Optimize SAP^® Business Warehouse Job Monitoring with Control-M

Business processes, jobs, and workflows are all interconnected, and the volume of data they handle and the complexity of those processes continue to increase. In this ever-expanding ecosystem, SAP^® enterprise resource planning (ERP) and other SAP solutions are constantly bombarded with incoming and outgoing traffic, Application Link Enabling (ALE), Business Application Programming Interface (BAPI), or just incoming Intermediate Documents (IDocs) or workflows with numerous items. Amid all of this, effective and proper monitoring of SAP Business Warehouse (SAP BW) systems and their integrations becomes essential for managing business operations, ensuring business continuity, and avoiding costly disruptions and failures that can have far-reaching consequences.

Job monitoring challenges

SAP BW comes with its own built-in job monitoring layer controlled by transaction code (T-code) RSMO and is connected to various source systems via source system configuration. Overall visibility can be impacted when SAP BW is interfaced with multiple non-SAP source systems. Job interception, job scheduling, and job monitoring can be problematic due to the complex SAP landscape. Without visibility across the enterprise, failures can go unnoticed, and IT teams will often need to invest significant manual effort and time to identify and untangle the dependencies to understand the underlying problem. BMC Helix Control-M and Control-M can be coupled with SAP BW tools to provide the most holistic view of all SAP BW processes and manage all job interdependencies.

The most common challenge occurs when jobs are not effectively monitored and subsequently fail. Fixing these jobs costs organizations resources, causes disruption to business processes, and likely makes certain data and reports unavailable since the fix is happening during business hours and not as a nightly refresh. In this case, delivering timely service level agreements (SLAs) becomes risky at best.
Control-M, alongside SAP BW tools, provides peace of mind by delivering total visibility around the clock.

Multiple steps in data monitoring challenges

1. SAP BW time selection challenges
   1. SAP BW GUI does not provide graphical time selection.
   2. Multiple systems involved.
   3. System-specific, only providing monitoring of specific BW systems—requires multiple BW systems to log in.
   4. Does not provide a 360-degree view.
2. SAP BW data monitoring selections challenges
   1. There may be a lengthy learning curve for users to master the GUI, making it challenging to perform their tasks efficiently and effectively.
   2. Requires knowledge of SAP metadata.
   3. Requires SAP BW skills.
   4. Requires high SAP BW job monitoring skills.
3. SAP BW execute challenges
   1. Any time “Execute” is executed, it only brings data for a specific source system.
   2. Lack of total enterprise visibility.
   3. System-specific logs—every time the RSMON T-code is called, a user must specify the source system to check its monitor logs.
   4. Logs for each system need to be monitored.
   5. System-specific silos—users must go to each source system to see the logs, creating a silo scenario, since all logs are not available. Users are also required to drill down to get to the desired outcome.
   6. Managing multiple systems without visibility into job statuses makes checking the status of jobs a time-consuming task.
   7. Expert RSMON T-code knowledge is required to monitor incoming and outgoing data packets.

Control-M benefits for SAP BW job monitoring

SAP BW is a system connected to multiple source systems, with inbound and outbound data and processes flowing constantly, so robust monitoring is needed. This is especially true in situations where heavy upstream or downstream activity is taking place.

Control-M monitoring and orchestration tools work in concert with SAP BW tools across the SAP BW landscape to provide a complete, 360-degree job, process, and monitoring layer that can help companies run and monitor their business processes effectively with fewer failures and bottlenecks. Control-M for SAP^® creates and manages SAP ECC, SAP S/4HANA^®, SAP BW, and data archiving jobs, and supports any applications in the SAP ecosystem, eliminating time, complexity, and any specialized knowledge requirements—while securely managing the dependencies and silos between SAP and non-SAP systems.

Control-M provides deep integration with and broad visibility for SAP BW monitoring through a single, powerful monitoring solution, resolving all cross-application, cross-platform data process monitoring challenges. Control-M enables total visibility of the data pipeline at every stage, while also providing timely SLAs for all processes and systems. All job monitoring can be streamlined and automated with Control-M, saving time and money for companies when those critical jobs fail. Error handling and message logging capabilities are implemented in the extract, transform, and load (ETL) process and controlled by Control-M. Finally, failed processes can be restarted with Control-M after data is corrected at the source.

Conclusion

Control-M is a robust application and data workflow orchestration platform that, when paired with SAP BW tools, offers various capabilities for monitoring and orchestrating jobs and processes across platforms. It provides a single dashboard from which all jobs and processes can be effectively monitored, delivering complete visibility across the data pipeline at every stage.

Control-M’s advanced job scheduling features enable you to schedule tasks across various platforms and applications, and hybrid and multi-cloud environments. The solution also provides real-time monitoring of job execution, giving you insights into the health and performance of critical processes.

Overall, Control-M’s comprehensive features and capabilities can help you optimize processes, enhance efficiency, and ensure reliable data pipelines. Learn how Control-M optimizes your SAP BW ecosystem, ensures business continuity, and mitigates the risk of disruptions that could impact your operations and budget at bmc.com/sap.

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These postings are my own and do not necessarily represent BMC's position, strategies, or opinion.

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