DOCUMENT OUTPUT

Document Solutions for International Business

Many SAP customers need special help planning and implementing solutions within SAP R/3 for document development, processing, and output. ERP Business Service Allgäu (ERP) can help with a single engagement for a specific tactical need or a full solution for internationalized business practices. Heiko Schultz is our specialist in both areas.

International Business and Technical Experience Required

Heiko, schooled in Germany, received his early SAP training in college, but his first applied experience came while working for Anderson Consulting in Europe. There he learned how to develop the documents that support international business practices for major corporations. He also became proficient in ABAP code development for multiple SAP modules. In today’s international markets, those skills have proven to be more valuable than he imagined at the time.

When a U.S. company starts doing business in Europe, it has to create a set of cross-border documents to satisfy particular legal requirements. All of the documents have to be available, and they have to be accurate. „Here, the details are critical, and if international business documents aren’t done right, you run into many, many problems, for example, shipments being returned at the border, or horrendous fines imposed by the government,“ says Heiko.

Worldwide document support for conducting international business requires dozens of forms, including purchase orders, picking lists, packing lists, invoices, CMRs and customs documents.

Heiko has plenty of experience in international document development for SAP systems across seven languages. „The Canadian French are different than the French French, who are different than the Belgian French. Even Germany, Italy, France and Spain all have different, but important ways of doing business.“

Heiko is a specialist in helping corporations adapt their SAP systems to successfully meet the legal, financial, and business process differences for each country.

SAP is quite powerful, but it presents customers with critical decision paths that have major business and technical implications, such as how your documentation is organized and produced. For example, do you want to print out documents locally and send them to your customer or print them remotely at a document center? How do you handle increasing data volume over the Internet? And how is email handled in the SAP system?

„One of the best things SAP customers can do is to start thinking about document planning early in the implementation process.“ says Heiko. „The sooner you start, the better.“

Taking Owens Corning International via SAP

Heiko has completed two one-year engagements with Owens Corning and is starting his third.

Owens Corning, the company that invented glass fiber, is the world leader in advanced glass and building material systems. They have a strong presence in highly competitive international markets, and they depend on their SAP implementation for much of their data flow.

As an ERP client, Owens Corning takes full advantage of Heiko’s international business knowledge and his technical skills, especially in ABAP programming for SAP modules.

Heiko applied his experience with similar client implementations to guide Owens Corning through many of the choices involved in integrating multiple vendor contributions to the system. With Heiko’s help, Owens Corning employed Xerox services and third-party software, such as JetForm, to set up centralized document centers to handle printing and faxing. In parallel, Heiko and a team of two other ERP consultants developed the SAP infrastructure for document output.

„The biggest challenge was ensuring consistency across multiple media forms,“ says Heiko. „The printed and faxed document forms have to match up to the electronic data interchange (EDI) system. Consistency and accuracy are essential, or something will go wrong across an international border.“

Call Us for Immediate Expert SAP Help

If you’re considering an SAP implementation of any size, call ERP and expect complete satisfaction from experienced consultants.

Other SE&C document solution clients include Hochland, Chevron and Rodenstock .

ERP provides the most seasoned SAP R/3 consultants and the most efficient recruiting process in the business.