SAP Business One Customization Market - Review

SAP Business One has about 4 years of implementation history and very robust presence in the USA, Europe, Australia, New Zealand, plus it has strong positions internationally. Considering the fact of relatively young age – the design of the system, including object model enable advanced customization, integration with both legacy and new technologies. We see certain stake on Microsoft technologies, such as MS SQL Server and COM object model. Integrated CRM module allows you to deploy Microsoft Outlook client for messaging, just to name a few. In addition to the customizability – SAP Business One has transaction integration to high end SAP, which allows this product to consolidate mid-size and small subsidiaries across the USA or internationally to your SAP corporate ERP system – franchisees network, dealerships, manufacturing facilities, etc. In this small article we will give customization scenarios to IT managers, who are planning to deploy SAP Business One integration, customization, reporting, etc.

• SAP Business One SDK. SAP Business One Software Development Kit has User Interface API, Data Interface API, Java Connector. The recommended way of customization design is XML web services, which allows you integrate custom web portals with SAP Business One objects: Sales Orders, Inventory Items, Customers. Ecommerce or Web-based Extranet (collaboration with your permanent vendors and customers) would be a good example.

• Implementation Partners. SAP Business One has several licensing & certifications criteria. One path allows the SAP partner to provide installations and so-called functional consulting. This means that these companies are experts of tying your business processes to SAP Business One standard set of modules and standard features/functionality. In our opinion – SAP BO is not only for relatively small to midsize businesses, but also for mid-size to large and even corporate business (subsidiaries and branches). Large companies have combination of multiple systems, including legacy – often they combine several platforms: Windows, Unix/Linux, Lotus Notes Domino, Siebel CRM, Salelogix, IBM DB2 to name a few. In this situation you need partnership with technically-savvy and experienced partner

• Customization Partners. SAP Business One SDK is not an open technology and in order to get access to it SAP Partner should get SDK development training and pass certification exam. At the same time, SAP SDK uses open tools, such as Microsoft Visual Studio, for example for coding itself. This leads to the common practice when Customization partners do not provide implementation and functional consulting services, but rather concentrate on development – offshore business location is also common. Some risk, however might be attributed to the fact that one organization does business processes specification and another one realizes them in custom coding.

• Technology Partners. The best result in the custom solution in our opinion could be achieved with SAP Business One Partner, who does both sides: Implementation/Functional and Customization/Development. Considering less then 10,000 SAP Business One implementations worldwide – it might be difficult to find local technology partner in your area, in this case – the compromise is to use remote partner with the network of local independent contractors.

Happy implementing, customizing and modifying! If you want us to do the job - give us a call 1-866-528-0577! help@albaspectrum.com

Andrew Karasev is Chief Technology Officer at Alba Spectrum Technologies ( http://www.albaspectrum.com ) – SAP Business One, Microsoft Business Solutions Great Plains, Navision, Axapta MS CRM, Oracle Financials and IBM Lotus Domino Partner, serving corporate customers in the following industries: Aerospace & Defense, Medical & Healthcare, Distribution & Logistics, Hospitality, Banking & Finance, Wholesale & Retail, Chemicals, Oil & Gas, Placement & Recruiting, Advertising & Publishing, Textile, Pharmaceutical, Non-Profit, Beverages, Conglomerates, Apparels, Durables, Manufacturing and having locations in multiple states and internationally. We are serving USA Nationwide: CA, IL, NY, FL, AZ, CO, TX, WI, WA, MI, MA, MO, LA, NM, MN, Europe: Germany, France, Belgium, Poland, Russia, Middle East (Egypt, Saudi Arabia, OAE, Bahrain), Asia: China, Australia, New Zealand, Oceania, South & Central America: Mexico, Peru, Brazil, Venezuela, Columbia, Ecuador, Chili, Paraguay, Uruguay, Argentina, Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico

Comparisons of SAP and Peoplesoft ERP Software

Can one software maker do it all well? There are many software development companies in the industry that are still striving to release a single, complete, successful product of outstanding quality and usability. With their modular approach to decision support software, ERP vendors are on the right track; because attempting to cover all of the separate functions of the modules would be unthinkably large and complex--not to mention costly--for one vendor.

