Explaining the Concept of Order Submit and Order Orchestration

Welcome to Lesson 3, where we delve into the core functionality of SAP Order Management foundation -- the Order Submit and Order Orchestration processes.

The order submit and order orchestration processes are critical functions of SAP Order Management foundation. Understanding these processes is crucial as they determine how an order is processed right from submission to the post-submission orchestration processes. These processes can vary significantly, and understanding these variations allows you to optimize the order process whether you're splitting orders, doing dispatch, or dealing with other scenarios.

At its core, the problem SAP Order Management foundation seeks to solve is that of siloed decisions that in the past, led to a fragmented architecture. Such a structure often resulted in inconsistent customer experiences, particularly around sourcing availability and the overall orchestration of the order lifecycle.

By implementing SAP Order Management foundation, we're looking to create a consistent, repeatable process. This effort helps streamline the introduction of new channels into the mix and keeps costs low. Siloed processes, just like disparate prices or incongruent experiences across channels, are undesirable. It's crucial to remember that customers' relationships are with the brand; therefore, their experiences should be consistent, regardless of the platform or channel they choose to engage on.

As we progress through this lesson, we will take a closer look at these order submit and orchestration processes and explore how best to implement and utilize them.

When implementing the SAP Order Management foundation, it functions as a core hub for managing your orders. This central role not only enables the efficient process of receiving orders and deciding their next steps, but also facilitates executions such as fulfillment.

Once orders are processed by the SAP Order Management foundation, the resulting actions are sent out to fulfill the requests. SAP Order Management foundation then collates the responses, rendering them available for direct lookup or event publication through the Event Mesh, which can subsequently be picked up by different sales channels.

For instance, if a customer on your commerce site seeks order status or tracking, the commerce system could either call directly into SAP Order Management foundation for updates or it could rely on a more decoupled process. In the latter case, the commerce system would constantly check for new events and update persistence in the commerce application based on new incoming events. The choice between these two options depends on the specific needs of your business infrastructure.

The key advantage is that SAP Order Management foundation provides visibility across the whole lifecycle of each order, ensuring you stay fully informed and can provide timeous updates to your customers. This creates a streamlined and efficient order process for both your business and its customers.

In the follow-up section, we will delve into practical examples of how to implement these order submit and orchestration processes using SAP SAP Order Management foundation.

The order submit process in SAP Order Management foundation is the critical first stage in order management. During this stage, an order is submitted to the Order Management foundation for processing. Various validations then occur to ensure the integrity of the order data.

There are two types of validations undertaken:

1. Technical validations, which evaluate whether the format of the order makes sense and checks if the data in the order matches the setup in SAP Order Management foundation. For example, it checks whether the specified market is set up in SAP Order Management foundation, and whether sourcing information is included if required.
2. Business validations, which ensure the accuracy of business partner and product data involved in the order.

After the validations, the order enters a buffer or "remorse" period. This holding period allows for changes or cancellations to the order. The length of this period can depend on individual markets and can be extended or defined differently within the order, depending on specific requirements or product types.

Upon the expiry of the buffer period, assuming no issues or failures, the order is then released to orchestration. Orchestration involves planning how the order will be split (if needed), creating the fulfillment request, and dispatching that request to the relevant systems.

Once the order has been dispatched, updates on the order's status are received in the form of order activity notices, like shipping or delivery notifications.

This gives you a broad overview of the steps involved in the order process. In the next section, we'll explore these steps in more detail and look at how to handle any challenges that may arise during this process.

In addition to the order submit and order orchestration processes, SAP Order Management foundation offers a wide array of other configurations. A core aspect of this is the Market configuration.

The Market configuration operates as a hub for much of the information related to orders. For the purpose of demonstration, let's consider pulling up the Market screen on the SAP Order Management foundation system. This screen lists all the markets under your organization, and each market has its own set of configurations.

