Travel on Demand vs TM

[Former Member]

Hi Experts,

Any chance to get a comparison between SAP TOD and FI-TV ? We have a subsidiary start working with ToD and I need to reinforce my thoughts about to wotk with FI-TV when integrating my subsidiary.

Thoughts ?

BR, Hamilton

[Lukas_Weigelt · Accepted solution]

Greetz Hamilton,

this isn't that easy to answer and the comparison itself with a useful valuation might strongly depend on one's personal opinion, I'll give it a (sibjective) try though.

First of all, you have to be aware of the history of SAP's attempt to provide a travel management solution for its customers... The foundations of the FI-TV solution reaches back to R/2, back to 1999 ,or even earlier if I'm not mistaken, and has developed ever since up to the present EHP6 / HR-Renewal-1 Upgrades within SAP's ERP 6.0 system/solution. So there has been a lot of maturing over that past time (especially in the last three or four years, i.e. EHP4 to EHP6).

The FI-TV module is entirely integrated into the ERP system and allows for cross-integration to Financials, Controlling, HR/HCM and CA-TS, you do need the hardware and you need to pay for licences. Furthermore the configuration is possible normally via customizing tables etc and in 90% of the entire application you have the possibility to alter it completely via enhancements modification-free, so you do have a great ton on control over this whole process and it is immensely flexible (because of the ERP system).

Travel on Demand, on the other hand, has been established within that whole HANA-Hype, is hosted on SAP side and also is relatively new, i.e. there are not many other customers using it and it isn't even available for the same mass that is using FI-TV at the moment. This cloud solution needs less configuration work but loses on side of flexibility. Travel on Demand supposedly can be orchestrated with FI-TV to have some kind of mixed solution (I don't believe this at the moment, since I haven't made the experience yet myself and you can't believe SAP's "success stories", or rather you should not if you are intelligent).

To shorten my babbling a bit:

FI-TV: Long-Term solution within SAP with (partially) very robust solutions and a vast variety of possibilites to alter/manipulate the process/business logic/UI-Logic, pretty much everything.

ToD: Fairly new solution in the super-duper-cloud hype with standarized standalone services that can be fed with uploaded masterdata from your own system.

Both solutions share about 70% of internal processes (request/plan/expense sheet/workflow/etc.), ToD has better or rather more integration with mobile solutions/devices but lacks flexibility. FI-TV nowadays allows for more integrated third-party solutions....

You see, it's all not that easy. If I was in the situation of "needing a solution fast" and would be ready to adapt myself to whatever is given me, I'd go for ToD; probably less TCO. If you have strict laws and requirements in a company like mine (in public services) ToD is never going to happen and you need full control and flexibility.

I hope this helped a bit and didn't confuse you,

Cheers, Lukas

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Hi Lukas,

You was very clear and I share your vision. As I talk to Alok, our company is too big (we have ERP, CRM, APO, HCM, BW, BWA etc). I'm studing TOD because some of our subsidiaries doesn't have ECC implemented yet and they need to control travel expenses (reports, approvals etc).

I don't know if we can implement FI-TV with subsidiaries' personnel master data just to have this kind of control without FI-AP/GL integration (they work with 3rd party's accounts payable system). Do you know ? Because, when we rollout t he ECC project they can use the same corparative FI-TV solution (not implemented yet).

Anyway, your explanation was a real "lesson" about the travel management.

Tks a lot !!!

[Lukas_Weigelt · Accepted solution]

Hi Hamilton,

thanks a lot for the kind feedback!

I don't know if we can implement FI-TV with subsidiaries' personnel master data just to have this kind of control without FI-AP/GL integration (they work with 3rd party's accounts payable system). Do you know ? Because, when we rollout t he ECC project they can use the same corparative FI-TV solution (not implemented yet).

I'm afraid I can't give you a reliable or qualified enough answer on that because I simply lack the practical experience of the use case you describe. SAP does say that orchestration between ToD and FI-TV is possible, however I don't see any detailed information about that how exactly so it sounds very much like marketing-ruckus to me.

I now also understand your ultimate problem; you need/want to straddle the amount of time in which your subsidiaries are not 'swallowed' yet from your ECC-Rollout with another solution that, in the best case, can be integrated in a clean way into ECC after the rollout, right? However, most of the time it comes down to migration in the end, so you will probably have some standalone solutions for your subsidiaries and after the Rollout, migrate them into the ECC-Environment ;-/. Whereas I don't really think of this procedure as negative, because after all you then have one system for all alike, without having an indefinable amount of island-solutions you have to keep integrated into FI-TV, maintain them, pay bills for them, etc etc.

Cheers, Lukas

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Hi Lukas,

Yes, it's exactly my problem. I want to decide what's the better solution until the subs. migrate to SAP ECC. We can start working with TOD stand alone and the migrate to FI-TV or decide to keep TOD for subs and corporate (this study is underway).

Best, Hamilton

[Former Member]

Hi,

TOD is cloud based solution so it really depends on the data privacy of your organization. Also TOD have limited OSS message support currently.

FI-TV itself is now a matured product with EHP 6 having many functionalities from legal perspective as well. OSS support is complete.

let me know the exact scope of project to have more visibility

Thanks

Alok

[Former Member]

Hi Alok,

Thanks for your help. You touch in 2 important questions for me: OSS support and data privacy. My company is the biggest Comestic in Brazil and now we are in the ERP rollout to the other countries (5 in total). Meanwhile, we are studing to implement TOD for companies that doesn't have ECC implemented.

BR, Hamilton