However, Compare SAP and Peoplesoft ERP software, if each individual module has a unique function, then each module can be a different product developed by a different vendor dedicated principally to the success of a single product.

Of course, if an ERP vendor can manage to avoid the "not-invented-here" syndrome, it could integrate some of the best existing tools from the various niche software makers. For example, rather than writing a finite capacity scheduler from scratch, an ERP vendor could purchase the rights to license a scheduling tool from an existing best-in-class tool provider, and integrate it with its other offerings. Indeed, the drive to integrate best-in-class software tools from different functions may be the dominant wave of the future for the ERP industry.

Another important strategic issue facing Compare SAP and Peoplesoft ERP software ERP is whether the enterprise decision support market is essentially homogeneous or heterogeneous. While every company's specific problems are different, many problems are variations of themes. Are the similarities strong enough to support a "mass market" approach to software? Or are the differences going to keep the manufacturing software market a wide-open arena of niche specialists, systems integrators, and solutions consultants?

The point may be moot, as this issue will likely be decided by cost. Integrated packages from single vendors are going to require a major up-front investment, but buying different modules from multiple vendors will probably require a lot of effort to get them to work together, and maintenance costs will be higher in the long term if we compare SAP and Peoplesoft ERP software. If the issue comes down to pay me now or pay me later, is it possible that these technology decisions could be decided by each company's financial situation, rather than by what the best solution is? We hope not.

For some industrial managers, ERP is the nightmare that keeps them awake at nights thinking "Is the MIS department going to take over my manufacturing floor?" Much of the force pushing software makers to develop better, more useful software has been coming from practitioners: IEs and OR types who know exactly what they need from a software package. Often these experts end up actually writing the best software, as well. However, several of the ERP vendors, notably giants SAPAG and Peoplesoft come from the information systems world, and traditionally focus on the MIS piece of organizations.

For engineers who have spent months locating and purchasing software that they know and like, being forced to adopt "corporate's package" may seem like one giant step backwards. Yet, the potential strategic advantages of enterprise integration are undeniable. One thing is certain: if you want to have control over the tools you are going to be using, you're going to have to utilize your engineering training and expertise to exert positive influence on the selection process. If you sit passively on the sidelines, don't be surprised if no one hears you.

Clearly, there are more questions than answers regarding the young ERP movement. That said, we are left with one final question: will all of this change result in ever increasing consulting bills? The answer: almost certainly.

Reggie loves the ERP movement. Check out: http://www.erpsap.com ERP SAP.

Upload Excel Data to SAP: 7 Best Practices

Even with the standardized business processes and centralized data stores provided by SAP, much corporate data still resides in spreadsheets. Taking data in these spreadsheets and putting them into SAP remains one of the thorny challenges facing many corporate IT departments. Many business departments are wasting resources in manually reentering this data into SAP while introducing errors due to manual data entry. Functional and technical analysts in the IT departments are inundated with requests from business users to automate the upload of Excel data into SAP.

• Are you an SAP business user looking to reduce manual data entry for mass uploads or mass changes to SAP data, particularly when the data already exists in Excel?

• Are you an IT functional or technical analyst looking for ways to service the end-user requests for data uploadd more effectively?

• Are you looking for ways that your company can save time and resources in SAP data management?

If you answered “Yes” to any of the above questions, then this article is for you. This article describes 7 best practices in automating the upload of Excel data into SAP. Adopting these best practices will alleviate many of the pains that business users and IT analysts face in uploading Excel data to SAP.

1. Avoid Programming. With the several non-programming choices available to connect Excel and SAP, custom programming in ABAP or VB should be the absolute last resort for ad-hoc uploading Excel data to SAP. Not only programming is expensive and time consuming, a program that will be used only once or even once a year is particularly wasteful. Further, creating robust programs require a fair bit of testing and if a program has not been well-tested, it could be dangerous and cause irreparable data damage.

Use a scripting or a non-programming approach as much as possible. SAP provided tools such as BDC, CATT, LSMW, and third party tools such as Winshuttle’s TxShuttle will allow you to avoid programming to a large extent.

