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Uplevel Your Integration Along Your ERP Transformation

KatrinVonAhsen
Product and Topic Expert
Product and Topic Expert
‎2025 Feb 18 5:02 AM
1,275

Are you planning to move towards SAP S/4HANA Cloud and wonder what to do with your existing integration scenarios along this transformation journey? Integration is the central nervous system of each enterprise which can make or break your supply chain and can deliver a delightful or disrupted experience for your customers. Hence, it is essential to revisit your integration strategy in context of ERP modernization which will allow you to realize the full benefits of SAP S/4HANA Cloud in future. This is the perfect time to elevate and consolidate legacy integration technology, to reduce TCO and benefit from robust, scalable modern future proof integration architecture.

The new white paper Thinking ahead with an integration strategy for a future-proof transition to SAP cloud ERP can help you to define a joint strategy which addresses both the technical and organizational dimension of integration modernization.

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Let me walk you through the key highlights of this paper…

Modernizing your business through a clean core

Many SAP customers have extended their SAP ERP system to meet specific business requirements. This often led to technical depth which can make future upgrades and migrations complex. To overcome this situation SAP recommends following a clean core approach: An SAP S/4HANA Cloud solution has a clean core when it is up to date, documented, unmodified, consistent, efficient, and has custom extensions decoupled from SAP source code. The clean core approach has multiple dimensions. With regards to the integration dimension the objective is to keep your IT landscape reliable and flexible using standard APIs and events.

You can accomplish this objective with the help of SAP BTP: This platform offers a comprehensive set of integration capabilities which allows you to integrate business processes end-to-end across SAP, partner and third-party solutions using public APIs and events.

Mapping an integration strategy in five steps

For defining a future-proof integration strategy along your ERP transformation you simply need to follow five steps:

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Let's take a quick look at each step:

1. Explore modern integration concepts

Follow an API-led integration approach which can increase flexibility and scalability – not only from a technical but also from a business point of view:

  • API services: API management allows you to share and socialize APIs with stakeholders inside and outside of the organization while controlling access and enforcing associated security policies. Accelerated onboarding of new API consumers avoids bottlenecks during parallel rollouts, while the complexity or changes of the underlying process is hidden from the API consumer.
  • Event-driven approach: An event-driven integration approach enables real-time information sharing for process automation and analytics in a loosely coupled fashion. Such an architecture can scale up flexibly in many dimensions such as adding more event providers and consumers or handling higher loads.
  • B2B integration: Replace legacy B2B technologies and services with a simple, scalable implementation for thousands of trading partners. Leverage AI for automating migrations which also allows you to replace legacy interfaces with modern APIs.

2. Define a modern enterprise integration strategy

Next, you define an integration strategy comprising of the following key ingredients:

  • SAP Integration Suite: This integration platform as a service solution enables you to quickly connect systems, automate business processes, and harmonize experiences across the extended enterprise.
  • SAP Integration Solution Advisory Methodology: Leverage this proven approach to achieve integration excellence and define your integration strategy as a C-level priority.
  • SAP LeanIX solutions: Optimize your enterprise architecture, including interfaces and integration technologies, with management solutions that help you meet changing needs.
  • ERP clean core strategy: Realize this strategy by integrating and extending SAP S/4HANA Cloud to keep the landscape reliable and flexible.

The graphic below summarizes the key requirements for achieving a clean core with regards to the integration dimension:

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3. Identify the right timing for modernizing your enterprise integration architecture

When transitioning toward SAP S/4HANA Cloud, you can embark on one of the following options about when to modernize your integration approach. The figure below shows some pros and cons for each option. Check out the white paper for further ones, including suitable use cases for integration modernization per option.

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When making a decision on when best to modernize your integration architecture you also need to consider where you are coming from: For greenfield implementations of SAP S/4HANA Cloud having a “clean” system from the start on you should focus on modern integration concepts right from the beginning on. In case of a brownfield implementation of SAP S/4HANA Cloud you have a heritage of existing integration scenarios in place: Hence, a phased approach for modernizing integrations seems to be more appropriate. You should consider adopting modern integration concepts for defined use cases before, while and after transitioning toward SAP S/4HANA Cloud.

4. Enable an agile integration practice

Adopting a modern approach on enterprise integration involves not just technology changes, but also significant shifts in how an organization operates. For achieving integration excellence, you also need to address the organizational dimension of enterprise integration. Hence, the SAP Integration Solution Advisory Methodology also includes best practices for enabling such an agile integration practice, such as introducing an integration center of excellence, integration governance, and integration quality assurance.

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5. Club integration and cloud transformation together

For a successful cloud transformation, you need to think, plan and execute your ERP and integration modernization together. To better understand the interdependencies of both, SAP LeanIX solutions for enterprise architecture management can provide you with the needed insights: To get an overview of existing interfaces, you can import your SAP integration scenarios into SAP LeanIX with the help of a predefined integration content package for SAP Integration Suite. Th architecture and roadmap planning feature of SAP LeanIX allows you to visualize the impact on interfaces between applications along a planned transformation such as moving toward SAP S/4HANA Cloud.

Furthermore, SAP also provides tools and services to support to migrate toward SAP Integration Suite in an automated fashion.

Enabling innovation through integration

Finally let’s look at the value of a modern integration strategy with examples of business benefits, backed-up with customer examples.

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Conclusion

No matter which route you take for getting toward SAP S/4HANA Cloud: Think and plan modernizing your ERP and integration architecture together. Make yourself familiar with the steps to take by reading the white paper Thinking ahead with an integration strategy for a future-proof transition to SAP cloud ERP.

Share with us your experiences with modernizing your integration approach when transitioning toward SAP S/4HANA Cloud by leaving a comment to this blog post: What is the best timing? What are good use cases for applying modern integration concepts? Which business benefits were achieved?