Jan 19, 2024 · 10 min read

Today, we invite you to dive into the captivating world of SAP BTP Integration Suite to witness the evolution of integration from a tech pursuit to a business necessity, as well as to discover its capabilities and explore real-world use cases that illuminate its transformative potential.

Integration with SAP BTP Integration Suite: Best Practices and 5 Real-World Use Cases

Name: leverX Company
Brand: LeverX
Rating: 4.9 (114 reviews)

Imagine a landscape where workflow management flows seamlessly, analytics capabilities reach new heights, scalability is built into the core, and the ecosystem thrives in robustness. In this scenario, integration emerges as a vital catalyst for achieving such business excellence.

Unveiling SAP BTP and Its Integration Portfolio

SAP BTP isn't just a platform: it's a comprehensive solution that effortlessly weaves together various tools and technologies.

With SAP BTP Integration Suite at hand, you get:

Efficient integration flows management
Advanced monitoring and analytics capabilities
Scalable and unified solution
Robust ecosystem
Pre-defined integrations and accelerators

When it comes to the pre-defined integrations and accelerators, they are represented by SAP Integration Suite. At its core is a unified system that smoothly integrates components, data flows, on-premise and cloud landscapes, and real-world entities such as sensors and mobile devices.

Understanding the Significance of Integration: A Glimpse Into Tomorrow

In a world where enterprise landscapes grow increasingly complex, the need for integration becomes apparent. It has the potential to transform disconnected components into a unified ecosystem, providing the agility needed for a business to thrive.

Another aspect that makes integration important is increasing integration needs. Companies need governance in place that will help ensure all standard integration implementations within the organization are consistently executed.

Although it seems apparent that organizations need an integration strategy to help them, there is no one-size-fits-all solution because an integration strategy depends on various factors, such as the organization’s current landscape, existing and future investments and plans, enterprise architecture strategy, commercial aspects, and so on. That’s why architects now grapple with the challenge of designing future-proof integration architectures that support both current and emerging business requirements.

Let’s now explore how the SAP BTP Integration Suite rises to the occasion, transcending the conventional role of a mere connectivity solution. This suite doesn't merely establish connections: it aspires to cultivate an integrated landscape surpassing mere coexistence.

Use Cases Showcasing How SAP BTP Integration Suite Meets Your Integration Needs

To illustrate the practical application of SAP BTP Integration Suite in addressing real-world integration challenges, let's delve into specific scenarios that highlight the diverse capabilities of this suite.

Use Case #1: Cloud Integration

Let’s imagine a seasoned sales representative who thrives on leveraging the SAP CRM system in their daily work. However, the data exchange between CRM and S/4HANA is not configured, requiring constant shifting between modules to find or aggregate valuable information. Frustrated by the inefficiencies of working in silos, they envision a seamless integration that would unify her CRM experience with the broader SAP ecosystem.

Cloud Integration capability in SAP BTP Integration Suite ensures the platform's ability to facilitate the seamless integration of various cloud-based and on-premise applications and services by leveraging a robust set of features and functionalities. This capability encompasses advanced connectivity options, allowing organizations to establish smooth communication channels between diverse cloud and on-premise applications and services. Through pre-built connectors and adapters, it simplifies the integration process, enabling users to seamlessly connect with both SAP and non-SAP applications.

Leveraging Cloud Integration capability, which acts as a bridge between disparate systems, our sales representative, now empowered, effortlessly connects their SAP CRM with S/4HANA. The Cloud Integration capability allows:

Seamless connection to various interfaces using industry-standard protocols, enabling a smooth flow of data.
Performance of dynamic message processing, ensuring real-time synchronization between CRM and S/4HANA.
Storage for data accumulation and caching, eliminating concerns about data loss or delays.
Leveraging embedded accelerators for pre-defined flows, saving time and resources in implementing integration solutions.
Interaction with third-party applications through Cloud Integration APIs, ensuring a comprehensive and connected workflow.
Robust security measures, flexible operational modes, and detailed monitoring for a secure and optimized integration environment.
Assurance that integration flows developed according to the standards can be reused and extended by other business users or developers in the future

Now, an enhanced workflow not only boosts productivity but also sets the stage for a more cohesive and streamlined sales operation.

