Transportation Management with SAP LES

Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) processes describe the exchange of business
data between two partners. This chapter shows you how to trigger EDI
processes from within your delivery documents and shipment documents,
and explains the process that starts when you receive EDI data.
16 EDI and IDocs
The practice of exchanging business data between two partners using electronic
means (commonly referred to as EDI) has been used for many decades. SAP software
provided EDI solutions as early as the R/2 system and further developed
these in R/3. As time went on, worldwide standards were agreed on so that the
content and business scenarios in the data exchange process did not have to be
set up every time.
There are predefined standard agreements for a range of business scenarios. For
example, if you want to send your partner price lists for the materials that you
offer, you use the PRICAT standard; if, on the other hand, you want to inform your
forwarding agent or external warehouse management company about an upcoming
delivery, you use SHPORD. Every scenario has a name, which is called the EDI
output type. In this chapter, you will learn about the EDI output types that the SAP
system provides for the various delivery and shipment documents.
Often, subsystems and converters are used that generate the EDI outputs by
default. In the case of outbound outputs, however, the data has to come from the
SAP system, and with inbound outputs, the data has to enter the SAP system and
be processed there.
The SAP system uses its own standard to standardize this communication with the
subsystems: the Intermediate Document (IDoc) interface. This chapter contains a
section on how IDocs are structured, and how you can organize the process of data
transfer between SAP software, IDoc, EDI converters, and your partners.
In the final section of this chapter, you will learn how to manage your interface
and to identify data transfers that contain errors.
Personal Copy for Tina Mastrup, user id 9f19c686-d5e1-4016-94fd-ebc72e1b8f7e
513