Link with SAP ERP

Better EDI with SAP

Even if you have your very own and unique business model, you may still recognize the following typical story from a SAP company that, over the years, had built, rebuilt, and customized their EDI solution. You may also – like the said company – dream of a way more efficient setup.

These are the main plot lines of their EDI story:

They had built a large part of the company's EDI solution themselves.
Some of the functionality consisted of third-party solutions.
Some things had come with SAP along the way.
Some things were outsourced to a VAN partner.Some things were insourced again because they regretted the outsourcing.
They had also inherited systems from other companies that they had either merged with or acquired.
Only a few employees held all the knowledge about this very complex EDI setup, one of whom had moved, and another was about to retire.

From complex EDI to streamlined EDI-with-SAP

If you have a very complex EDI setup , then how do you turn it into a modern, user-friendly, and future-proof solution that fits your SAP solution in the best possible way?

Here's what the said company did. They invested in the EDI management platform Link, which today is the link between the company's SAP solution and the trading partners' various ERP solutions.

Link replaces, so to speak, the many "EDI branches " that used to be a part of the company's complex EDI setup. Instead, all EDI-related functionality is gathered in one solution. That means that the company's employees only need to look in one place when they need answers to questions regarding the many document exchanges.

This does not mean that the company has had to change everything that worked well in their "old" EDI solution, such as mapping. Instead, they have been able to reuse all the functionality they wanted, now just mainly incorporated into Link.

Anyone with user access can see the information they need, whether they are EDI supporters, buyers, salespeople, IT specialists, or something completely different. And above all, it is the same, correct information they are looking at, as they are all looking at data via the same EDI management platform.

“Link is highly intuitive and lets us meet our requirements for self-service. What is more, it was really important to us not to throw away all the work we’d already put into SAP, which is our entire back-end. It is in SAP that we deal with our invoices, orders and similar incoming and outgoing documents, and we’d already completed 500+ mappings in SAP PI. It would’ve meant a whole lot of work if we’d had to junk our SAP PI, so we were keen to avoid that scenario.”

Jakob Andersen, Integration Manager at Solar

Go to customer story

The four main benefits of combining SAP with Link

Much faster onboarding of new trading partners – because EDI support no longer need to involve IT specialists.
Better support for the organization – because Purchasing, Sales, and other key functions can find answers to many of their questions themselves
Full compliance – because all information about the company’s document exchange is logged and documentable.
A higher level of security – because Link ensures the necessary user management and protection of data.