How to manage the integration of data in an SAP environment?

A DataFlux White Paper Prepared by: Mike Ferguson Managing and Integrating Data in an SAP Environment Leader in Data Quality www.dataflux.com International and Data Integration 877–846–FLUX +44 (0) 1753 272 020 Over the last decade, the number of companies that have invested in packaged Investment in applications to help run their business operations and to analyze business activity has packaged climbed steadily. Many of those companies have selected SAP as a strategic provider for applications has packaged applications. This selection may have been made for one specific SAP increased application (e.g. enterprise resource planning (ERP) for finance and/or human resources) significantly over or for the complete suite of SAP operational packaged applications, which includes ERP, the last decade customer relationship management, supply chain management, supplier relationship management and product lifecycle management. Packaged SAP solutions may also have been purchased for manufacturing, asset management, performance management, business intelligence and master data management. Therefore, for many organizations the selection of SAP packaged applications has been a strategic investment that is driven by the need to improve and underpin core operational and analytical business processes. However, to maximize the benefits of an investment in SAP applications it is also necessary to integrate them with non-SAP applications to increase process integration — and to share core master and transaction data created in SAP with other systems in other parts of the enterprise. Whatever the investment in SAP, one thing is clear — the benefit from process improvement expected from such a strategic investment is not going to be down to just the applications and processes themselves. It is also dependent on the quality of data SAP is often a within these applications and the ability to synchronize changes to this data across SAP strategic and non-SAP applications. In addition, most companies need to integrate SAP and non- SAP data to create common shared master data and common shared business intelligence investment for organizations that in an enterprise data warehouse. Therefore, a critical success factor when implementing SAP is to not just focus on the packaged applications, but to also make sure that data are trying to improve their quality and data integration are managed in order to yield the maximum return on business processes investment. Without data quality and data integration, business processes will still be plagued by defects caused by inability to eradicate data errors, and an inability to integrate, consolidate, share and synchronize core operational data, master data and historical analytical data across the enterprise. This paper looks at the SAP applications and SAP infrastructure technologies and the impact of poor data quality in an SAP environment. It then defines the requirements needed to support data quality and data integration for SAP customers and the components needed for enterprise data management in an SAP environment. The paper concludes by looking at how one supplier – DataFlux – is bringing products to market to support these needs. SAP Applications and Infrastructure In order to understand the requirements for managing data quality and data integration in an SAP environment, it is first necessary to understand SAP’s applications and main infrastructure components. These are outlined below. 1 SAP Operational Applications SAP has two main generations of its popular operational application suite: • SAP R/3 • SAP Business Suite SAP R/3 is the older generation of SAP’s operational application suite, while the SAP SAP operational Business Suite is the more modern generation. The operational applications included in applications SAP Business Suite are: support a broad range of • SAP Customer Relationship Management operational • SAP ERP business processes • SAP Product Lifecycle Management • SAP Supply Chain Management • SAP Supplier Relationship Management SAP’s operational applications also include: • SAP Manufacturing • SAP Service and Asset Management • Duet – the jointly developed software component that allows Microsoft Office applications to directly access SAP application services and data SAP NetWeaver In addition to the SAP packaged operational application suite, SAP also offers its flagship NetWeaver infrastructure software, which is sometimes referred to as middleware. A high SAP NetWeaver level diagram of SAP NetWeaver is shown in Figure 1. SAP NetWeaver is a suite of provides a software products that together provide the base platform for its enterprise service- platform for oriented architecture offering for integration of SAP and non-SAP user interfaces, integrating SAP processes, applications and data. and non-SAP user NetWeaver is the platform upon which both the SAP operational application services and interfaces, SAP’s NetWeaver BI (formerly SAP Business Warehouse) packaged BI system run. In processes, addition, the SAP NetWeaver application and integration platform provides the applications and development tools, connectivity, integration and administration software to allow access data to SAP application services from other applications, processes and portals, and vice- versa. SAP NetWeaver is made up of a number of components: • SAP NetWeaver Mobile - Access from mobile devices • SAP NetWeaver Portal - A single, secure, personalized user interface for role-based access to enterprise business processes, SAP and non-SAP applications, information and collaboration tools 2 • ARIS for SAP NetWeaver - A partnership with IDSScheer offering their ARIS Business Process Management software for NetWeaver to model, integrate, execute and monitor business processes across the enterprise (SAP and non- SAP applications) and between enterprises • SAP NetWeaver Exchange Infrastructure (XI) - The service bus/message broker and Enterprise Service Repository underpinning SAP’s Service Oriented Architecture • SAP Auto-ID Infrastructure - For integration of sensing devices, e.g. RFID readers, Bluetooth • SAP NetWeaver Business Intelligence - Packaged data warehouse, analytic applications and BI tools • SAP NetWeaver Master Data Management - Management of core business entity data and synchronization across multiple operational and BI systems • SAP NetWeaver Application Server - The base NetWeaver platform for the development of web services and business applications for the SAP environment Figure 1: SAP’s NetWeaver Integration Platform SAP NetWeaver BI One of the components of SAP’s NetWeaver infrastructure suite is the SAP NetWeaver BI (Business Intelligence) system, formerly known as SAP Business Warehouse. This is an extensible, packaged business intelligence system that integrates transactional and master data from SAP and non-SAP operational and master data system(s) to create data 3 in SAP NetWeaver BI that has been optimized for multi-dimensional analysis, reporting, decision support and performance management. SAP NetWeaver SAP NetWeaver BI has pre-built data integration to take data from its own packaged BI is an operational applications into its persistent staging area and operational data store and extensible then into its active data marts and InfoCubes. Non-SAP data integration products and packaged data quality software can be integrated with SAP NetWeaver BI to provide integrated business clean data into this environment. A high-level architecture chart of SAP NetWeaver BI is intelligence shown in Figure 2.