SAP & Pricefx Basic Scenario
After successfully implementing your SAP Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software and enhancing your pricing strategy, you now find yourself facing new business requirements. The need to automate and track rebates and promotions, integrate finance and CRM systems, and establish a unified pricing software solution has emerged. Congratulations on your business success! However, it is crucial to recognize the urgent need for SAP integration with a pricing software solution.
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Of course, there will be some processes to go through to optimize your system, and, in this article, we discuss some steps you can independently take to ease a smooth transition in integrating your SAP Platform with pricing software.
SAP Integration Platform and Pricing Software?
The SAP Integration Platform works effectively with most pricing software packages, allowing for swift and data-rich integration between SAP and non-SAP systems. Customization options are available to meet your specific business requirements, such as rebate management and regional breakdown.
Each business has a separate set of requirements and accordingly, your company’s integration can be customized to achieve the outcomes you need. For example, the possible outcomes are wide and varied; from rebate management to regional breakdown, to protect the integrity and security of your system, or any combination of these or additional factors are all achievable.
SAP Data Integration
The integration facilitates two-way communication, enabling the exchange of information between SAP and the pricing software package. Regardless of the SAP interface used, master data can be pulled into the pricing software package. It is important to note that all SAP customers will eventually need to upgrade to the SAP cloud-based interface S/4 HANA.
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NOTE: The illustration also includes SAP PI NetWeaver, which is a platform for integrating SAP components with each other and with external systems. Within this platform, "Mappers" and "Adapters" are used to transform and connect data formats and protocols between systems. |
SAP Cloud Integration Platform
The SAP Cloud Integration Platform (CPI) is an integration platform as a service (iPaaS) offered by SAP. It provides a comprehensive set of tools and services for connecting cloud-based and on-premises applications, systems, and data sources. The key features and capabilities of the SAP Cloud Integration Platform include:
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SAP Cloud Integration Platform is designed to simplify the complexities of integrating diverse systems and applications in a hybrid IT landscape.
Pricing Software
The final element in the integration flow is the "Pricing Software,", this suggests that all the listed SAP technologies and methodologies above are used to feed data into the Pricing Software, which likely uses this data for pricing calculations or analysis.
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By integrating pricing software with SAP, organizations can achieve greater accuracy in pricing calculations, improve sales effectiveness, and ensure consistency in pricing across different sales channels. It also enables better visibility into pricing-related data and supports more informed decision-making.
Prepare for SAP integration
When integrating SAP with your chosen pricing software solution, the quality of data is paramount. Clean data is essential for successful integration, regardless of its source or transmission method. While the shift towards cloud-based S/4 HANA is imminent, the focus should remain on ensuring data cleanliness. Establishing clean master data is a top priority for achieving a successful integration and should be addressed promptly.
With that in mind, the transmission of clean master data heads the wish list below of steps to pull off a successful integration. Preferably, try to get the elements below in place as soon as soon you can.
1. Ensure Your Master Data is Clean
Be certain that your master data is clean, meaning that there are no duplicates, and it is the sole source of truth for your future pricing decisions. Identify that data upfront and have an idea of how and where you want to use it and have it established ASAP in the integration project. Some pricing software can also clean your businesses’ blended Extract-Transform-Load (ETL) data, but note, it needs to be free of duplicates also, your single source of data truth.
IMPORTANT: Pricefx project use the Data Readiness Methodology for ensuring accuracy of all associated customer, product and pricing data. Click here to learn more about his approach.
2. Use an Experienced IT Solutions Architect
Onboard or source an in-house seasoned IT professional who is familiar with implementing ERP-level projects and managing change management who speaks the native language. In a perfect world, someone who knows your company’s system landscape and SAP intimately, your data and where it lives, and understands the overall vision of the project would be fantastic, which segues nicely to…..
3. Identify the ‘Condition Types’ You Will Require Before You Begin
Keep in mind the required ‘Condition Types’ of your specific pricing project – Numerous condition types basically each represents a step (much like a price waterfall) in your unique pricing project on the journey to the selling price of your products – i.e., list price, invoice price override, invoice price, net price, etc.
LEARN MORE: For more information on SAP Condition Types, click here.
However, the more complex your business (in terms of customer types, number of products, sales regions etc.), the more condition types you may potentially have. Sometimes your pricing software vendor may need to redesign new condition types or data access sequences depending on your businesses’ specific pricing project requirements to communicate effectively with SAP.
4. Facilitate Executive Buy-In
Source an executive champion for your project – you will know much better than us who is the appropriate person in your company to drive your SAP-pricing software integration project. It might be your Pricing Manager; it could be the VP of Sales.
For sure, in your organization, it will be the individual who ‘gets’ the value of pricing and is possessed with the character and the ‘oomph’ to throw their weight and support behind the integration project in your company.
Steps to a Successful SAP integration
In the context of successful integration with pricing software, the quality of the data stored in SAP is crucial. Even with a flawless pricing system and algorithm designed to optimize profits and align with business objectives, the presence of dirty, incomplete, or duplicated data can render the system ineffective. This issue is a common cause of integration delays or failures. While it may sound like a marketing cliché, the importance of establishing a "single source of data truth" for your company cannot be overstated.
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Quite literally, too many pricing cooks with access can potentially destroy the infinite positive possibilities of the pricing broth. Worse still, unauthorized changes such as one decimal place changed by mistake here-or-there by multiple users can have disastrous potential consequences.
API Integration of the SAP Platform with Pricing Software
To ease you through the integration process, SAP has developed an in-house platform to help manage and accelerate enterprise-wide integration across unique business landscapes.
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