2. Do not Upload Directly to SAP tables. While this point is very obvious, it cannot be overemphasized. Writing directly to SAP tables avoids all the data validation and checks and balances that happen when creating data through the normal SAP transactions. So, avoid using any method that writes directly to SAP tables.

Always upload data via the pre-configured SAP transactions or BAPIs. Again, using tools such as BDC, CATT, or LSMW, or TxShuttle will allow the upload of data via SAP transactions instead of writing directly to SAP tables.

3. Choose a Record, Map, and Run strategy. A record, map, and run strategy generally involves first recording an SAP transaction where data needs to be uploaded. The recording step is followed by a mapping step where the SAP data fields captured during the recording are mapped to the Excel fields. Finally, the transaction is run over and over again with the different rows of data in the Excel file. A Record, Map, and Run strategy is similar to recording and running macros for automating routine tasks.

The advantages of choosing a record, map, and run strategy are that (a) it is very general and can work well for many different upload tasks and many different SAP transactions, even with custom transactions, (b) it is a very easy and intuitive approach and saves a lot of time making a mass data update, (c) it is something that even the business users can do themselves without requiring much IT support.

A record, map, and run strategy should be used for uploading data from Excel to SAP. Again, the SAP provided tools, such as BDC, CATT, and LSMW all support such a strategy and can work for many different upload applications. The TxShuttle tool simplifies the mapping recording and mapping tasks a lot and makes it even easier for business users. Also, for applications that require upload of transactional data containing header and line-items, such as journal vouchers, invoices, purchase orders, sales orders, etc., the TxShuttle tool has features that make it really useful.

4. Choose a Secure and SOX Compliant Method: Make sure the method you choose is secure and preserves SAP’s role-based security. In these days of Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) audits, this point cannot be overemphasized. One key aspect of section 404 is checking that rights and duties are separately assigned to different individuals so that no individual has the power to divert business or transactions in a fraudulent manner. One of the most common open SOX audit issues is that users in the IT departments have very broad access to production data in SAP. Therefore to ease compliant with SOX, any mass changes or uploads should ideally be performed by the business users who are already authorized to make the change.

To allow business users to perform the upload via SAP-provided transaction-based tools, they would need extra authorizations to use these tools. If your company is not able to provide such authorizations, the use of Winshuttle’s TxShuttle product may be more appropriate since it lives outside the core SAP system and generally does not require extra authorizations.

5. Keep the data in native Excel format. If the data to be uploaded stays in the native Excel format, rather than being converted to comma-delimited or tab-delimited text file formats, it makes the upload process much simpler. One less step for the users to worry about.

The use of Winshuttle’s TxShuttle product allows the users to keep their data in native Excel format.

6. Select an outside-in approach: The two approaches to bringing outside data into SAP are: (a) an inside-out approach where the data import tools live inside SAP are used to bring outside data into SAP, and (b) an outside-in approach where the tools living outside SAP are used to bring outside data into SAP. An inside-out approach typically requires all the data import scripts and programs to live inside SAP and therefore need to be maintained as SAP versions are upgraded, even when the scripts are one-time-use only. Thus, these one-time use scripts clutter the SAP system when using the inside-out approach. An outside-in approach offers a cleaner alternative that can be used with the user’s existing security profiles.

The announcement of Microsoft and SAP’s joint product, Mendocinno, recently validates the importance that both companies give to an outside-in approach. Other add-on products such as TxShuttle also take an outside-in approach to connect to SAP.

7. Empower business users: On a final note, one of the best practices in uploading Excel data to SAP is to empower business users to do the upload themselves. The choice of the right tool for the business users which will enable them to easily upload data without requiring any programming will go a long way to freeing up IT resources for more mission-critical applications. Letting business users take control of their own data also makes SOX compliance easier.

An easy to use product such as Winshuttle’s TxShuttle which will let business users upload their own data from Excel to SAP allows the empowering of these business users.

In summary, the best practices in uploading Excel data to SAP proposed here involve choosing non-programmatic, easy-to-use approaches, and this will enable your company to save large amounts of time and resources in day-to-day SAP data management.

To learn more about SAP tools, BDC, CATT and LSMW, visit  http://www.sap.com.

