Augment SAP Integration Strategy to Optimize Organizational Efficiency — Here’s why.

Digitization is a lot more than just automating everyday mundane processes. It is, as a matter of fact, an agile methodology adopted to transform the entire business ecosystem in a way that benefits both the enterprise and the customer segment. In other words, digitization is about increasing efficiency, expanding operations and culminating a better and stronger workforce.

SAP Integration Strategy

True that such a transformation is bound to yield positive results however, the road to success isn’t easy. Not all organizations that implement digital methods or adopt SAP modules to run their business drive revenue. Surprisingly, some suffer from failures.

The catch here is the integration strategy. Evidently, SAP has a highly complex ecosystem and the one way to fetch results in favor of the organization is by undertaking the right integration strategy.

But why SAP?

Transforming Business Performance with SAP ERP

SAP is one such enterprise-level solution that aims at enhancing the overall IT infrastructure of an organization. Implementing SAP solution help leaders optimize and cardinalize their end to end business processes. Right from enterprise performance management to finance and accounting, the SAP system is capable of improvising all.

Nearly two decades and still counting, the SAP ERP system renders significant information on the entire business flow enabling leaders and managers to enhance their day to day operations. Furthermore, SAP is continuously evolving with more and more innovations in the form of SAP Leonardo and SAP S/4 HANA technology solutions, fostering more and more enhancements.

It is evident that organizations that tend to avoid the integration of SAP modules within their operations experience technology gaps and own the risk of poor performance.

The Different Technologies — Integrating SAP with Business

Integrating SAP involves a lot of effort, not to mention the challenges faced by the developers when augmenting the existing system within SAP. To ease the process, SAP rolled out a number of tools and technologies. These include the following:

1. IDocs: Also known as Intermediate Docs, IDocs are one way of facilitating information exchange between the SAP and the non-SAP applications. It is, in fact, the standard format defined by SAP. For organizations that have a lot of information to transfer in and out of SAP, IDocs seems the best fit.
2. BAPI: Acronym for Business Application Programming Interfaces, BAPI is an interface that is used both by the SAP as well as the non SAP applications to promote communication. This further aids hassle-free access to data and processes.
3. JCo: SAP Java Connector or JCo acts as the middleware allowing developers to build components compatible with SAP on Java. JCo is one of the most important tools used by Java developers when integrating SAP modules.

The Architecture: Manifesting SAP

Even though SAPs point to point integration methodology accelerates the integration process, it does not provide interlinked dependencies. This is where the Service Oriented Architecture comes into the picture. The SOA stack comprises of the enterprise service bus, the orchestration engine, and the application servers.

All of these promote the formation of powerful architecture which further eliminates the need to add additional applications for running business operations.

Also, the creation of the above is done in a way that is cost-effective and within the limits of the organization’s status.

Integration Approaches — Following the Right Path

As stated above, it is not the technology but the process or the strategies adopted, that determine the success or failure of its implementation. Hence, it is important that enterprises meticulously outline their needs before adopting a significant integration approach.

The different types of integration include:

1. Out of the box integration: For organizations that are planning to integrate SAP Data Hub or the Master Data Services, the out of the box integration is the best fit. It allows organizations to swiftly integrate such components within their enterprise applications.
2. Holistic Integration: Promoting round the clock digitization, the Holistic Integration follows integration solution advisory methodology. The above adopts technology-driven use cases, maps it with the existing one and then integrates the same. Holistic integration encompasses a range of use cases, easing the integration process.
3. AI-driven Integration: The artificial intelligence aided SAP integration approach uses processes that have the abilities of machine learning. It ensures process-based automation and assistance tailored through content. Presence of a number of patterns of use cases, the AI-driven approach allows developers to leverage from existing integration situations.
4. Open Integration: The last of the type is open integration. For organizations that plan to integrate both process and SAP data along with SAP apps, the open integration approach yields better results. It has a pre-defined set of scenarios to facilitate the integration process.

SAP for ERP

When it comes to enterprise resource planning, SAP comes with plenty of modules and each tailored to enhance and optimize end to end business processes. The applications comprise of SAP All-in-One, MySAP, SAP ECC and SAP BusinessOne. These solutions are both agile and flexible enough to be incorporated within any or every enterprise, mapping the needs of all. There is a range of tools available that promote the migration of existing applications to the SAP infrastructure.

Also, the SAP S/4 HANA strategy allows organizations to deploy SAP in the form of software as a service model and add value to enterprise-grade applications.

The Final Word

The key to every business’s success lies in the revenue earned by the same. Sticking to the old and siloed business infrastructure does no good to the enterprises and stating that integration or migration to a modified system is of paramount importance would not be wrong.

To deal with the same, we recommend the adoption of an inventive SAP integration strategy. It is deemed that integration is one of the major challenges when migrating to SAP. Failing to integrate the solution properly, organizations cannot unleash the true potential of automation, disrupting business processes. The inventive strategies are destined to help developers and organizational leaders enhance and optimize their business operations, driving greater revenue.