5 Ways to Reduce Risk and Disruption in Your Salesforce-SAP Integration

Want good, cheap, fast? No need to choose just one – you’ve got it all with enosix

Key Takeaways:

• Salesforce/SAP integration is complex and inherently filled with risk
• The four integration methods most often used are time-consuming and ineffective
• The enosix platform is designed to remove the risk of systems integration and limit disruption to days or weeks, not months
• enosix reduces risk through pre-built components, re-using logic, our communication network, reducing the load on SAP, and speeding time to value

Salesforce and SAP integration is, without a doubt, a tricky business with many potential risks. The solution you pick makes all the difference when it comes to combining these two powerful platforms that were designed to do very different things in very different ways.

You have all of this wonderful SAP data sitting there that’s not accessible by Salesforce, hampering quoting, productivity, and the ability to deliver a superior customer experience. There are a number of integration solutions involving middleware, but they each have their own risks, and none are complete solutions. These less-than-ideal methods also take nine-to-18 months to implement.

It’s time to get down to brass tacks. How much business disruption can you afford? How much risk are you willing to take? If the answer to these questions is “none,” then there’s only one integration solution for you – enosix.

4 integration methods that increase risk

When you integrate your front-end Salesforce CRM with your back-end SAP ERP, your business can move at the speed of commerce today. Integration means a 360-degree view of customers, real-time inventory information, streamlining of business processes, access to critical data needed for sound business decisions, and a transparent view of the sales order cycle.

This all sounds great, but combining these two systems is a complex process with many perils. Let’s take a look at four different integration methods and their inherent risks:

Data-level integration means stale data

You can’t get to where you want to go with data-level integration. Sure, it’s easy. Or so you think. This process is simplistic, moving data from one system to another, but your business processes are still siloed, and data becomes quickly stale. Simple? Yes. Effective and complete? No way.

Application integration is great if you like mysteries

This method, which focuses on shared functionality using business logic instead of pure data, is essentially a non-starter unless you love doing API management.

There’s plenty of data available, process results can be called and returned, and the APIs can be used by other APIs or consuming systems. The problem comes in when you want to know which backend system or functionalities are happening. Where is the information coming from? And then there’s the authentication token problem …

Business process integration for those who really like risk

By the way, business process integration is something enosix does really well, but we’ll talk about that later. Without enosix, this integration method carries a lot of risk and is costly in terms of cash and resources.

Processes exist, and business process integration provides a linkage of several processes into a chain. This is ideal for established companies that have been operating for a while with a lot of information in a particular system that has to be accessed in a certain way with processes that can’t be used out of that system for one reason or another. With this type of integration, results come from a known working process, but rewriting that data across other systems brings unacceptable risk.

Presentation integration is for the compromiser 

Presentation integration results in an integrated system that provides a unified presentation layer that allows users to access the functionality in the integrated system. However, because they use the presentation layer, they are not aware of the existing applications that are executing in the background.

While users will be interacting with the destination system in a more user-friendly way, several UIs have to be maintained because a subset of users are still working with them. This means resource constraints because systems are often compromised for convenience, and potential system-specific logic means users have to be trained in domain knowledge of back-end systems.

5 ways to reduce integration risk with enosix 

You want real-time transaction execution and access to your SAP ERP data in Salesforce. You want it now, not in months, and not at the expense of disrupting your entire business.

We have the only integration platform that runs inside SAP, so all API calls, database queries, etc. are made inside SAP with all of the logic that combines the results. This means we only need to pass the front-end system the data that it needs, not all the intermediate results. This greatly reduces the number of API calls, bandwidth, and run-time needed to feed the integration.

The enosix pre-packaged integration solution and suite of front-end applications allow you to get started in days to weeks. This means your integration is implemented in 80% less time than less effective, more disruptive approaches. Here are five ways enosix reduces risk and disruption:

1. We reuse your business logic, we don’t rewrite it

Our Rapid Integration Objects sit inside your SAP system to leverage all your existing SAP processes, custom fields, business logic, and security. This eliminates the time-consuming and risky need to attempt to reproduce those processes over and over in middleware or front-end applications.

2. Our communication framework reduces complexity

There’s no need for any deep expertise in SAP tables and functions. Our communication framework replaces the standard JCo connector and iDocs, which means 90% fewer API calls. Developer-friendly object and field names aid developers, and there’s no release dependency.

3. Our approach reduces the load on your SAP system

The enosix solutions mean a significantly reduced load on your SAP system compared to traditional integration approaches that call standard SAP BAPIs and piece together the results in middleware or the front-end.

4. Our solution is future-proofed

Because the enosix framework runs in both SAP ECC and S/4HANA, and the platform uses the same interface for your front-end applications for both, upgrading is easy. When you’re ready to move from SAP ECC to S/4HANA, applications that have been integrated via enosix can be easily upgraded without the need to rework them.

5. We speed time to value

With enosix, in days or weeks, you could realize the benefits:

• Drive 360-degree views for staff
• Transform the customer experience
• Quote better, faster, and more accurately
• Improve order accuracy and entry
• Enable customer self-service
• Build a scalable eCommerce platform
• Provide SAP data visibility on any device

enosix is the only solution that makes sense

At enosix, we have true real-time access and both custom and prebuilt components. We’re all about scalability and reusability. We take the complexity out of SAP integration to let you get up and running 70% to 90% faster than competing approaches, while still providing secure, scalable, reliable connections between your front-end systems of engagement and your SAP ERP core. Schedule a demo today.