SAP Integration

gargargar

We are looking to integrate our finance application into SAP ERP. Does anyone have any knowledge on how we go about it? There seem to be so many products.

None of us have a background in SAP and it seems so huge. It is hard from the site to find out the best approach, (even the name of the product or component you would be integrating to).

I have been looking on the web and there doesn't seem to be many independent SAP consultant in Ireland. Anyone know of any?

Thanks

StupidLikeAFox

SAP can be a monster. I briefly worked on an SAP project a good while back so I am pretty rusty on the details but I will try help. All SAP installations are different - you can have have a manufacturing component, a project management component, HR component etc. Not all systems will have the same components. But if I remember correctly, the core functionality lies in the SAP Central component, this is a core financial application which the other components are tacked on to, I don't think you can just pick a product yourself (open to correction on this)

Also, contractors are very specialised and very expensive. SAP software itself is very expensive. SAP implementations are generally reserved for huge companies and are generally implemented by large consultancies too (IBM, Accenture, Deloitte etc)

What are you hoping to do exactly?

Speedwell

I have some experience with SAP as well as other ERP applications. That's a huge mouthful to chew on unless you are a large enterprise (the firm I used to work for was a 60K-employee international business). I talked to my current boss and he said that it is possible to implement and maintain an SAP setup remotely if you've really got to do it, and that you might therefore speak to consultants where SAP is widely used, mentioning Germany in particular. Wish we could help more, but we're more on the CRM side of things.

seamus

SAP is deliberately designed to be opaque and confusing so that you have to hire consultants at thousands of dollars a day to assist you in performing even simple configuration tasks, who then in turn advise you to spend hundreds of thousands on licencing and training from SAP themselves.

You're looking for someone specifically with ABAP experience working with SAP FI/CO at least, and ideally SD, MM, QM and PP as well.

They will need to have experience using SAP XI/PI for interchanging data between SAP and 3rd party applications. This will be the interface that your application uses to talk to SAP.

Is all that confusing? You betcha. Get this person in for a week to discuss what it is you're trying to do and whether it's actually worth your while.


From an architectural point of view, SAP is basically an application platform. It consists of a core interpreter engine (written in Java) and a large database backend, usually Oracle or SQL Server.

On top of this application platform are programs written in ABAP, which is a proprietary language. Pretty much like any other programming language, but with a strong focus on data manipulation. The ABAP programs are compiled by the engine and interpreted by it - in much the same way that the JVM interprets the compiled code for the physical machine.

All of the acronyms I give above are basically individual application modules written in ABAP that provide a core set of functionalities. So the FI/CO module provides a Financial Controlling application. SD - Sales & Distribution. End-users can in fact write their own ABAP programs to modify the way the system behaves as they see fit, but you can make a balls of things if it's not done right. So it costs millions of dollars if you want a system that does things the way you want it.

The SAP XI/PI is another complete SAP system, but it contains a module that allows for data interchange between the SAP modules and other systems, without having to code half-arsed hacks into your main system.

gargargar

StupidLikeAFox wrote: »

What are you hoping to do exactly?

We are in the analysis phase but it would be to pull invoicing information from the accounts part of the system.

seamus wrote: »

SAP is deliberately designed to be opaque and confusing so that you have to hire consultants at thousands of dollars a day to assist you in performing even simple configuration tasks, who then in turn advise you to spend hundreds of thousands on licencing and training from SAP themselves.

You're looking for someone specifically with ABAP experience working with SAP FI/CO at least, and ideally SD, MM, QM and PP as well.

That's what I thought. Our best path would be to talk to some skilled consultant, but as you say it may be tough even to find someone who knows the sub section.

seamus

gargargar wrote: »

That's what I thought. Our best path would be to talk to some skilled consultant, but as you say it may be tough even to find someone who knows the sub section.

You'll find plenty of people who claim to know what you need and will charge you silly money and produce nothing.

Rather than engaging an SAP consultancy, I would actually recommend engaging a trainer. Unlike other technical training, where a trainer is often someone who is best able to read a book, the best SAP consultants do official SAP training because that's where the really silly money is.

They would have the insight to speak to you for a day or half a day and give you recommendations on what you need to do next.

www.olas.ie offer an ABAP programming course, code is BC400. I've done the course, but I forget the name of the trainer, but she's brilliant.

If you could get her contact details for a day's general consultancy I think it would be worth your while.

14ned

StupidLikeAFox wrote: »

SAP can be a monster.

