SSM to cProjects or xRPM integration

Question

Hi,
Is there a way to integrate SSM with either cProjects?  If we're looking into feeding project variance information or even portfolio status from cProjects into SSM's scorecards, etc, what is the best way of implementing that?
We will go through a software evaluation exercise to decide whether SSM or the CPM modules are options, or should we just implement on BI.
Many thanks,
Josephine

Answer 1

Hi Josephine,
given the open architecture of SSM, there are multiple approaches how to achieve this type of integration. From a business perspective, it makes a lot of sense to track initiative-related metrics associated with the strategic initiatives defined in SSM. The important piece is to make the initiative information coming from diverse transactional systems (cPro and co.) visible in SSM as the so-called metrics (actual, target) within your SSM's model. Once you've achieved that, you can use SSM's rules engine as part of SSM's modeling capabilities to derive those useful virtual metrics (trend, score, gap persormance) based on actual/trend. This would give you the opprotunity to track the variances as you're requesting.
This is the core task which is independent of the SSM release you're currently working with. However, there are a few specifics at the beginning and the end of the integration chain which might be affected by the release level:
1) for SSM 2007 - which is the current release based on the application state as it was acquired with the Pilot company - I would advise you to use any standard integration option SSM supports. The easy way would be to let cPro generate flat files with the initiative-related metrics to be connected to SSM's model. The rest would be as desrcibed above and to visualize the metrics, you could turn the metrics set (actual, target, score etc.) into a Key Performance Indicator to be assigned to the same objective the respective initiative is assiged to (a negative variance would affect the status of the respective objective then). At the initiative level, you could then assign a URL link to your cPro app for further drilldown.
2) for the upcoming release (SSM 7.0) that is planned to be released in Q1 2008, there might be some significant improvements that would help you establish a more SAP-centric integration approach. The first planned feature might be the SSM connector to SAP NetWeaver BI. I think I do not have to elaborate on the advantages - just think of cPro extracting the project related data to BI using its standard extractors where you can directly use it as a metrics set (no more flat files...). The next significant improvement in this context might be the possibility to assign KPI's to initiatives directly to trigger the initiative status. This would reduce the necessity to make workarounds (of having to assign the variance KPI to an objective). The feature with the URL link at the initiative level for a drilldown to more details cPro remains of course in new release, too.
(of course please understand my above-mentioned forward-looking statements regarding the upcoming release are not a commitment by SAP to deliver any given code or functionality release - just wanted to share with you my personal opinion on how your question could be answered).
Thank you / regards,
Karol