To learn more about Winshuttle tool, TxShuttle, visit http://www.winshuttle.com.

At this site, you can download a FREE WHITE PAPER describing this problem and how the TxShuttle tool works at uploading Excel data to SAP. 

You can also download a FREE 15-day evaluation version of the TxShuttle software for connecting SAP and Excel.

Vikram Chalana is the SAP product specialist at Winshuttle, Inc. He has helped many clients automate their SAP business processes, in particular processes dealing with the connecting spreadsheets and SAP. He has been in the IT industry as a data minining, business intelligence, business process automation expert for over 10 years.

To learn more about Winshuttle, please visit http://www.winshuttle.com

A General Idea on SAP Master Data Management

Working across Sap heterogeneous forums systems at multiple places, SAP Master Data Management leverages accessible IT assets in business-critical data, delivering greatly reduced data repairs charges and very useful for sap business jobs. Moreover, by ensuring cross-system data consistency, SAP Master Data Management speed ups the implementation of business processes for jobs. SAP MDM is a key enabler of SAP Enterprise Service-Oriented Architecture forums.

SAP is at present on its second iteration of MDM software. Facing restricted acceptance of its primary release, SAP changed path and in 2004 purchased a small vendor in the PIM space known as A2i. This code has happen to the basis for the presently shipping SAP MDM 5.5, and for itself, most analysts believe SAP MDM to be more of a PIM than a broad MDM product at this time.

The components & tools of SAP NetWeaver master data management integrates business courses across the comprehensive value chain, delivering features and functions to help: Master data consolidation, Synchronization and distribution of master data , Centralized management of master data, Administration of master data, Management of internal content, Catalog search, Print catalog customization , Multichannel syndication of product catalog content, Business process support and Business analytics and reporting.

There are five normal execution scenarios:

Content Consolidation, Central Master Data Management, Master Data Harmonization, Rich Product Content and Global Data Synchronization With the SAP (MDM), you can:

1. Control customer relationships efficiently through streamlined visibility across various systems 2. Simply allocate master data to assigned systems through automated distribute and subscribe models 3. Lessen the number of part masters maintained worldwide by removing duplicates 4. Analyze and statement on spending by part, supplier, or other master data 5. Negotiate superior sourcing contracts based on analytical insights 6. Lessen supply chain charges by ensuring exact exchange of data involving manufacturers and dispensers or dealers. SAP Master Data Management is the basis for harmonized, reliable information that can be offered to client applications across the enterprise. It offers you a great way to attain information steadiness across your business or jobs and IT landscape. It enables improved decision-making, translating chance charges into gains, and reducing the charge of IT maintenance. SAP Master Data Management allows you to go with information across myriad applications and topographies -- whether that details resides in SAP, non-SAP, or legacy applications. Therefore, you can lessen costs, develop decision-making, and attain business goals on jobs. The sap news says that SAP (MDM) increases the sap jobs search and by training this sap certified course education module, it supports and gives more vacancies for permanent sap jobs for all developers or trainers worldwide.

Ron Victor is a SEO copywriter for SAP jobs
He written many articles in various topics like SAP news,SAP Forums,SAP Articles.For more information visit sap employment
Contact him at ron.seocopywriter@gmail.com.

Brazil: ERP Selection - Oracle, SAP, Microsoft

In the beginning of 21st century we can recognize the trend in international business. Multinational corporations are moving their manufacturing facilities and sales operations to Brazil. Typical scenario – regional office is established in Sao Paulo or Rio de Janeiro and manufacturing facility in Salvador, Porto Alegre, Curitiba, Belo Horizonte, Recife, Manaus, etc. The first step in establishing controllable operations is ERP system implementation – this formalizes the chain of command, decision making and management. In this small article we will give you Brazilian ERP market review for midsize and large business. We will compare Microsoft Business Solutions, Oracle, SAP as well as local ERP vendors: Microsiga and RM. Let’s come to the topic:

• Local versus International brand. We do not pretend to be the judge, just pluses and minuses. Local brand ERP has local market experience, tax, typical chart of accounts, payroll specifics implemented. They are probably very competitive if you are Brazilian business. However if you represent multinational company or corporation – you should think about users experience for your international management team, IT centralized support and things like these.

