SAP Fiori App for UNICEF: Country Office Funds Management

BackgroundThe United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) is a United Nations Program headquartered in New York City that provides long-term humanitarian and developmental assistance to children and mothers in developing countries. UNICEF is present in 190+ countries and territories around the world. UNICEF activities are sponsored by contributions from governments and private donors. It is important to have sufficient funds allocated to specific activities in Country Offices (CO) to be able to implement them. Funds Management in UNICEF is executed in SAP ERP /Public Sector Management (PSM) in Funds (FM) and Grants Management (GM) modules.

Market STP (Challenge) Funds are allocated to a CO against high level CO Funded Program (FP) by a Headquarters (HQ) or Regional (RO) Office through PSMGM and FM Modules. CO is authorized to distribute/allocate the approved funds between their own Activities assigned to specific FPs.

SAP ERP PSM tools are complex for CO use. In order to executea Funds Transfer, CO needs to:

1. Check the status of their funds/budgets by executing one of the Funds Availability Reports FMAVCR01, FMAVCR02, or FMAVCH01 with complex selection criteria.

2. Execute Funds transfer (Return, Supplement, Transfer) using Budgeting Workbench FMBB which requires repetitive entries for master data, such as Fund, Funds Center, Funded Program, Commitment Item, Functional Area, etc. which can be easily derived by the system for a specific CO, year, etc.

SAP Fiori App for UNICEF: Country Office Funds Management (contd.)Customer Engagement & User Research (Persona)A transactional SAP Fiori App needs to be designed for UNICEF CO Budget Assistants and Officers, who are responsible to transfer funds within CO. Sometimes local staff has limited knowledge of SAP ERP system and lack of experience to execute and interpret complex budget reports. Since the activities (procurement, invoicing, etc.) cannot be executed without sufficient funds, there is a need for a simple, straight forward App, which will combine both budget status report and funds transfer functionality and will require minimum knowledge and intervention from user side.

E2E Process Modeling (simplified)Step 1: HQ Office receives and records Funds/Grants from sponsors in both FM and GM Modules of SAP ERP;Step 2: HQ Office distributes funds/budgets to the CO. Funds are allocated against CO high-level FP;Step 3: CO allocates funds to specific activities/FPs and between FPs by executing funds transfers from/to CO high-level FP to a specific FP;Step 4: CO implements activities (procurement, invoices, etc) and continuously executes Funds Management.

Define Apps and PrioritizationDifferent Apps can be designed to simplify and streamline Funds Management at HQ Locations, ROs, and COs. HQ and Regional users will require more sophisticated tools to enable processing of original, global allocations; Funds Monitoring and Transfers between countries and regions, etc. The scope and priority of his specific project is to design a transactional Fiori App to streamline and simplify Funds Management in COs.

Design of Individual App: Country Office Funds ManagementThe following 3 slides describe in detail the design for a transactional Fiori App for UNICEF Country Office Funds Management based on Desktop and Tablet devices.

SAP Fiori App for UNICEF: Country Office Funds Management (contd.)

Country Office user will access the transactional Fiori App from their Desktop or Tablet through Launchpad

Screen 1 will display all funding sources assigned to specific CO with information on approved budgets, consumption, and available balances (backend: report similar to FMAVCH01, automated selection by CO Funds Centers, Year, Commitment Item, etc.)

User will be able to sort or filter the records by specific Fund or Grant.

User will access the details on allocations between Activities/FPs for a specific funding source by clicking the small arrow on the right to the funding source.

SAP Fiori App for UNICEF: Country Office Funds Management (contd.)

User will have options to select a specific Activity/FP and

a. “Supplement” (add) funds (backend: FMBB, budget transfer from “high-level” CO FP to a specific Funded Program)

ORa. “Return” (reduce) funds

(backend: FMBB budget transfer from specific FP to “high-level” CO FP), thus, making funds available for a new allocation.

System will derive automatically master data details from the budget addresses of FPs selected by user. User will not need to enter manually all master data details.

User will be able to sort or filter the records by specific FP.

Screen 2 will display details of the allocation of funds between Activities/FPs for the funding source selected in Screen 1.On the top of the screen, user will see the information about selected funded source, Totals for allocated funds (committed to specific activities) and funds available for allocation, residing on CO “high-level” FP.

SAP Fiori App for UNICEF: Country Office Funds Management (contd.)Screen 3 will display the Activity/FP selected by user in Screen 2 and also the information about the Total Allocated and Available funds. A simple form will be designed to allow user to provide the details on the Amount and Document Date for the Funds Transfer transaction.

User will enter the Amount to be “Supplemented” (or “Returned” if the option “Return” is selected in the Screen 2) and Document Date (date could be optional, but needed in case FM period control is activated and user needs to post the funds transfer in the past or future).

User will click “Save” button to process the Funds Transfer.

After saving, system will update the Totals, Consumable, and Available amounts in all screens.

In this example, Consumable for “002 Water and Sanitation” activity will increase to USD 3,000,000.00; Available Amount will increase to USD 999,500.00. TOTAL Available for Allocation on the top will decrease to USD 1,000,000.00,