Why we built the SAP Integration

SAP, the global leader in enterprise resource planning (ERP) software, completely changed how businesses manage their day-to-day operations. Whether it’s finance, human resources, procurement, supply chain management, or customer relations, SAP’s integrated solutions allow organizations to streamline and centralize these processes. Given its widespread use and functionality, the question of integrating SAP into your processes becomes a matter of when, not if.

We’ve seen firsthand the importance of SAP integration in various customer use cases. For example, businesses routinely use SAP systems to perform tasks like looking up customer addresses or generating customer quotes. And, we understand the value that comes with being able to flexibly integrate across systems and know that many are still struggling to determine the best path forward in SAP S/4HANA migrations. However, the real game-changer for us came when we were inspired by the holistic approach to SAP integration that was shared in May of this year at CamundaCon Berlin by Nicolas Barz and Volker Buzek. That’s when things really started to take shape in terms of development and exploring all of the potential customer use cases!

Simplifying and reducing risk in SAP S/4HANA migrations

As of Q4 2023, only a limited number of SAP customers have fully transitioned to SAP S/4HANA, while many others are still strategizing the best approach for migration. With the end-of-life for SAP ECC looming in 2027, businesses are under increasing pressure to plan their migrations in line with SAP S/4HANA’s Clean Core guidelines.

These migrations, however, pose significant challenges. A “big bang” approach, where everything is migrated at once, is often risky and expensive. Technical migrations of this scale can easily become complex and fraught with delays if not managed carefully.

The solution? Rather than attempting a full-scale migration in one go, businesses can execute their standardized processes on Camunda while connecting back to SAP ECC via SAP Business Technology Platform (BTP). This iterative approach using process orchestration allows for a more controlled transition to SAP S/4HANA.

By migrating in stages, you can reduce testing efforts, avoid media disruptions, save both time and resources, and most importantly, minimize risk. This method enables businesses to migrate confidently, ensuring a smoother, more efficient path to SAP S/4HANA.

Handling complex and changing business logic

A prime use case discussed by Volker and Nicolas at CamundaCon revolved around tracking complex company purchasing processes that allow employees to make purchases freely. To ensure accountability, employees are asked 1 to 10 questions for each purchase to determine the appropriate account, the department responsible, and the purpose of the transaction. This task can be challenging and often requires the expertise of a tax lawyer. Moreover, new regulations and evolving compliance standards further complicate the process.

Camunda’s model-driven approach (using BPMN and DMN) allowed the tax lawyer to build the business logic for this process. The result was 60 BPMNs and 100 DMNs. The solution is also future-proof as changes can be implemented easily.

Integrating SAP and non-SAP systems

In conversations with our customers, we understand that many departments rely on best-of-breed solutions like Coupa for procurement or other specialized tools. Despite using these third-party tools, SAP remains the system of record, requiring synchronization between these disparate systems.

Currently, these integrations are often handled with point-to-point connections and managed using multiple tools and diverse technologies. Camunda’s open and composable architecture enables seamless integration of both SAP and non-SAP systems. Our centralized platform offers end-to-end process visibility, reducing complexity and streamlining operations by eliminating the need for separate skill sets or fragmented tools.

Diverse cross-industry and business application

Camunda’s SAP integration can be applied across various industries and business processes, including these practical examples:

• Customer management: Automate customer data retrieval by looking up addresses or updating customer profiles directly from SAP.
• Sales automation: Streamline quote generation by integrating SAP data into automated workflows, ensuring accurate and timely responses to customer inquiries.
• Supply chain optimization: Coordinate end-to-end supply chain processes by integrating SAP’s procurement and inventory systems with automated workflows for better visibility and faster response times.

Technical details of the Camunda SAP Integration

Our solution is built on several technical components, all of which are designed to work within SAP’s infrastructure:

• OData and RFC connectors: These components enable seamless integration with both SAP S/4HANA and SAP ECC environments.
• BTP Integration: These applications interact with SAP BTP services, rendering Camunda forms directly in SAP Fiori tasks.

By utilizing standardized SAP interfaces, including the SAP Cloud Connector, the Camunda SAP integration securely connects both cloud-based and on-premise systems. This architecture allows businesses to leverage SAP’s full capabilities while maintaining the flexibility to automate processes and integrate with other systems via Camunda.

Conclusion

We’re excited about the flexibility our new Camunda SAP integration brings to SAP transformations, enabling customers to seamlessly orchestrate custom processes across all SAP (and non-SAP) systems, people and devices. Whether you’re navigating the complex transition to SAP S/4HANA, handling intricate business logic, or integrating SAP with non-SAP systems, this solution offers the technical foundation to ensure seamless integration and smooth operations.

By investing in this capability, we aim to empower organizations to accelerate their development efforts, increase their business agility, and reduce risks in their SAP S/4HANA migration.

Want to try it out? Get in touch!

The post Why We Developed a Camunda SAP Integration Solution appeared first on Camunda.

Camunda Optimize provides business activity monitoring for workflows, supporting continuous process improvement by providing transparency into your automated workflows and decisions. Business-friendly reports, dashboards, and alerts make it possible to identify process bottlenecks, improve end-to-end processes, and evaluate the success of your process automation initiative.

