Imagine ordering a gift for your loved ones on their special occasion and it doesn’t arrive on time! It is annoying, right? This happened to me recently, when I ordered a gift, very well ahead of time, from a well-known gifting website for my bae on Valentine’s Day. Guess what, the order did not arrive on time!

After this unpleasant experience, I did get another gift offline, but the gifting site lost one customer and in addition received bad review post the experience, which would damage their reputation. Now, imagine this scenario multiplied by 100 customers across the globe! This can inflict much greater harm to the company’s reputation and business.

You might assume this was due to poor customer service or might be some supply chain issues. However, anyone familiar with SAP’s widely used ERP software, would suspect the culprit was an IDoc error in the backend, which was only resolved post the complaint was raised.

This is just one heartfelt personal experience that I recently faced. There are many such instances, and some are as follows:

  • Many times, we are faced with an ‘in stock’ item becoming ‘out of stock’ in retail stores, a missed opportunity for the retailer.
  • Have you faced a discount offer mismatch? It shows 50% off on the tag and when you go to the billing counter, the system shows only 30%. Then you struggle with the POS executives to get the price corrected.
  • Number of trucks lining up in front of a company’s manufacturing unit, however the gatekeeper is not allowing them inside, as the system does not show up the details, which is quite a common scenario.
  • Imagine another scenario, where a life sciences company gets an order to make 100 ECG machines and they are not able to process the deliveries due to some system glitches. What a miss even after such a huge consignment is ready.

All this can happen due to IDoc errors. Be it manufacturing, retail, pharma, e-commerce, or any other industry using SAP ERP, they all face some or the other issues due to IDoc failures. Delay in resolution of incidents in Order to Cash (O2C) and Procure to Pay (P2P) areas, which can eventually lead to poor supply chain operations, is a serious concern for companies. All these issues point towards one major problem and that is, inefficient IDoc Management.

Let’s start with understanding IDoc and related issues in brief for the non-techie readers. IDoc is an acronym for Intermediate Document. The purpose of an IDoc is to transfer data or information from SAP to other systems and vice versa. These IDocs may get into an error state due to various reasons. The errors can lead to multifold SAP operational issues. To state an example, IDoc errors can lead to improper functioning of Order to Cash and Procure to Pay business processes, which may cause disruption in supply chain operations. Impacted issues include stocks not replenished, order mismatched, sales orders not created, and unfulfilled orders. Also, the number of IDocs processed for any organization can be huge and monitoring them manually is a burden. Furthermore, untimely resolutions of the errors found, and sluggish responses can inflict loss of money and reputation.

Introducing DigitateTM’s IDoc Management Solution for SAP

IDoc Management for SAP is a solution by Digitate, which was recently released as a part of the Dragon launch. IDoc Management is very focused solution meant to address the IDoc related challenges that SAP ERP operations teams face. IDoc Management is a key capability in the parent product ignioTM AI.ERPOps, and now available as a separate solution with quick to implement and more value-added features.
Digitate’s IDoc Management solution for SAP is a comprehensive solution that monitors IDocs across the entire landscape, identifies issues, prioritizes, and resolves them autonomously. It also provides an intuitive dashboard that gives a bird’s eye view of all the IDoc communications. It uses intelligent automation techniques to minimize risk, optimize supply chain and ensure business continuity.
Here are some key features:

  • 100% automated monitoring of IDocs: Expect flawless, on-time, proactive IDoc monitoring with zero human intervention. This means 100% automated monitoring that eliminates the risk of manual errors and makes the SAP operations smooth.
  • Identify IDoc errors proactively: With this solution, IDoc issues can be identified proactively, and prioritized based on their financial impacts.
  • Autonomous resolution: Enjoy out of the box (OOB) self-heal use cases, which can resolve errors without human involvement. In case of ambiguity, it also recommends corrective actions. If in case there is no recommendation, then it is assigned to a manual queue, so that the error can be resolved before it impacts the business.
  • Unified view: The intuitive dashboard provides a bird’s-eye view of the entire SAP landscape’s IDocs. This helps to keep a track of inbound/outbound IDocs movement between the applications, business partners, different business processes and so on.
  • Right notifications to right stakeholders: Only the notifications, which are relevant to specific stakeholders are shared. Thus, they stay focused without missing important updates.
  • Scheduling: This feature schedules requirement-based checks. Many of the customers schedule them before start of the business hours. For critical business processes this can be scheduled every two hours or more frequently.
  • Extension and Customization: Convenient OOB use cases helps to realize faster value from the product. The monitoring of specific error codes can be extended. Using customization, own self-heal use cases can be tailored.

Digitate’s IDoc Management Solution for SAP is a SaaS-based offering that helps you realize the value of the solution quickly. You just need the technical prerequisites for solution installation to get started on day one; and reap the benefits in a matter of few weeks.

To find out more about IDoc errors and issues related to it, refer to the following blogs:

Know more about IDoc Management solution for SAP: https://digitate.com/sap-idoc/