Supplier integration via Cloud Integration Gateway & SAP HCI

Hello All,

My Name is Vijay, a certified SAP Ariba associate. I had the privilege to Go live SAP Ariba Collaborative Supply Chain globally and first to implement SAP Ariba add-on in the Asia pacific region.Since then, I have been working on various functionality and integrations of SAP with SAP Ariba.

In this blog, I would like to share details on the SAP Ariba Cloud Integration Gateway powered by SAP HANA Cloud Integrator (HCI).

Cloud Integration  Gateway (CIG), powered by SAP Hana Cloud Integration (HCI), helps suppliers connect their ERP systems to SAP Ariba. It reduces deployment time and TCO for Suppliers.It has the following features

• Single sign-on with Ariba Network:provide single sign-on options for users to access CIG from their SAP Ariba network supplier account.

• Enhanced Security in Connection protocols: CIG supports HTTPS and AS2 protocols. You can either use certificated based or basic authentications

• Standard mapping repository: CIG support non CXML data format and hence users can stick to existing data formats. The CIG also has standard mapping for various transactions such as PO, POA, ASN etc.

• Conect onces: This concept enables supplier map to Ariba only Once. It also caters for scenarios where you can enable non standard mapping to be done for various customer requirements. Using CIG, you can map these customer need with no IT requirement there by bring down the TCO for suppliers.

The below feature also help in quick validation and enabling the integration of supplier to SAP Ariba Network.

• Integration wizard:This a guided way of deriving transaction configuration based on a set of questions based configuration. These configurations can be reused in future integrations across many customers.

• Development tools: CIG has Schema Validation tool to ensure that the formatting (syntax) is accurate and Transformation tools help in verifying data requirement to meet your customers’ requirements.

• 1-click deployment: Finally when completed the build, you could use the  1-Click deployment  feature to deploy the entire project into your production landscape,

• Transaction tracker with search capability:The transaction tracker help search transaction and its status on the SAP Ariba Network. It also has an option to download the transactions.

The flow of the development, testing and trouble shooting are as following

1. Connection test – Testing the Connection to Ariba Network
2. Schema Validation – Validating Syntax in Transaction Documents
3. Transformation of Transaction – If the syntax validation has been successful, use this step to test the transformation of your documents

I will be posting blogs around integration of SAP with SAP Ariba.