By Yana Steinbruck
There are a couple of things you should know about me. First, I worked at SAP for nearly 14 years, so I’m familiar with the company’s enterprise resource planning (ERP) system. And second, I love chocolate.
As it happens, The Hershey Company is an SAP customer. So, when I explained to people why SAP’s software is essential for companies to run their businesses, I would talk about Hershey’s Kisses. Think about everything that goes into getting a box of those delicious morsels into the hands of chocolate lovers like me.
You need to procure all the ingredients to make Hershey’s famous chocolate, along with the packaging like the foil and the little strips of paper. You have to make the candy. There’s inventory and warehouse management. Then, there’s the distribution of the product. Also, remember the finances of worker payroll, supplier payments, and incoming revenue. SAP software manages the entire lifecycle of the Kisses.
That’s an example of why the global SAP footprint in business is enormous. An estimated 77% of the world’s transactions go through SAP systems. This helps explain organizations’ laser focus on modernizing ERPs to get the most from their SAP investment. They’re moving business processes to the cloud, taking advantage of new efficiencies offered by supporting applications, or simply looking to declutter their ERP environment.
Boomi can help with all of that.
You probably know Boomi best for our ability to connect systems. We certainly do that for SAP customers, but we also address complex challenges around data stewardship. I recently hosted a four-part webinar series looking at different facets of how our integration platform helps with various facets of modernizing your SAP environment. It’s a massive problem in business today.
So, if I’m a fan of SAP, then why do I say you need Boomi?
That’s an easy answer: Our customers use the Boomi platform to make their SAP environments faster, more flexible, and easier to manage.
I want to highlight a couple of crucial points.
Agnostic Connectivity
SAP is excellent at integrating business processes within its ERP through proprietary connectivity. But as any SAP customer knows, it’s not easy to connect the system with third-party apps – and these connectivity challenges can slow down the business.
In today’s world, nobody uses one monolithic system to run their entire business. Innovative organizations stay ahead of the competition by constantly adding – and subtracting – best-of-breed applications to run their operations better. That’s a “composable” ERP strategy. Yes, SAP might be the essential building block. But you must also seamlessly move data between those other vital blocks in your larger ERP ecosystem.
Enter Boomi. We’re application agnostic. We can connect everything, whether it’s hyperscalers like Amazon Web Services, the latest supply-chain management tool, or integrating SAP to other ERPs. In the cloud. On-premises. Edge devices. We don’t care how you choose to run your business. We help you do it better through seamless connectivity.
Our one-of-a-kind Boomi for SAP solution is a connector that moves data in a way that synchronizes the information within other applications. That’s critical because when it comes to any ERP modernization project, knowing your data is trusted – wherever it lives – is essential for success.
Data Integrity
Again, getting data in and out of SAP is challenging. That challenge extends beyond moving transactional data between systems. Businesses are striving to get more from their growing trove of data. That explains the importance of data lakes, warehouses, and popular analytics applications.
Boomi does more than connect data sources. We ensure the information is accurate and in the proper context after it’s moved. Our data stewardship capabilities enable you to organize and synchronize data when, for instance, you’re migrating data from SAP to Snowflake for deeper analysis. Because we move data based on SAP rules, nothing changes. And you have complete visibility.
What do I mean by that? Here’s a simple example involving customer data. A field in SAP automatically calculates how much tax a customer pays based on location. The customer could be undercharged or overcharged if the state information is wrong. We ensure that the correct field information in SAP is synchronized when moved to other locations.
That’s the beauty of Boomi data governance.
Speed
Can SAP or other integration vendors connect your ERP to systems like Salesforce? Sure, eventually. Speed is our market differentiator. If you need it done fast, Boomi is the answer.
What’s the value to your business if you can cut down your order-to-cash process to get paid from 90 to 60 days? Or here’s another question. What if you could complete your ERP modernization effort three months ahead of schedule? How much money would that save your business?
An independent study conducted by analyst firm Forrester, commissioned by Boomi, found that our low-code platform reduces integration development time by 65%. Forrester also determined that businesses can expect a 410% ROI over three years and that the platform will pay for itself in just six months.
That’s the power of speed.
It’s not an exaggeration to say that the business world depends on SAP. But when you pair SAP with Boomi, great things will happen.
Interested in learning more? The SAP Integration Planner’s Guidebook helps you build a plan for success.