SUGEN Executive Exchanges November 2020: SAP’s Integration Strategy

In this month's SUGEN meeting we have had conversations with global executives of SAP and raised with them key strategic questions coming from our members. We will be releasing a series of updates from the executives, beginning with SAP's Integration Strategy.

Latest Developments and Current Topics Around Integration

In February 2020, SAP’s Integration Plan in the Cloud was published that outlines SAP’s integration strategy and related roadmaps for the Intelligent Enterprise along following End-to-End business processes: Recruit to Retire, Lead to Cash, Design to Operate, and Source to Pay. End-to-End business processes span across SAP’s Intelligent Suite, partner and third-party solutions. SAP introduced distinct Suite Qualities that facilitate a deep business process integration: seamless user experience, one workflow inbox, End-to-End process blueprints, aligned domain models, consistent security & identity management, coordinated lifecycle management and embedded & cross-product analytics. SAP has published an updated version of this document including latest roadmap status and timelines in July. More information on the progress of SAP’s integration roadmap can be found in the following blogs, also including information on the support of hybrid integration scenarios for the Intelligent Enterprise:

Answers to Strategic Questions

Question 1: Integration between SAP products is always a challenge. What is the progress here? + Can SAP be more specific about plans and real deployment of solutions to solve the integration challenges rather than the broad statements we hear?

Please find below selected examples and links to further information that outline the progress along SAP’s Integration Plan in the Cloud:

For detailed information on the update of SAP’s Integration Plan in the Cloud, please feel free to check out this on-demand webinar for SAP User Groups:

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Recording

Question 2: What is the current timetable for improving integration between SAP products (see 1.)?

The paper SAP’s Integration Plan in the Cloud includes the status and planned roadmaps for the outlined suite qualities and End-to-End processes. More detailed information can be found in the SAP Roadmap Explorer. Please note that the mentioned Suite Qualities will evolve over time (e.g. new Suite Qualities) and the work on integration of the Business Technology Platform will continue.

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Question 3: Do you have any concrete best practices/customer stories for fully integrated end-to-end solutions?

SAP has published End-to-End (E2E) process blueprints for Lead to Cash, Source to Pay and Recruit to Retire in SAP API Business Hub. They provide a reference architecture for business processes of the Intelligent Suite and can be used as best practices for the following customer uses cases:

In addition, the SAP Integration Solution Advisory Methodology helps customers to shape their enterprise integration strategy based on a proven set of integration patterns. This helps customers to define their hybrid integration platform and related best practices. In addition, SAP plans to publish an update on its integration guides: an integration architecture guide for enterprise and integration architects as well as a management abstract (e.g. for CIOs).