• SAP. If you are committed to SAP solution - SAP Business One is probably the system of choice – it has transactions integration to SAP, CRM, MRP/Production, POP, SOP, HR, Multilanguage, multicurrency. SAP Business One is just localized for Brazilian ERP market, especially we should mention localized tax engine. SAP tested its localization with 7 pilot implementation in 2005. You should be looking for SAP Business One customization partner (who is licensed to develop customizations and integration in SAP Business One SDK). SAP Business One sits in Microsoft SQL Server and is written in C++ - it also has integration with MS Office on the level of COM objects

• Oracle. Oracle E-Business Suite, also known as Oracle Financials (as part of Oracle E-Business Suite) and Oracle Applications is natural choice if your Headquarters in Europe, USA, Australia or elsewhere is committed to Oracle platform. Oracle has long time presence in Brazil and is very good choice.

• Microsoft Business Solutions Navision & Axapta. Microsoft is currently on the way of merging/integrating its applications – this is known as Project Green, in September 2005 new marketing name was introduced- Microsoft Dynamics. Respectively Microsoft Navision and Axapta became Microsoft Dynamics NAV and Microsoft Dynamics AX. More traditional solution for Brazilian market is Navision. It has very strong position in both Europe (where it is recommended by Microsoft in all the countries, except UK – where both Navision and Great Plains are in use) and USA- especially in manufacturing sector. Axapta, however is newer and respectively its design should be more geared toward new technological trends. Axapta should be released for Brazilian market in 2006

You can always appeal to our help and expertise – in our Sao Paulo office we have all these systems expertise, plus Microsoft CRM, MS Great Plains, Lotus Notes Domino. Please give as a call São Paulo 55-11-3826-3449, USA 1-866-528-0577, 1-630-961-5918! help@albaspectrum.com

Andrew is Great Plains specialist in Alba Spectrum Technologies (http://www.albaspectrum.com) – Oracle, SAP, Microsoft Great Plains, Navision, Axapta, Microsoft CRM Partner, serving clients in São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Salvador, Porto Alegre, Curitiba, Belo Horizonte, Recife, Manaus, Lisboa, Coimbra, Porto, Cascais and having locations in multiple states and internationally.

Remove Tree Sap From Your Paint

Removing tree sap (Gummosis as defined by Wikipedia) from your car's paint is generally a very difficult and time consuming task. Here are some tips and tools that are very effective and safe ways to remove tree sap.

1) You need to remove the bulk of the sap from the paint without damage to your paint. The most effective and safe method is to use a wood paint stirring stick. These are the flat wood sticks given to you free every time you buy house paint. These work well because they are soft enough to not seriously scratch the paint yet they have nice edges that can grab the sap and scrape it off. Be careful not to get too aggressive with your scraping if you care about the paint.With enough force, you could do some damage to your paint.

2) Remove the remaining residue with full strength Simple Green or Goo Gone. I have purchased a number of Tar and Sap removers that are made for this but so far, I have found full strength Simple Green or Goo Gone to do a better job and seems to be safe for your paint. Now, this does take a fair amount of rubbing with pressure to completely remove the remains of the sticky sap. Use a soft clean rag or cloth and apply the Simple Green to the cloth, then rub like crazy! An old sock works well.

3) Finally, apply a cleaner wax to the entire area that you worked on. In many cases, this is a number of areas on your roof trunk and hood because you parked under a nasty tree that was raining sap onto your car. With that, you should probably go ahead and wax the entire car... What else are you going to do on a Sunday afternoon? You may need to use a mild rubbing compound or a cleaner wax with a mild abrasive to eliminate any minor scratches created from step 1.

Gummosis on your windows - The easy part.

Any tree sap on your windows is easily removed with a razor blade. This is the easy part because you can scrape it all off in one pass without a worry of damaging the glass. Make sure to use a razor blade holder so that you do not cut your finger off and really make it a bad day!