SAP isn't too bad compared to alternatives, and it's certainly well supported. Its single biggest problem is that users view it as an expense for gluing silos together, not as an investment in fundamentally rearchitecting their business around their new information system. They tend to misallocate monies appropriately, and SAP installations get the rap they do consequently.

StupidLikeAFox wrote: »

Also, contractors are very specialised and very expensive. SAP software itself is very expensive. SAP implementations are generally reserved for huge companies and are generally implemented by large consultancies too (IBM, Accenture, Deloitte etc)

A lot of the expense is because when consultants get called in things have already gone badly wrong, so you charge danger and inconvenience pay. After all rescuing failing systems where lighting a bonfire with money would be cheaper per day of production lost is stressful, people get angry and litigious. I personally love working in business information systems, but I don't tolerate stress well, so it's not a career for me.

Still, we here in Ireland like to do piecemeal information systems upgrades, so it is what it is. All I can recommend is don't scrimp on budgeting for someone who knows what they're doing to come in and tweak the system every week for a few months after flipping the switch. You'd be surprised at the really little but morale damaging quirks a new install can have, fixing those little quirks can make a big difference to how well the company culture ends up adopting the new system.

Niall

seamus

14ned wrote: »

SAP isn't too bad compared to alternatives, and it's certainly well supported. Its single biggest problem is that users view it as an expense for gluing silos together, not as an investment in fundamentally rearchitecting their business around their new information system. They tend to misallocate monies appropriately, and SAP installations get the rap they do consequently.

This is actually a good point.

The vast majority of bad money I've seen spent on SAP is by companies modifying the system so that it works the way their old system used to. Rather than spend money retraining users on a new system, they spend money rearchitecting SAP into the old system it's supposed to be replacing.

However, in the end when it comes to improving the efficiency of, or automating processes, it becomes expensive. Primarily because you're locked-in to SAP, good third party applications that will do this for you are rare and never cheap.

From the OP's point of view, there's a double-edged sword; if you can develop something with good SAP integration, your target market has deep pockets.
But that same target market has a tendency to ignore third party apps in favour of in-house modifications to their SAP system.

gargargar

So it would appear to be a consensus that you won't write it yourself by finding some docs on their site. It will involve getting SAP consultants. It makes sense as we would need the data to be pushed from the ERP to our system, so it will involve some form of SAP coding. Don't fancy the sound of learning ABAP!

gargargar

14ned wrote: »

SAP isn't too bad compared to alternatives, and it's certainly well supported. Its single biggest problem is that users view it as an expense for gluing silos together, not as an investment in fundamentally rearchitecting their business around their new information system.

I have heard that about SAP, that you almost need to reengineer your own business process around it.

Atomic Pineapple

I'm not familiar with SAP at all really or your business needs but would SalesForce present an easier alternative?

Speedwell

Atomic Pineapple wrote: »

I'm not familiar with SAP at all really or your business needs but would SalesForce present an easier alternative?

I work for a Salesforce partner, and Salesforce and SAP are completely different platforms. There is considerable overlap, of course, and SF is currently attempting to promote itself as a "one size fits all" solution, but they are really very different approaches and handle different parts of the business in different ways. My company is trying to leverage my ERP experience within Salesforce, but to tell you the truth there is little I can do in that way; I mostly deal with data conversion, documentation writing, client communications, and training.

I would second the salesforce suggestion.
Does this SAP ERP already exist that you are trying to integrate?

dudara

How big is your organisation and why are you pushing data to SAP? Do you own the SAP instance or is it owned by a third party?

If your organisation owns the SAP instance, then you should have in-house support who can start to help on this in terms of requirements gathering and fit-gap analysis.

Independent SAP consultants are in high demand at the moment, and I suspect most will be employed on long-term contracts. But if you find the right one, who can combine functional and technical experience, they would be able to advise you.

Deloitte and Accenture are probably the market-leading implementers in Ireland. But they deal largely with full life-cycle, multi-million Euro implementations. So their scale might not suit you, hence why I asked my first question

Caveat - My background is in ERP implementation, albeit Oracle not SAP, although I have spent some time on SAP projects, having held roles from the bottom to the top.

Speedwell

If you're determined to go with the Force.com platform (the official name for the Salesforce technology), there are bolt-on ERP applications such as FinancialForce (just one example) that can give you that functionality.

Tow

The only company I saw who painlessly converting to SAP sent two of the developers who wrote and maintained their in house systems on a six month SAP course before hand.

