TECHNICAL WHITE PAPER BMC Asset Management SAP Integration How to bridge the gap between your company s SAP systems and BMC Asset Management
Table of Contents Introduction 1 Procurement and receiving 1 Integration tasks 1 Understanding the process 2 BMC Asset management Procurement process 2 BMC Asset Management with SAP Integration Process 2 SAP Process handling 3 SAP Integration Connector options 3 Web services 3 Why Use Web Services?..................................... 4 CSV Import 5 Summary 7
Introduction Procurement and receiving IT organizations need to identify and capture costs throughout the entire lifecycle of an IT asset even before it s deployed (whether waiting on a docking bay or sitting comfortably on a shelf in its inventory location). Unfortunately, with today s high volume of IT components and bulk items, it s difficult for IT asset management teams to manually enter and track all the necessary data about requisitions, purchases, shipping, receiving, and inventory that s necessary to conduct basic cost analysis and assess IT s budget for the future. Thankfully, due to existing implementations of SAP, most medium and large organizations today don t need to worry about finding and entering this information into two separate systems. SAP s accounting and purchase ordering software is used to track requisitions and purchases and provide information that s also important to BMC Asset Management software, such as purchase order (PO) numbers, unit cost, shipping costs, vendor information, manufacturer information, quantity ordered, and location information. Although this data is usually maintained by a company s accounting department, IT asset managers also need this information to maintain accountability and produce accurate reports for the IT assets they own or deploy. Using one of several out-of-the-box integration methods to BMC Asset Management, this information can be automated in a scheduled or near-real-time fashion with SAP as the source of truth. Integration tasks Integrating BMC Asset Management (part of the BMC Remedy IT Service Management Suite) and SAP relies on several methods and technologies that allow the two systems to communicate with each other. Communication can be unidirectional (one way) or bidirectional (both ways). Because each SAP environment may differ in use and functionality, an in depth look at the types of available data stored within SAP is required. For this reason, data mappings (i.e. the mapping of a field from one system to another) are crucial to obtaining accurate and consistent data that meets the needs of the IT asset management team. 1
Understanding the process BMC Asset management Procurement process IT asset information is stored in several places within the BMC Asset Management solution, where it is tracked throughout the asset s lifecycle. The process starts within the requisition management component of the software and then transitions into purchase orders once proper authorization has been granted and a PO has been cut. From here, POs are transitioned to the receiving management component of the software, which can be used to receive partial or complete orders or returns to the vendor. Once items are physically received and transitioned out of the receiving management console, they are physically created as IT assets linked to the requisition and order information marked as received. From here, received assets can be configured with additional information (i.e. serial number); sent to an inventory location (managed through the inventory management component); returned to a vendor; assigned to an individual or group; reserved; or deployed. Purchasing Receiving Inventory Figure 1. Managing the asset throughout its lifecycle. Figure 2 shows the standard lifecycle of this process without integrating SAP to BMC Asset Management. Figure 2. Standard lifecycle without BMC-SAP integration. BMC Asset Management with SAP Integration Process With SAP integrated to BMC Asset Management as an automated purchasing solution, the manual processes in steps 1a through 4 (in Figure 2 above) can be eliminated. Instead, SAP becomes the source of truth for purchasing and cost-related data imported into BMC Asset Management, and BMC Asset Management becomes a sub-ledger to SAP. 2
BMC Application Server Components Financial Team BMC Atrium Integration Engine (AIE) BMC Remedy Asset Management SAP Staging Form SAP Purchasing Report SAP Integration Connector BMC Remedy Application Server Figure 3. Requisition and Purchasing Best Practices SAP Process handling In the best-practice scenario above, requisitions and purchases are handled through the company s financial team. This data is stored in the company s SAP environment through the requisition and purchasing process it has established to meet the needs of the business. Purchasing reports are run periodically (daily, weekly, bi-weekly, etc.). Each report contains a formatted version of SAP s requisition and purchase records and is stored on the SAP server and sent out as necessary. The SAP Integration Connector (which is discussed in the next section of this document) is set to look for these reports on a scheduled basis, and import their data into the BMC Remedy Application Server through a component called the BMC Atrium Integration Engine. This integration engine handles this data by mapping the information from the report to a custom staging form through workflows that translate the data into a format that BMC Asset Management accepts. SAP Integration Connector options There are two recommended ways in which SAP data can be integrated into BMC Asset Management: Web Services or CSV Import. These next sections will cover these two integration methods in more detail. Web services Web services provide a simple, platform-agnostic method for application integration. By using standard messaging protocols and service definitions to support computer-to-computer interaction over a network, web services allow application integration regardless of the hardware or software platforms and independent of the programming languages in which the applications are written. Note: In order to use web services, you must have at least one (1) deployed BMC Remedy Mid-Tier in your environment. You publish a web service to make BMC Remedy Action Request System (AR System) functionality available over the web by creating a web service object, associated forms, and optional workflow. AR System developers can use a web service to make AR System operations (such as submit, modify, and query) available to other applications. Web services that are published in AR System can be very basic, such as creating a record in the AR System database, or more complex, such as processing a PO that spans multiple AR System forms. 3