Upon selecting a market, various parameters can be seen. You would observe something called a 'price type' and organizational details that can map to sales organizations, distribution channels, etc. Another important parameter is the 'orchestration rule ID,' which will be more discussed when we delve into orchestration.

The configuration screen also displays the delivery options supported from the OMS side, sourcing strategy used, and buffer hold period. You can also notice the 'one-time customer' setting that decides whether or not SAP Order Management foundation will treat the business partner as a one-time customer or use the customer information as given.

By diving into such configurations and settings, you can set up your SAP Order Management foundation to best suit your business needs. You can tailor how you intake and process orders, shaping your business operations for optimal efficiency. In the upcoming sections, we will take a closer look at these configuration details and walk you through each process step by step.

In the context of SAP Order Management foundation, the orchestration service functions to initiate the delivery process of an order item to the customer. This module is responsible for sending out requests to one or more systems outside of SAP Order Management foundation, those systems being accountable for execution. The way these requests are sent out aligns with a pre-defined rule set.

The orchestration service is also in charge of recording relationships between orders and the generated fulfillment documents in the fulfillment systems. As multiple fulfillment requests for an order could create various follow-on document IDs in the backend system, maintaining visibility of these relationships is essential. This visibility ensures that updates from the fulfillment systems can be accurately mapped and order statuses updated successfully.

It's important to note that the term fulfillment is more often used in a logistical sense; the warehouse and shipping execution of physical goods. However, it can also comprise non-logistical aspects, such as accounting processes or invoicing processes. Fulfillment could also relate to non-physical order items, like subscription products or digital products.

The orchestration process occurs in two main steps:

1.  Orchestration planning:
   • This step involves determining which rule to apply for each order.
   • Fulfillment request creation: After the orchestration rule is defined, a fulfillment request is created based on it.
2. Fulfillment Request Dispatch: Following the creation of the fulfillment requests, they are dispatched for the execution process.

In our next sections, we will explore these steps in further detail and provide insight on effectively managing the order orchestration process in SAP Order Management foundation.

Understanding the orchestration process can initially be complex due to its multilayered structure. But breaking it down into digestible steps can simplify matters.

The first step involves designating an orchestration rule in the market configuration. The rule defined here controls the route for planning which can involve various parameters like factors at the order header level, aspects of the item level such as product category, or even custom fields that you've created at either the order or item level. This flexibility means SAP Order Management foundation can cater to various needs and requirements, thus lending a high degree of customization to your orchestration process.

The most common default way to conduct this is usually based on sourcing. If we receive sourcing input for the order from the 'Order Management for Sourcing and Availability' system or if a location is already defined in the storefront (for pickup orders), we can determine the sites for fulfillment.

This information allows for mapping to a specific fulfillment channel. Fulfillment channels represent the outbound channels we use and usually map to a targeted fulfillment system. From an SAP Order Management foundation perspective, one outbound channel may target an ERP while another may target a Warehouse Management System (WMS). In general, this mapping is done via the Integration Suite using different iFlows, although alternative software can be used as the outbound contract permits.

In future sections, we will delve into the detailed orchestration process and provide practical examples of how to use the system for optimal order management.

To better understand the orchestration process, let's take a look at what it looks like in the SAP Order Management foundation system.

Firstly, each Market comes with a designated Orchestration Rule. Upon examining the Orchestration settings, you'll notice the presence of an Orchestration Rule list. When you select an Orchestration Rule, it provides a range of details. For example, a Rule might include an option to make default settings. Furthermore, it contains a route list intended for mapping.

You can imagine this table could get quite extensive - for instance, if you are fulfilling from numerous store locations, you may have different routes according to the fulfillment channel.

These tables allow you to designate different processes for different systems - be it warehouse management systems or varied store applications.

The Channel Details provide further specification. For example, the system type (like SAP S/4 HANA on-prem) is included, along with a system ID. You'll also find the destination name, denoting the use of the SAP BTP destination service for outbound communication. This service simplifies the management of communication by SAP BTP.

