When we start learning a solution like CRM , depending which track ( functional / technical ) we have chosen, we immerse us in the pursuit of learning. And then when we get staffed into a project then also we also the same paradigm continue on functional or technical track. I was also going in my technical track, when we hit an escalation and the customer wanted a speedy resolution of the problem. The project landscape was CRM-ERP, and some body had accidentally deleted the customization entry through a transport. This was not allowing a very important deal to go through. The consequence was known, a very high prio ticket raised and the support colleague said it was design issue. As luck would have it, being festival week in India, the functional colleagues were on leave and US colleagues would join in some time later.
There was a colleague who came to me saying that the error message was self explanatory indicating that the customizing had been played around with but to prove that we still needed to find out what has happened and then point to the which had transported the erroneous customizing. The CRM system was behaving unexpectedly but the problem of deletion of customization happened to be at SAP Sales & Distribution side. I was aware of the customization but did not know how to evaluate the change log.After some minutes of playing around we could prove that the customization itself was deleted and that was the root cause of the problem. We found the customizing transport request and shot a mail to the team citing the root cause. Major relief and major problem solved.
There was another issue we had faced earlier when we need to check the material hierarchy in CRM for a downloaded product from ERP. There was some error in data download for that product and some of the development was termed as buggy because of that. Using the variant class configuration knowledge, we could convince the stakeholders the problem was in material class hierarchies rather than in the development.
An important learning that came through is that when you work in a project you just cannot be technical guy. You need to have a basic knowledge of base customization and also how check different options. This not only helps you to fight escalations but make you independent worker. Especially for CRM techhnical leads, where SAP ERP system is the order processing engine.