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What is SAP WMS Integration? Definition, Solutions, and Benefits.

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Meet Canary7
What is SAP WMS Integration? Definition, Solutions, and Benefits.

Reliable, Robust 3PL Solutions; Now at your service.

ERP integrations in general are a wonderful addition to the framework of any business – especially those that have to heavily deal with the logistics element. This is true when it comes to SAP WMS integration, which helps businesses streamline their operations to a great extent.

Never heard of SAP WMS integration? Well, don’t worry: this page is all about SAP WMS integration, and will help you get a grasp over what it is, how it works, and what benefits it provides for your business.

So, without further ado, let’s dive right in.

Contents:

What is SAP Integration?
How Does a SAP Integration Platform Help?
SAP Integration Benefits
Disadvantages of SAP Integration
SAP Integration Best Practices
More About SAP WMS Integration
What is the Purpose of SAP WMS Integration?
What are the Implementation Considerations for SAP WMS Integration?
Summing Up

What is SAP Integration?

SAP integration, also known as SAP integration suite, is a form of integration platform as a service (iPaas). The main purpose of SAP integration is to connect your software solutions, whether they are cloud-based or on-premise, with the kind of applications you need to accelerate the efficiency of your processes.

This makes SAP integration important – around 77% of the world’s transactions are carried out with the help of SAP, and it is an integration platform that is used by more than 400,000 businesses globally. Among other things, SAP integration is used to manage an organisation’s finances, resource planning, customer relations, and logistics. By connecting these aspects of your business with technology that is meant to improve them and make them a better fit for your business goals.

SAP WMS integration is the ERP integration that helps you connect your warehouse to other areas of your business by equipping it with apps from different fields. Essentially, with the help of SAP WMS integration, you can build a seamless connection between the back end of your business with everything that is going on in the front.

How Does a SAP Integration Platform Help?

There are many ways that SAP integrations can help your business. At times, they are absolutely necessary to ensure smooth functioning of systems installed in every department. With SAP integration, you get to handle a range of your systems and the problems associated with them, without having to invest too much. This means that you get the opportunity to evolve your business and take it to the next level with a limited budget, which is the best approach for small-to-mid sized companies, and even larger establishments that are looking to save money.

The reason that SAP integrations are considerably better than other forms of ERP integrations, or at least are considered to be as such by many businesses is that they provide IT teams with flexibility, ease, and convenience. Instead of having to code your own integrations and other integrated solutions, IT teams can simply opt for SAP WMS integrations that are ready-made and can help your business move forward without further delay. SAP WMS integrations only require configuration from your end, so your IT team does not have to waste time or resources on crafting their own ERP solutions.

Oftentimes, SAP WMS integration platform allows you to connect your warehouse to a range of helpful apps without requiring any knowledge of SAP data structures and framework. It can be as simple as installing your SAP integration platform and letting it run – the rest will be handled with the help of SAP WMS integration itself! Needless to say, this is a wonderful way of saving money and can allow businesses to also save time, which can then be utilised for other tasks.

A SAP WMS integration is key when it comes to integrating your warehouse with other elements of your business. Not only that, but it is also key if you are planning to use the data you generate from your warehouse, inventory, and order activity to inform your future decisions, then SAP WMS integration is definitely the way to go.

SAP Integration Benefits

As you may already be aware of by now, SAP WMS integration platforms can bring a whole range of benefits to the table. Let’s have a look at these in-depth for better understanding:

1) Real-Time Analysis

One of the biggest benefits of SAP integration is that it allows you to perform a real-time analysis. This is because it allows you to generate data in real-time in not one place, but multiple places at the same time. So, with SAP WMS integration, you are not only getting insights into your warehouse and inventory, but also other areas of your business such as, say, finance or customer management. By amalgamating these different segments together, it becomes easier for you to get a holistic view of your business operations and understand the workings you need to understand in order to get an analysis that actually counts.

