Product Information
How to integrate Transportation Demand Forecasts from SAP IBP for Demand into SAP S/4 TM SFP
Motivation / Relevance / Context
You have the Strategic Freight Procurement (SFP) application of SAP S/4 Transportation Management (TM) implemented or you consider to implement it. In SFP the end user prepares an RfQ Master document as a basis for requesting quotations from carriers or service providers. One important part of it is the expected Transportation Capacity Demand for the next half or full year. There are various options to prepare the capacity demand on line item level (including xls uploads etc.), but there is no out-of-the-box integration of Forecast data from SAP IBP for Demand into TM’s SFP yet.
How to …
Just to begin with – Yes, you can establish an integration between TM’s SFP and IBP for Demand in your project with some customizations and enhancements. A “cookbook” for consultants is available, which comes with all required details, including sample code snippets. The goal of the cookbook is to reduce efforts and implementation time in customer projects. Certainly every customer specific implementation project will need to make adjustments according to the business requirements.
The cookbook is made available via this consulting note: https://launchpad.support.sap.com/#/notes/3246001
High level concept
The Transportation Demand History based on Freight Orders or Freight Bookings is loaded via CPI-DS into IBP for Demand into a Planning Area. In your IBP Planning Area you plan the Transportation Demand on the preferred level of granularity, which is equal to or more detailed than the required level for requesting rates from carriers / LSPs. Based on the loaded demand history statistical forecasts could be done. Alternatively one could also derive Transportation Demand figures from other IBP based plans for sales, procurement or distribution.
Finally the Transportation Demand from IBP is loaded back into TM’s SFP – again via the CPI-DS. In TM the prepared RfQs could subscribe such demand loads or usually preferred the user pulls the capacity demand into the RfQ Master upon a push of a button.
Benefit / Value
With an integration of IBP for Demand into TM’s SFP the end users can save manual efforts for preparing the demand data in excel spreadsheets, to transform them into right formats and to upload them into RfQ Master documents. Sophisticated forecasting and planning features of IBP for Demand or even anyway existing IBP based plans can be leveraged.
Architecture of a project based Integration of SAP IBP for Demand and SAP TM SFP
An excellent step towards the one-integrated SCM environment. IBP forecast-based planning in TM, and IBP access to TM planning for TLB also add more value to the customers.
Dear Stefan,
Thank you very much for this insightful blog.
I understand from the Consulting note (3246001) that a cookbook can be downloaded. If there is no restriction or confidential policy, would it be an option to add the document as an attachement here?
Thank you in advance for your help.
Thank you & regards,
Youssef
Thank you Youssef for your interest. Your preferred contact at SAP can download it for you. Only SAP employees can access and hand it out. The advantage is that we can update the cookbook any time and when downloaded it is always the newest version.
Best regards
Stefan