SAP-Centric Projects

Level 3 - Contractors & Vendors

Finally, there is a whole critical set of interaction with the project that may be out of the direct control of either the program owner or project owner. Often (sub-) contractors will perform the work, sometimes even with them keeping the complete responsibility for a whole branch of hierarchically structured work breakdown structure. Likewise, suppliers may need to deliver key pieces of equipment may need to deliver semi-finished or finished products at a specific time.  

In either case there will be schedules and feedback for forecasting and actual confirmations on that level that need to be considered in the master schedule. This may not be a trivial task, particularly if the program owner exerts overall project control using SAP while leaving it up to the General Contractors to use the tool of their choice.  At that point three different systems and viewpoints are in play, and inefficiencies easily can compound.  

In an ideal world, time planned on the enterprise level would be turned into milestones on the project level and then being translated into detailed work papers for contractors or delivery times for suppliers of equipment. In a next step then the entering of actual time by a contractor should automatically be reconciled between the SAP purchasing system and the project owner's scheduling and earned-value analysis system. No duplicate records and reconciliations should be needed.