Furthermore, we have a system defined for key mapping purposes. This is crucial to ensure customer information in the backend matches what we dispatch to them.

In the subsequent segments, we'll dive deeper into these systems, shedding more light on their roles and how to best leverage them for effective order management.

The orchestration process in SAP Order Management foundation offers a high degree of flexibility when defining routes and channels based on various criteria.

A market in SAP Order Management foundation is assigned a specific orchestration rule. This rule sets the blueprint of the route to be followed, and the routes are subsequently mapped to relevant fulfillment channels for outbound communication.

The configuration for these channels can vary greatly depending on the specific needs of your business. For example, a country-based market could be mapped to a specific ERP system. Alternatively, a premium customer may be assigned a route that promises swifter delivery.

At a more granular level, configurations at the item level could refer to large goods being directed towards a warehouse, while small goods are fulfilled from a store. One-time goods and subscription goods could be directed down different channels, with one-time goods being processed by a warehouse management system and subscription goods managed by Subscription Billing.

The ability to define custom fields opens the door to a wide range of scenarios, allowing you to tailor your orchestration strategy according to specific business needs or exceptions.

In subsequent lessons, we will explore real-life examples of these concepts, providing a practical perspective on utilizing routes and channels in SAP SAP Order Management foundation.

After the orchestration rule has been determined, the process transitions into a couple more steps: enriching the business partner data using appropriate key mapping and generating the actual fulfillment request.

Key mapping is integral to channel-to-fulfillment mapping. For instance, in a certain market level, an orchestration rule could match "power tools" to the channel "FC1" and "paint" to channel "FC2". This creates different fulfillment requests that use different keys.

Key mapping becomes critical in navigating across various system IDs and ensuring the requests are properly distinguished and channeled. Depending on which system ID you're using, the appropriate key mapping system ID needs to be used to validate the actions.

In ideal scenarios, it is preferable to set up one-to-one mapping unless there are factors that render it unnecessary. For instance, if your order data is going to remain consistent across different channels, your need for key mapping diminishes. Similarly, if all your processes involve a single back-end channel such as an ERP, the existing data should serve the purpose.

This shows the flexibility of SAP Order Management foundation in working with various layers of data complexity. In the next section, we'll delve further into the use of key mappings and how it supports the orchestration process.

With the fulfillment requests created and properly mapped, the process moves on to order dispatch. This step sends the fulfilled orders to their targeted locations. The out-of-the-box setup allows orders to be sent to different iFlows for different systems including SAP S/4HANA on-prem, SAP S/4HANA Cloud, SAP Subscription Billing, among others.

If you wish to incorporate additional or different systems, this can be achieved by customizing the existing iFlows rather than creating entirely new ones. Furthermore, the Outbound API can also hit any destination configured in SAP BTP.

A crucial detail when configuring custom dispatches is ensuring the response includes follow-on document information. Having this information is invaluable when you need a reference for checking against, or ideally, when you want a deep link into the document in the other system.

In cases where issues arise, automatic retriggering is in place to handle temporary network glitches. If a system happens to be down for an extended period or the data isn't correct, there are also provisions for manual re-triggering either via the UI or by API.

Updates on the dispatch process can come back in more than one way, and whilst all of these are documented, an asynchronous response is usually the recommended approach for event handling due to its robustness and flexibility.

In the next section, we will look into handling updates and responses as we explore more of the SAP Order Management foundation's functionalities.

To conclude this lesson, always remember the wealth of information documented by SAP about SAP Order Management foundation and its functionalities.

These resources are designed to guide you through the various steps, options, and configurations, and help you understand how to best work with the SAP Order Management foundation.

From understanding the orchestration process to managing dispatch and handling updates, the documentation provides you with detailed instructions and insights.

So, whether you're just starting out on your SAP Order Management foundation journey or are aiming to further explore its capabilities, these guides can be an invaluable resource.

In the next lesson, we'll look into handling updates and responses along with other advanced functionalities of the SAP Order Management foundation, using practical examples for better understanding.