EDI Interfaces in SAP
EDI (Electronic Data Interchange) interfaces are absolutely critical to businesses which use them and to the modern economy in general. Needless to say, they are also crucial in achieving effective SAP operations for your business. Therefore, we are very focused on helping our customers achieve the most resilient EDI interfaces in SAP.
Our previous blog posts have covered the basics of EDI and how it works in SAP systems, we have also taken a look at specific processes of EDI within SAP. This time Robert MacDonald will be discussing operations for SAP EDI interfaces. Read on to learn more about:
What is EDI?
Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) is the backbone of huge parts of the world economy. Every time you buy a packet of pasta, or a loaf of bread, EDI messages are sent flying through the supply chain to replace items to keep up with supply and demand. Using EDI in SAP and understanding it will have a huge impact on your SAP systems and processes.
EDI transmits an electronic form of conventional business documents, like a purchase order or invoice. Since the seventies, businesses have realised that there are economies of scale in using technology to do what it is good at. This allows people to get on with what they are good at. Above all, repeatable tasks with minimised data errors have a real impact on the bottom line of any production business using SAP.
A typical landscape for EDI
Although there is a lot of variety, it is most common to see a landscape with one or more VAN Networks providing an iDoc interface to SAP PI, often with an SFTP step. IDocs are SAP’s own format for business documents, an EDI message format. The iDocs are posted into SAP ERP or S/4HANA.
What can go wrong? Common faults with EDI
Follow the flow of data, for example for an order. There are opportunities for a fault at every step:
- The order data must be correct
- Order must be in the correct format
- Order must be sent to the VAN correctly
- The VAN must map correctly into the iDoc
- The SFTP transfer must work
- The message must be picked up correctly by SAP PI
- SAP PI must perform mapping correctly
- SAP PI must be able to connect to SAP ERP
- The iDoc must technically validate correctly in SAP ERP
- The iDoc must post successfully into the application
- The functionality to process the order must run correctly
- Onward interfaces into printers, shop floor machinery or production control systems must run.
With so much to go wrong, the first step in troubleshooting is to see exactly where it has gone wrong. This is where real-time monitoring comes in.
Real-time monitoring
At Absoft we have specialised in real-time automated monitoring for the operations of our managed service customers for over a decade now. Faults with the SAP software are identified and handled by the SAP support team immediately.
To monitor EDI interfaces, there are two important differences to traditional application monitoring:
- Context. A minor fault has the correct priority assigned only when you can see the business impact.
- Reach. Focusing only on SAP applications doesn’t work. How do the messages get into SAP? Where do they go?
For an EDI interface, we create a dashboard to show the context of every component. We will also use any API we can get our hands on, including the VAN and any infrastructure monitoring.
In other words, we build a complete picture of the end-to-end process with proactive monitoring of every single bit that can go wrong.
Tracing an SAP EDI interface fault
Traditionally, tracing interface faults can be one of the most disruptive, time consuming and soul-destroying parts of any SAP operations. Conference calls and high priority tickets fly around as every team says their part of the interface is working and the problem must lie elsewhere.
For our food and beverage customers in the fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) sector, EDI is as important as the production ERP system and any failure is catastrophic. With orders often filled within hours of receiving them from the supermarkets, it is not acceptable to spend time on troubleshooting.
With a real-time monitoring dashboard, it’s immediately clear where a fault lies. We use highly granular notification configuration to inform the right team, whether they are in Absoft, a customer team or a third party.
Constantly learning
It is impossible to predict every fault from the start, so it is important to adapt. If we miss a problem, we make sure we set up custom monitoring and add it to our dashboard for next time.
If a problem becomes repetitive, we will automate the solution. Often it is more appropriate to alter the design to build in resilience, but if that is not possible we will use monitoring and automation together to create a self-healing EDI interface.
Putting it all together
SAP cannot operate as an island with EDI, and subsequently neither can the SAP support teams. At Absoft, for our SAP Managed Service customers in manufacturing, food and beverage, we run critical 24/7 EDI interfaces. We do this with and without SAP middleware and VAN networks.
When building new interfaces, Absoft specialises in resilient interfaces without complex and expensive middleware, by making expert use of the application server in ERP and S/4 and our expert SAP operations function.
Article by: Robert MacDonald, Innovation and Technology Manager
Bob is responsible for bringing the latest SAP technology to Absoft and its customers across industry sectors. From a technical background, he specialises in identifying efficiencies in running SAP through automation, monitoring and optimisation. He has worked on supporting, implementing and upgrading SAP for over 10 years, and is now launching the newest innovations in automation.