Use Case #2: Integration Advisor

In the finance department, an integration of new software takes place, and specialists working there are looking for a way to map data in the right way. As they embark on this integration journey, Integration Advisor becomes a trusted companion.

The Integration Advisor in SAP BTP Integration Suite is designed to simplify and streamline the process of defining and managing integrations between different applications, systems, and data formats within an organization by leveraging a user-friendly graphical interface, which allows users to visually design data mappings and transformations. By providing a comprehensive set of pre-built content, templates, and industry-specific best practices, the Integration Advisor accelerates integration development and ensures consistency across various integration scenarios. This tool empowers users to enrich integration scenarios semantically, addressing the challenge of disparate data models and vocabularies between different systems.

Furthermore, the Integration Advisor supports reusability and collaboration by enabling the creation of reusable artifacts such as mappings and templates. This promotes collaboration among different teams within an organization and facilitates the sharing of integration components, leading to increased efficiency in development efforts.

As a result of the work of the Integration Advisor, finance specialists are getting the Message Implementation Guidelines and Mapping Guidelines back from the services. With these comprehensively described artifacts, the transformation of the data into the required standard can be easily established. Furthermore, the final integration can be transferred to Integration Suite's Cloud Integration as a ready-to-use Integration Flow.

With the Integration Advisor, it’s now possible to:

Access a comprehensive knowledge base with message implementation and mapping guidelines, ensuring precision in financial data transformations.
Use Integration Advisor implementation guidelines and mapping suggestions based on AI-driven mechanisms, simplifying decision-making.
Simulate integration models to predict outcomes before finalizing implementations.
Generate artifacts seamlessly translatable into Cloud Integration, facilitating a smooth transition from design to execution.

As a result, financial processes within the department become not only more accurate but also agile, thanks to the predictive and advisory capabilities of the SAP BTP Integration Suite.

Use Case #3: API Management (APIM)

A diligent product manager faces the task of providing integration layers through APIs to partner organizations. Security and monitoring are paramount in this endeavor. SAP Integration Suite's API Management capability becomes a strategic ally.

API Management is a set of tools and services SAP provides to create, manage, and monitor APIs. API Management is a crucial component for organizations looking to expose their digital assets, such as data and services, in a secure, scalable, and controlled manner. It facilitates the design and creation of APIs, supporting their entire lifecycle from versioning to retirement. The platform prioritizes security with authentication and access control features, ensuring only authorized users can access APIs. API Management provides real-time traffic monitoring and analytics, enabling organizations to track usage patterns and performance metrics. Developer portals encourage collaboration by offering documentation, code samples, and testing tools. Additionally, integration with other SAP BTP services creates a unified environment for efficient management of both APIs and integrations, empowering organizations to expose their digital assets securely and foster innovation in application development and integration initiatives.

The journey with API Management unfolds as follows:

API Management ensures the holistic management of APIs, from design to development and from deployment to monitoring.
A user-friendly, web-based framework allows the design and management of APIs without the need for extensive coding.
Attaching runtime policies offers control over API usage, from regulating call frequency to defining IP ranges and custom logic.
Secure wrapping of existing APIs with API proxies ensures that access is controlled and security measures are enforced.
API Management's developer portal enables the publication of API products, enabling partners to subscribe and access APIs securely.

Meticulous control over the API lifecycle empowers our product manager to provide seamless integration solutions while maintaining the highest security and efficiency standards. To delve further into creating the abstraction layer for our APIs, SAP Graph can be utilized in conjunction with SAP Integration Suite's API Management. Using APIM Graph simplifies the life of a developer by providing a simplified, consolidated, and unified view of SAP business data through a single API. It also has a mechanism to add customization to cover specific topics, called custom entities. This unified perspective aligns seamlessly with our product manager's commitment to ensure seamless integration solutions.

Use Case #4: Open Connectors

An experienced HR manager relies on SuccessFactors for daily HR operations. Despite the efficiency of this system, its coverage doesn't extend to all the intricacies of HR management. Fueled by the company's commitment to employee development through various platforms, our specialist envisions a more unified approach to streamline employee onboarding processes.

Envisioning a seamlessly interconnected landscape of information, our experienced HR manager looks beyond the confines of HR applications. The organization needs a centralized solution to bridge gaps across various systems like Messenger client applications, CRM systems, Google applications, etc. Open Connectors, an integral component of SAP BTP Integration Suite, provides the solution.

