Escolar Documentos
Profissional Documentos
Cultura Documentos
Table of Contents
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Procurement and receiving . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Integration tasks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
Introduction
Procurement and receiving
IT organizations need to identify and capture costs throughout the entire lifecycle of an IT asset even before
its deployed (whether waiting on a docking bay or sitting comfortably on a shelf in its inventory location).
Unfortunately, with todays high volume of IT components and bulk items, its difficult for IT asset management
teams to manually enter and track all the necessary data about requisitions, purchases, shipping, receiving, and
inventory thats necessary to conduct basic cost analysis and assess ITs budget for the future.
Thankfully, due to existing implementations of SAP, most medium and large organizations today dont need to
worry about finding and entering this information into two separate systems. SAPs accounting and purchase
ordering software is used to track requisitions and purchases and provide information thats also important
to BMC Asset Management software, such as purchase order (PO) numbers, unit cost, shipping costs, vendor
information, manufacturer information, quantity ordered, and location information. Although this data is usually
maintained by a companys accounting department, IT asset managers also need this information to maintain
accountability and produce accurate reports for the IT assets they own or deploy.
Using one of several out-of-the-box integration methods to BMC Asset Management, this information can be
automated in a scheduled or near-real-time fashion with SAP as the source of truth.
Integration tasks
Integrating BMC Asset Management (part of the BMC Remedy IT Service Management Suite) and SAP relies on
several methods and technologies that allow the two systems to communicate with each other. Communication
can be unidirectional (one way) or bidirectional (both ways). Because each SAP environment may differ in use
and functionality, an in depth look at the types of available data stored within SAP is required. For this reason,
data mappings (i.e. the mapping of a field from one system to another) are crucial to obtaining accurate and
consistent data that meets the needs of the IT asset management team.
Purchasing
Receiving
Inventory
Figure 2 shows the standard lifecycle of this process without integrating SAP to BMC Asset Management.
Financial
Team
SAP
SAP Integration
Connector
Purchasing
Report
BMC Remedy
Application Server
Web services
Web services provide a simple, platform-agnostic method for application integration. By using standard
messaging protocols and service definitions to support computer-to-computer interaction over a network,
web services allow application integration regardless of the hardware or software platforms and
independent of the programming languages in which the applications are written.
Note: In order to use web services, you must have at least one (1) deployed BMC Remedy Mid-Tier in your
environment.
You publish a web service to make BMC Remedy Action Request System (AR System) functionality available
over the web by creating a web service object, associated forms, and optional workflow. AR System
developers can use a web service to make AR System operations (such as submit, modify, and query)
available to other applications. Web services that are published in AR System can be very basic, such as
creating a record in the AR System database, or more complex, such as processing a PO that spans multiple
AR System forms.
You consume a private or public web service to obtain external information for use in an AR System application
by creating a form and an associated filter that uses a Set Fields action.
Starting with BMC Asset Management version 7.6.03, you can use web services to create, query, and update
purchase requisitions, purchase line items, purchase work information records, purchase orders, and purchase
returns using out-of-the-box web services that are connected through integration interface forms.
The following is a list of the out-of-the-box interface forms available for BMC Asset Management:
AST:PurchaseLineItemInterface_Create Creates a purchase line item and related work information record
Note: A PO can be created depending on the input status.
BMC Remedy
Mid-Tier
SAP
Deployed Web
Services
BMC Remedy
Application Server
Purchasing
Receiving
Inventory
CSV Import
SAP can also be integrated through a scheduled CSV Import process. This process relies on SAP to produce a
report of purchasing and requisition data that is exported to a .csv file. At a minimum, this file should contain
the following information:
Shipping costs
Shipping tracking number
Cost center
Order location
Individual or group who placed the order
Prior to importing this information, it is crucial that the name of the product, manufacturing company, and
supplier in SAP align with information configured in the BMC Remedy Product Catalog. If this information is
missing, or is not configured prior to import, BMC Asset Management will not be able to properly map the
data to an existing product catalog entry. For more information regarding the configuration of the Product
Catalog please see the BMC Remedy IT Service Management Configuration Guide.
Once the report has been generated and exported in .csv format, it must be placed locally or on a remote
share drive that the BMC Atrium Integration Engine can access locally. The integration engine is used to
schedule and map the fields and data contained within the .csv file to a custom form that will need to be
created in BMC Remedy.
Using the BMC Remedy Developer Studio, a custom staging form will need to be created that contains both the
fields that are contained within the .csv file, as well as the fields contained within the BMC Asset Management
Interface forms described in the Web Services section of this document. Since every SAP environment is
different, the exact fields needed for the integration must be determined by first analyzing the data and then
determining which integration interface forms must be used for creation of the PO in BMC Asset Management.
Note: You may need to copy several fields from one or more of the available interface forms.
After creating the staging form, workflow will need to be created within the BMC Remedy Developer Studio to
perform several lookups and checks before it can be pushed directly to the staging forms. Some common
lookups that will need to be performed include the following:
SAP
Purchasing
Report
BMC Remedy
Application Server
BMC Remedy
Asset Management
SAP Staging Form
Asset Management
Integration
Interface Forms
Purchasing
Receiving
Summary
SAP is a powerful financial tool that can be combined with the full lifecycle and tracking capabilities in BMC
Asset Management, part of the BMC Remedy IT Service Management Suite. By integrating SAP using the
methods described in this document you can:
Save money by reducing overall time spent producing purchasing information that would otherwise be
entered manually
More effectively prepare and provide documentation for audits by maintaining a consistent sub-ledger
Ensure accurate inventory and spending on assets owned.
To learn more about how BMC and SAP work together, please visit www.bmc.com/partners/strategicalliances/sap-partnership.html.
BMC, BMC Software, and the BMC Software logo are the exclusive properties of BMC Software, Inc., are registered with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, and may be
registered or pending registration in other countries. All other BMC trademarks, service marks, and logos may be registered or pending registration in the U.S. or in other
countries. SAP is the trademark or registered trademark of SAP AG in Germany and in several other countries. All other trademarks or registered trademarks are the
property of their respective owners. 2011 BMC Software, Inc. All rights reserved.
*223779*