UN/EDIFACT (the United Nations rules for Electronic Data Interchange for Administration, Commerce and Transport) is an internationally recognized standard for data transfer between independent information systems. EDIFACT rules were developed and published by UNECE (United Nations Economic Commission for Europe). All business organizations must have a transfer standard that can be interpreted by information systems, because companies need to exchange information with multiple trading partners at the same time. EDIFACT is designed to standardize communication between business parties that rely on electronic data interchange (EDI) as their primary form of communication.
SAP and EDIFACT integration is the exchange of documents between suppliers and buyers through SAP systems using the EDIFACT messaging standard. When this process takes place via the SAP PO module, PO acts as an interpreter that enables the conversion of different document types (EDI <-> IDOC). The B2B add-on in the SAP PO module converts business documents into EDIFACT messaging standards and sends them to recipients’ ERP systems very swiftly.
The message’s digital signature feature and PGP encryption ensure a secure data transfer. Messages can be processed individually or as a batch, depending on user preferences. B2B messages at various levels are archived in the SAP system after sending; past messages can be viewed as needed.
The B2B add-on has a number of adapter modules that can convert messages between XML and EDI formats. The converter modules convert local EDI and plain-text formats into XML messages. They can be used together with any transport protocol adapter for inbound and outbound communication.
The B2B Add-On provides reliable and secure operations and enhances productivity for many operational business processes. The B2B Toolkit is fully compatible with most B2B integration solutions used by suppliers.
The B2B Add-On’s Trading Partner Management feature allows users to collect, manage, scan and store all trading partners in a single platform. Users can access real-time view of their business partners' information and create profiles for the companies they trade with. People, partnership agreements and document references can be added to these company profiles. This allows reliable and much simpler storage, approval, display, and activation of information pertaining to partners via SAP system.
The EDI Content Manager is a tool for setting, testing, and customizing EDI conversion rules. It enables the import and export of content data. The test features allows companies that perform data exchange through SAP B2B Add-On to create and verify sample EDI messages. They can also test the conversion rules of the messages. The EDI Content Manager has a user-friendly interface that differentiates messages by color according to similarity or difference. This makes for easier comparison of the different messaging types.
The Component Monitoring feature in the B2B integration cockpit provides end-to-end monitoring of the connection and data transfer between partners. It facilitates the tracking of sent and received technical (MDN, ERP, Delivery Reports) and functional "receipt" notifications (code for EDIFACT: CONTRL). Component Monitoring feature enables viewing all messages, confirmation reports and B2B parameters defined in the Trading Partner Management through SAP.
Interfaces can sometimes differ in quality and structure. An important process for developing B2B communication is mapping senders with receivers when they have differing interfaces. The graphical mapping feature enables simple and fast two-way data conversions between EDI and IDOC.
Some of our integrations for SAP PI / PO B2B projects are listed below.
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