Introduction:
Central Finance (CFIN) is an SAP provided solution to plan and implement a roadmap for migrating legacy ERP systems into S/4HANA with minimal disruption to the legacy financial systems. Documents posted in source systems are replicated into S/4HANA and posted to the S/4HANA ledger after transforming the source system data to a common data format. By standardizing data into a common format CFIN enables cross system functions like allocations, segmentation and consolidations in S/4HANA and also paves the way for migrating month-end and year-end book close from source systems to S/4HANA. This blog post will covers the technical and functional aspects of the CFIN implementation. In this document we will cover details of the integration between non-SAP, SAP Landscape Transformation (SLT), and SAP S/4HANA systems
SAP Central Finance Architecture:
Figure 1 illustrates the architecture of the CFIN implementation, we have 2 SAP ECC systems as source systems shown in architecture diagram, and NON SAP applications like PeopleSoft 9.1, PeopleSoft 9.0, Oracle and Cost point. The SLT replication server and MDG systems are standalone. The MDG system (also an S/4HANA system) is used for master data and key mappings.
The legacy SAP ECC applications, are connected directly to S/4HANA via SLT. Since SAP does not support or provide any tools to connect non-SAP systems directly or via the SLT, we developed a custom solution.
We can replicate the data based on the scenarios and the requirements, as illustrated in the above figure, different scenarios can be used to replicate the documents, if you read the architecture diagram PeopleSoft system is connected via DB connect and other is connected via file transfer. So again how your systems are being used, that way you can configure them.
In this blog post we will be focusing only on the NON-SAP system integration with S4.
The most interesting topic we found in central finance is the integration of the NON-SAP application with S4HANA, it is quite challenging to configure the NON-SAP application with S4HANA, as it involves lot of customizing. We created custom programs, tables and used advance replication options to replicate the posted documents from all NON-SAP applications. After replicating posted documents to custom SLT tables, we used custom modules and standard SAP functionality to replicate documents to S4.
For more details, please refer the below KBA, which talks about the integration of NON SAP systems.
https://launchpad.support.sap.com/#/notes/2481900
Also if anyone interested to know about SAP system integration, I have referred the SAP KBA for that as well.
https://launchpad.support.sap.com/#/notes/2154420
Ok, lets stick to the topic of NON SAP systems for now 🙂
SAP standard solution says you bring the data to SLT from any NON SAP system then further use SAP driven solution to replicate the data to S4. So for this you can create a custom functions to map and filter data from source system tables to customs tables on SLT. All that mapping can be performed using the rules and assignment which are available in LTRS. We have created a custom program scheduled to run every 15 minutes( varies from project to project) to process data on Z tables and performs following four major functions:
The delivered /1LT/CF_E_HEADER table acts as a trigger for the non-SAP systems replication. As soon as a header record is posted to the table SLT pushes document details to S/4HANA. Like SAP replication, external system documents received from SLT go through key and value mapping and standard FI substitutions and validations before posting to S/4HANA. Any documents with mapping or validation issues/errors are managed in AIF.
For AIF error handling, please refer the below blog post:
https://blogs.sap.com/2016/02/15/monitoring-and-error-handling-for-interfaces-in-aif/
Conclusion:
In order to enable large enterprises with multiple legacy financial systems to accelerate their migration to S/4HANA with minimal disruption to the existing systems, they must choose the best integration option to ensure success of the CFIN project. Some of the key aspects the team should consider before deciding on the type of integration includes:
SAP central finance configuration and replicating data to S4 is quite interesting as well quite challenging, I hope this document will give insight and interest to readers, how to integrate SAP and NON SAP systems with S4.
