SAP Business One Integration highlights

SAP B1 has multiple tools to enable integration with your legacy system, eCommerce, etc. In this small article we would like to give you highlights on SAP Business One SDK integrations. These integrations require Microsoft Visual Studio.net C# or VB programming skills. Typical SAP BO integration would move customer orders to SAP B1 Sale Orders

• Staging Table. You need to move your eCommerce transactions to staging table, preferably in MS SQL Server, where SAP BO is hosted. Use stored procedure, if required you can do heterogeneous queries to pull transactions from Oracle, IBM Lotus Notes Domino or another db platform

• SAP BO SDK Loop. You should open connection to SAP BO company via SDK. We will not give you code sample here, we expect intermediate SDK coding experience. When connection is established – you read your staging table and create Sales Orders one by one – or alternatively you create one Sales Order and add items one-by-one

• Flagging Imported Transactions. In staging table you should either delete imported transaction or flag them as being imported, your choice

• AR Invoice. We do not recommend you to add invoice in integration. The reason is simple – invoice is not stored in the batch – it should be posted – and we do not recommend you to review posted invoices – in order to reverse them you will need to enter credit memos, which will create a mess in your data entry

• Other Integrations. SAP Business One SDK allows you to create, modify and manipulate virtually all SAP B1 objects, in this article we showed you Sales Orders, you can also update or add customers, vendors, etc.

Please feel free to call us on SAP Business One integration scenarios: 1-866-528-0577, 1-630-961-5918, help@albaspectrum.com or skype: albaspectrum

Andrew Karasev, Alba Spectrum Group, serving SAP Business One customers in USA nationwide from Chicago and Houston, in Brazil from our call center in Sao Paulo. We also serve Microsoft Dynamics GP US nationwide and support all the types of customization, reporting, software development, integration, data conversion from our Manila software factory.

http://www.albaspectrum.com
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Data Warehousing and SAP BW

The basic criteria for the formation of data warehousing is to scrutinize data from diverse sources while taking decision-making. The objective of data warehousing is to scrutinize data from diverse sources to support decision making.

Poor Performance

Generally, data warehouse refers to storage of numerous data in it. It is not a quick process to retrieve data from the data warehouse for analysis purposes. To scrutinize the data, this data warehouse design uses a special process known as star schema. One finds difficult while extracting, transferring, transforming and loading data from diverse sources into a data warehouse. The Data must be analyzed properly before using. For the failures of many data warehousing projects ETTL has been frequently quoted. You also realize the problem if you started analyzing the data without SAP BW.

Today in large companies, SAP R/3 is used for management purposes. This SAP R/3 which is an enterprise resources planning system which is used business purposes. Before the introduction of the SAP BW, SAP R/3 was mainly used by the data warehouse. SAP BW is a business information warehouse which explains the needs of the business development. To mark your success in the market competition, you have to complete with the up-to-date development of your business environment. These challenges enable the business to take an appropriate decision with the available data. This decision enables you to make many successes in your business life.

Basic Concept of Data Warehousing

Data warehouse is a system, which contains its own database. This data warehouse collects data from various sources and it is planned to support while research has been taken place. For the purpose of analytical processing a special database technique called star schema is used.

Star Schema

Star schema is a new technique that is used by the business people for few years. This star schema has various concepts in it. Star schema is used for the data base by the following method.

This star schema is a graphical version. The name has been derived since it looks like a star. The table looks like a several dimension table. Since the table is very large, it is measured in the gigabyte. This table ensure with enormous useful data. The dimension table size will amount to 1 to 5 percent of the actual table size. This table does not require any normalization.

ETTL—Extracting, Transferring, Transforming, and Loading Data

One finds difficult while designing database, because building a data warehouse involve a significant task that do not arise OLTP system. It is difficult to extract, transform, transfer and load the data from the diverse source to data warehouse.

