SAP Integration

CASE STUDY
Three NSG Group staff in the roles of GIS Business Analyst, Lead GIS Developer and ESRI Vendor GIS Consultant formed the core of a GIS team responsible for the design and implementation of GIS integration into the world’s first SAP based supply chain system for the forestry industry.

The project was implemented and SAP resources provided by a leading SAP implementation partner in Asia Pacific.

The New Zealand forestry company had an estate of 815,430 acres, 50 ArcGIS seats with well over 100 users, running SAP 4.5b with 5000+ screens.

GIS-SAP integration was provided for a real-time view of the business. GIS integration was provided for the SAP R/3 Project Systems and Materials Management modules. The project had a budget of NZ$7 Million and was completed on-time over 18 months. This project won a coveted National IT award for the “Most Successful Project Implementation” in 2005.

Integration was achieved using webMethods as the middleware with XML for data transfers and http requests for communication between GIS and webMethods. This resource was supplied by the SAP implementation partner.

From the ESRI GIS environment the users could directly

• Create projects in Project Systems
• Generate Purchase Orders in SAP Financials
• Assign materials from Materials Management to Purchase Orders
• View orders and status from SAP Financials

NSGI staff is experienced in

• SAP concepts and terminology
• Integrating SAP with ArcGIS using a variety of technologies
• Working with SAP consultants for business process mapping
• Working with ABAP developers for developing custom BAPIs
• Opening SAP screens directly from GIS
• Interrogating SAP through defined interfaces