Regards
Harminder Singh
Central Finance (CFIN) is an SAP provided solution to plan and implement a roadmap for migrating legacy ERP systems into S/4HANA with minimal disruption to the legacy financial systems. Documents posted in source systems are replicated into S/4HANA and posted to the S/4HANA ledger after transforming the source system data to a common data format. By standardizing data into a common format CFIN enables cross system functions like allocations, segmentation and consolidations in S/4HANA and also paves the way for migrating month-end and year-end book close from source systems to S/4HANA. This blog post will covers the technical and functional aspects of the CFIN implementation. In this document we will cover details of the integration between non-SAP, SAP Landscape Transformation (SLT), and SAP S/4HANA systems
SAP Central Finance Architecture:
Figure 1 illustrates the architecture of the CFIN implementation, we have 2 SAP ECC systems as source systems shown in architecture diagram, and NON SAP applications like PeopleSoft 9.1, PeopleSoft 9.0, Oracle and Cost point. The SLT replication server and MDG systems are standalone. The MDG system (also an S/4HANA system) is used for master data and key mappings.
The legacy SAP ECC applications, are connected directly to S/4HANA via SLT. Since SAP does not support or provide any tools to connect non-SAP systems directly or via the SLT, we developed a custom solution.
CFIN Architecture
We can replicate the data based on the scenarios and the requirements, as illustrated in the above figure, different scenarios can be used to replicate the documents, if you read the architecture diagram PeopleSoft system is connected via DB connect and other is connected via file transfer. So again how your systems are being used, that way you can configure them.
In this blog post we will be focusing only on the NON-SAP system integration with S4.
The most interesting topic we found in central finance is the integration of the NON-SAP application with S4HANA, it is quite challenging to configure the NON-SAP application with S4HANA, as it involves lot of customizing. We created custom programs, tables and used advance replication options to replicate the posted documents from all NON-SAP applications. After replicating posted documents to custom SLT tables, we used custom modules and standard SAP functionality to replicate documents to S4.
For more details, please refer the below KBA, which talks about the integration of NON SAP systems.
https://launchpad.support.sap.com/#/notes/2481900
Also if anyone interested to know about SAP system integration, I have referred the SAP KBA for that as well.
https://launchpad.support.sap.com/#/notes/2154420
Ok, lets stick to the topic of NON SAP systems for now 🙂
SAP standard solution says you bring the data to SLT from any NON SAP system then further use SAP driven solution to replicate the data to S4. So for this you can create a custom functions to map and filter data from source system tables to customs tables on SLT. All that mapping can be performed using the rules and assignment which are available in LTRS. We have created a custom program scheduled to run every 15 minutes( varies from project to project) to process data on Z tables and performs following four major functions:
- Splits PeopleSoft 9.1 documents into multiple SAP documents based on the multiple PeopleSoft fields used for S/4HANA company code derivation.
- Split each document from step #1 into multiple documents if the total number of lines in the document is more than 900 lines.
- Generate a unique object key for each replicated S/4HANA document to enable duplicate identification in AIF.
- Map PeopleSoft field values to SAP fields and post the processed data to the CFIN SAP SLT tables (/1LT/CF_E_HEADER, /1LT/CF_E_ACCT and /1LT/CF_E_EXT_IT).
The delivered /1LT/CF_E_HEADER table acts as a trigger for the non-SAP systems replication. As soon as a header record is posted to the table SLT pushes document details to S/4HANA. Like SAP replication, external system documents received from SLT go through key and value mapping and standard FI substitutions and validations before posting to S/4HANA. Any documents with mapping or validation issues/errors are managed in AIF.
For AIF error handling, please refer the below blog post:
https://blogs.sap.com/2016/02/15/monitoring-and-error-handling-for-interfaces-in-aif/
Conclusion:
In order to enable large enterprises with multiple legacy financial systems to accelerate their migration to S/4HANA with minimal disruption to the existing systems, they must choose the best integration option to ensure success of the CFIN project. Some of the key aspects the team should consider before deciding on the type of integration includes:
- How much data is being replicated?
- How soon do you need data in target systems?
- Can legacy systems support these type of integration?
- Does it cause any performance issues on the source system? Answers to these questions will help users to decide which type of integration best suited for implementation.
SAP central finance configuration and replicating data to S4 is quite interesting as well quite challenging, I hope this document will give insight and interest to readers, how to integrate SAP and NON SAP systems with S4.
Regards
Harminder Singh
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