The Product Information Management (PIM) platform of manufacturers, wholesalers and retailers is the heart of their product information. The source of truth of all products within the organisation. How do you ensure that your internal systems share the same information? That that information is true and stays true? In this blog, I answer these questions.
Christ Klinkenberg
Just recently, Rabobank published a report on the competitive position of Dutch industry. To remain competitive, labour productivity must increase by 60% between now and 2035. How? By automating. That is why Ctac often works for manufacturers, wholesalers and retailers on a good integration between their ERP system and PIM platform. That integration must be smooth and seamless. That is why we have developed two adapters that ensure automatic information sharing between InRiver PIM and SAP’s ERP system.
With these links, your people no longer have to manually check or even retype all the information. You therefore make a huge efficiency leap with these links. You work faster, minimise errors and increase the quality of your product information.
Link 1: inriver and SAP S/4HANA
Manufacturers, wholesalers and retailers have a great need for integration between inriver PIM and SAP S/4HANA. With our link, you can easily exchange product information between these systems. And extra special: the link works both ways.
For example, as a manufacturer, do you start a new product development in S/4HANA? Then, during the various development phases, S/4HANA automatically synchronises all information about this product with inriver PIM for enrichment via this interface. As a wholesaler, do you import new products from suppliers into Inriver PIM? Then this link synchronises the information on these products after product data enrichment with S/4HANA for sales.
With this link, you can therefore ensure a closed loop, as S/4HANA and inriver PIM run synchronously. Commercial information, USPs, technical data, digital assets, sales information, supplier information, product relationships: you maintain it all in your PIM as a source of truth and easily share a selection of this master data with S/4HANA. Do you update product data in S/4HANA that also needs to be updated on your PIM? Then PIM receives that information via the same link.
This is the case, for example, if inriver PIM synchronises saleable products with S/4HANA after importing a new product and enriching the product data. The prices of these products are maintained in S/4HANA. When a wholesaler sends product assortments to buyers from PIM with the recommended selling price, this price comes from your ERP thanks to the synchronisation between inriver PIM and S/4HANA.
PIM and SAP speak the same language
S/4HANA and inriver PIM do not synchronise directly but via the SAP Cloud Integration Suite (CPI). CPI handles communication between inriver PIM and S/4HANA and uses iFlows for this purpose. These iFlows translate inriver product data messages into S/4HANA product data messages (API calls) and vice versa. In addition, iFlows transform data. Think of converting encodings for measurement units. We supply these iFlows as standard and they can be fully customised and extended.
Also link inriver PIM with SAP CPQ
Does your sales organisation use SAP CPQ for a long tail strategy? Then this link also offers a solution. The link simply synchronises the total product range of all your suppliers between inriver PIM and CPQ. If a CPQ quotation results in an order, this order is passed on to S/4HANA including all relevant, associated information from your PIM. This keeps your ERP free of 80% of products that may never be sold and you never have to tell a customer “no” again.
Link 2: Inriver and SAP Commerce Cloud
Back in 2022, Ctac developed another link on behalf of inriver: between inriver and SAP Commerce Cloud. You can read all about this coupling in this blog. Also with this adapter, inriver PIM sends information directly to SAP. This time to SAP Commerce Cloud. Via this link, you synchronise all data between Commerce and PIM. You only need to maintain your portfolio and all associated commercial and technical information from one place: inriver PIM. But you always have the most up-to-date information in SAP Commerce Cloud. What does that give you? This link also minimises errors, works more efficiently and offers higher quality information.
