Our SAP AIF (Application Integration Framework) experts completed the project for a global logistcs supplier!
The company had started in 2014 migrating local SAP systems, from multiple offices around the world, into one, global SAP ECC solution. The main goal of this massive undertaking was to have global FI/CO system, where all operations would be posted on a close-to-online basis. Such a large in scale project leads to many challenges.
One of them was standardizing and reengineering the interfaces between SAP ECC and other systems.
with t2b's help , the customer decided that
- SAP AIF add-on to SAP ECC should become a main point of monitoring of all interfaces involved,
- Entire business logic behind the interfaces (e.g. DB lookups, business validations, value mapping tables etc.) should be moved to SAP AIF,
- SAP PI should only handle connectivity, simple structural conversion and routing of the messages,
- SAP PI mapping should be simplified to significantly decrease number of errors on that stage,
- Where possible, direct connection between connecting systems can be introduced, skipping SAP PI as a mediator,
- More advanced mappings should be done in SAP AIF, and hence errors on that stage should be handled in SAP AIF as well.
During the project also enhanced monitoring with BPO – Business Process Observer – was introduced. This increased the visibility of the data flows and allowed the team to add automated notification to business process responsible when
Compared to the previous solution, the new architecture:
- - Clearly separates business logic/rules on the ERP side with AIF and technical connectivity into the SAP PI/PO middleware
- - Gives each business process responsible visibility of his dataflows via a graphical Dashboard
- - Gives back the control over the data to business, so that the users can fix data errors from partner systems themselves
- - Therefore, increases the speed with which (data) problems can be fixed while decreasing the workload on the IT support team – and related cost
- - Takes out the pressure of problem analysis and fixing from the overall organization
-> we believe that AIF is needed by every SAP customer to make the dataflows in and out of the SAP systems managable.