Converting Mainframe Applications To SAP

Problem/Situation

Our organization, an upscale manufacturer and distributor, was in the process of converting our mainframe applications to SAP. In addition, the PC based EDI system that we were using was outdated and was not Y2K compliant. We needed to upgrade our translator to one that was certified by SAP, Y2K compliant and able to run on a Unix platform.

Consideration/Criteria

The organization wanted to convert to a client/server Unix based EDI software solution. It would have to enable us to interface with SAP not only with EDI data but also with various types of data from multiple legacy systems. We needed a solution that would allow us to implement in a reasonable amount of time with minimum user impact and fall in conjunction with our SAP implementation schedule. The mapping tool had to be user friendly and flexible enough to allow use of any to any mapping. We had to stay within budget and the vendor support had to comply with our needs. We solicited information and presentations from four EDI vendors who met our criteria.

Result/ROI

After multiple presentations to allow for a full understanding of all products, the EDI team selected Tie Commerce as our vendor of choice. We purchased the full compliment of software packages that allowed us to not only map and translate the inbound and outbound documents, but provided us with a scheduler and a multiple processing environment. Thanks to the vendor support, training and implementation assistance we received from Tie Commerce, we were able to meet our implementation schedule. On going we have been able to bring up new trading partners, add additional EDI documents and continue to add interface documents within a very reasonable time frame. The software has allowed us to fulfill all of our specified requirements without adding any additional staff.

Environment

We are currently processing on a HP 9000/D370 platform. We have approximately 65 trading partners and process 160,000 EDI transactions with an additional 350,000-400,000 legacy any to any documents per month. The documents we trade are:

204    Motor Carrier Load Tender
810    Invoice
820    Remittance Advice
832    Price/Sales Catalog
850    Purchase Order
852     Product Activity Data
855    Purchase Order Acknowledgment
856    ASN
860    Purchase Order Change
864    Text
997    FA

Future Plans

Our current projects call for us to implement XML mapping and file transfers with online sales and distribution. We have decided to update our software to Tie Commerce's eVision and xVision products. This now gets us into a true Windows NT / Unix client server environment and with the updated mapping tools allows us to prepare to map XML to EDI and SAP to XML files. With just an upgrade to our software and a conversion of our current data we will be able to continue processing all information that we are currently processing and add the opportunity to deal directly with B2B and B2C applications.