Understanding Business Network Collaboration and Alerts

Objective

After completing this lesson, you will be able to explain the concept of sharing information with a network of suppliers.

SAP Supply Chain Control Tower and SAP Ariba

As we have explored previously in the course, SAP Supply Chain Control Tower integrates performance from multiple systems. SAP systems and third-party systems can both be in that ecosystem. With tighter integration to execution systems, much of the future direction for SAP Supply Chain Control Tower revolves around visibility of order-based data, specifically, integration to SAP S/4HANA.

Taking it one step further, we should start thinking of integration beyond the organizational boundaries.

Integration with Suppliers

  • Sharing planning information between SAP Integrated Business Planning solution and your network of suppliers

  • Executing the planning results via the same platform allows you to significantly improve capacity utilization and working capital

The benefits of integration include the following:

  • Reduction of latency in planning and re-planning

  • Improvement of planning accuracy by collaborating with suppliers and gaining visibility into supplier inventory and capacity

  • Reduction of cost and improvement of accuracy of procurement execution
The figure shows an example for Integration with Suppliers by sharing planning information between SAP IBP, SAP S/4HANA, and SAP Ariba Supply Chain.

Supply Planning and Collaboration with Supplier

Managing Data Sharing Plans

Data sharing is an agreement between business partners that governs what data is shared, with whom and how, for example. The business has to decide which partners will be taking place in collaboration and how to share the information.

The figure shows an example of a Data sharing agreement between business partners.

SAP IBP provides 10 custom Key Figures for suppliers and 10 custom Key Figures for buyers. Shared data can be analyzed in the SAP IBP, add-in for Microsoft Excel.

Alerts and case management can be leveraged for these processes.

As an example, KPIs and alerts can be created for the Key Figures Supplier Commit (History) and Supplier Forecast (History).

Creating a Communication Arrangement

Communication Arrangements App

With this app, you can create and edit various communication arrangements. The system provides communication scenarios for inbound and outbound communication that you can use to create communication arrangements. Inbound communication defines how business documents are received from a communication partner, whereas outbound communication defines how business documents are sent to a communication partner. The communication scenario determines the authorizations, inbound and outbound services, and the supported authentications methods that are required for the communication.

A prerequisite for creating the arrangement is the existence of a communication system with inbound and outbound users. The communication user with a supported authentication type that is defined in the selected communication scenario also has to be created beforehand.

Examples of communication scenarios used in communication arrangements include:

  • SAP Ariba Network Integration

  • Data Serviced Integration (CPI-DS)

  • UI Theme Designer (for SAP Fiori themes)
  • External scheduler integrations (IBM's CONTROL-M, and so on)
  • Social Collaboration Integration (SAP Jam, and so on)

Learning

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