The Truth About SAP Integration
By Louis Columbus In discussing weight or golf scores it’s easier to exaggerate the positive than to openly share the truth. The same holds true when it comes to sharing the truth about SAP ERP integrations. Let’s face it, integrating to any ERP system is hard work, but SAP integration around meaningful business processes can become much more challenging than integrating to even a back-office production scheduling system.
For one global aircraft manufacturer the promise of SAP integration turned into a nightmare – and from their pain some great lessons can be learned. At the core of this manufacturer’s problem is the need to integrate front office systems (quoting, proposals, pricing, order capture and front-end order management) by integrating to an SAP ERP system. Big promises were made and not delivered on, leaving this manufacturer with re-work on over 70% of customized product builds.
Here are several key take-aways from this manufacturers’ experience. If you’re looking at any front-office application that requires SAP integration, slow down and complete due diligence on these factors and then move ahead. It’s tempting to have such a high sense of urgency to get “done”; but as this manufacturer learned, “done” never happened because SAP integration was hyped and not delivered.
Here’s the checklist:
Qualifying SAP Integration Expertise
- SAP Internet Pricing and Configurator (IPC) Expertise Is Essential For Any Customer-Facing Strategy. Arguably the core of any complete CRM implementation on the SAP platform makes use of the IPC including mySAP.com deployment strategies in progress. If you have IPC installed you need to ask for and get a demo with live data staged in a non-production instance of your SAP platform.
- Create a replicated set of SAP data and qualify vendors with that test region. Replicate live SAP system data during final vendor qualifications and benchmark vendors on their ability to illustrate integration. Manufacturers have found Gamma Enterprise Technologies’ InfoShuttle product useful for this purpose. Check them out if you are doing much testing of SAP integrations.
- SAP integration expertise must be global. Here’s the challenge on this point: the manufacturer found their platform vendor had SAP integration references in just one country – just one – and the SAP instance did not serve business processes outside of that company. Result: After further investigation when their own SAP integration didn’t work they found that the customer had written the adapter themselves and resold it to the vendor.
- “How did you recruit your ABAP programmers?” Ask the CTO of any vendor who is pitching SAP integration to you this question and see what you get as a response.
India is snatching up ABAP programmers just as fast as signing bonuses can be EFT’d to signed candidates’ checking accounts.
- Visit the top three SAP integration references in person. The reason you want to do this is to actually see the applications running, using SAP part numbers, interacting with SAP Bills of Materials, and most importantly, interacting with SAP’s Internet Pricing and Configurator (IPC) module.
- Balance of references on mySAP and legacy R/3 platforms. When you are creating your short list of CRM, channel management, order management or pricing vendors to work with, this criteria will narrow the field fast.
Manufacturers from heavy equipment to consumer products face a daunting task of trying to find out which best-of-breed vendors have true SAP integration expertise. Sure, the core functionality of these best-of-breed vendors sometimes can’t be found in the ERP vendors’ suites – but the Achilles heal of many of these companies is their ability to handle ERP integrations. Be sure to qualify any vendor thoroughly on the claims of SAP integration especially before going forward.
Posted by LOUISCOLUMBUS on August 2, 2005 at 11:42 AM in Business Infrastructure | Permalink
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