: On a final note, one of the best practices in
uploading data from excel to SAP is empowering business users to do the upload
themselves. Choosing the right tool for business users who
allowing them to easily load data without programming will be a
long way to free up IT resources for more mission-critical applications.
Allowing business users to take control of their own data also makes SOX compliance
easier.
An easy-to-use product like Winshuttle’s TxShuttle that will allow businesses
users upload their own data from Excel to SAP allows the empowerment of these
commercial users.
In short, here are the best practices for uploading data from Excel to SAP
involves choosing non-programmatic and user-friendly approaches, and this will allow
your company to save vast amounts of time and resources in the day-to-day running of SAP data
management.
To learn more about SAP tools, BDC, CATT, and LSMW, visit
http://www.sap.com.
To learn more about Winshuttle’s TxShuttle tool, visit
http://www.winshuttle.com.
On this site, you can download a FREE WHITE PAPER
describing this problem and how the TxShuttle tool works on
upload data from excel to sap
You can also download a FREE 15-day trial version of TxShuttle software to connect SAP and
Standing out.