Dean Chafee, owner and creator of http://www.HowToFixYourStuff.com A community of People Helping People Fix Stuff.
Dean is also a contributing expert at Experts-Exchange: http://www.experts-exchange.com/M_3706695.html

SAP ABAP Performance Tuning Tips & Tricks

Need for performance tuningABAP is the universal language in the World of SAP programming and the focus is also on getting a team of efficient programmers as early as possible in each and every part of the project, both for handing over the technical specifications to them and also for asking them to toss out the ABAP programs within the “given deadlines” as well.

The key focus of assembling an efficient program takes a back seat since this force has a greater pressure of schedules along with deliveries to accomplish successful outcomes. Also an proficient ABAP program is one which brings the wanted output to the user in a finite time according to the complexity involved in the program, rather than hearing the comment “I put the program to run, have my lunch and come back to check the results”.

A performance optimized ABAP program saves the time of the end user, thus increasing the productivity of the user, and in turn keeps the user as well as the management happy leaving aside the hyperbole. SAP ABAP performing tuning tips and tricks are used for making the ABAP programs efficient in doing their work. This tuning tips and tricks also assume that the reader is well versed in each and every concepts and syntax of ABAP programming.

SAP Implementation Benefits SAP solutions embrace an extensive range of business domains, such as Financial Accounting Controlling, Asset Management, Project System, Human Resources, Quality Management, Production Planning and Sales and Distribution. We also help for small and mid-size firms that achieve profits and have significant advantages through SAP investment via our expertise in presenting SAP solutions.

Some SAP implementation benefits include:

 

• Gradual declination in the total cost of ownership
• Accomplishment of faster return on investment
• Imparting flexibility in business processes
• Inspection of entire business processes
• Integration, collaboration, planning, execution, and coordination of the complete supply chain network
• Achievement of consistent as well as apparent business insights
• Develop employee productivity
• Creation of a quality work environment
• Achievement of operational excellence and growth
• Exploitation of additional solutions with ease

 

Both SAP Implementation and SAP training are worth investing since it takes into account regarding the benefits it offers. Our partnership with leading application vendors permits us to convey competitive SAP advantages to our enterprising customers. Enterprises get in touch for the processing of SAP Consulting and SAP Upgrade solutions. We also offer its consulting, implementation and training services for the upcoming Microsoft Dynamic Business Solutions.

Ron Victor is a SEO copywriter for www.simplysap.com
He written many articles in various topics.For more information visit www.simplysap.com
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SAP Business One in Ecommerce: Integration highlights

SAP BO is moving to ecommerce with the acquisition of NetPoint ecommerce and web CRM modules, however if you already have functioning ecommerce website the idea of redeployment might be not very attractive. Let’s take a look at simple ecommerce functionality

• Ecommerce Business Logic. When new customer decides to place the order, ecommerce should create new customer record with delivery address, then create web order, plus typically charge customer credit card. All this logic is standard functionality of out of shelf or custom made ecommerce application.

• Excel CSV Templates and Integration Workbench. First what could come to your mind is deploying user-friendly SAP Integration bench by putting customer and sales order information into Excel or csv templates. This might work, however it might be exposed to human errors and probably you should consider, that these csv templates were intended to help you with initial data integration and conversion from legacy ERP to SAP BO.

• Light SAP B1 SDK programming. This customization option is not as difficult as you could think of. You need Visual Studio .Net developer, familiar with C# or VB.Net programming. In SAP BO we recommend you do not import ecommerce orders as invoices, but instead place them as Sales Orders. The reason – SAP BO Invoices are not stored in the batch but immediately posted when you add them – in our opinion you should review customer orders prior to post them all the way through to General Ledger

• SAP Business One as ERP Backend. Besides its integration capabilities, SAP BO has light manufacturing, bill of materials, assembly, robust inventory control module, plus it has integrated CRM, which could help you in generating customer leads via telemarketing campaigns, etc. SAP B1 has integration module, which allows you to consolidate SAP BO company to high-end SAP application, such as mySAP or SAP All-in-One – this option should be considered by large companies, opening subsidiaries overseas

If you need help, please give us a call: 1-866-528-0577, 1-630-961-5918, in Brazil: +55-11-3444-4949. Or email: help@albaspectrum.com skype skype: albaspectrum

Author is SAP Business One consultant and developer at Alba Spectrum Group ( http://www.albaspectrum.com http://www.enterlogix.com.br ), serving SAP BO in Brazil and international environment. In USA we serve Microsoft Dynamics GP Great Plains and recommend SAP BO as entry level solution for American companies in Brazil.

