Most of our current SAP ERP Customers have implemented EDI with their Business Partners using the

one of the following integration patterns:

1) Leverage SAP PI and SAP B2B adapter to transform native SAP APIs to EDI standards message
format and delivering/receiving documents to/from the partner using Sftp or HTTPS (for AS2
standard).
2) Leverage SAP PI and SeeBerger adapter to transform native SAP APIs to EDI standards message
format and delivering/receiving documents to/from the partner using Sftp or HTTPS (for AS2
standard). SeeBerger was the preferred vendor of choice for EDI connectivity with PI prior to PI
7.4. With the introduction of SAP B2B adapter by SAP, we have seen increased adoption of SAP
B2B adapter v/s SeeBerger.
3) Leverage 3rd Party EDI transformation tools/services such as Gentran.

In recent times SAP has focused on providing new innovations and features as services on their Cloud
Platform. The advantages of using Cloud platform is that the product is continuously getting updated for
support fixes and introduction of new features while providing inherent advantages of high availability,
disaster recovery and resilience that Cloud Platform provides. SAP has introduced SAP Cloud Platform
Integration, which provides a plethora of integration services that are empowered by Machine Learning
and uses crowd sourcing technologies to accelerate integration design and implementation. The
integration content available of SAP Cloud Platform Integration is compatible with SAP PI /PO 7.5.

Of interest for current SAP Customers who are either migrating to S4/HANA or looking at
implementation options for EDI are the innovations
on SAP Cloud Platform Integration for acceleration
of EDI implementation. SAP Cloud Platform
Integration has as service “Integration Content
Advisor” (ICA) which leverages machine learning
and crowd sourcing to propose implementation
guidelines for transactions that customer wishes to
implement in ANSI/X12 4010/5010, UN/EDIFACT
version D.01. The proposal supports constraints
defined in the EDI standards and leverages
semantics-based mapping to ensure that the SAP
delivered API fields are used contextually.

Instead of the traditional Message Mapping exercise on an Excel where the analysts work on capturing
the transformation rules and business rules for the implementation, the ICA allows the analyst to work
with an implementation guideline focused on the semantic content that needs to be
processed/delivered in the transaction to meet the requirements. At the end of the exercise, the tool
generates

 an Implementation Guideline document which is a documentation that can be shared with your
partners, quality assurance personnel and developers.
 A XSLT message map object that can be deployed on Cloud Platform Integration (CPI) or on SAP
PI/PO or any middleware that supports XSLT.
  An XSD that supports and enforces the constraint definitions of the messages supported by the
implementation guideline during runtime transformation in CPI or SAP PO/PI as well as during
error handling in Application Interface Framework (AIF).

Following is an example of a B2B integration implementation project that shows the efficiency using the
Integration Content Advisor.

Use Case: An automotive manufacturer in US wants to implement an interface (API) for exchanging
purchase orders with suppliers in US, Japan and Germany.

 <ICA> Creates a proposal for an interface

 <Manufacturer> Finalizes the specification
 <Manufacturer> Invites suppliers for collaboration on interfaces
 <ICA> Share specification with suppliers
 <ICA> Creates mappings for every supplier based on their structure definitions
 <Supplier> Finalizes technical specification
 <ICA> Manufacturer + Supplier use the “Generate” functionality of ICA to deploy the API
on the SAP Cloud Platform Integration

For customers migrating from ECC to S4, this is an opportunity to re-examine their integration strategy
and evaluate the offerings from SAP. For customers having large volume of transactions flowing thru EDI
and using 3rd Party EDI translator such as Gentran, it may be advantageous to perform a cost benefit
analysis of using a Cloud Product.

For high volume, larger number of EDI partners, it is advisable to separate EDI re-implementation on
Cloud Platform Integration from ECC to S4/HANA migration thus reducing risks.