SAP Information Interchange On Demand

SAP, who previously became a shareholder in Crossgate (October 2008), and Crossgate have furthered their partnership by entering into a global reseller agreement that will allow SAP to offer their customers Crossgate’s B2B Content Engine as an SAP Solution Extension under the name “SAP Information Interchange On Demand”.  SAP Information Interchange allows companies to exchange electronic purchase orders, forecasts, invoices, delivery notes, and other documents directly from their SAP applications, eliminating the need for legacy B2B translators and EDI mapping tools.   

To succeed in a high-speed, volatile economy, companies need to simplify their integration infrastructure and utilize pre-defined business content rather than building, deploying and adapting 1:1 mappings every time a new business partner requirement surfaces. By utilizing Enterprise Services and SAP Information Interchange by Crossgate, thousands of SAP customers will be turned into one network and enabled for business-to-business information exchange, transaction execution, and collaboration with each other.  SAP and Crossgate are creating the largest Business-Ready Network globally, to which every SAP customer is automatically linked to as an extension of their SAP applications.

Albert Pang, IDC's Research Director of Enterprise Applications -- "We have reached a stage where a number of tech vendors, including SAP, have amassed enough of a base of customers and business partners that could really reshape how companies are going to be implementing the next generation of business applications."

Key Benefits of SAP Information Interchange

• Content -  Partner Profiles enable you to trade electronically with any trading partner in the world regardless of data standard. Eliminate the need for mapping trading partner formats and constantly acquiring new time and material services to integrate with your value chain.
  
  
• Cost -  SAP Information Interchange is a fixed cost solution – no more time and material projects to build point to point connections that will end up costing more money in the future and creates barriers to flexibility if you want to change partners, applications or grow your business.
  
  
• Comply  - with customer and government mandates for electronic commerce.  Many customers in specific industries demand specific electronic commerce formats such as EDI or XML.  This makes it difficult to build and maintain as this could add up to hundreds of maps that have to be built and maintained. SAP Information Interchange  allows a customer to comply with any customer or partner B2B/EDI request without having to worry how to build. 
  
  
• Change – Future Proof. SAP and Crossgate are building and maintaining the connections to an organization’s business network. One of the largest costs with existing, legacy B2B systems is change.  This could be from internal changes to the back-end ERP system or changes in data standards by a partner. Ongoing and constant change management costs associated with legacy translators are dramatically reduced as SAP makes B2B and extension of the ERP Application rather than tool sets.