Integrating XML into SAP Business Connector

Corporations are always in search of the most effective mechanism for both acquiring and selling goods as well as services at very minimum total cost over the Internet. The Business Process Connectors for SAP systems supports for the dynamic integration between the application processes and server systems thus it facilitates in faster and efficient functioning of SAP R/3, SAP Portals and MySAP solutions. In the current model, SAP Business Connector Framework uses XML schemas for generating a JSP that can be assessed from any of the web browsers dynamically, so that one can test and deploy integration tools between the application server environment and SAP systems immediately. For the purpose of adding flexibility, convergence of XML schema approach to the SA Business Connector facilitates to all the SAP standards. Thereby the customers can leverage the power and flexibility of XML into their business documents with an improved efficiency and improved cost-effectiveness as well.

Integrating Business Connectors with XML

SAP BC combines both the RFC server and the client. Additionally it supplies an XML layer over R/3 functionality and also comes with XML automation since it has the ability in converting SAP’s RFC format into XML. There is no requirement of SAP R/3 automation at the receiving end since it supports both synchronous RFC and asynchronous RFC protocols.

Benefits of XML Integration:

End-to-End Web Business Processes

Internet bridges the gap between different businesses, systems and users and facilitates them to do business via web. SAP BC makes communication easier by its XML conversions. By means of integration with XML, it enables the exchange of structured business documents over the Internet by providing common standard for various applications together with IT systems for communing with each other and for exchanging business data. Open Business Document Exchange over the Internet

SAP Business Connector uses hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP) for exchanging XML-based documents over the Internet. Without the need of developing tool, it guarantees the security in replacing of documents in accordance with the help of its SSL (Security Socket Layer) technology. Additionally, SAP BC offers openness and flexibility for complying with emerging semantics of business that keep on changing frequently.

XML Solutions for SAP services

SAP BC makes all solutions to be accessible by means of XML based business documents and with the support of XML-based interface Repository (IFR) and empowers SAP customers to benefit from SAP functionality over the Internet, it helps all major existing interfaces that are being offered by SAP. This particular IFR gives the choice of downloading XML schemas and tenders a uniform XML interface representation despite different implementation technologies such as RFC, IDOC and BAPI. XML messages are easily translated into equivalent SAP internal call whenever you need and it gets converted back into XML format when received from SAP system thereby enhancing the existing programming model for distributed applications formed by ALE along with SAP BC.

Ron Victor is a SEO copywriter for www.simplysap.com
He written many articles in various topics.For more information visit www.simplysap.com
Contact him at ron.seocopywriter@gmail.com

SAP Business One Ecommerce Integration Highlights

In this small article we would like to give you SAP Business One SDK integration options, if you already own and operate e-commerce business. Legacy ecommerce website might be substantial historical investment and the idea to slash it and re-implement SAP Business One ecommerce module might be theoretically logical, but very expensive step, which will undermine your legacy ecommerce investment,, at least large portion of it. You can stay in SAP B1 realm and deploy different tool – SAP Business One SDK – you will need SAP BO technical consultant or programmer to code your plan

• Connector approach. Yes, this good old-days approach is still feasible. Try to design the connector – you ecommerce should send data into staging table, from where connector should pick data and mark it as processed/integrated or delete.

