A Faster Way to Move VC Models
Do you find yourself asking these questions?
- I need to move configurable product data between disconnected systems. How can I do that?
- I need to consolidate data from acquired or merged companies onto fewer SAP instances. How can I do this faster?
- I need to move models the "wrong way" (not set up with PDR or ALE, or from target back to source system/client). How can I do that?
- I want to avoid PDR setup time with a lighter solution. Is there an alternative?
- I need to transform the data that is loaded into the target system.
Avenue i2i is an alternative to SAP's ALE and PDR
You already know moving SAP VC product data can be tedious, especially for large knowledge bases. You have to take care to move information in the correct sequence or else the move fails. Large, complex VC models can take days or weeks to move. 
Without a tool to automate the process, experienced, skilled VC resources are required to perform the manual and often time consuming transport every time product or process information is edited or new products are introduced.
In practice, this means larger queuing of updates between development, testing and production stages; less granular testing of new information; longer times between effective releases of new or revised product information to production deployment and an overall process severely constrained by the availability of hard-to-find resources.
Perhaps this is why many companies make changes to production and avoid the transport of VC models. We, however, recommend a better practice of using a Gold Client and Production at a minimum. .
We have worked with many SAP VC clients and this is a problem that many SAP VC users experience. Since the Avenue Managing VC portal application has a VC model extract and model upload, we combined them with Avenue Compare and created a software bundle that can be used within the Avenue Managing VC solution or sold as a separate application (Now available in two versions).
Avenue i2i
One of eSpline's latest application within the Avenue Managing VC suite of tools to help SAP VC Modelers and VC Teams to move models easier. Avenue i2i (Instance 2 Instance) will improve your productivity and eliminate the headache of granular moves of a VC knowledge base. Now product models can be moved or transported by selecting a source model and selecting a target location and let Avenue i2i do the work for you. There is no longer a need to have an expert perform the move.
Avenue i2i is now available as a standalone application in two versions: Avenue Pro and Avenue i2i Enterprise.
The diagram illustrates a selection screen that is not the production version.
Both Avenue i2i solutions transfer a SAP VC knowledge base from one client in ECC and replaces the model in another. While this function can be accomplished by ALE, ALE is still a manual and painstaking effort. You may have already discovered that the various relationships between entities make the job difficult because if you send a characteristic prior to the dependency allocated to it, the transfer will fail. This effect is seen throughout the knowledge base.
Avenue i2i understands all the inter-relationships and moves objects in the correct sequence. The effort to transport a knowledge base is reduced from hours or days to minutes.
A customer noted that the cost of the application was justified as a "no brainer" based only on the time it was going to save moving 50 models to another SAP client.
Key Features
- Transfer of a complete knowledge base associated with a configurable product based on material, plant and BOM usage
- Transport of zero, single and multi-level (nested) configurable materials
- Transfer of selected knowledge base objects
- Database compare report using Avenue Compare to ensure data integrity
Benefits
- Automation of the manual and error-prone process of moving knowledge bases from development to quality assurance and production during the initial SAP implementation and ongoing maintenance
- Avenue i2i understands the relationships between the objects associated with the configurable product in SAP ECC and moves the objects in the sequence required.
- The effort to transport a knowledge base is reduced from days to hours or minutes
- Maintains the integrity of the system infrastructure
- Model moved to target is compared to source client to validate a complete move.
- Models can be transformed in-flight in cases where the target is to be different from the source.
