4 Major Challenges Faced By Businesses Using SAP ERP Systems & How to Overcome Them

Wednesday, January 31, 2018Lauren Macdonald Every Angle Software, a business analytics tool for SAP users, comprehensively examined and explained the top four challenges faced by businesses that use SAP ERPs, such as SAP Business One or SAP R3/ECC. You can read their whitepaper here to learn more.

At eBridge, we have many clients that have made the smart decision to use an SAP product as their ERP system of choice. Our customers can relate to a few or more of the pain-points brought up in Every Angle’s article.

Here’s how system integration has helped SAP ERP users overcome the challenges they face with their ERP systems and improve the overall efficiency of their businesses:
 

Data Model Complexity

THE CHALLENGE: Data model complexity is the first challenge that Every Angle summarizes in their article. Here, they suggest that it can be difficult to analyze raw data in SAP ERP systems and make accurate business recommendations based-off the data available.

This is largely because there is little in the way of simplified reporting and it can be difficult to view things such as multiple shipment tasks for a single sales order, for example.

OVERCOMING THE OBSTACLE: Our experts have seen this exact example come up numerous times. It’s important for businesses to have accurate reporting and be able to view the complete lifecycle of their order documents from the time they are placed to the time the product is received by its buyer.

Actually, that’s why eBridge designed our latest integration platform upgrade with this in mind, and can now offer detailed reporting for all transactions flowing through our integration system. Using the “Messages” tab on our platform’s user dashboard, you can view the entire lifecycle of a single sales order document. This effectively solves the issue SAP ERP users face when it comes to limited reporting on things like multiple shipment tasks for a single order, etc.
 

Configuration

THE CHALLENGE: Next, Every Angle suggests that your SAP ERP has been configured (likely a long time ago) to meet your specific and unique business needs. This is a great thing—except for the fact that your other business systems and applications have likely been configured differently.

This means you’ll either have to rebuild the logic in the other systems to match your SAP data (which is expensive and time consuming to do), or you’ll have to skip over the issue all together and risk inconsistencies between your ERP data and other data (this will make it extremely difficult to make accurate recommendations for growing your business).

OVERCOMING THE OBSTACLE: ERP integration platforms are designed specifically to address the problem of disparate business systems that have been configured and implemented in isolation with no easy means to communicate with one another effectively.

Using carefully coded and pre-established business rules and translations, the eBridge integration platform can adjust and manipulate data across these disparate systems so that the information can be transferred seamlessly from one business system to another regardless of how differently the source data is stored in each.

Data Volume

THE CHALLENGE: SAP ERPs like Business One, and R3/ECC are generally chosen by large multinational companies transacting hundreds of thousands of documents a day. According to Every Angle, extremely high data volumes require SAP ERP systems to aggregate the data before it’s loaded into a reporting or BI system. This can make it difficult to access very specific details such as exact order numbers, specific product descriptions, etc.

OVERCOMING THE OBSTACLE: eBridge’s latest integration platform upgrade enables the solution to handle varying transaction volumes. Hosted on Microsoft Azure, the platform can dynamically adjust to support an infinite number of transactions per minute.

With eBridge’s user dashboard you can always access specific details of your transactions, including exact order numbers, product details, inventory counts, and more. Our SAP clients also enjoy the fact that they are never charge per transaction, and are free to transfer as many orders through our system as required with no additional fees or costs for high volumes.

Poor Data Quality

THE CHALLENGE: Transactional data is a rapidly moving target, and therefore pinpointing errors before it is too late can often be difficult. Every Angle sums this up well in their article, stating that these errors can accumulate and become quite significant, resulting in lost revenues, unneeded procurement, upset customers, etc.

OVERCOMING THE OBSTACLE: Integration platforms enable businesses to better serve customers – and keep them happy.  To help you achieve this, the eBridge platform eliminates manual rekeying of transactional data that so often results in the kind of costly errors that Every Angle was referring to.

With eBridge, information flows seamlessly, and automatically, from SAP ERP systems to other business systems and applications like eCommerce platforms, online marketplaces, CRM applications, shipping platforms, retail trading partners, etc. This drastically improves the accuracy of the data across systems by eliminating the need for human interference and therefore reducing the likelihood of errors being made.
While there are plenty of benefits, the challenges to those utilizing SAP ERPs like Sap Business One and SAP R3/ECC are equally important to identify and overcome. 

Safari Ltd. Integrated Their SAP Business One ERP

Order, inventory, product, and shipment data was piling up for the folks over at Safari Ltd. They needed a better way of connecting their sales channels to their back-office ERP to avoid having to manually pass data back and forth. Javier Silva, Director of IT at Safari Ltd, began looking for an integration vendor that could connect their disparate business applications and enable them to pass data back and forth without the need for human intervention. With eBridge's iPaaS solution,Safari Ltd was able to get up and running with an integration solution that automated all their important business data in near-real time. Read More

We make integrating and syncing your SAP ERP easy! 

Learn all you can about what others are doing to optimize your ERP and extend your system to system info flow to improve data quality, anticipate and accept high transactional volumes, allow for complexities, and be open to various configurations. 

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