You consume a private or public web service to obtain external information for use in an AR System application by creating a form and an associated filter that uses a Set Fields action. Starting with BMC Asset Management version 7.6.03, you can use web services to create, query, and update purchase requisitions, purchase line items, purchase work information records, purchase orders, and purchase returns using out-of-the-box web services that are connected through integration interface forms. The following is a list of the out-of-the-box interface forms available for BMC Asset Management: AST:PurchaseRequisitionInterface_Create Creates a purchase requisition and related work information record AST:PurchaseLineItemInterface_Create Creates a purchase line item and related work information record Note: A PO can be created depending on the input status. AST:WorkInfoInterface_Create Creates a work information record for either purchase requisition or purchase line item AST:PurchaseRequisitionInterface Queries and modifies a purchase requisition AST:PurchaseOrderInterface Queries and modifies a PO AST:PurchaseLineItemInterface Queries and modifies a purchase line item The following is a list of the web services available for BMC Asset Management. AST_PurchaseRequisitionInterface_Create_WS Supports the creation of parent purchase requisitions and child purchase line items. It also supports the creation of a work information record for parent and child items. A PO can be created depending on the status of the purchase requisition and purchase line items. AST_PurchaseRequisition_QueryModify_WS Queries and modifies purchase requisitions and its work information records and purchase line items AST_PurchaseOrder_QueryModify_WS Queries and modifies a PO and its purchase line items AST_PurchaseLineItem_QueryModify_WS Queries and modifies purchase line items and its work information records and return records AST_WorkInfoInterface_Create Supports the creation of work information records for either a purchase requisition or purchase line item For more information on these web services, see the BMC Remedy IT Service Management Integrations Guide. Why Use Web Services? Using web services to integrate SAP to BMC Asset Management eliminates the need for both a staging form and the extra workflow to parse the SAP data from the staging form to the necessary interface forms (as described in the previous section). This functionality is available already because the out-of-the-box web services and interface forms that communicate with BMC s purchasing and receiving modules already exists. Not all SAP environments will allow the capability to integrate to BMC s out-of-the-box web services for BMC Asset Management, and you may need to work with someone from SAP s Development team to develop, map, and adhere to the BMC solution s published web services standards. However, it is recommended by BMC as a best practice that web services be used if possible. 4
BMC Remedy Mid-Tier SAP Deployed Web Services BMC Remedy Application Server BMC Remedy Asset Management BMC Asset Management Components Purchasing Receiving Inventory Figure 4. SAP Integration Process CSV Import SAP can also be integrated through a scheduled CSV Import process. This process relies on SAP to produce a report of purchasing and requisition data that is exported to a.csv file. At a minimum, this file should contain the following information: Purchase order (PO) number and / or requisition number Name of purchased asset Manufacturer of purchased asset Supplier of purchased asset Quantity ordered Per unit cost Total cost Optional Fields information may include: Shipping costs Shipping tracking number Cost center Order location Individual or group who placed the order Prior to importing this information, it is crucial that the name of the product, manufacturing company, and supplier in SAP align with information configured in the BMC Remedy Product Catalog. If this information is missing, or is not configured prior to import, BMC Asset Management will not be able to properly map the data to an existing product catalog entry. For more information regarding the configuration of the Product Catalog please see the BMC Remedy IT Service Management Configuration Guide. Once the report has been generated and exported in.csv format, it must be placed locally or on a remote share drive that the BMC Atrium Integration Engine can access locally. The integration engine is used to schedule and map the fields and data contained within the.csv file to a custom form that will need to be created in BMC Remedy. 5
Using the BMC Remedy Developer Studio, a custom staging form will need to be created that contains both the fields that are contained within the.csv file, as well as the fields contained within the BMC Asset Management Interface forms described in the Web Services section of this document. Since every SAP environment is different, the exact fields needed for the integration must be determined by first analyzing the data and then determining which integration interface forms must be used for creation of the PO in BMC Asset Management. Note: You may need to copy several fields from one or more of the available interface forms. After creating the staging form, workflow will need to be created within the BMC Remedy Developer Studio to perform several lookups and checks before it can be pushed directly to the staging forms. Some common lookups that will need to be performed include the following: Person ID and Login ID lookup of PO submitter Manufacturer Company ID lookup Supplier Company ID Lookup Product Catalog Lookup based on Name of Product Order (Product Categorization Tier 1, Product Categorization Tier 2, Product Categorization Tier 3, Product Name, Model / Version) You will also need to create workflow that converts cost data from SAP to BMC Remedy Currency Fields. This can be done easily if the SAP cost data is first stored on the staging form as a character field, and then converted using a filter to set the currency fields. After creating the workflow above to stage the data for import to the purchasing component of BMC Asset Management, a series of filters can be created to push this data to the available BMC Asset Management Integration Interface forms as described in the Web Services section of this document. Note: The workflow created here can be very sophisticated, and may require advanced Remedy Development experience. A working knowledge of Filter Phasing and order of operations is required to create this workflow. If your company is not familiar with creating advanced workflow in BMC Remedy, it is recommended that you consult BMC Consulting Services for assistance building this integration. The following diagram shows the general integration approach using this method: SAP Purchasing Report BMC Atrium Integration Engine (AIE) BMC Remedy Application Server BMC Application Server Components BMC Remedy Asset Management SAP Staging Form Asset Management Integration Interface Forms Purchasing Receiving Figure 5. BMC Remedy Advanced Workflow 6
Summary SAP is a powerful financial tool that can be combined with the full lifecycle and tracking capabilities in BMC Asset Management, part of the BMC Remedy IT Service Management Suite. By integrating SAP using the methods described in this document you can: Save money by reducing overall time spent producing purchasing information that would otherwise be entered manually More effectively prepare and provide documentation for audits by maintaining a consistent sub-ledger Ensure accurate inventory and spending on assets owned. To learn more about how BMC and SAP work together, please visit www.bmc.com/partners/strategicalliances/sap-partnership.html. 7
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