2) Customer Retention

Customers in the 21st century are used to all major processes related to shopping being centralised. When certain aspects of your business are not interconnected, it wouldn’t be hard for the customers to notice that something is amiss. Of course, this can dent your reputation and credibility, and may even impact whether or not the customer wants to do business with you ever again. However, if you manage to streamline everything with the help of a SAP WMS integration platform, you will be leaving a lasting, positive impression on the minds of your customer, which will further motivate them to do business with you in the future as well! So, if, as a business, your ultimate goal is to boost customer retention, you will benefit from SAP WMS integration.

3) Improve Inventory Management

Inventory management is one of the aspects in your operations that is very closely interlinked to other areas of the business. For example, your sales activity is likely to have an impact on inventory management, as well as being impacted by it to a great extent. For this reason, it is important to ensure that your business is as integrated as it can be – which can be done with the help of ERP integrations, including a SAP WMS integration platform. Reliance on such platforms can enable you to bring the kind of connectivity you are looking for right to the heart of your warehouse.

4) Centralise Everything

Whether it is business opportunities, contacts, accounts, customers, or leads; if you manage to centralise everything and gain control of all these aspects from one place, it will become considerably easier for you to decide the direction of your business that aligns with what is in the best interests of all the areas within your business. Achieving a single view of these elements will allow you to not only save money, but also time and energy, which essentially adds up to more space for work in other areas that genuinely require your attention and effort for improvement. With the help of SAP WMS integration, you can do this and a lot more.

5) Enhance Operational Efficiency

Time is valuable – not just for you, but also for your clients. For this reason, operational efficiency is an extremely important thing to focus on. However, for businesses, it is not always easy to achieve. This is especially true where logistics are involved, since that adds an extra layer of complexity to your operations. Using a SAP WMS integration will help you speed up things to a great extent, especially considering that such a platform is aimed towards minimising defects, delays, and errors, and allows you to achieve unparalleled operational efficiency for your business.

6) Better Forecasting

Forecasting is the key to ensuring your business succeeds in the future. If you don’t get forecasting right, your business can collapse as it moves forward into the future and needless to say, that is not something anyone wants. Hence, it is important to get forecasting right – which you can with the help of SAP WMS integration. As mentioned earlier, SAP WMS integration helps you get a holistic view of your processes and make decisions as well as predictions based on them.

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Disadvantages of SAP Integration

Everything has its pros and cons, right? This extends to SAP integration as well. If you want to make an informed choice for your business that doesn’t turn out to be a costly mistake for you, you will be aware of not only the advantages but also the disadvantages of this particular kind of ERP integration.

1) High Cost

The first disadvantage is that SAP integration can be quite expensive to implement. Although it helps you save money in the long run, the upfront investment it requires from you can be quite hefty. This is because in order to be able to benefit from SAP integration, you first have to purchase the software as well as the hardware that will make SAP integration possible.

Not only that, but you will also have to curate a team of IT professionals and SAP integration experts, which is bound to increase your overall warehouse spending up a notch. Not only that, but other employees will also have to be trained on how to use SAP integration in the best way possible, which can prove to be yet another costly affair.

And lastly – maintenance. Your spending is not over once the system has been implemented, because you have to also spend money on maintenance and the general upkeep of all the different components that make SAP integration possible.

2) Complexity

As our section on the best practices for SAP integration will show you, SAP integration is actually quite complex. A person with no prior knowledge of SAP cannot possibly master it, which means that most of the things associated with SAP will have to be taken care of by experts.

Again, this raises your costs. However, it also results in delaying your services and processes, which is a no-go zone for businesses that are looking to impress their customers and improve the speed of their services. Think of it this way: the more complex your SAP WMS integration solutions are, the more challenging it becomes for you to achieve the kind of efficiency your customers are likely to be on the look out for.

