IBP – Ariba SCC integration (part III – e2e process)
Here is the third blog I promised on the IBP – Ariba SCC integration topic. As the first two were more technical, explaining the HOW, in this post, I will provide an end to end example that will help to answer the WHY.
Preventing or mitigating supply chain disruptions requires companies to gain visibility not only over their own operations but also across suppliers. But this state is difficult to achieve as the information is fragmented, sometimes within the organization itself, with high variation in data type and format. The ability to go beyond the organization’s borders is highly dependent on two aspects: processes and the adoption of the right technology. The technology must enable collaborative processes across the organization and with the trading partners, with the aim to reduce risks and improve performance.
Let’s have an example and see how with IBP and Ariba SCC companies have the chance to transform themselves into extended enterprises where suppliers are tightly integrated.
From operational to tactical and strategical, there are many business use cases I could choose from to showcase the benefits of the tight integration between IBP and Ariba SCC. I will use the day-to-day situation of managing demand and supply fluctuations and for this, we start from the premise of having a product for which the latest demand projection indicates a significant increase over the next months.
The supply planner has to determine how to fulfil the extra demand, if possible at all. Using IBP’s time series planning operator, in a matter of minutes, the latest demand projection is carried throughout the entire supply chain network allowing the planner to evaluate the impact at different levels like resource production capacity or components consumption.
Without emails and phone calls, the supply planner can share the new components’ forecast with the suppliers by running the corresponding data sharing arrangements.
Logging into Ariba SCC planning portal, the supplier can immediately review how the forecast has changed since the last received plan. Is he able to meet this extra demand? Most likely not entirely as he is also encountering some production challenges. The supplier updates the commitments plan and sends it back to the customer.
Integration of the supplier commits to Time-Series-Based: Supply Planning Optimizer
Once the commitment is integrated back to IBP, the supply planner is alerted about the possible disruption. With the help of analytics, he can easily go to the root and identify the problematic component.To realize the impact of the component constraint on higher level demand, the supply planner will run the time-series optimizer operator*. This way, the supply planner can check what is the total customer demand that cannot be fulfilled and work toward alternative plans.
*To use the supplier commit as a constraint in the optimizer, I defaulted the Maximum Transport Supply to the Supplier Commit key figure.
Integration of the supplier commits to Order Based Planning: Constrained Forecast Run
Depending on the use case, another way of consuming the supplier commitments is by executing a Constrained Forecast Run, operator available with IBP Response. The outcome of this run will enable the planner to determine the ability to fulfil the forecasted demand and derive allocations based on rules and prioritizations.
Are there any constraints that prevent the plan fulfilment? The supply planner has multiple ways to visualize the exception situations: planning views, alerts’ monitoring or gating factors. In this example, as expected, the component under-commitment coming from the supplier is generating a supplier constraint gating factor highlighted in the order network.
Further, to close the loop, if the constrained plan suits the planner’s requirements, the planner can trigger the confirmation run to confirm the sales orders based on the product allocation and stock supply quantities.
The benefits?
- Faster response to demand changes or supply shortages, resulting in supply chain lead time reduction
- Improved accuracy via end-to-end collaboration, manage complexity through transparency
- Improved customer service through responsive supply chain planning
- Supply chain costs reduction by avoiding costly fire-fighting
That’s it! I hope that you found this mini-series useful for your future implementation projects.
All the best,
Alecsandra
Dear Alecsandra,
We followed all the steps provided in this blog but we are receiving below error on the arrangement.
"Error while processing message for arrangement SUPP01" when we are running the data sharing plan. Please can you help us here.
Note:We have used existing suppliers in Ariba and added the link to the IBP supplier. Will that be ok?
Regards,
Shweta Kherdekar
Hi Sweta,
Please use the Message Dashboard app to monitor the status of the IBP- Ariba SCC integration jobs. It should provide more details than the application logs.
Best
Alecsandra
Hello Alecsandra
This is really very Helpful Document, I have done Similar Configuration on my System for ARIBA network Connectivity, below are activity completed, but I am getting Error Message as stated below when my Send Outbound Forecast
Communication System Set-up Done (As Shared Secret Method hence selected Host Name as
service-2.ariba.com and Outbound Communication as NONE and assigned Comm Arrangement as well
Communication Arrangement Created with Scenario ID SAP_COM_0201, and assigned the Comm System defined in Previous step. and rest everything is Auto Populated
Created Data Sharing Plan, with Input and Output definitions
Mange Ariba Network Credentials and End Points: updated as Shared Secret Method (Password Maintained same in Ariba Buyer Network as well)
Triggered App Job- master Data Sharing (Job is successful), but having error in transmission as below:
PS: Can we Download the XML in anyway? to analyse it easily.. as Looking into each segment one by one is very difficult… Please advice
Hi Guru,
The cXML cannot be downloaded from IBP frontend, but it can be downloaded from Ariba, assuming it reaches Ariba. Please raise a customer incident. IBP support team can check the backend activity e.g: polling status, generated cXML and advise you how to fix the issue.
Best
Alecsandra
Hi Alecsandra,
Sincere thanks for detailed documentation with steps.
I have followed your steps to establish connection between IBP & Ariba. Outbound job executed without errors however we can't see any forecast in Ariba system.
is system id refers to logical IBP system ID or IBP URL ?
Regards
Sudhakar
Please use the Message Dashboard app to monitor the status of the IBP- Ariba SCC integration jobs. It should provide more details than the application logs.
Best
Alecsandra
Hello Alecsandra,
Good day!
I got the similar issue happened like screen shot shown by Sudhakar. But when I check error log, it's says"Invalid Document:The content of element type "Credential" is incomplete, it must match "(Identity,(SharedSecret|DigitalSign". But I maintain the same credential value from Ariba network.
Can you please help me on this issue?
Thank you so much.
Dear Sudhakar,
Good day!
I am facing the same situation during configuration of IBP and Ariba. there is no data in forecast in Ariba but the job log is the same as yours. May I know how did you fix this issue before ?
Best regards,
David Yu
Did you ever get this working. I'm trying to get this working and have some issues.
Shane
I'm trying to get this working and have an issue when trying to run the Application Job in IBP. It says I don't have authorization to run the Data Sharing Plan that I created earlier. Can you still help with this.
Regards,
Shane