Integrations / ERP / SAP
SAP integration
SAP knows everything.
Nobody else
can see it.
SAP knows what was ordered, delivered and invoiced. But the warehouse works with scanners, the customer wants a portal, and the reporting happens in Excel. I bring the data out of SAP to where the work is done — and the confirmation back.
The interfaces SAP actually offers
IDoc
Document exchange
The classic asynchronous format: purchase orders, advice notes, invoices. Robust, and the standard between SAP and logistics partners for decades.
BAPI / RFC
Direct function calls
Synchronous calls into SAP — post a goods receipt, query a stock level, get the answer immediately.
OData / REST
Web APIs
The modern route in S/4HANA, and in the public cloud often the only one. The same APIs Fiori apps use. Right for portals and real-time queries.
SOAP
Web services
Common in grown landscapes running SAP PI/PO: structured messages with reliable delivery.
File
Scheduled export
CSV, XML or Excel from a report or job, dropped via SFTP. Unglamorous — and often the fastest route, because nothing in SAP has to change.
Middleware
Your existing hub
SAP Integration Suite or an EDI platform you already run: I connect where your IT wants the hand-over point.
There is no such thing as “the SAP interface”. Which route fits depends on your SAP version, who runs your Basis, and what the data is for.
What companies use it for
- Warehouse system on SAP: deliveries and advice notes come from SAP, the floor works by scanner, goods receipt and dispatch go back as confirmation.
- Advice notes imported automatically: instead of someone pulling an export every morning and pasting it into a sheet — with checks for duplicates, quantities and batches.
- Customer portal on SAP data: stock, order status and documents visible to your customers, without anyone needing an SAP login.
- Reporting and AI: SAP data flows into a data warehouse; the AI spots overbookings, deviations and bottlenecks before they get expensive.
Where SAP integrations really fail
Rarely on the technology. Almost always on the details. One of the warehouse systems I built runs on SAP data every day, and this is the kind of thing that bites: in a German SAP export, “1.080” means one thousand and eighty — not 1.08. An integration that naively reads it as a decimal quietly books wrong quantities a thousand times over. Equally treacherous: leading zeros in material numbers, batches with trailing spaces, units of measure maintained differently per plant, cancellation documents that show up looking like a new delivery.
So every integration I build validates on the way in: number format, mandatory fields, totals, duplicates. What is not plausible does not get booked. It gets reported.
No access to the SAP Basis?
Logistics providers often work with their customer's SAP — and get neither RFC access nor an interface of their own. Then you work with what the customer sends anyway: an email with an Excel attachment, a report, a PDF. That can be turned into a dependable data stream too. It is the same principle as everything else on this site: an ERP is not automation — what happens around it is.
How I go about it
01
Read what the system offers
Which data lives where, who needs it when, and which route the system genuinely provides. The output is a one-page interface sheet, not a concept paper.
02
Prototype on real data
Within days the first real record travels from A to B. Only then do the actual problems show up: formats, edge cases, permissions.
03
Run it properly
On monitored servers, with retries, a log and explicit failure handling. Not a script on a forgotten office PC.
04
Let AI watch it
A delivery that does not arrive, a format that changes, a total that drifts — the integration reports it before accounting or the warehouse notices.
Questions I get asked
Do we need an SAP consultant for this?
For a file export or existing standard IDocs, usually not. As soon as something has to be set up inside SAP — a partner profile, an RFC user, an OData service — I work with your Basis team or consulting house and hand them the exact specification.
Does it work with S/4HANA and with older SAP ECC?
Yes. ECC and S/4HANA on-premise offer IDoc, BAPI/RFC and file export. In the S/4HANA public cloud, integration runs essentially through OData and SOAP APIs. I work with what your version provides.
Will the integration change anything in SAP?
Only if you explicitly want it to, for confirmations for example. Many integrations deliberately start read-only: SAP stays the system of record and there is no risk to your data.
How fast does data arrive in the target system?
Depends on the route: seconds via OData or BAPI, near real time via IDoc, and on the schedule of the job for file exports — typically every few minutes to once a day.
Other integrations
Freight forwarding
CarLo
Orders, tours and shipment status out of the CarLo transport management system — into warehouse, customer portal and reporting.
Payments
Stripe
The payment arrives — invoice, warehouse and accounting know immediately. Fees and payouts included.
Payments
PayPal
PayPal transactions matched to the order and booked automatically — instead of a CSV export at month end.
Next step
Which SAP data
is missing where
the work happens?
Tell me which export someone still pulls by hand. I will tell you which route your SAP version allows.
SAP, SAP S/4HANA, SAP ECC and SAP Fiori are trademarks or registered trademarks of SAP SE in Germany and other countries. I work independently and have no partnership or affiliation with the companies named. Names are used only to describe the technical connection. · Auf Deutsch: SAP bei Monster Intelligenz