• Integration Simplicity. Try to make it really primitive and very simple – in this case SAP BO SDK programming should be very light, quick and simple and will not require tons of SAP B1 SDK programming experience

• Sales Orders. SAP B1 architecture suggests you use Sales Order, rather than invoice as integration object. We discourage you to integrate on invoice level, because invoice should be “added” or in accounting terms “posted”. In ERP you probably would like your operator to review customer orders, prior to be posted

• Programming Language. C# and VB.Net – this is very good news for you – these programmers are available on the job market, plus a lot of consulting companies practice these services. Tool of choice is Microsoft Visual Studio (.Net)

• SAP B1 Ecommerce module. We recommend you to review this module seriously and if you can afford to re-deploy your ecommerce website – this might be another good option, which should work in long term, assuming that you have enough time and resource for redesign

If you need help with ecommerce integration programming, please give us a call: 1-866-528-0577, 1-630-961-5918, help@albaspectrum.com , skype: albaspectrum

Andrew Karasev, Alba Spectrum Group, serving SAP Business One from our offices in Chicago and Houston, in Brazil from our office in Sao Paulo, and centralized call center and software development factory in Manila, Philippines: http://www.albaspectrum.com http://www.enterlogix.com.br

SAP ERP - The Great Equalizer

Manufacturing is a much simpler process than the convoluted melange of hardware and software choices that confront manufacturers today.

By giving unique commodity product, available in limited locations, a buyer should pay high costs to the shipping and long trip traveling. But increasing mobility changed the situation some what.

Before introduction of advertisement in the market unusual products are difficult to find in the market. A person might see a product carried out by the foreigner and he wants to inquire the origin of the maker to order a similar product. But he could not contact the particular person because of unlimited resources. Due to the unlimited resources it will take long time to fulfill the buyer needs. So to eliminate that problem temporarily the "supply chain" began with obtaining an address for the manufacturer, sending a letter of order and waiting for a response.

After innovation of computers the small companies they started using that to giants in their industries by giving them the great equalizer. To blame it on information the computers made lot of mistakes so much easier and faster. Finally they raised the question, what did we do without them? The question is no longer, where can I get the information I need? The question is now, what do I do with all the information I have? To overcome the above problem SAP ERP has given some solution.

EVOLUTION OF SAP ERP

Finally we got the solution but the solution is much more complex than the problem. First we should separate the information form the delivery mechanism and data. But data does nothing but fill computer drives until it is presented in an intelligent form to people. Then it becomes information.

Levels of SAP ERP Information

 

Nowadays varieties of programs are designed for the purpose of company’s suits. They will convert the data into the information, usually for a specific purpose or function. For example Shop floor workers need one level of information, in real-time, about the process or production; executives need a different view of that data for long-range planning and short-term deployment.

In many situations, data are available but in uncollected format. To correct that data we need lot of stuff, by doing manual entry, bar code scanning or sensor monitoring. Data mining and data warehousing applications involve this aspect of information development but the databases are becoming larger and larger as companies find more and more data to store. But all those bytes are still just a data only.

To answering the above difficulties the software developers have looked for ways to bring many divergent requirements under a single, if huge, umbrella program called SAP enterprise resource planning or SAP ERP. What SAP ERP strives to do is to combine the needed functions of every application a company requires to do its job and integrate them all together.

· "SAP ERP allows the organizations to balance customer demands impacted by multiple interrelated items and multiple plant locations.”

· SAP ERP is a very hot trend in manufacturing/information technology circles right now, and all developments indicating that it getting even hotter and hotter. Advanced Manufacturing Research (AMR) estimates that the worldwide SAP ERP software market grew in a short period of time, from $7.2 billion in 1996 to $9.6 billion in 1997. “The Growth of the SAP ERP market moves towards the increasingly global business”.

· The entire forests have facing/addressing the problems of process control but what about the problem of information control? Columbia Contech (Vancouver, Wash.), a manufacturer of electric equipment, control systems and regulators, was confronted with same problem, and he got solution in an SAP ERP system provided by Data Works (San Diego, Calif.), a leading vendor of SAP ERP software and solutions.

· "Before us getting our ERP system from Data Works, we manually costed our SAP jobs when they were completed”. Now days the overall control of the information has gotten much better through the system.

· SAP ERP makes difference at the shipping and distribution end of a company. Our SAP ERP system should overcome the duplications, delays and mistakes on delivery times, and manufacturing has become more flexible. Shipments can go direct so need to stock materials or finished goods.

Ron Victor is a SEO copywriter for SAP News . He written many articles in various topics in SAP Articles and SAP Training. For more information about sap information visit SAP Forums .Contact him at ron.seocopywriter@gmail.com