Interfacing with EDI in SAP

Interfacing with EDI in SAP

In any company there are several systems apart from the ERP, SAP R/3 systems. For example a company could be using Siebel as the CRM package, Cognos as the BI solution and there could be a legacy system. Apart from the internal third party systems a company also need to interface with its partners (Customers and Vendors). This integration can be done in several ways depending upon the level of integration and the business objects that need to be integrated. One of the commonly used method is Electronic Data Interchange (EDI).

With the help of EDI business process can be integrated across companies, business documents such as Sales Orders, Purchase Orders, Invoices can be exchanged between partners. This is achieved by using Industry standards such as ANSI X12 (American National Standards Institute) and EDIFACT (Electronic Data Interchange For Administration, Commerce, and Transport).

EDI makes use of SAP's proprietary IDOC interface. This interface defines the format of the data that has to be interchanged between one SAP and another SAP system or between SAP and NON-SAP systems. EDI can be used with all the Modules of SAP eg. SD, MM, PP, FICO, PM, WM etc.