Colgate-Palmolive Co.

has begun using SAP's Advanced Planning and Optimizer applications, making the $9 billion consumer packaged goods manufacturer the first company to implement SAP's supply-chain management software. The adoption of APO is Colgate-Palmolive's latest step in leveraging SAP software to integrate its global manufacturing and distribution operations: 77% of the company's sales are outside North America. "Our manufacturing and distribution model is changing. We're doing more regional and even global manufacturing," says Ed Toben, global information technology VP at the company. Colgate-Palmolive has implemented APO's supply network planning, transportation load builder, forecasting, and vendor-managed inventory (VMI) modules on a limited basis. The supply network planning system, for example, is installed at a Kansas City, Mo., plant that makes soap, while the VMI software, which lets Colgate-Palmolive manage its inventory at customer sites, has been installed in about a dozen Kmart Corp. distribution facilities. By mid July, Colgate-Palmolive intends to implement these modules in all of its North American manufacturing and distribution facilities and to have the VMI software installed in nearly 70 customer facilities, which account for half of the company's sales volume. Later this year and next, Colgate-Palmolive plans to install the production planning, detailed scheduling, and demand planning APO modules. Plans are also in the works to implement SAP's Focus sales and service applications and Business Information Warehouse data warehouse software. Colgate-Palmolive is counting on APO to further the operating efficiencies it has realized since the company began using SAP's R/3 enterprise resource planning system in 1993, Toben says. That system has helped Colgate-Palmolive reduce its finished inventory by half, while cutting order receipt-to-delivery time for its 50 top customers from 12 days to five, Toben says. The APO system replaces supply-chain software from Manugistics Inc. Says Toben, "What was very important to us is the integration" of APO with R/3.

Leveraging Information technology HUL customers are serviced on continuous replenishment. This is possible because of IT connectivity across the extended supply chain of about 2000 suppliers, 19 factories,51 depots and 7,000 stockiest. This sophisticated network with its voice and data communication facilities has linked more than 200 locations all over the country, including the head office, branch offices, factories, depots and then key redistribution stockiest. They have also combined backend processes into a common Shared Service infrastructure, which supports the units across the country. All these initiatives together have 10 enhanced operational efficiencies, improved the service to the customers and have brought us closer to the marketplace. The RSNET: The RS Net initiative, launched in 2001, aims at connecting Redistribution Stockists(RSs) through an internet based system. It now covers stockiest of the Home & Personal Care business And Foods & Beverages in close to 1200 towns and cities. Together they account for about 80% of the company's turnover. RS Net is one of the largest B2B e-commerce initiatives ever undertaken in India. It provides linkages with the RSs own transaction systems, enables monitoring of stocks and secondary sales and optimizes RSs orders & inventories on a daily basis through online interaction of orders, dispatches, information sharing and monitoring. The IT powered system has been implemented to supply stocks to redistribution stockiest on a continuous replenishment basis. Today, the sales system gets to know every day what HUL stockists have sold to almost a million outlets across the country. Information on secondary sales is now available on RS Net every day.RS Net is part of Project Leap. Project Leap begins with the supplier runs through the factories and depots and reaches up to the RSs. This ensures HULs growth by ensuring that the right product is available at the right place in the right quantities and at the right time in the most cost effective manner. Leap also aims at reducing inventories and improving efficiencies right through the extended supply chain. RS Net has come as a force multiplier for HUL Way, the company's action plan to not only maximise the number of outlets reached but also to achieve leadership in every outlet. RS Net has enabled stockists to place orders on a Continuous Replenishment System. This inturn has unshacked the field force to solely focus. on secondary sales from the stockiest to retailers and market activation. It has also enabled RSs to provide improved service to retail outlets. Simultaneously, HUL is servicing the rural market,key urban outlets, and the modern trade as a single concern

SAP SD is simply Sales and Distribution

Its all about selling goods & distributing them to relevant parties and gets the payments for relevant parties. Helps to optimize all the tasks and activities carried out in sales, delivery and billing. Key elements are: pre-sales support, inquiry processing, quotation processing, sales order processing, delivery processing, billing and sales information system. SAP SD application components fulfills many of the international requirements that supports the sales and distribution activities with functions such as pricing and conditions, customer order processing, delivery monitoring, billing, credit and risk management. The SAP sales and distribution is part of the logistics module that support your customers, starting from quotations, sales order and all the way towards billing the customer. It is tightly integrated with the MM and PP functional modules. It allows companies to input their customer sales price, check for open orders and forecast etc.

The most important basic functional features in the SD module are:

Pricing Availability Check Credit Management Material Determination Output Determination Text Processing

SAP SD stands for Sales and Distribution and this is the module which is used to manage customer-focused activities, from selling to delivery, including

RFQ Sales orders Pricing Picking (and other warehouse processes) Packing Shipping

Some of the main SAP SD transactions are:

VA01 Create Customer Order VL01N Create a Delivery VA03 Display a Order VL02N Change Customer Delivery (F20 is to post a good issue) VA05 List Orders VF01 Create a Invoice

The Order to Cash flow roughly follows the following sequence

A customer orders some items from your company by creating a sales order Your company decides to deliver the items ordered by the customer. This is recorded by creating a outbound delivery document Once the items are available for sending to the customer, you post goods issue which reduces your inventory and puts the delivery in transit. This will create a material document. You will post goods but the material document created will be stored in tables. You will then create shipment document to actually ship the items. You finally create a sales billing document. This will have a corresponding accounting document created that will be in different tables. When customer pays to your invoice, it will directly hit your AR account in FI.