How Boomi can Help Enterprises Battle their SAP Integration Woes

Introduction:

A Guide to SAP Integration Methods with Boomi

Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) has become essential to business processes today. ERP systems prove to be highly beneficial. The implementation advantages override the costs companies incur. With SAP being a popular choice for ERP adoption, it is no wonder the market for it will witness an exponential rise in the coming years. However, to realize the actual value of SAP cloud, organizations need to extend its capability to other core systems as well – for example, CRM, CPQ, Inventory, MES, etc. This, though, is fraught with some inherent challenges. SAP systems may not be ready to integrate with other enterprise systems.

Challenges with Integrating SAP

We outline some of the significant challenges that businesses face when integrating SAP with Boomi:

• There are no existing industry-standard capabilities for integration by SAP. It offers proprietary capabilities like iDOCS, BAPI, ABAP, RFC, and JCo.
• It is muddled by data inconsistency due to customized functionality implementation.
• Businesses also need specialized technical know-how or SAP cloud platform integration experts for complicated development for IDOCS, BAPI, etc.
• SAP integration is required with multiple external applications running on different technologies.
• Integration needs are dynamic and evolving with the emergence of new business scenarios.

How Businesses can Overcome this Malady

This continued to be a severe concern for enterprises adopting the SAP cloud platform for a long time. Fret not. Businesses losing their mind over these obstacles can now rest easy with Boomi!

Businesses needed a modern digital integration platform that is agnostic to any specific technology and offers a readily available infrastructure to integrate with SAP and other third-party systems.

Boomi platform is one such iPaaS (Integration Platform as a Service) that fits the bill perfectly. Boomi can help an organization address integration-related challenges. Furthermore, it can rapidly integrate other applications or realize emerging use cases.

Let us quickly go through how Boomi addresses SAP-related integration challenges

Boomi platform offers OOB SAP-certified SAP Enterprise Connector with various options to integrate SAP - Doc, BAPI/RFM, file extracts, and SOAP web services. It also offers SAP Netweaver Gateway for SAP business data accessible as RESTful resources. SAP connector takes the complexity of these integration methods away from the developer. It brings in an element of choice. It allows the developer to choose integration methods while configuring the SAP connector.

The Connector has two parts –

• A Connection to establish network connectivity with the SAP cloud platform with a few simple, configurable steps
• An Operation to deal with an incoming or outgoing data profile

While configuring an operation, the Boomi SAP connector creates a profile (XML, JSON, DB, or other) based on the backend service selected – iDOCS/BAPI, RFC, etc., that caters to a custom data structure.

• Boomi SAP Connector hides all integration complexity at the SAP level from the Boomi developer by offering the option to choose the type of service to connect SAP and creating custom profiles automatically to deal with data within the Boomi platform for transformation, business rules, etc.
• Apart from SAP Enterprise-Grade Connector, Boomi also offers 200+ enterprise connectors for various standard applications available in the market – Salesforce, NetSuite, Oracle EBS, Oracle CRM, Microsoft D365, SuccessFactors, Workday, and more. It also has many other technology connectors, e.g., major databases, Webservices (REST, SOAP, OData), JMS, etc. This helps integrate SAP with various other systems, on-premises or on-cloud.
• With its low code, high configuration visual UI-based development capability, Boomi can build any new integration between SAP and any other system rapidly, realizing new use cases coming up because of changing business needs.
• Boomi has its run time (Atom – single unit of run time or Molecule – Clustered environment of run times) loosely coupled with the Boomi Platform (Atmosphere).

Simply put, this means Boomi run time can be installed on the Network or data center of your choice, e.g., Boomi Cloud, Public Cloud (AWS, Azure, etc.), Private Cloud, or within your Datacenter. This kind of flexibility allows you,

• More control over your data as data only passes through the network where run time is installed, thereby addressing data security concerns.
• Achieve architectural topology that suits your need depending on how various applications are spread in your IT ecosystem (On Cloud, on-premises, Hybrid, e).

Use Cases of Achievable Integration between SAP & Other Applications

Multiple use cases can quickly be achieved between the SAP cloud platform and various other applications:

• Order-to-Cash and Order-to-Fulfilment
• Supply Chain Planning and Operation
• B2B/EDI management through X12, EDIFACT, ASC, RosettaNet, API management, etc
• Partner/Customer quick onboarding
• Rapid data migration from SAP ECC to SAP S4/Hana or from other enterprise systems because of M&A
• Procure to Pay cycle
• Integration of IIoT data for manufacturing production planning or efficient maintenance

About Jade Global

Jade Global, an industry leader and trusted technology collaborator for futuristic digital enterprises, is a Boomi Certified Elite Partner specializing in enterprise-grade solutions for all integration needs. Jade Global works closely with Boomi Atmosphere to deliver complex yet cost-effective integration solutions to help customers accelerate business agility and achieve rapid digital transformation.

It has been successfully building interfaces using Boomi and helping businesses increase user adoption, engagement, and connection through multitudes of disparate systems.

Jade Global uses a hybrid Integration methodology that simplifies and achieves rapid time to value by reducing data and application integrations by weeks, months, and even years!

Let our Boomi experts set up your SAP integration with the Boomi roadmap, design, and integration process to fast-track your business growth and optimize your operations today!