With the evolution of web services standards and their usage in exposing interfaces by enterprise systems , it is much easier to connect to the today’s ERP systems. SAP has embraced open standards for integration across all its products to expose the business functionality as SOA-compliant web services.

Web services-compliant interfaces provide a significant ease in integration for business data exchange between enterprise applications and exchanging business data with external trading partners. Earlier, this SAP specific integration was the responsibility of the SAP adapters provided by the middleware product suite, and used SAP proprietary protocols (RFC, ALE). The use of web services standards makes the task of data integration simpler.

Web services-based interfaces do not, however, deal with the data payload being exchanged between the SAP and non-SAP systems. For example, business document representation (such as an Invoice) would be different across SAP and non-SAP systems. Hence, the role of middleware in terms of document transformation between business applications is as valid as before.

Middleware infrastructure takes care of managing the data exchange between enterprise applications having different document representations. Additionally, the middleware infrastructure takes care of integration scenarios such as master data publication to downstream systems (e.g. price change of an item, that needs to be published to the relevant systems such as Point of Sale). The use of web services and a SOA architecture simplifies the integration end points (eliminating the need for proprietary SAP connectors), complemented by the EAI middleware taking care of the data transformations and message orchestration between different SAP and non-SAP systems.

This SearchSOA article captures some of our recommendations on SAP PI and SAP SOA.

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I recently chatted with Alan Earls, reporter with SearchSAP.com, for a story on Quick ROI supply chain projects in SAP environments. In our experience working with midsize and larger customers, we have witnessed significant business benefits for projects that have been identified based on our qualifying criteria. Our key criteria for SAP improvement projects involve processes that are manual, spanning multiple participants, and requiring timely notifications and reporting for strategic decision making.

Companies that have implemented SAP in the last decade are now in the phase of stabilizing and improving their SAP investments. An analysis of supply chain improvement opportunities leads to a list of several potential supply chain projects. Considering limited budgets, time and management attention, our customers need guidance in identifying and prioritizing supply chain projects that provide maximum bang for the buck.

Nagarro’s SAP Practice helps customers successfully automate core business processes that were manual, using the SAP BPM and NetWeaver platforms. For example, we have enabled purchasing cycle automation using SAP Workflows supported by insightful reports to support the purchasing process. Such projects have a relatively small scope, short development cycle and provide immediate business benefits to the customer.

Got any tips for getting more out of your existing SAP investments? Please let us know what’s worked at your company.

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SAP ESR and SAP SR are the core tools for the SAP SOA modeling and implementation. In this blog, we provide the evolution and role of the SAP ESR for SAP SOA implementation.

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For SAP SOA design and development, it is important to understand the best practices for identifying the granularity and technical characteristics of the enterprise service. In this blog, we provide essential design principles and best practices for designing such enterprise services.

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SAP BPM is a relatively recent offering from SAP. SAP customers are looking to evaluate SAP BPM in comparison to the mainstream BPM vendors such as Savvion, Lombardi, Pegasystems, Metastorm and others. In this blog, we recommend the usage of SAP centric products such as SAP BPM for customers having major investments in SAP. Continued »

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The MES software are adopted by many customers for managing the production and material flow on the shop floor. In this blog, we look at the integration between SAP and the MES software. Continued »

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Many customers are having business processes implemented in SAP CAF. With the availability of SAP BPM in SAP CE 7.1, customers needs methodology and techniques to migrate their SAP CAF models to SAP BPM. This blog presents our design recommendations to provide a future proof business process design, and SAP CAF to SAP BPM migration best practices. Continued »

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SAP product set has multiple frameworks and tools for workflow and business process management capability such as SAP ABAP Workflow, SAP PI BPM, SAP CE BPM, SAP CE CAF, SAP MDM Workflow, SAP BW Process Chains and SAP Portal Ad Hoc Workflow. We provide product positioning and recommendations for adopting each of these SAP Workflow and BPM products for implementing your workflow requirements. Continued »

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ISV software companies are developing integrations to the SAP platform so that they can address the large SAP customer base. SAP integration approaches are important to provide a modern integration strategy, keep up with the various SAP Continued »

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SAP remote consulting is being increasingly adopted by customers globally. There are major benefits for SAP customers such as access to high quality SAP consulting services, access to high quality SAP talent, access to SAP consultants for fractional requirements, reduced consulting Continued »

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SAP SOA is now a mainstream architectural strategy being followed by SAP customers for providing future proof integration to SAP and non-SAP systems. However, customers are not clear on the SAP SOA guidelines, and how to truly model, design and develop enterprise level services. Continued »

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Background
Most SAP customers have enterprise applications developed in other mainstream development platforms such as Microsoft, Java and others. Many customers have existing legacy applications built on multiple technologies and platforms (too numerous to list here).

Going forward, SAP customers are tending to standardize on the SAP platform for running their core business operations. However, for development of custom applications, customers do not have a clear approach towards selecting SAP NetWeaver or the other mainstream platforms for development. Continued »

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In most organizations, the SAP infrastructure is maintained through a team of SAP consultants sitting full time in the head office. The SAP team looks after all SAP functional areas, SAP technical development, SAP BASIS maintenance, and interacts with the business to resolve all their SAP issues. Continued »

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In our experience working with customers who want to adopt Enterprise SOA in an SAP environment, many customers tend to believe that SAP PI is a prerequisite to enabling and consuming enterprise services. Since SAP’s service management tools of SAP ESR and SAP SR are provided by the SAP PI infrastructure, customers tend to believe that they need to use SAP PI in all service interactions.

In this blog, we would present guidelines and best practices for usage of SAP PI in an Enterprise SOA environment. Continued »

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Independent Software Vendors (ISV) are companies that have niche product offerings for a certain industry area. ISVs typically have acquired their deep understanding of an industry through years of working in their particular focus areas. You would typically find the ISVs to have “champions” and well know industry experts in their area of expertise. Hence, these ISVs are extremely well known in the industry, and they may enjoy comfortable market share in the particular industry vertical in a certain geography. Continued »

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