SAP Hybris Commerce – Integration with SAP Solutions – A Compendium

This blog is discontinued since SAP (Hybris) Commerce 6.0, but can still serve you for general understanding about how to integrate SAP (Hybris) Commerce with SAP Solutions.

The most recent information about the integration with SAP Solutions is available in the corresponding SAP (Hybris) Commerce docu parts (access only for registered Hybris Wiki users). Check each release seperately.

Read this blog for the SAP (Hybris) integration with SAP Retail specific industry solutions  

Dear community members,

This compendium gives an overview about the integration of the SAP Hybris Commerce Platform with SAP solutions, and provides helpful links and guides.

Please note:

Most of the hybris/SAP integration content described below is part of the hybris product portfolio. Therefore the online documentation, feature description, product details etc. are located in the Hybris WIKI (registration required, access might be restricted).

NEW However, as SAP customer you can download a comprehensive PDF presentation about the hybris/SAP integration from SAP Service Marketplace (as of Hybris Commerce 5.5).

Quicklinks

    By release

• • Hybris 5.2 – PunchOut Scenario, Ariba Integration
  • Hybris 5.3 – THE first ERP & Order Management integration release; Product Configuration
  • Hybris 5.4 – Refinements in Master Data Order Integration
  • Hybris 5.5 and 5.5.1 – Refinements in synchronous ERP integration, Java 8
  • Hybris 5.6 – Multi-scenario support on a single Hybris instance – basic settings
  • SAP IS-Retail Integration Packages for Hybris Commerce
  • Hybris 5.7 – B2B and B2C ERP Order Integration in parallel on a single Hybris instance
    • NEWRDS – Hybris Commerce 5.7 integration with ERP incl. IS Retail
      
  • Integration with SAP Cloud for Customer / extended in Hybris Commerce 6.0
  • Hybris 6.0 – SAP CRM order management integration; multiple SAP backends, further C4C integration – stay tuned
    
• Integration Technology and Architecture
• Further Information

Introduction

The company hybris joined the SAP group in August 2013. In October 2013 SAP announced to discontinue its own SAP WebChannel Experience Management solution to solely focus on boosting hybris’ Commerce Suite. For hybris 5.1, just four months after the acquisition, SAP described the integration with SAP ERP in a RDS package documentation.

hybris 5.2

In July 2014, hybris 5.2 provided the integration with external procurement solutions.

The so-called hybris B2B PunchOut Service provides an easy configuration point for suppliers to integrate with third-party procurement systems and feed catalogs and product content to these systems on a request basis. This enables B2B buyers to access the full product catalog and shop within their preferred procurement system environment.

The hybris B2B PunchOut Accelerator offers a built-in access to the ARIBA network.

Check the hybris PunchOut Factsheet.

hybris 5.3

Back in Sept 2014, hybris 5.3 provided a deep integration between hybris Commerce Suite as a front end and SAP ERP as back end, introducing a new SAP extension. This integration makes it possible to reuse the master data available in SAP ERP, which are transferred as XML idocs via http using the hybris DataHub for the asynchronous transfer of master data, prices, stock information, as well as order documents and order status.

Here a list of standard idocs used (as of hybris Commerce 5.4)

hybris 5.3 contains a built-in Order Management integration with SAP ERP. Orders are either created in hybris (asynchronous and hybrid scenario), or directly in SAP ERP (synchronous scenario) using SAP’s Lean Order Management interface. Real-time connections to SAP ERP are performed synchronously via JCo-RFC connections calling SAP RFC Function Modules. The hybris Management Console (hMC) provides built-in settings to configure the preferred scenario, SAP ERP backend destination, RFC functional calls etc.

Integrated in the hybris/ERP Order Management scenarios SAP Configure, Price, and Quote for Product Configuration provides a comprehensive solution to manage personalized and customizable products in and with hybris Commerce Suite. As a pillar of the SAP Configure, Price, and Quote (CPQ) solution, it allows you to expose capabilities of SAP ERP Variant and Product Configuration to your hybris online store customers. At the same time, it allows you to hide any complexity that is not relevant for the online store. Online store customers can configure these products interactively, and then order them.

