Magento B2B Extension – eCommerce for SAP ERP

If you’re looking for a Magento B2B extension to connect to SAP, you’ve come to the right place! Magento’s new module offers a powerful solution for B2B e-Commerce. When you couple it with Corevist’s real-time integration to SAP, which is SAP-certified, you have a powerful integration-as-a-service solution that works for SAP companies. 

How exactly does Corevist’s extension fill out the Magento B2B Module for SAP manufacturers? Let’s dig in.

What Corevist provides (click to jump):

• We are SAP-certified
• We provide SAP Material and Customer Master extract and synchronization with Magento
• We provide Magento Admin functionality to manage assigning sold-tos to users
• We provide API access to SAP order simulation and return of all SAP warnings and messages
• We provide eCommerce order posting to SAP
• We support quote-to-order in Magento 2.2 at the order level
• We provide delivery status updates in Magento 2.2
• We support tiered pricing

We are SAP-certified

The Magento world and the SAP world developed at different times and in different markets. Now, as Magento’s 2.2 B2B Module encourages these two worlds to converge, someone has to bridge the gap. With deep knowledge of both SAP and Magento, Corevist makes this connection, both technologically and culturally—and we’ve been doing it for years.

Just how complex is SAP eCommerce? Compared to a typical Magento B2C project, an SAP eCommerce implementation touches on numerous moving parts. You might find an SAP installation in one physical location, an ABAP development team in another physical location, and a special workflow to time transport releases. You may have to work with VPNs, IT teams, and security teams. Satisfying these many needs can be a nightmare if you aren’t familiar with the requirements of an SAP company.

If you’re going to work in the SAP world, you need an expert partner to help you navigate these new waters. We bring all that experience of working with multinational SAP corporations to every SAP eCommerce solution we build.

We provide SAP Material and Customer Master extract and synchronization with Magento

Data synchronization can make or break an SAP eCommerce solution. For example, material master sync must be conducted to fill the catalog with valid information to create one or more storefronts. If the data in Magento doesn’t accurately reflect the data in SAP, you’ll have big problems. More precisely, you’ll be providing a bad user experience which could significantly impact the use of that website.

It’s a gargantuan task to try and duplicate all data from SAP into Magento 2.2, especially as business rules get more complex. We believe that the less you use batch sync, the simpler the overall architecture is. That said, total batch sync can’t be zero. The trick is to use batch sync only for those things that truly require it, and to use real-time integration (our specialty) for everything else.  

We provide Magento 2.2 Admin functionality to manage assigning sold-tos to users

In the B2B eCommerce buying process, an order eventually posts to a sold-to or ship-to in SAP. That means a Magento user must map to an SAP sold-to. We offer this functionality through manual assignment by a Magento 2.2 admin.

When you create a user, you can search and select partner information, which is a sold-to. You input that partner data so the user maps to the relevant data in SAP. B2B eCommerce users are created by invite only, and they have to be valid in SAP. We provide functionality for the admin to manage these users. For the initial launch of your webstore, we can also do a mass load of user/sold-to mapping to minimize the manual work required to launch your new website.

Either way, Corevist easily allows the Magento admin to assign eCommerce users to valid SAP sold-to’s—valid being the key word. Because we interrogate SAP data in real time, it’s impossible to map a user to an invalid sold-to. In other words, the Corevist solution ensures 1:1 mapping between Magento users and SAP sold-to’s.

We provide API access to SAP for order simulation and SAP messages

Order errors slow down SAP companies, and phone, fax, and email are prone to creating errors. The good news is that Corevist’s connection between SAP and the Magento 2.2 B2B Module happens in real time. That means that a Corevist-Magento 2.2 B2B eCommerce store will only accept SAP-valid orders.

We achieve this by providing API access to SAP. We leverage this access in several different ways.

• We can prevent order errors by checking SAP data

With a non-integrated eCommerce website that requires batch updates to post orders in SAP, you may find out down the road that master data was wrong—that ship-tos didn’t exist in SAP, that products no longer exist in SAP, or that an account wasn’t allowed to order a certain product. We believe that in the B2B world, that friction shouldn’t exist.

So how do we stop it?

For Magento 2.2 B2B integrations, we give automated feedback, in real time, using real SAP data. We do it as the order is being assembled.

