Cross LoB Integration - How does SAP activate help?

[wagener-mark]

Hi,

My question how SAP activate could help to tackle cross line of business integration. This is a standard activity in every implementation project and a lot of these integration taks are the same in each project, however some are very specific to one project as each project has different business challenges to solve.

Easy/common examples would be (e)WM and TM integration or (e)WM and QM or sales and purchasing in a drop shipment scenario. The number of involved streams/LoBs can also vary from a minimum of 2 to easily 4 or 5. The higher the number, the higher complexity.

The goal always is to make the best use of SAP standard to solve a business problem and to have an end-to-end solution.

Are the any recommendations and methodologies coming with SAP activate to make these integration topics a success?

[Thomas_Winkler]

Hi Mark,

this is a organizational question - the official answer is like the following picture:

>> but my personal recommendation is more, to find the right valuestream:

1. this brings you faster in the business process from your company: some examples you'll find here
   https://scaledagileframework.com/operational-value-streams/
2. you are able to prevent a "LOB-silo-thinking"

BR Thomas

[mark_olislagers]

Hello Mark,

Interesting topic and in my opnion a shortcoming to the Best Practice approach, as the individual Best Practices are not really E2E. However they often do belong to an E2E Process, which is also mentioned in SAP Activate Design and Configuration Workstream. My suggestion is to define these E2E processes at a company first. Look for the LoB that is dominant within that stream and make that LoB the E2E Lead. Often an SAP Integration Consultant that knows his/her way around the business processes, preferred with industry knowledge, can support the process. Make sure enough time is budgetted for these activities.

A good tool to manage the E2E process is Signavio. To track it in Excel you can find tools like the BPML in the SAP Activate toolbox.It even comes with the integrations listed.

It is funny that when implementing R/3 we told the customer that we need to break down the silos as SAP is an integrated system. 20+ years later, SAP made the integration so seamingless that those silos are back again and with an S/4 implementation we need to break them down again.

Best regards,

Mark

[janmusil]

mw_overlack I suggest to leverage the accelerators in SAP Activate Integration work stream to keep track and visibility of the integration requirements, their implementation and testing. And as Thomas outlined above, the cross team meetings as part of your cadence should include discussion of any cross team topics - config, integration, data, security, etc.