SAP Center of Excellence

SAP Change Management | SAP CoE Framework | SAP CoE Leadership | SAP CoE Team Structure | SAP Learning Organization

What is SAP COE?

Centers of Excellence provide business and application expertise to support the effective daily operations and improvement of different business or IT functions. The SAP Center of Excellence (COE) focuses on these tasks for SAP systems and solutions in place at an organization. They provide functions such as implementing new SAP systems, designing new processes, optimizing existing processes, managing projects, providing user support and training, and keeping the SAP landscape running 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

What is SAP COE?

Some of the benefits that a SAP COE offers include: a repository of SAP deployment best practices; a central point-of-contact for all SAP-related matters; a place where strong competencies can be developed; a means to enhance the value of SAP solutions; improved SAP personnel retention; and improved service levels. While there is an investment involved in creating a SAP COE, with many organizations running dozens or hundreds of SAP systems there can be a significant organizational benefit to setting up a COE.

Key Considerations for SAPinsiders:

Building a successful COE requires planning and investment, both financial and from a resource perspective. According to David Jantzen and Dan Haynes of Deloitte, some of the key steps to setting up a successful SAP COE include: ensuring appropriate leadership, defining how the organization will work, building tight relationships with business and IT teams, and defining appropriate metrics.
You can boost the success of your SAP COE by developing and defining the right metrics. Many organizations view their SAP COE as little more than a support organization. However, given the value of SAP systems and the resources invested in the COE itself, this limits the overall value the team can provide. By developing the right metrics it is possible to transform the COE from a support team to a key part of the business. In this article SAPinsider spoke with Ken Grady of Novartis how they appropriately defined metrics to help transform their SAP COE into a valuable part of the business.

- SAP Leonardo
Revolutionizing the Innovation Experience: SAP Leonardo Experience Centers

Published: 31/July/2019

Reading time: 8 mins

Discover the SAP Leonardo Experience Centers — state-of-the-art centers intentionally designed to help customers rethink and reimagine their business stories, from the outside-in, and innovate on behalf of their customers and employees. With the flagship experience center now open in Walldorf, Germany, and the next location set to open in Tokyo, Japan, in Q3 2019,…
Profit Center Accounting – Track Internal Revenue and Costs Using Transfer Pricing

Published: 15/November/2003

Reading time: 15 mins

Profit Center Accounting: Track internal revenue and costs using transfer pricing. I’ve been hearing a lot about this question: “What are the possible ways to record the internal sales for an organization?” Let’s say you are required to track the profitability of a certain product. However, the product is sold as a consumption material to…...…
A Hidden Process in the Routing Helps Assign Activities from Multiple Cost Centers to One Operation

Published: 15/June/2003

Reading time: 14 mins

Using the example of a quality control process in a fertilizer factory, the author shows how to use business processes in recipes to map activities from different cost centers to one operation. The method also applies for mapping multiple costs center to a network activity if you are using the R/3 Project System module. Have…...…
Optimize BW’s Data Modeling Capabilities with BPS

Published: 01/April/2006

Reading time: 18 mins

Make the jump from reporting in BW to planning and data modeling using BW’s Business Planning and Simulation (BW-BPS). See how the InfoCubes, attributes, calculated key figures, and dimensions for planning differ from those you use in reporting. Get valuable tips about properly structuring your planning InfoCubes. Key Concept A characteristic is an object that…...…
A Step-by-Step Setup Guide to SAP Solution Manager Adapter for SAP Quality Center by HP: Part 1

Published: 25/February/2010

Reading time: 11 mins

ManagerIn this first half of a two-part series, learn how to begin the setup of SAP Solution Manager Adapter for SAP Quality Center by HP. See how you can prepare and meet the requirements for connecting the two systems. Key Concept Preparing for the integration between SAP Solution Manager and SAP Quality Center by HP…...…
6 Tips for Improving Reporting Governance

Published: 24/September/2009

Reading time: 12 mins

Make sure your reporting is accurate by following these six surefire tips for reporting governance. Key Concept The term SAP reports can be rather confusing because in SAP lingo, the term “reports” is applied in general to SAP programs. The context of this article is the traditional understanding of this term — an application or…...…
In-House Cash Center Manages Payment Processes

Published: 15/May/2004

Reading time: 13 mins

For many global companies, it makes sense to reduce overhead by consolidating their payment processes. SAP users can accomplish this by using the In-House Cash (IHC) component. The author describes the capabilities and configuration of the IHC. Many global companies face the challenge of reducing the cost and number of intra-group and external payments. One…...…
Enhancement Package 5 Includes Fixed Asset Segment Reporting Improvements

Published: 17/May/2010

Reading time: 9 mins

New features in enhancement package 5 change the way you report fixed assets. Walk through some of these features and see how they’ll affect you. Key Concept SAP ERP 6.0 enhancement package 5 includes new functionality in the Asset Accounting (FI-AA) area related to reorganization capabilities. SAP has extended the account assignment options to include…...…
- SAP S/4HANA
Technical Guide: Using Flexible Hierarchies in SAP S/4HANA 1709

Published: 14/May/2018

Reading time: 7 mins

Maintaining hierarchies for cost centers and profit centers is always a challenging task for large enterprises that have thousands of such centers. Every change in the attribute definition can involve a huge amount of maintenance for hierarchies, and there is the chance of missing updates. Adding new attributes to cost center and profit center master…
Custom Developments for FERC-Compliant Financials Reporting Using SAP HANA and SAP EPM 10

Published: 08/May/2014

Reading time: 31 mins

Financials Follow the stages of the development of a real-life custom solution developed for financial reporting within the oil and mining, utilities, and electric and gas distribution industry in the United States. Compare this improved solution with the same processes executed in SAP ERP Central Component (ECC) Managerial Accounting (CO) and Financial Accounting (FI) modules…....…