SAP IDoc and GIS EDI Integration for railroad BOL’s and customer Orders

SAP Intermediate Documents (IDoc™) and EDI integrate very well using Sterling Commerce’s Gentran Integration Suite™. This proven reliability encouraged this food commodity producer to upgrade to GIS from Gentran:Server™ for the IBM Series i™. DCS provided the expertise to guide the project and comprehensive maps to help them become self-reliant.

Overview

A DCS customer’s EDI systems needed to be replaced as part of a conversion from System2000 and BPCS to SAP on a Microsoft Windows Server 2003™ platform. The problem was to learn and implement GIS for logistics documents that are high volume and time-critical.

Outbound railroad Bills of Lading – Transaction Set 404 – needed to be processed immediately out of SAP and transmitted to railroads to keep the freight moving. Outbound Purchase Order Acknowledgements (855) and Invoices (810) were also needed. Comprehensive maps were designed and modified to meet individual Trading Partner requirements. To handle inbound POs from multiple customers, a single, all-inclusive map was designed that works for multiple customers and multiple versions.

A key step was creating the business processes and error-reporting to manage the flow of data through GIS, the new EDI system, during the conversion. As customers and divisions migrated to SAP, GIS was configured to send their data to the new business system while routing data for unmigrated customers to their legacy systems. Finally, email formats were created for Text Documents and errors (864).

Result

DCS and the food producer jointly solved this challenge with both on-site and remote collaboration. Where appropriate, challenges were addressed in phases, getting the most immediate benefit while allowing time for development of solutions to more complex issues.

This DCS customer now has sound EDI capabilities and is self-reliant as new requirements and customer demands arise. EDI specialists with extensive knowledge of SAP and GIS kept the cost lower due to experience with technical challenges. DCS continues to be available for same day support when needed. The next step is easy, email DCS to set you free assessment.