Forms and SAP Implementation

Having worked on numerous SAP implementations I’ve seen this story repeating over and over – forms putting go live at risk. Check out my key learnings and things to consider early in the project to avoid surprises.

Forms for obvious reasons are low priority items at the start of a project and before you know it you would be toward the end of project and forms are still not ready putting all hard work at risk. Even when you have the best project plan to deliver forms on time you might struggle with the form if you overlook below points.

Template it

Create template document with the correct header, footer, logo and margins for each page size and orientation.

Companies, usually, will have the header, footer, font, font size, colour scheme, margins defined for outputs. Gather this information, put it in the document and make it known and available to all developers. Even when a company does not have these defined, you should get this agreed and document before starting work on forms.

Estimate

Management will like to get a number (of days) to finish development for planning purpose. If you underestimate the task, irrespective of its form or not, you have already put the project at risk.

Before you estimate consider the following:

We are where we are…

Know where you are. Look at the SAP standard output then look at the output clients like to be. Insist on getting output from the client. Show them SAP standard output they might like it (oh yeah – like that will happen) and you are just left with changing the logo (Seriously–this is never going to happen).

Look Beyond the Horizon

Outputs are usually multi-page documents. At the start of project consultants usually create one line sales order and prints the output. No, never do that. For every output, create a document complex enough to print beyond the first page. This will give you a better understanding of where you are.

Page size

Page size in forms is static. If you are implementing in UK and US you will have to create two versions of forms one with page size A4 and other with page size letter. Unless you are going to use S4 HANA Output Management.

Some of the options you can consider are:

Design content area of A4 in such way that when printed on the Letter sized paper it would still be ok. This way you can just have one form and it can be printed ok on both A4 and Letter sized paper.

If you place an A4- and Letter-sized paper one atop the other, with their top left-hand corners touching, the differences between the two sheets is obvious: Letter is wider than A4; A4 is longer than Letter. So, for a design or layout to fit safely on both sheet sizes it must be no wider than A4 and no longer than Letter.

Taken from blog Between Borders

If you are implementing greenfield S4 HANA, you can dodge this bullet by using SAP OM.

Language

Translating forms in other than original language would require extra effort.

Alignment

Alignment takes considerable time. It can range from mins to days.

In case form designed for a preprinted stationary it tricky business when the developer is working remotely. I would recommend focusing on getting information on form first, leave alignment of content for later. When ready, train someone who in the vicinity of the printer to use Adobe LiveCycle Designer and adjust the coordinated of elements.

Form Development and Developer

Form development is challenging work. Get the right mix of experienced and not so experienced developer in the team as you would do with any other SAP projects.

Cut the Middleman

You need to trust your form developer(s) and let them collaborate with end-users directly or at least reduce the number of middleman to absolutely minimum.

Prioritise

There will customer-facing outputs (Sales order, invoice, customer statements) and internally used outputs (picklist e.g.). Know these beforehand. You will run into nagging issues later, knowing these will help you priorities issues.

Scope Creep

As with any development remember to revisit the estimate when the requirement changes.

With forms, a small, seemingly harmless change could snowball.

Closing note…

If you are consultant involved with form development projects you would probably agree with most points here. I bet there would be more things which we should be looking at toward the start of the project, if you do have such points please leave a friendly comment.