SAP Application Development and Integration

SAP Application Development and Integration

For success and for even survival, today’s companies must develop and roll out applications, with high quality, user experience, and integration, while minimizing risks associated with the rapid development and deployment of applications.

SAP Application Development and Integration

For success and for even survival, today’s companies must develop and roll out applications, with high quality, user experience, and integration, while minimizing risks associated with the rapid development and deployment of applications.

SAPinsider’s benchmark report on Application Strategies and Development for SAP S/4HANA and Cloud discovered that found that the top driver for application strategy is the need to maintain or improve business processes rapidly to support changing needs (50%). The next important driver is the continued demand for SAP and non-SAP applications that connect to core SAP (36%).

Understanding this burgeoning need for developing applications, SAP has bundled several tools in the SAP Extension Suite and SAP Integration Suite which are part of the SAP Business Technology Platform (SAP BTP).

To deliver the value proposition, SAP Extension Suite includes components such as SAP AppGyver for low-code development, SAP Business Application Studio for extending business applications, SAP Conversational AI for voice and bot applications, SAP Mobile Development Kit (MDK) for mobile applications, SAP native SDKs for iOS and Android as well as the SAP Fiori design system and design platform for pre-built common applications for thousands of use cases.

This valuable article Extend Your Core Business Applications and Drive Your Business Forward with SAP Extension Suite outlines the various ways in which SAP Extension Suite provides extensibility and walks through the various steps in the process of utilizing it.

ABAP code forms the bulk of the legacy customizations and extensions. As part of SAP BTP, ABAP environments provide ways to develop using the ABAP RESTful Application Programming Model (RAP), leveraging SAP HANA, SAP Fiori, and a cloud-optimized ABAP language with a clear set of released standard APIs. Developers can utilize a development toolset that enables tight integration with Git-enabled lifecycle management that includes ABAP ABAP editors, dictionary, UI painters, function, class, and web app builders.

Skills are always a major issue in development as the above-mentioned report found. SAP Extension Suite offers options of different technologies and programming languages through various options and runtime environments are available on the SAP BTP: ABAP environment, Cloud Foundry runtime, and Kyma runtime.

Almost half of the respondents in SAPinsider research on Application Strategies and Development for SAP S/4HANA and Cloud are planning or evaluating low-code platforms. There is an expectation of significant impact from these platforms such as ability to deliver applications rapidly, reduced IT costs, and enabling industry standards. Read the article “Governance for Low-code Platforms” on recommendations on governance for low-code platforms.

There is an exciting range of applications that are possible in today’s platforms. Companies like ServiceNow and Pillir.io provide a significant set of prebuilt apps in their low-code platforms. Consultants such as Cognizant, cbs Consulting, Capgemini, and TechMahindra can provide the expertise to drive innovation.

What is SAP Integration?

Establishing a single hub of information is vital to arm business leaders at any organization with the real-time information they need to make the decisions that will benefit their organization the most. While IT teams can manually create some connections, integration platforms are often favored as the solutions to keep all facets of the business connected.

These platforms have significant experience in ensuring that data flows throughout the business to the appropriate points while remaining accurate, accessible, and up-to-date. Organizations should ensure that they keep integration in mind when incorporating new applications and systems into their overall SAP landscape.

Organizations should ensure that all solutions they adopt can become part of a consistent software architecture that will accommodate any changes to business processes, new applications, and technological upgrades.

Some business processes require SAP to connect with multiple systems that communicate with SAP in slightly different ways. These systems can function together, as long as the company is able to find an integration layer that goes in between SAP and these systems, allowing the data to flow freely around the entire SAP landscape.

Why is SAP integration important?

SAP integration is vital for organizations across all industries. Nearly half a million organizations use SAP. Their reach extends to more than three quarters of all transactions between business and customers around the world. The massive scope of SAP powers global commerce. To make the most of this scale, organizations must integrate their SAP software and applications to the rest of their system, including their ERP.

Many organizations are turning more towards Software as a Service (SaaS) applications such as Salesforce to help manage business processes. Companies should be aware that the mixture of on-premise and cloud applications can pose a challenge for integrations, and factor that potential issue into any decisions made about which solutions or services they decide to leverage.

SAP Application Integration: Use Cases

Integration is important for all SAP applications to pair with non-SAP applications. Yet there are certain specific scenarios, systems, applications, and functions in which SAP integration is most common. These scenarios are:

CRM applications: Customer Relationship Management is one of the most vital functions of a consumer-facing business. As such, organizations must ensure that they have tight integration between their CRM systems and their ERP systems. Ensuring that customer data is consistent can help avoid improve overall business agility. To do this, organizations need to have a consistent pipeline of information between CRM systems and ERP systems so that financial, performance, and other business data is easily accessible from all parts of the business.

Supplier systems: Just as businesses must have accurate and up-to-date information for their customers, they must also have that same data for vendors. Staying on top of purchase requests, ensuring that all potential suppliers know what raw materials a business needs, and having a single source of truth for all quotes keeps all financial information accurate and ensures continuity through the supply side of the business.

Third party purchase order systems: While it is important to integrate all applications within ones own business, it is also important to set up a system to communicate with partners, such as third parties who operate purchase order systems. Integrating with these valuable organizations can help streamline new purchase orders, automatically enabling businesses to buy necessary materials while keeping all facets of the organization up to date on the process.