How to integrate a sales process across multiple ERP systems with SOA?

[Former Member]

Over time we have merged with multiple companies that used to run on their own ERP system. In the past we concerted them to our own R/3 instance. Having recently upgraded from R/3 4.6 to ERP 6.0, we want to transition to a SOA architecture for integrating stand-alone ERP systems. We are looking for best practices on how to start this transition; i.e., how to use SOA to implement an Order-to-Cash process across separate ERP systems.

Here is our scenario:

The same products are sold through ERP system A and ERP system B. However, each system represents a different company code with its separate manufacturing plants. Both systems evolved independently and presently have separate master data. How do you enable a sales process that dynamically (depending on inventory availability) gets the product either from a plant on system A or B? How do you implement a triangular sale that covers both ERP systems?

I am looking forward to learn from your experiences and your advice.

[Former Member]

Hi Bernard,

Like most SOA scenarios, first your scenario requires a detailed fit gap analysis to see which of your existing ERP systems best meet which business process that you want to accomplish at an organisation level. It is only after that, that you can decide which capabilities of SAP SOA can you leverage and how.

Broadly speaking, SAP's SOA paradigm provides several approaches which you could use depending on your scenarios. For example, if you only need a brokerage between two or more systems (updating or retrieval of data) either synchronously or asynchronously, your best bet is PI (preferably 7.1 because of its ESR and Services Registry). On the other hand, if you require a new application that acts as a controller of flow or processing across various systems, you could use the Composition Environment which provides you with a toolset to build composite applications across various systems (for instance, by registering services from multiple systems on the Services Registry, and then consuming it from say a WebDynpro application).

The following document might provide you with more insight on this:

https://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/scn/go/portal/prtroot/docs/library/uuid/809db91f-9bdf-2910-93be-ca4f0853...

Hope this helps!

Regards,

Romit