The Global Trade Management working group is celebrating its 10-year anniversary.

One hundred and forty-six: that's how many members the Global Trade Management (GTM) working group counts, making it a relatively small but highly valued DSAG committee. At its heart is an SAP module that is essential for many international businesses. And the working group has already made several notable improvements to it. 

The team's spokespersons, Peter Langner and Astrid Rüggeberg, have been involved for many years. As a founding member and working group spokesperson, Langner has even been part of it since day 1. Rüggeberg has served as deputy for around seven years. On the occasion of this anniversary, the two not only reflect on the early days and all of their achievements, they also take a look at the issues the committee is currently addressing.

For those hearing about Global Trade Management for the first time, what does the group do and what are your user interests?

Peter Langner: As our name suggests, our work focuses on the SAP module "Global Trade Management", or LO-GT. This allows users such as commodity traders to easily manage their scheduling, transaction calculations, and ancillary costs digitally. LO-GT is used both for international sales processes and acquisition processes, making its features essential for trading companies.

Astrid Rüggeberg: The module has been around for about 25 years and is used by approximately 4,500 companies. These are enormous figures when you consider how relatively little attention LO-GT is given, even in SAP marketing. The module is hardly advertised and is included as a price list component in the S/4HANA license. This is a major advantage, for example over its sister product "Global Trade Services", which is "only" used by around 2,400 companies in the context of clearing and compliance requests. However, users need to pay extra for this, and it's no insignificant amount.

How do you benefit as a DSAG working group?

Rüggeberg: One of the biggest advantages is the helpful communication between users in the committee. Especially because there is little published information and material about LO-GT from SAP, the DSAG network as well as its lively, active community is a great help.

Langner: That was one of the reasons the working group was created. A customer came to me in my role as IT consultant and requested insights into the practical GTM example of another customer. Of course, as a service provider I'm bound by confidentiality, but I offered to put the trading companies I support in touch. This was no sooner said than done, and a contact at SAP also joined. The resulting conversations generated a lot of enthusiasm. But SAP quickly informed us that continuous dialog could only take place in a consolidated way with a user group in the country. We promptly joined the DSAG's trade task force and established the Global Trade Management working group under its auspices. Looking back, this was a great decision.

How is the cooperation with SAP through the industry association?

Rüggeberg: We have direct access to SAP thanks to the committee. This is highly appreciated. There's always a person from the software company at our regular meetings to answer user questions and discuss specific cases, much like a consultation. The cooperation is on equal footing, not least because SAP has frequently signaled to us that our practical feedback is valuable.

Langner: We have already implemented a number of improvements and accomplished a great deal for users through DSAG and its influence.

What are some examples of the improvements you have made?

Langner: One major accomplishment was the additional feature added to S/4HANA GTM that allows inventory postings to be made. This feature was integrated directly into the Trading Execution Workbench and takes the association into consideration. In turn, this allows a link to be established between quantities in the purchasing position and quantities in the sales position.

Rüggeberg: Before, the module was restricted to the purchasing and sales process without incorporating warehousing. But in Europe, companies handle large quantities of goods in warehouses. This additional function helps them process transactions in the warehouse.

What topics are you currently focused on?

Langner: There are many, including the conception of native Fiori apps. Understandably, SAP's stance is to only develop what users will accept and use. Specifically, this applies to the implementation of the Monitor Trading Contract Items app, which not only shows the trading contract positions, but also enables KPIs that are important for the evaluation of transactions to be calculated. To this end, we are currently gathering feedback from members of the group. This presents a small challenge, as many users have not yet migrated to the SAP S/4HANA version required and are still a long way from using the app.

Rüggeberg: The future evolution is very important to us. That's why we are also addressing the question as to whether it makes sense to run SAP S/4HANA GTM in the public cloud and, consequently, how interfaces can be used for cloud integration. It is important to us that a CRM (customer relationship management) system be integrated into GTM. The SAP AI copilot Joule is also set to support GTM, to name a few points currently on the agenda.

So there's already quite a bit on your to-do list. What do you hope for the future of the GTM working group?

Rüggeberg: One goal is to continue the cooperation with SAP in a constructive and results-driven way in order to represent the interests of DSAG members as best as we can. In terms of the working group, I hope that the communication among and between the members remains collegial and lively and that we continue to grow as a committee.

Langner: Personally, I would very much like to garner more attention for our cause and to inspire more GTM users to join the group. The GTM working group should remain engaged and continue to produce improvements in the future. Speaking of inspiration: we are now active at an international level. We are currently attempting to create a similar interest group with a Canadian customer in the Americas' SAP Users' Group (ASUG), among others, in order to allow Global Trade Management to reach a wider audience.

The anniversary meeting of the working group on November 21, 2024 is also all about the future. With a focus on "future trends for GTM", the committee would like to invite all of its members to Hamburg to share ideas. All information as well as the agenda can be found on DSAGNet.

First published as "Kleine Gruppe, große Wirkung" on implusant (04.12.2024): https://impulsant-dsag.de/formate/textbeitrag/ag-global-trade-management