SAP-Centric Projects

What does Sales and Distribution (SD) functionality have to do with the management of enterprise projects? It does for more companies than may seem obvious at a first glance. For contractors using their own SAP system to manage and deliver capital investment projects the SD module is where the billable deliverables of their projects are defined. The same is true for everybody who uses the SAP project system (PS) to manage the make-to-order production of complex products, whether they are powerplants, aircraft parts, or the concrete bridges.  

SAP has functionality that allows to tie reference (template) project structures to product codes so that at the time of sales order creation the setup of a project structure can automatically be triggered. This does then link SD and PS seamlessly, at least on a high level. As the project progresses, milestone billing set up in SAP-PS can then trigger payments in SD, which again results in revenue postings in the SAP financial accounting module (FI).  

There are a number of other reasons where SD can interact with projects managedf in SAP. Mostly, however, it does so only when you take a comprehensive look at the overall process, trying to ensure full integration. Not doing so may lead to inconsistencies between what sales people or customer relationship personnel sees in SD and the actual status of the delivery of products. One may just consider a situation where SD data from a suppliers' system needs to be tied into a project master schedule managed by a general contractor. To overcome the latter it is helpful to mirror and match purchase orders and sales orders between supplier and customer, also in line with the way the general project is managed.