Concept of Mass Activity in SAP FS-CD

Mass Activity is a functionality in SAP FS-CD that is used to process high volumes of data efficiently with minimal consumption of system resources. It uses a parallel processing technique to take advantage of the available system resources to process large data simultaneously.

Mass Activity Framework supports batch processing which helps to automate business processes like dunning, Invoicing, Payments, etc. It supports the scheduling of periodic and Ad hoc batch jobs using the scheduler. It uses a standard event-based approach to implement custom business requirements. It also supports application logs, which help monitor and analyze processed business cases.

Below are some of the standard mass activities available in SAP FS-CD

• Creation of payment plan items for multiple contracts.
• Creation of billing documents for multiple contracts.
• Creation of dunning notices for multiple contracts.
• Automatic collection using payment run for multiple contracts.
• Automatic clearing of debit credit available on accounts.

Benefits of Mass Activity

Mass activity can be a powerful tool for businesses that are looking to improve their efficiency, reduce errors, improve compliance, improve data quality, and reduce costs.

• Time Savings – Mass activity helps users to process a high volume of data quickly and efficiently, which saves a lot of time compared to processing records one by one.
• Customization – Mass activity can be customized extensively to meet the user’s specific needs by adjusting criteria, settings, and parameters.
• Scalability – Mass activity can handle large amounts of data without slowing down the system, making it highly scalable.
• Enhancement – Modification of standard logic is easier using events, these events were called during the processing of mass activity.

Technical Framework of Mass Activity

Similar to several business partners or contract accounts, mass activities break the dataset into numerous technical jobs and process them concurrently in parallel. Variants, which you must reload on a regular basis, store the specifications for allocating the key for the parallel objects. The system ensures that during parallel processing, processes do not obstruct one another as a result of varying accesses to the same database resources.

Since Mass Activities process a large number of items, setting up intervals and jobs correctly is essential for achieving peak performance. By dividing the work into intervals, it can be made sure that each background job only processes one set of data at a time, preventing conflicts or duplication. The system can also save processing time and prevent any delays or bottlenecks by finishing all parallel background jobs concurrently.

The technical framework of mass activity includes various features and settings, such as selection criteria, parallel processing objects, variants, load distribution, and database access using block size. They are designed to optimize performance and improve efficiency.

Example: An insurance company sends billing information to its customers. To generate this information, a billing mass activity needs to be executed for all customers (Business Partners). The billing mass activity can be carried out based on a parallel Processing object (Business Partner). Let us assume the insurance company has 10K business partners, then a variant will be created based on a business partner that contains an equal number of intervals. There are 1K intervals (I1, I2, I3…I1000) created and each Interval contains 10 business partners. I1 would include Business Partners 1-10, I2 would include Business Partners 11-20, and so on.

Available background jobs (J1, J2, J3…J10) will be assigned to intervals. Job J1 processes the interval I1, Job J2 processes the interval I2 and so on. Once a job is free, it picks up the next interval for processing. On successful completion of a particular interval, it will create billing documents for the customer.

If the standard logic is not sufficient for the business requirements, additional business logic can be implemented into the events. Events are interfaces where the insurance company can implement its own coding based on specific business requirements.

Key Components of Mass Activity

1. Run ID: Each mass activity run has a unique identifier called Run ID. The Run ID helps to track the status and progress of the mass activity. When executing mass activity using the mass scheduler, the system automatically generates the Run ID.
2. Run Status: Real-time information about the ongoing mass activity run comes from the Run Status. It shows whether the run is in progress, completed, or has any errors. Some typical run status values progress, completed, cancelled, not scheduled, Scheduled, and others.
3. Interval Status: To enhance performance, mass activities process items in intervals or batches. The Interval Status shows the status of each interval or group within the mass activity run. This status tells you how many intervals have been processed.
4. General Selection: The general selection is useful to filter the data selection, it can help to optimize data selection for processing. This will only select relevant data for further processing.
5. Technical Settings: Technical Settings are used to configure the parameters and processing logic for the mass activity. These settings include parallel processing objects, load distribution, and database access using block size.
6. Block Size – Database Access using Block Size is a technique used to improve the performance of database queries by optimizing the way data is retrieved from the database. In SAP block size refers to the number of data records fetched from the database at one time. If the block size is too small, this results in more frequent database accesses. If the block size is too large, this results in a heavy load on the system. To ensure optimal performance we have to adjust block size based on system resources.
7. Parallel processing object and Variant – A parallel processing object is an object that can be processed simultaneously. The parallel processing procedure involves dividing objects such as business partners, contract accounts, or contracts into intervals of similar size using a variant. This procedure partitions objects into intervals in such a way that similar sets of records are distributed among intervals. As a result, each interval is expected to take a similar time to complete its task.
8. Load distribution – Load distribution is the process of distributing the workload of a mass activity evenly across multiple servers. This helps to balance the processing load and optimize system performance. There are two options available for load distribution, Automatic load distribution & explicit load distribution. In automatic load distribution, the system decides on which server the jobs will be executed, depending on resource availability. In Explicit Load Distribution, the IT team will help to explicitly enter the servers and the number of jobs to execute on this server.
9. Logs – When a mass activity is executed, the system generates a log file that contains information about the execution. The user to view details about the execution, such as the selection criteria used, the number of records processed, and any errors or warnings that occurred, can access it.
10. Job Logs: Job Logs provide an overview of the entire mass activity execution. They contain information such as the start time, end time, processing status, and any errors or warnings that occurred during the execution.
11. Application Logs: Application Logs provide detailed information about the processing of individual objects within the mass activity. They are primarily used to analyse and troubleshoot individual object processing and to identify any errors or issues that occurred during the execution.

Business Usage of Custom Mass Activity

Even though Standard provides multiple mass activities that can support running daily business operations. However, there can be business scenarios where customer requirements may not be fulfilled by standard Mass activity. To handle such operations SAP has given the provision for the creation of Custom Mass Activity.

Any business process that involves selecting, updating, or processing a high volume of data can leverage a custom mass activity.

Custom Mass activity usage for Business Operations

Mass Activity for Reconciliation –Reconciliation is a frequent practice in financial services. It refers to the process of comparing different sets of data to ensure they are consistent. Since reconciliation involves accessing and comparing large volumes of data, creating a mass activity can be a highly effective and efficient way to streamline the reconciliation process. We can prepare the data using mass activity and reconcile it.

Mass Activity to Update Database Fields – Mass activity can be created to update fields in a database table, it can help in locking issues for real-time business operations. This approach allows you to update outside of transactional operations, ensuring that the process can continue uninterrupted. A large volume of transaction data can be updated using this approach.

Mass Activity for Integration – Mass activity can be used to exchange data with other systems. Data can be downloaded in a file format and that file data can be exchanged with other systems using the FTP process.

Mass Activity for Report – Mass Activity can be applied in a way to enhance the efficiency of reports with intricate logic and lengthy display times. Mass processing will handle complex logic, and the results will be updated in a database table. By doing so, we can do away with the requirement for pricy computational activities in typical reports. The pre-computed data can simply be selected from the table by the report, which will be quicker and more effective. The necessary option can then be used in the report’s design to extract the needed data from this table. Using a bespoke mass activity and precomputed table can increase system efficiency and performance while also lightening the strain on the database server.

Hence, Mass activity is a feature of SAP FS-CD that allows the efficient processing of large volumes of data related to collections and disbursements in the insurance sector. It uses parallel processing and batch processing techniques to automate and optimize business processes such as billing, dunning, payments, clearing, etc. Mass activity can be customized, scaled, and enhanced using variants, intervals, jobs, events, and application logs.