No additional hardware is required in order to use SAP CPQ, as the configuration knowledge base with the configuration models is replicated from ERP database to the hybris database server as a second instance, which is independent from the hybris DB instance. So it sits there in parallel. The configuration engine is the “CPQ engine”, a JAVA based application that is installed on the hybris application server in parallel to the hybris application. hybris and CPQ engine communicate via JCO. During a product configuration by a user, the hybris application calls the CPQ engine via JCO, which provides the configuration options. The UI rendering however happens in hybris. So there is only one common UI for webshop and configuration part.

Please note that SAP CPQ requires an additional software license to make use of the product variant configuration, as well as an SAP ERP software solution package (SAP CPQ Product Config 2.x) which can be downloaded separately from the SAP Software Download Center.

Important to all SAP customers to know, the hybris software shipment includes all SAP ERP integration capabilities, which is part of the hybris software. Unless you are not using SAP CPQ for product configuration, there is no additional package required in SAP ERP.

hybris 5.3 also provides an integration with SAP Customer Activity Repository (= CAR), a solution for SAP’s retail customers, where all customer activities are tracked. When SAP Customer Activity Repository (SAP CAR) is part of your system landscape, you can provide B2C customers with a more complete view of their purchase history. When customers access their order history in the online store, they can view not only orders made in the online store and other hybris channels, but also see their point-of-sale (POS) transactions.

When SAP hybris Marketing (formerly SAP Customer Engagement Intelligence) is part of your system landscape, you can offer your customers personalized shopping experiences by integrating and leveraging the results of the advanced customer segmentation capabilities with the hybris WCMS. The data needed in SAP hybris Marketing Segmentation comes from hybris Commerce Suite via SAP ERP, for customer-related and order-related information created in hybris, but optionally also from other sources like CAR (including POS data), Loyalty Management and CRM solution(s), Social Media platforms, geo-based data sources (e.g. Nielsen), … The extensive information of customer data, transactions and (social) interactions in the HANA based SAP hybris Marketing provides an ultimate 360 degrees view of the customer allowing best-in-class personalized marketing addressing.

This in total makes hybris 5.3 the first major release for SAP customers to go for.

SAP release requirements are found in the hybris WIKI.

hybris 5.4 (RTC on Dec 4, 2014, see product page in hybris WIKI).

Among generic hybris features, hybris 5.4 provides new SAP integration capabilities like the integration of the personalized product recommendations based on SAP hybris Marketing Recommendation (formerly known as Product Recommendation Intelligence), as well as important round offs of the extensive SAP integration content shipped in the former release.

For SAP customers hybris 5.4 supports

• Integration with SAP hybris Marketing for personalized product recommendations
• Watch the video on hybris 5.4 Product Information page
• Handling of pre-configured product variants
• Ordering of configurable products
• Customer Self-Service and customer data change
• Material classification data seamlessly integrated with hybris
• Cart handling between sessions and planned backend down times (synchronous scenario)
• Support of group conditions
• Maintain and display commerce-specific information for configurable products

The comprehensive description of hybris 5.4 based SAP integration features is found in the hybris-SAP Knowledge part of the hybris WIKI.

hybris 5.5 (RTC on March 11 2015, see product page in hybris WIKI)

On March 11, 2015, hybris 5.5 was shipped. As in the former release, it contains both new capabilities as well as important round-off content.

hybris 5.5 provides important generic SAP integration features, like

• Transfer of taxation information
• Conversion of Base UoM
• Definition of an SAP base store
• Live ATP check via synchronous RFC call
• Pricing scales via synchronous RFC call
• Significant hybris DataHub performance increase

hybris 5.5.1 (RTC in April  2015, see product page in hybris WIKI)

This realease provided genuine hybris improvements, but from an SAP integration perpective the changes are only documentation:Instructions for extending SAP Data Hub extensions are now available, see Data Hub – Extensibility Guide.

However, hybris 5.5.1 is the first release supporting Java 8, Spring 4.1 and other latest technical framework releases. Please note that Java 7 is no longer supported with 5.5.1!

hybris 5.6 (RTC on August 4, 2015, see product page in hybris WIKI)

Asynchronous B2C and Synchronous B2B scenario can run in parallel on a single hybris instance. This capability was further extended in 5.7, see below.

SAP IS-Retail Integration Package

SAP Retail specific integration is provided by the SAP hybris Commerce, integration package for SAP for Retail

The package contains important enhancements to integrate SAP ERP Retail and SAP CAR with SAP hybris Commerce Suite by providing the following integration:

hybris 5.7 (RTC on Oct 8, 2015, see product page in hybris WIKI)

There is plenty of interesting functionality in 5.7.