3) Hard to Find

While this is not a complete disadvantage since you can always fix this with a little research, it is still concerning. The perfect SAP integration platform is not only hard to find, but it is also difficult to check whether the one you have chosen is actually fit for the job you want it to do, which is of course worrisome since it is a hefty investment, and if things go wrong then you might as well be pouring your money down the drain.

SAP Integration Best Practices

Now that you have a clearer idea of what SAP WMS integration is, we can finally get to the best practices associated with it. Here are a few things you should take note of so that the next time you use SAP with your desired apps, you can take full advantage of integration and ensure that there are no loopholes or loose ends that you have to factor in:

You should fully understand the connection protocol you want to use before you commit.

Have you ever appeared for an exam totally unprepared? I am sure you have – just like the rest of us, and so you too must know the feeling of not being able to crack the code that you are technically supposed to. This exact feeling will arise if you try to work with SAP WMS integration without understanding the connection protocol you are about to use.

A great point to start in this regard is that each integration has its pros and cons – you should research these before you get to implementing SAP WMS integration in your operations. It is only if you understand them fully will you be able to gauge whether or not they are a good fit for you.

You should know what technology layers are needed for SAP integration.

As a business owner you may think that you shouldn’t be concerning yourself with the technological aspects of SAP WMS integration. However, this isn’t true – if you have working knowledge of how SAP integration works, it will become easier for you to understand whether or not your business is properly equipped.

Here are a few layers you should be aware of:

ABSL/BODL – SAP Business ByDesign has a C-like programming language that compiles into ABAP.
ABAP – SAP ECC and S/4 instances usually perform on a ABAP stack
Database – S/4 Runs on HANA usually. However, it must be noted that the ECC database can actually run Oracle, MS-SQL and DB2. Despite this, HANA is the most popular choice when it comes to
NetWeaver – SAP has a NetWeaver stack that can be used as a Web application server. Yet, it can also be used as SAP integration.
NET – SAP Business One usually runs on a .NET stack. However, it may also run on MS-SQL/HANA.

You should review the documentation.

Looking at the documentation will give you a better idea of what the SAP integration is supposed to do. This is a best practice that should be implemented by you, but also the IT team that is in charge of the SAP integration. This is because SAP WMS integration has many pre-defined integration objects that tend to complicate things.

Sticking to the standard ones will make it easier for you to integrate SAP WMS solutions and build an advanced ecosystem out of the apps you are connecting. However, this doesn’t mean that you cannot create custom objects – you can do that, considering your framework has complete modularisation.

More About SAP WMS Integration

All of the above more or less relates to SAP integration generally. When it comes to SAP WMS integration, there are a few more things we can look into in order to deepen our understanding of the subject.

What is the Purpose of SAP WMS Integration?

The main purpose of SAP WMS integration is to provide a flexible, automated support system for all your warehouse operations. Whether it is good movements or managing stocks across the warehouse complex, SAP WMS integration can really help you do every part of your warehouse activity with utmost precision and efficiency, and is hence an important part of your overall warehouse management strategy.

What are the Implementation Considerations for SAP WMS Integration?

One of the best things about SAP WMS integration is that you can implement it on a larger level. So, no matter how big your warehouse or warehouse complex is, you can map out all of it with the help of SAP WMS integration. Everything from bigger details right down to storage bin level intricacies can be accessed with the help of SAP WMS integration – which means that you are finally able to take your warehouse optimisation to the next level.

SAP WMS integration, to put it simply, is end-to-end. This means that your WMS will be fully integrated into the SAP environment. Essentially, what this means is that your actions in other apps will influence the way you handle goods. The end result is an extremely organised and controlled warehouse, which we all know is ultimately the key to success.

Summing Up

As complex as SAP integration may be, it can be the ultimate way to organize and evolve your warehouse. Especially with the help of SAP WMS integrations offered by Canary7, you can ensure that your warehouse is set up for long-term success!

Meet Canary7
What is SAP WMS Integration? Definition, Solutions, and Benefits.