In the rest of this post, we’ll highlight some of the new capabilities.

What’s new in Camunda Optimize 3.10.0 alpha1?

Smart bar charts (Camunda Platform 8/Camunda Platform 7)

Bar charts in Optimize are “Smart” now. Depending on the nature of data, the bar charts smartly adapt the orientation and sorting for improved readability. Categorical values (assignee, flow nodes, etc…) are displayed using the horizontal bar chart instead of the existing vertical one. It is still possible to change back to the vertical visualization via the popover configuration.

Delete Backup API (Camunda Platform 8 Self-Managed)

Optimize self-managed now allows you to delete backups via the API. You can read about how to backup and restore Optimize data in the documentation for Camunda Platform 8.

Allow disabling of hostname verification (Camunda Platform 8 Self-Managed)

Optimize now allows you to disable hostname verification similar to other Camunda Platform 8 components like Camunda Tasklist. This allows the integration of Camunda 8 with a secure Elasticsearch cluster using self-signed certificates.

You can find the full list of changes here: Release Notes 3.10.0 alpha 1

What’s next?

Stay tuned for the 3.10 alpha2 release of Camunda Optimize.

How to get it

Not a user yet? Sign up for a free 30-day trial of Camunda Platform 8. 

If you are a user of Camunda 7 – Enterprise Edition and want to try Optimize, you can download the release with your customer credentials. 

The post Camunda Optimize 3.10.0 alpha1 released appeared first on Camunda.

How did one of Germany’s leading insurers, handling insurance premiums in excess of six billion per year, undergo a complete digital transformation in less than six years?

At CamundaCon LIVE 2020.2, Provinzial NordWest’s (PNW) André Wickenhöfer, and Björn Brinkmann, Co-Founder and Chairman of the BBHT Beratungsgesellschaft mbH & Co, shared their journey through technical, organizational and methodological challenges.

Starting Small

In 2013 PNW established a small team to implement a workflow automation platform. Their goal was to intensify process orientation in PNW’s application portfolio and enable the execution of cross-application and (semi)-automated processes.

The pilot project — Request for Insurance Documents, where an existing customer requests several documents, like an additional copy of their policy documentation — was a small, but impactful process that integrates several applications, some of them still running on a COBOL-based mainframe. The first release allowed sales agents to fulfill customer requests for several documents types and systems at the same time.  

Using Camunda Platform, PNW created and implemented a straightforward, automated process, cutting down manual tasks and leveraging existing applications.

Aside from the slow nature of claims notification, other questions quickly came into consideration. Do the clerks approach the process in the same way each time? Does each clerk complete it in the same way? How can we measure and improve the process?

The Lighthouse Projects 

With the success of the Request for Insurance Documents Process, PNW expanded their vision. With their lighthouse projects, they aimed to integrate and expand their process automation efforts to include their own user task — Siebel — as well as external service providers and business rule management. 

They then moved onto a more complicated process — Managing Car Windshield and Glass Insurance Claims — using the experience to fill existing gaps in technology and to build up know-how within the team. By the end, they had established a specification for implementation. For the first time, business stakeholders were able to view the process end-to-end and see ways it could be improved.

Finally a digitization project portfolio was implemented, to integrate different user groups, from customers to the back office, into the same IT landscape to use the same process. 

Growing Camunda Adoption Internally

To scale up Camunda Platform within PNW, a BPM community was established in 2016. Consisting of an active BPM Blog, inhouse BPM training and an annual BPM Community day — featuring internal project showcases and external speakers from Camunda. 

As the number of automated processes grew, PNW built heterogeneous clusters based on business criteria. This enabled the horizontal scaling needed to cope with the increased requests for process execution and enabled the different development teams to work more autonomously. 

The clustering approach, combined with an active community, increased uptake and adoption, as process instances rose to eight million per year. 

Establishing Camunda Platform as the company-wide Process Automation Standard 

With more and more areas of the business turning to process automation, PNW wanted to keep improving.

Using automated testing, supported by Camunda Platform, they reduced the effort required for process testing. Meanwhile, leveraging Camunda Optimize, PNW enabled business stakeholders to analyze processes — identifying the right KPIs to measure and monitor success and find ways to improve. 

These efforts have led to BPMN becoming the business-standard for process modeling at PNW, with high demand for further automation. 

In 2020 PNW had more than 90 live processes running in its Camunda Platform Workflow Engine, and 187 in its Camunda Platform Decision Engine, tallying up to more than eight million process instances. 

Continuous Improvement 

PNW already has a roadmap for the future. In the coming year, they plan to introduce an embedded approach to BPM and DMN for each team, replace the current process modeling tool with Cawemo, and build support for more generic user tasks.

Want to learn more?

Watch Provinzial Nordwest’s CamundaCon LIVE 2020.2 presentation on-demand: Scaling Process Automation at Provinzial NordWest.

And check out Camunda Co-Founder Bernd Ruecker’s blog series: From Project to Program, for more ideas about how to scale Camunda Platform adoption within your company. 

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