From an SAP integration perspective, combined B2C and B2B scenarios can run in parallel on a single hybris instance. This is a huge step forward for all industries who sell to both B2B business partners as well as B2C consumers.

Here an extreme example of shop combinations possible with 5.7 in one hybris instance:

B2C with asynchronous order management (AOM)

• B2B with asynchronous order management (AOM), prices and ATP are determined by hybris
• B2B with asynchronous order management, but synchronous connection to ERP for e.g. pricing, ATP, credit limit, …
• B2B with synchronous order management in ECC via SAP’s Lean Sales Order API (LO-API)

Please note that a hybris instance can only be connected with a single SAP ECC client, so all these scenarios have to run against the same ECC client.

Check the details in the hybris 5.7 SAP Integration docu.

A Rapid deployment Solution is available which provides a scenario and implementation guide to integrate Hybris Commerce 5.7 with ERP including special Retail Industry master data, see this blog: RDS – Hybris Commerce 5.7 integration with ERP incl. IS Retail and the corresponding RDS page.

Hybris Commerce 6.0 (RTC on April 13, 2016, see product page in Hybris WIKI)

– Release Documentation

– massive enhancement on the Hybris Commerce platform, responsive UIs, Customer Experience, etc.

– SAP CRM Order Management Integration

– Integration of Hybris OMS with ERP logistics

Integration Technology and Architecture

There are different technologies used for the hybris Commerce/SAP Integration, see figure below:

hybris Commerce/ERP integration methods

1) Asynchronous integration via Hybris Data Hub
used for the asynchronous transfer of master data and order documents between ECC and hybris Commerce Suite by using the hybris Data Hub. ERP data is replicated through SAP’s ALE layer as XML based IDocs (http transfer) to the hybris Data Hub, which identifies and converts the data packages into a hybris IMPEX format and forwards it to the hybris Commerce server.

In the same way hybris documents, e.g. orders, are sent from the hybris Commerce server to the hybris Data Hub, which converts the data into XML based idocs and forwards it to the ALE interface. This technology is applied for master data (materials, customers, price conditions, bonus buy conditions, stock inventory, order documents) and order documents. Standard iDoc types are used.

In B2C, usually you need no customer specific pricing, no true ATP check, no credit limit check (only a credit check for your payment card), … Therefore B2C is destined to run via AOM.

In B2B, you usually have customer specific prices, maybe even sales/volume contracts, credit limit, ATP check, customer/plant assignments, etc.

In B2B you have the option between

• • Asynchronous Order Management (AOM = order creation in hybris Commerce) with synchronous RFC calls into ERP for retrieving real-time information
  • Synchronous Order Management (SOM = order creation in ERP SD) via the Lean Order API (LORD, LO-API) for the (almost) complete SD Sales order context accessible from within hybris Commerce with a single RFC call. In case the ERP is not available a fail-safe mechanism is available to save the basket within hybris.

In B2B, you usually have customer specific prices, maybe even sales/volume contracts, credit limit, ATP check, customer/plant assignments, etc. Here a synchronous order creation in ERP is useful, with access via the Lean Order API (LORD, LO-API) for the true ERP Sales Order specifics.

2b) Synchronous integration via OData Web Services Odata

web services are used to synchronously integrate

• • SAP Customer Activity repository (from hybris Commerce 5.4)
  • SAP hybris Marketing (Recommendation, Segmentation) from 5.4

Master Data

(all transferred asynchronously via hybris Data Hub)

• Transfer of standard materials and IS-Retail single articles to hybris (hybris 5.3)
• Transfer of variants of IS-Retail generic articles (w/o header) from ERP to hybris (hybris 5.4)
• NEW Transfer of IS Retail Generic articles, merch hierarchy to hybris (hybris 5.6 with SAP Retail Industry Addon 1.0 for hybris Commerce 5.6)
  • see hybris WIKI knowledge section for details (registration with SAP.com address required)
  • see SAP Download Center (search for sap retail industry hybris)
• Transfer of plant ID from ERP to hybris (hybris 5.5)
• Transfer of hybris customer records to ERP (5.3) to become ERP debitor master
  • including customer data changes (5.4)

Prices / Discounts / Bonus Buy:

(all transferred asynchronously via hybris Data Hub)

