SAP C4C connecting to multiple ERP backends
I am writing this blog to talk about my experience with having
C4C as the frontend connecting to multiple ERP backends,
Enterprises have multiple ERP backends, either due to complexity of the
Business Units, acquisitions, or mergers. For a global sales or service leader,
sometimes its imperative to get information across BUs with trends that can
affect pipeline for example, and have a call to action message for sales team.
C4C also has extended app, which features latest RUI version of CRM, and is
device agnostic.
Some of the the components that need to be completed are listed below. They do
not represent the complete list of work needed.
ID mapping – Make sure that for automated interfaces, id mapping is working, and for
manual loads, based on system instance id, you have right ids mapped for
integration. This is important if you want to use ERP IDs in C4C for these
objects.
Communication
Arrangements – Communication Arrangements is an important
aspect to monitor payloads. You will need at least 2 arrangements for each
object depending on number of ERP you are connecting to single C4C tenant.
Multiple ERP
BAdI – This is an important BAdI to determine which ERP
the payload goes out to, and creates subsequent process documents. An example
for the BAdI is shown below. An example would be which ERP does the pricing
request call gets routed?
Codelist
mapping – Important to note here is that you have to
create a code list mapping group, one per ERP. This is the most important
aspect of the integration, as different ERP can have different names/codes for
same C4C code.
Once the codelist mapping group has been created, corresponding codelists need
to be mapped. Inheritance concept applies.
Source system
identifier – It is important to consider the source system
identifier field on master data and transaction objects to easily differentiate
for users visually, and via search query, which source system is originating
system of record. For example, in case of multiple accounts with same name in
two ERPs, apart from number range and other differentiators, this field can be
used to build queries based on business role fro example.
PI namespace
– Since we had 2 ERP to integrate with, we used the
concept of “tracks” for each integration. For each track of integration,
we placed those customized mappings into its own custom namespace
Please revisit the blog, as I will update the blog with new URLs and learnings.