SAP-Mass data update

An occasional task was to change percentages in hundreds to thousands of SAP purchasing records. Manually, with the care required for each item, this took around 2 minutes per record. A mass upload was available, but the data structure available in the download could not be easily used in the SAP context. The export output different numbers of lines (sometimes one, sometimes two, three or even seven lines per article), making it difficult to understand the context of the data in Excel.

The situation in these two images used does not correspond to the actual situation, as no screenshots were archived. However, the situation was completely comparable, as shown in the first image.

To solve this problem, formulas were developed that processed the line context. In a first phase, the relevant user data was located in unstructured free text fields (as shown in the red frames of the images). Suitable formulas were used to visualize the row relationships and transform them into clear structures. In the second step, the user data was inserted into dedicated number fields, allowing changes such as a discount increase from 2% to 3% for all thousand data records to be implemented in one go.

With this solution, the originally time-consuming procedure, which would have taken hours, could be carried out reliably in just 5 minutes. The export to a suitable upload format was only a minor formality.