• Transfer of Prices, discounts from standard ERP to hybris (hybris 5.3)
• Transfer of IS-Retail Bonus Buy conditions to hybris (hybris 5.4)
  • > discontinued with Hybris 6.2 and replaced by SAP Retail Omnichannel Commerce scenario “Omnichannel Promotion Pricing“
• Transfer of Tax indicator to hybris (hybris 5.5)

Order Management:

• Asynchronous Order Management (order creation in hybris Commerce Suite)
  • Asynchronous transfer of hybris orders to ERP via iDoc (hybris 5.3)
  • Transfer of SD order status from ERP to hybris via iDoc (hybris 5.3)
  • Change header, delete complete orders in hybris or ERP (hybris 5.4)
• Hybrid/Mixed/Pick&Choose Scenario = Asynchronous scenario with synchronous JCo-RFC calls from hybris to ERP, e.g. to retrieve
  • • Customer specific prices and discounts (hybris 5.4 with ERP EhP7)
    • ATP-Check (5.5)
    • Scale prices (5.5)
    • Credit Limit Check (5.5)
• Synchronous ERP order integration via LORD API (order creation directly in SAP ERP as standard SD Order via LORD API)
  • focus on B2B scenarios
  • Direct (synchronous) creation of an ERP SD order while bypassing the hybris order management capabilities.
  • LORD order creation limitations (compared to ERP Sales Order in va01) apply.

Integration with EWM and TM?

hybris Commerce Integraton with SAP Cloud for Customer (C4C) – outdated chapter

The C4C integration provided by SAP (for service ticket and customer master replication) relies on the hybris Data Hub.

In contrast to the ERP integration, the C4C integration uses SOAP service calls (C4C communication arrangements) instead of IDocs. For the quick access to the hybris Assisted Service Module from within C4C, a URL mashup is used. Again, have a look at the corresponding section in the hybris wiki for more information. To my knowledge, there are no standard iFlows (HCI or PI content) available that would realise integrations between C4C and hybris Commerce.

hybris Commerce – Product Information and Support

• hybris/SAP Integration – Presentation (PDF) as of Hybris 6.0
• ERP SD PRICING API in EhP7 SP03/04 for customer specific pricing
• hybris Commerce Suite – One Pager
• hybris Product Information Overview
• hybris Presentations
• hybris Experts Community
• hybris-SAP Solution Integration – Online Documentation
• hybris-SAP Release Requirements
• hybris Addons and extensions for SAP integration
  • SAP IS Retail Integration Add-On for hybris Commerce

Training and Learning

• hybris-SAP Learning Map for technical and application consultants for Customers and Partners
  • hybris-SAP Integration 3-day Classroom Training (HY600) (public)
    >> training is outdated and is to be revised
  • hybris Essentials Online Training for Customer and Partners
  • Learning Room for hybris-SAP Integration (customer/partner)
    • Starting mid of April 2015, the Learning Room is offered with the option to subscribe to new on-demand access to SAP training systems, preconfigured with the data you’ll need to carry out the exercises, plus additional live info sessions.Please note that access to this content in SAP Learning Hub requires a commercial subscription to SAP Learning Hub. Find more information here: https://training.sap.com/
      • Log on to SAP Learning Hub
      • To search for the Learning Room, from the Main Navigation Node (in upper left corner, next to SAP Learning Hub), select Learning Content.
      • In the Find Courses screen area, enter the Learning Room title hybris-SAP Solution Integration Learning Room (EKT), and click Go to receive the link to your learning room.
      • To narrow your search results, select Learning Room in the Delivery Method screen area. Choose the link to your Learning Room to open it.

Implementation

• • • • SAP release requirements for hybris Commerce integration (Customer/Partner)
      • hybris-SAP Solution Integration – Fact Sheet (Customer/Partner)
      • hybris-SAP Integration Documentation (Customer/Partner)
      • hybris-SAP Integration – Rapid Deployment Solution Package (Customer/Partner)
        • RDS – Technical Tips & Tricks document
      • SAP Software Download Center (Customer/Partner)
        • hybris Commerce Suite 5.x (highest x recommended)
        • SAP CPQ Product Config 2.0 (additional license option for Product Configuration)

Most content of this blog is from early 2016 and has not been updated since. But I hope you find it stilluseful, as the general integration is still working as described.

Enjoy,

Ingo

Dr. Ingo Woesner

Global Director, Product Management Retail Omnichannel

SAP SE

ingo.woesner@sap.com

www.sap.com

Follow me on SAP Community Network and LinkedIn