Defining the Scope of Integration in ESM

Objective

After completing this lesson, you will be able to analyze and evaluate potential high-level business opportunities by reviewing integration options with Enterprise Service Management (ESM)

Integration Scenarios

In this lesson, you will learn how to accelerate Service Delivery by leveraging the pre-delivered, integrated scenarios offered as part of SAP ESM and SAP S/4HANA. The pre-delivered integration scenarios enable seamless data exchange between systems and support key scenarios like general finance enquiry, payment advice processing, customer invoice enquiry, asset creation, manual accrual posting and general ledger posting.

Diagram showing a process flow for handling general finance inquiries. The process starts with inbound requests, proceeds through AI-powered case creation, case routing, progress tracking, automated processing, efficient communications, and concludes with case completion and general ledger postings in S/4HANA.

A General Finance Inquiry is a common inbound request where a supplier contact person sends an email to the Finance Department asking for information or clarification about an attached invoice document. When the email reaches SAP ESM, the following activities take place.

  1. Case Creation with AI: SAP ESM Generative AI features are applied automatically to the inbound enquiry for the creation of a new Case and its enrichment.

  2. Case Routing: Case routing gets performed based on the Case content and classification, and a skilled Finance Support Agent is assigned as the owner.

  3. Track Progress: Case progress can be monitored and tracked in the system.

  4. Automated Processing: Posting documents into SAP S/4HANA is automatically performed by the system, with the Finance Support Agent reviewing and confirming the correctness of the transaction.

  5. Efficient Communications: Smooth and efficient communications with the supplier are supported by SAP ESM Case management capabilities.

  6. Case Completion: A prompt Case resolution is guaranteed by combining embedded AI features in SAP ESM, a standard integration with SAP S/4HANA, and the manual intervention of an expert Finance Support Agent.

Similarly to the General Finance Enquiry, the following use cases can also be handled as part of the SAP ESM and S/4HANA integrated scenarios.

  • Payment Advice Processing

  • Customer Invoice Enquiry

  • Asset Creation

  • Manual Accrual Posting

  • Manual General Ledger Posting

The connection between SAP ESM and SAP S/4HANA can be created using the SAP Integration Suite.

SAP Integration Suite

SAP Integration Suite serves as the middleware that facilitates the dataflow between SAP ESM and SAP S/4HANA, the core Cloud ERP that receives or provides data upon request to expedite the handling of enquiries.

SAP Integration Suite, in combination with SAP ESM, SAP S/4HANA, and SAP SuccessFactors provides standard integration packages which allow you to enable the following scenarios:

The image is a simple diagram featuring three rectangles arranged in three rows under a header. The header contains the text Integration Scenarios indicating the theme of the diagram. Below the header, the three rectangles represent different integration scenarios. The top left rectangle is labeled Request Payment Advice Document from S4/HANA, and the top right rectangle is labeled Request Supplier Invoice from S/4HANA. The second row left rectangle is labeled Post Payment Advice Document to SAP S4/HANA, and the second row right rectangle is labeled Search Supplier Invoices from S4/HANA. The third row left rectangle is labeled “Replicate Employee from SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central.” The third row right rectangle is labeled “Replicate Employee manually from SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central.

SAP S/4HANA Finance Integration Scenarios

General enquiries like correcting a posted general ledger entry, handling the creation and approval flow for internal assets, or payment advice automation processes can be managed as part of the SAP S/4HANA Finance capabilities.

Request/Post Payment Advice Document from S/4HANA

Payment advice documents detail payments made by customers or received by the company, including information about the payer, payee, amount, and date of payment. These can be requested from SAP ESM or posted into SAP S/4HANA using this process.

Request Supplier Invoice from S/4HANA

Requesting a Supplier Invoice by key refers to retrieving the invoice details from a supplier within SAP S/4HANA.

Search Supplier Invoices from S/4HANA

Looking up a supplier invoice by reference number refers to retrieving the invoice details from a supplier within SAP S/4HANA.

SAP SuccessFactors Integration Scenarios

Replicate Employees from SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central

This process replicates employees from SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central to SAP ESM leveraging a pre-delivered integration package SAP Sales Cloud and SAP Service Cloud Version 2 Integration with SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central available in SAP Cloud Integration.

Lesson summary:

In this lesson you examined the different integration scenarios that can be executed after configuring the integration between SAP ESM, SAP S/4HANA and SAP SuccessFactors.

Once the integration has been enabled, it is possible to easily send and receive specific data from one system to the other to expedite resolving cases and providing solutions.