SarahMollie

StupidLikeAFox wrote: »

Also, contractors are very specialised and very expensive. SAP software itself is very expensive. SAP implementations are generally reserved for huge companies and are generally implemented by large consultancies too (IBM, Accenture, Deloitte etc)

What are you hoping to do exactly?

I've work in the SAP universe and this isnt really true anymore.

They have a lot of SME products (often same as regular versions, with license limitations to fit SME market and priced accordingly). These are referred to as Edge products.

The main integration solutions are PO (Process Orchestration) which is on premise or HCI (HANA Cloud Integration) which is obviously enough, in the cloud.

SarahMollie

gargargar wrote: »

That's what I thought. Our best path would be to talk to some skilled consultant, but as you say it may be tough even to find someone who knows the sub section.

SAP have a network of partners and thats where most of the SMEs would get their services from, as the big SI's really are too expensive.

I'm probably closer to this than I'd care to chat about publicly but PM me if you want to be pointed in the right direction.

14ned

gargargar wrote: »

So it would appear to be a consensus that you won't write it yourself by finding some docs on their site. It will involve getting SAP consultants. It makes sense as we would need the data to be pushed from the ERP to our system, so it will involve some form of SAP coding. Don't fancy the sound of learning ABAP!

Personally speaking I always found programming SAP dead easy relative to other kinds of programming. The docs are high quality relative to other software projects, and there is a ton of information online (relative to other software projects). The algorithmic demands are extremely low, testing is very easy, and you don't need to think about low or hard latency guarantees in the microseconds range like in other programming like say for gaming, kernel device drivers or finance.

The hard part with these systems isn't the software programming, it's the fact you're actually programming the human ecosystem around the software. Unlike a database, humans don't react deterministically to commands repeated over long periods of time, and that's where almost all the big deployments of business information systems fail. That's where the value of consultants comes in, because they have accumulated domain experience in which ways human ecosystems respond to being driven by a computer.

Niall

gargargar

dudara wrote: »

How big is your organisation and why are you pushing data to SAP?

We are small but well skilled. The reason for the SAP tilt is out customers/leads would, in a lot of cases, have SAP in house.

That is also why the saleforce integration that people mention is not an option for us.

StupidLikeAFox

Wait, are you trying to push your data into their system?

LSMW might be an option

http://help.sap.com/saphelp_nw70/helpdata/en/ad/2d54a41d7011d2b42e006094b944c8/content.htm

dudara

In that case, I would expect the customers/leads to provide you with functional / technical specifications of how to create an interface to their system. Because they own the SAP system, they will control the environment and the interfaces to it. Have you discussed this potential interface with your customers/leads, and if so, have they given any guidance on their interface requirements?

LMSW files are also an option for loading data into SAP and would be simpler that full-blown interfaces.

gargargar

StupidLikeAFox wrote: »

Wait, are you trying to push your data into their system?

No push data from SAP into our system. Possibly pushing back later, but not initially.

dudara wrote: »

In that case, I would expect the customers/leads to provide you with functional / technical specifications of how to create an interface to their system.

if we want invoice data from SAP, I would have thought that would be the same structure across all SAP instances? I suppose depends on the configurability of SAP which I guess is a lot. Maybe it would be on a case by case basis.

it's probably the case that I need to talk directly to SAP consultant to see what is achievable in an off-the-shelf component. On our side it would not change, but maybe the malleability of SAP makes a single component not achievable.

Seth Brundle

Is the option there to export data from SAP to say Excel or text and import it then into your other system?

It should be a fairly simple, cheap and quick alternative (I've done it loads of times and it's often a preferred option for SAP teams).


(For transparency, I work for the firm Seamus mentioned and am not intending this as pimping)

dudara

gargargar wrote: »

No push data from SAP into our system. Possibly pushing back later, but not initially.

if we want invoice data from SAP, I would have thought that would be the same structure across all SAP instances? I suppose depends on the configurability of SAP which I guess is a lot. Maybe it would be on a case by case basis

Ah, that's a bit different.

To have an automated interface, you would need to map the fields in your system to the fields in their SAP system. in general, yes, there is a standard set of fields for invoices, but companies can often extend the standard. You would also need to map standard values between fields i.e. does their payment term of 30 days net equal your payment term of 30 days net? You'd need to work with their SAP support/development team to define, build and test the interface. But be aware, that this is a change in their production system and the change would need to be approved on their side. So you need someone in the company who can work with you to request the change and sponsor it.

As kbannon said, the easiest way be to use Excel downloads and uploads. No development would be required in their system.