sap-salesforce-integration

Overview

SAP is one of the most widely used enterprise resource planning (ERP) solutions, serving as the backbone of critical business processes for many companies. To fully automate and optimize these processes, organizations must integrate SAP seamlessly with other applications within their ecosystem.

One of the most common SAP integration scenarios involves connecting SAP with customer relationship management (CRM) applications. As a pioneer in Software as a Service (SaaS), Salesforce.com is the market leader in CRM solutions. Consequently, integrating SAP with Salesforce has become a frequent challenge for many organizations.

Uses and benefits of SAP & Salesforce integration

Integration Between SAP and Salesforce

Integrating SAP with Salesforce enables seamless data synchronization between the two systems. For example, when a new customer's information is entered into Salesforce, it’s essential that this data is promptly available in SAP for financials, performance management, and other key business functions.

Additional common use cases for SAP-Salesforce integration include:

  • Synchronizing master product lists between SAP and Salesforce.
  • Transferring data for won opportunities in Salesforce to SAP for invoice creation.

Benefits of SAP and Salesforce Integration

Proper integration between SAP and Salesforce allows companies to streamline and fully automate their business processes. This integration provides several key benefits, including:

  • Elimination of dual data entry, reducing time and costs.
  • Minimized data redundancies and errors by avoiding manual input.
  • Increased agility, enabling faster responses to new information.

SAP & Salesforce integration challenges

Challenges in SAP and Salesforce Integration

While integration has existed for over a decade, the challenge of integrating SAP and Salesforce is relatively recent. Historically, ERP and CRM integration involved connecting two or more on-premises applications. However, integrating SAP's on-premises solutions with Salesforce’s cloud-based delivery model requires a modern, adaptive approach.

Traditional integration methods have proven costly and complex:

  • Point-to-Point Integration: Often used as a quick, ad hoc solution, this method creates tight dependencies between SAP and Salesforce. Over time, this results in a brittle environment and an increasingly complex architecture as additional integrations are layered on.
  • SOA Stacks: Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) stacks offer loose coupling between applications, providing greater flexibility to adapt to changes. However, implementing a full SOA stack from a major vendor often involves prohibitively high upfront costs and years of development.

These challenges highlight the need for more efficient, scalable solutions to integrate SAP and Salesforce effectively.

EMC as an ESB

The best way to integrate SAP and Salesforce

A Modern Solution: SAP Integration with an Enterprise Service Bus (ESB)

Instead of relying on point-to-point fixes or costly SOA stacks, organizations can integrate SAP using an Enterprise Service Bus (ESB). ESBs offer a modern, lightweight, and standalone solution for connecting SAP with various applications, including SaaS solutions like Salesforce.

EMC as an ESB

Its SAP Enterprise Connector enables seamless bidirectional communication and is compatible with existing SAP technologies such as:

  • Intermediate Documents (IDocs)
  • Business Application Programming Interfaces (BAPIs)
  • SAP Java Connector (JCo)

In addition, EMC’s industry-leading Cloud Connect technology simplifies integration with Salesforce’s APIs. By combining the SAP-certified connector with Cloud Connect, EMC ensures that integrating SAP and Salesforce is faster and more efficient than ever before.

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