However, many small and big corporations are still using Excel Worksheets to store their corporate data. It takes so much time, energy and resources for these IT personnel to manually input the data into SAP. Manual re-entry causes errors that can cause inconvenience and inaccurate reports for those who will need the information. The operations and administrative personnel of these IT departments are constantly bombarded by requests from the other departments to upload their own Excel spreadsheets into SAP.

This article will discuss the automation processes of uploading Excel worksheets into SAP. This will benefit IT specialists who are required to do the following tasks: to stop or at least reduce the manual entry of data during upload sessions to SAP, to look for more effective and faster means to provide data to users, and to help the company save resources when using SAP as the central data management system.

Tip No. 1: There is no need for programming. This can only mean more expense for the company especially if you are only going to use the software once a year. One can opt to use these SAP-provided tools: CATT, BDC, LSMW or third-party software tools like Winshuttle’s TxShuttle.

Tip No. 2: Spreadsheets should not be uploaded directly into existing SAP tables. You can use the above-mentioned SAP tools and Winshuttle instead. Uploading directly to SAP tables negates all the validation processes when you create data during everyday SAP transactions.

Tip No.3: Use the record-map-run strategy. This three-step method is your guide to uploading Excel spreadsheet data into SAP. Using the same tools mentioned in tip number one will make this strategy work. First, a recording will occur during a SAP transaction wherein data will be uploaded into the system. Next, a mapping step will happen wherein all the SAP data fields are mapped into specific and corresponding Excel fields. Then, the system will run all the needed processes to transfer the data needed to be uploaded.

Tip No. 4: Always have a check and balance method so that the company will provide specific access rights to different employees instead of having only one IT specialist maintaining all SAP transactions.

Tip No. 5: Keep your information in basic Microsoft Excel format. This will make the upload process faster and simpler. Again, you can use Winshuttle’s TxShuttle.

Tip No. 6: Use the outside-in approach wherein the tools not included by SAP are used to bring in outside information into the system rather than the other way around.

Tip No. 7: Provide adequate training to all frequent users of SAP. These users should be able to know how to do the uploading by themselves without any assistance from the IT department. This will enable the IT personnel to be more efficient in their various roles and responsibilities. SAP also has SDN which means SAP Developer Network. This is the online community for SAP users and developers. They have forums and sharing portals wherein they can discuss and share various information, techniques and basically tricks and tips that are needed by using SAP anywhere in the world.

For small and medium enterprises, SAP Business One is the recommended software for important resource planning. With larger enterprises, there is SAP NetWeaver Business Warehouse. The users will benefit from the informative search features in this system.

Lastly, for those companies in need of specially designed reports for frequent use, there is such a thing as Crystal Reports. Crystal Reports is a powerful software that has interactive reports that can be connected to any data source. This software includes Xcelsius Engage which is helpful for those who require forecasting-based information.

Business Scenario: A company has a set of loans which it needs to have evaluated by a third party. The company has 1000 loan records in their database. They have received back 975 records. The goal is to research the returned loan population from the third party evaluation company.

Individual SQL Count Query: It will be important to document how many loans are in each data population. In this business scenario, the original population results in 1000 loans and the returned population has 975 loans.

Individual SQL Count Query Example:

select count(loan_num) from original_loan_pop

select count(loan_num) from returned_loan_pop

SQL Straight Join Query: This business related query checks to see which records are in both populations. In the business scenario, the query returns 970 records. This means of the 1000 loans sent to be evaluated, only 970 loans were sent back correctly from the original population.

SQL Straight Join Query Example:

SQL Left Join Query with Criteria: This query looks to see which loans are in the original table, but are not in the returned table. The query in this example returns 30 loans.  This mean of the 1000 loans sent to be evaluated, 30 loans from the original population were not included.

SQL Left Join Query Example:

SQL Right Join Query with Criteria: This query looks to see which loans are in the returned table table, but are not in the original table. The query in this example returns 5 loans.  The results of this query mean the company who provided back the evaluated loan information some how added 5 loans that were not even included in the original 100o loan data set.

SQL Right Join Query Example:

Final Results and Findings: Based on the results of the data analysis above, a data analyst or business analysis could conclude that the data returned by the loan evaluation company is incomplete with data inconsistencies. Of the original 1000 loans only 970 were returned correctly, with 30 loans missing. More concerning, there were 5 loans returned which did not even exist in the companies original loan set.