How CPI helps to integrate your SAP ERP to 3rd Party Software

Overview

SAP Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) has been known as one of the market leaders for ERP Solutions.

Many big enterprises run their day-to-day business process using SAP. In this digital transformation era when companies want to extend, optimize and automate their business process they need to integrate their current ERP with another solution with specialized function such as Customer Relationship Management (CRM). Salesforce.com (SFDC) is one of the market leaders in CRM solutions, which come as Software as a Service (SaaS) solution.

The integration between SAP ERP which can be installed on-premise or on-cloud with SFDC is one of the most common integration scenarios. In this blog we will discuss about the integration of SAP ERP (on-premise) with SFDC. The hybrid integration scenario between on-premise SAP ERP with cloud based CRM(SFDC) can be challenging.

Our approach on SAP and Salesforce Integration

SAP with their SAP Cloud Platform has come up with several services for the purpose of integration which called as SAP Cloud Platform Integration Suite. In our case, we are utilizing SAP Cloud Platform Integration (CPI) and SAP OpenConnector as part of the SAP Cloud Platform Integration Suite.

A. Integration architecture.

Brief explanation to the above architecture:

1. Systems which deployed as cloud services:

• Salesforce (SFDC) will act as a front-end application where the user will interact with.
• Open Connector is a platform for API integration combined connectors to 3^rd party systems, that allow developers to use more than 180 pre-built connectors, quickly build new integrations
• SAP Cloud Platform Integration (CPI) provides a rich set of capabilities for integration, that allow seamless integration with cloud and on-premise applications, both from SAP and third-party providers. It offers out-of-the-box integration content for accelerated integration and a wide variety of standard adapters.

2. System which deployed as On-premise system:

• SAP Cloud connector, SAP cloud connector will act as a reverse proxy between the on-premise SAP system and the services in the SAP Cloud platform.
• SAP ERP will act as a back-end ERP system. And in this integration scenario will exchange data with Salesforce as the front-end system.

B. Integration Scenario

As a CRM application, Salesforce is account(customer) centric. In Salesforce, there are many sales process which can be performed, from leads generation, account management, and as a final result it will generate the sales documents, such as quotation and sales order. During this sales processes there are two types of data need to be integrated between Salesforce and SAP ERP, which include master data and transactional data.

1. Master data integration will cover the following:

• Customer Master Data Integration
• Material Master Data Integration

2. Transactional Data will cover the following:

• Customer Credit Limit
• Sales Order Integration
• Delivery Order Integration
• Billing Integration
• Account Receivable Integration
• Exchange rates integration
• Payment document integration

There are several options of data integration:

1. Batch data integration : Batch data integration will be used for master data integration.  It will process multiple data/records at once and can be scheduled to recur at defined time. In our integration scenario it will be used to integrate the delta changes of master data from SAP ERP to Sales force.

2. Real time data integration : Realtime data integration is used to integrate processes in real time manner, it can be used to integrate both master data and transactional data. The real time integration characterized by processing only single records at one moment.  For master data it will be used to update master data in real time ad hoc triggered from Sales Force to SAP.

Example use of real time integration of master data including:

• Retrieving current material stock
• Retrieving material master data  
• Retrieving current customer credit limit
• Replication of Customer Master Data created in Salesforce to SAP ERP

For transactional data integration, the real time integration will cover the following:

1. Replication of Sales Order document created in Salesforce to SAP ERP

2. Retrieving SAP transactional data from sales force, such as:

• Delivery Order Data
• Billing Data
• Account Receivable Data
• Payment document Data

If you want to learn further about this integration use case or any other integration scenario, please feel free to contact us, please visit www.soltius.co.id