Open Connectors is a set of pre-built, standardized connectors that simplify the integration process by enabling seamless connectivity between the Integration Suite and a wide range of third-party applications and services. These connectors act as bridges, allowing data to flow between SAP BTP Integration Suite and various external systems without the need for extensive custom development by leveraging a uniform and consistent approach to interacting with diverse APIs. By adhering to industry-standard protocols and data formats, Open Connectors ensures that organizations can easily connect and exchange data with external applications, regardless of the specific APIs employed by those applications. This not only expedites the integration setup but also significantly reduces the complexity associated with custom development efforts. Users benefit from a plug-and-play model where the connectors abstract the intricacies of different APIs, enabling seamless communication and data transfer. As a result, organizations can achieve a more agile and adaptable integration strategy, responding quickly to evolving business needs and incorporating a variety of external tools into their workflows with greater efficiency.

In this integration journey, Open Connectors offer:

Harmonized data retrieval from multiple non-SAP applications, ensuring a standardized and cohesive HR data landscape.
Normalized features such as authentication, error handling, and search, eliminating the need to decipher intricacies across different applications.
Standardized query language, translating queries seamlessly to endpoints' searching syntax, irrespective of the underlying service architecture.
Standardized events, including polling and Webhooks, ensuring real-time updates and interactions.
Flexibility to create custom connectors to third-party applications using the connector builder, leveraging normalized features and events.

Open Connectors, with over 170 adaptors, serves as an aggregator point for all third-party applications, enabling users to:

Customize SAP SuccessFactors by reading and updating data in third-party solutions.
Manage payrolls, apply screenings during hiring processes, schedule events, and provide diverse training for employees.
Track and analyze results efficiently across integrated platforms.

The innovative use of Open Connectors transforms HR processes, fostering a seamlessly interconnected environment that enhances employee onboarding and development.

As you can see, the integration capabilities of SAP BTP Integration Suite, exemplified through Cloud Integration, Integration Advisor, API Management, and Open Connectors, offer a comprehensive toolkit for addressing real-world challenges across different business scenarios. These tools empower users to achieve seamless, secure, and efficient integration, driving innovation and connectivity in their respective domains.

Use Case #5: Integrating with Artificial Intelligence Capabilities

An accountant in a manufacturing firm faces the manual data transfer challenge from diverse supplier invoices to the ERP system, often in formats like PDFs, scans, and images, requiring labor-intensive digitization.

With Cloud Integration in SAP BTP Integration Suite, the accountant gains capability for seamless document upload and management using a user-friendly front-end developed using CAP and Fiori Elements. Behind the scenes, SAP HANA Cloud acts as the ERP system where parsed invoices find a structured repository. The integration initiates as the accountant uploads a file, directing it to the SAP Cloud Integration iFlow. Post preparations, the document proceeds to the Document Extraction service, a potent BTP service that extracts data from documents using machine learning (ML) models, presenting it in a JSON format. The asynchronous process integrates iFlows with job statuses and confidence levels associated with parsed fields.

Cloud Integration steps in again, efficiently handling parsing results, auto-approving with high confidence levels, or triggering notifications for manual input. Represented as an Open Connectors instance triggering a Slack message, this ensures seamless communication.

The integration held by our accountant:

Automates the time-consuming process of manual data entry, enhancing overall efficiency.
Leverages Artificial Intelligence (AI) for precise data extraction, reducing errors associated with manual input.
Establishes a responsive workflow that adapts to varying complexities in document formats.
Ensures swift communication through notifications, enhancing collaboration and decision-making.

This integration not only automates and accelerates invoice digitization but also showcases SAP BTP Integration Suite's prowess in making business processes more efficient, accurate, and intelligent.

The Bottom Line

Navigating the intricacies of SAP BTP Integration Suite is a transformative journey. LeverX, with its seasoned expertise, turns complexity into opportunity. We invite you to join the webinar series on SAP BTP to get a deep understanding of the solution, including SAP Integration Suite. Let us unlock the full potential of your integration landscape, ensuring innovation and efficiency.

Ready to embark on this transformative journey? Contact us by filling out the form below, and let’s elevate your integration capabilities together.