Customer-specific forms in SAP Business ByDesign

14.03.2017

Forms represent an area that is frequently used by customers in SAP Business ByDesign. Although SAP already provides a wide range of templates in the system (e.g. offer, order confirmation, order, customer invoice, delivery note and much more), nevertheless these cannot be used in this version for a customer. To redesign forms tailored to the customer, a great many adaptations usually have to be made. LiveCycle Designer from Adobe serves as a tool here.

The most frequently required adaptations can be classified roughly into the following categories:

1. Design
2. Company-specific data
3. Fields

Usually points 1 and 2 are permanent and apply across forms – in other words these adaptations and data are applied and added to all forms uniformly. Point 3, on the other hand, is document specific.

Design

Most customers need their forms in the corporate design of their company, as the forms are often printed out and sent to customers (e.g. invoices or delivery notes). This can function in various ways with forms. A distinction is made here between corporate design letterheads and normal paper. If prefabricated letterheads are to be used, only the added data needs to be aligned in the forms. However, if the design is saved completely in Business ByDesign, a lot more adaptations have to be made. Besides integrating the company logo, these also include coordinating the font(s) and color(s) used. The data required for this must be provided by the customer.

Moreover, many German companies follow the specifications of DIN standard 5008 when designing their official letterheads. To implement this standard within the forms, the positions of individual areas (e.g. the header or logo) must be realigned according to the DIN standard.

Company-specific data

The company-specific data generally involves business information (e.g. company address, contact details, website, bank account, legal form, company head office, court of registry and/or commercial register number). This is usually present on every official letter and can often be found in the footer. Some customers can also provide further data, information or similar, which is also to be provided universally in all forms.

Fields

The final field associated with fields is probably the most important component: the fields. These fields are filled out individually (e.g. for each customer or order) by data from the SAP Business ByDesign system when applying the relevant form. For this, the link between the fields in the form and the corresponding fields in the system must be established in Adobe LiveCycle Designer. In this respect, it is unimportant whether the fields involve standard fields or whether the data of a customized field is to be adopted.

Therefore, forms within SAP Business ByDesign represent a very attractive and important component for companies thanks to their flexibility regarding adaptation and/or customization. They allow a great deal of things to run automatically in the background, which means a finished letter can always be output promptly with very little data in the system.