This covers many types of SAP data. For example:

• We provide all SAP messages and warnings to the Magento developer

We provide the Magento 2.2 B2B checkout process with all SAP errors and warnings. Each individual client chooses how they want to display (or hide) these messages. For example, we provide the Magento developer with a last-minute warning if an item is out of stock. That triggers the execution of a cross-sell/upsell scenario in Magento. We can display messaging like, “We noticed you wanted product X. Unfortunately, it isn’t available at the moment, but we’re happy to give you a 10% discount on Y which is an even better product for your application.”

This functionality can reclaim revenue that would’ve been lost or postponed otherwise. We believe that real-time display of SAP error messages gives eCommerce a leg up on antiquated processes like EDI. Why introduce a margin of error? We want our clients to see 100% well-formed orders going into SAP, and we advocate the real-time eCommerce integration with SAP that supports that goal.

• We can automate credit checks against SAP data

In the B2B world, many orders are PO-driven. Somebody has to check the credit status on each of those orders. The Corevist solution automates that process, in support of the Magento 2.2 B2B Module. Prior to posting any order that flows from Magento, we’ll fire off all SAP business rules whose goal it is to enforce accurate orders. All checks that we perform are provided to the developer as APIs in support of the Magento 2.2 B2B Module.

We provide eCommerce order posting to SAP

When a customer places an error-free order in the eCommerce store, the Corevist integration posts that order to SAP in real time and returns a real SAP order number to Magento. In addition to all the other order checking which we mentioned above, we do last-minute queries against SAP at time of checkout. That’s one more layer of assurance that the order will be error-free.  

This process is a huge win over batch updates for order posting. It gives the customer instant confirmation that the order was successful, and it updates the client’s SAP right away with an error-free order. It’s more efficient for everyone involved.

Quote-to-order in Magento 2.2

Magento’s 2.2 B2B Module assumes that people will want to create quotes outside of the visibility of the ERP system, manage that workflow and approval outside the ERP system, and then convert the quote into an order and post that order in SAP.

SAP companies that want to handle eCommerce quote workflows outside of SAP will simply use that functionality as designed in Magento’s 2.2 B2B Module. When the quote has been approved and is turned into an order, Corevist sees that order like any other and posts it to SAP after validity checks.  

We provide delivery status updates in Magento 2.2

Everyone is focused on getting the order into SAP. But that’s not the end of the story, and SAP companies and their customers need much more visibility into order status. In the world of eCommerce solution providers, it’s rare to find someone who focuses on servicing the order after it’s completed.

We’ve always provided ongoing delivery status of orders and synchronized them between SAP and Magento.* With the launch of the 2.2 B2B Module, we’ll offer delivery status updates within Magento. This delivery status visibility works for orders that were placed in Magento and posted to SAP.  

*Special note on delivery status updates outside of Magento 2.2:

For the status of orders placed outside of Magento, you can implement Corevist’s eTrack module to get statuses on all orders within SAP (EDI, phone, fax, email and web).

eTrack makes a great value-add to any Magento implementation. This module allows you to track all orders and see and pay all invoices across all ordering channels. It’s a self-service module that displays payment history, order history, and more for SAP B2B eCommerce customers.

We support tiered pricing

Magento’s 2.2 B2B Module includes pricing tiers, which is great news for B2B eCommerce. In the case of SAP manufacturers who need complex mapping of these pricing tiers to SAP data, the Corevist solution supports that custom mapping through our SAP extract program. This program can be configured to extract pricing tiers that exist in SAP into flat file formats (csv), which can then be imported into Magento.

What about legacy Magento B2B eCommerce integrations?

In the event that an SAP company wants to work with our legacy solution (standard B2C Magento storefront integrated to SAP) rather than using the 2.2 B2B Module, we have good news: Corevist will continue to support both models. We’re happy to talk to SAP companies and Magento SIs on which Magento solution is ideal for unique business models.

The Takeaway

That’s a lot of value that we’re adding to the Magento B2B Module. We believe that our real-time interrogation and display of SAP data will help to make Magento’s 2.2 B2B Module even more viable for SAP manufacturers and distributors. Magento’s B2B Module plus Corevist’s connection to SAP offers limitless eCommerce possibilities for all B2B business models.

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