ETTL Process

1. While extracting the data, data has been transferred from the source system such as sap R/3 system. The purpose of this extraction is to identify the right data. A knowledgeable source system is essential for absolute accomplishment.
2. In transfer, we transfer a large number of data from different source systems to the data warehouse. Here the purpose is to plan a reasonable schedule and should have reliable and fast networks.
3. In data transformation, we design data to represent consistently in the data warehouse. The original data which exist in different databases may use different data types or different file formats. Some are case sensitive; others may not be.
4. In loading, we load data the actual tables appropriately and quickly. The purpose is to develop a complete procedure.

This ETTL is a complex and time-consuming task. Any error in it will put in to a risk at data quality, will affect business decision making. Due to this reason many data warehousing projects will try to complete their work in time. SAP R/3 is a good business functionality which leads to a complex database. Actually, it contains approximately 10,000 database tables. Sometimes the tables and columns may not have precise English descriptions. For years, due to the usage of SAP R/3 data for decision making, the business people face a continuous problem. After short listing the problem, SAP decided to develop a new data warehousing solution to help its users. The result they found is SAP Business Information Warehouse, or BW.

Ron victor is a SEO copywriter for SAP Jobs Search. 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

Want to become a SAP consultant?

SAP security is the best place to build a career if you are smart and well educated. If you are ambitious too, you will easily find the best way to reach higher and higher places inside the structure of our company and we will help you acquire the skills to become more and more competitive. Just like we were a very small company founded by only five people and finished by being one of the biggest companies in the world, you can become from a student who just knows too much, a highly successful professional involved in many interesting activities.

Most people who work for SAP hold the title of SAP consultant. This is because finally this is what our company does: it provides advice for big companies. We offer the companies packages of high-tech services and we implement them. If you will be a SAP consultant so you will have to understand the product very well. You may become a SAP consultant in any number of fields, such as mining, oil, postal services, transport, pharmaceuticals, education. As a SAP consultant you not only have to know our product very well, you also have to know the field you will work in just as much. Being a SAP consultant is not an easy job and it requires you to stay very well informed and up to date.

A SAP consultant may be under a lot of stress but the satisfactions are huge. On the one hand, a SAP consultant gets to know and understand very well all of our services. On the other, a SAP consultant gets in touch with the clients and he or she has to explain the products to the customer. So this just means that the job of a SAP consultant is not in any way dry or only technical. It is related to social sciences too, as a SAP consultant has to know how to deal with the clients, to understand their needs and be able to communicate with them. At an advanced point in the career, the SAP consultant may even give advice to the company about which services are needed on the market, which are in greater demand. The SAP consultant may be in the best position to propose new products to be developed by our company. Do try to become a SAP consultant. There are many possibilities of growth in the company and it is the best way to start your way up.

Once you know that, you will also ask yourself which specific field you should start working for. Most people coming to interviews for our company say they want to work for SAP security. SAP security may indeed be our best known field because SAP security comes together with any field in our activity. No matter what business solution we provide, we also have to provide SAP security for these solutions.

Because our solutions are highly specialized, it is usually impossible for other companies to offer SAP security. So, most possibilities for work in SAP security will come from our company as well. There may be other protective software for the business solutions we provide, but we do recommend, if you want to become an expert in SAP security, to start in our company.

What you need to know if you come to work for our company in the area of SAP security is that this job may differ very much depending from the type of solution you are working on or the type of company you are providing solutions for. The area of the world where our activity takes place is very important also. SAP security is such a general term, but it encompasses very many specific and highly specialized activities. Before you come to apply for a job in the field of SAP security, we advise you to get some information about the width of our services and the type of solutions we provide. We recommend that you find the field where you would feel more comfortable working and not just resume to the desire and thought of becoming a member of our SAP security staff.

All these explanations are meant to encourage you though. Do come to work for SAP security. Do come to be a SAP consultant. We are a very rich company and there will be many opportunities for you as well as chances for personal development. You just need to know what you want and be ambitious. We will build up on the knowledge you have and teach you many new things also.

Working as a SAP consultant or being in the staff of the SAP security is not an ordinary job. It is the chance to prove your valuable qualities and develop personal skills.

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.