SAP TM Deployment Options – embedded vs side-by-si...

NiteshSaluja1 · ‎02-02-2024

Summary

In this decision accelerator, you will know how to decide between embedded TM on SAP S/4HANA and side-by-side TM on SAP S/4HANA Private cloud or on-premise edition.

Business Requirements

There are two major business scenarios for transportation management in current AS-IS system landscape:

LE-TRA transportation configured in SAP ECC system.
Transportation flows configured in SAP TM (NW release) as a separate system.

As the customers are embarking on the journey of SAP S/4HANA transformation in their companies replacing existing SAP ECC systems, it is important to decide their Target Architecture deployment strategy of transportation management business area to select between embedded TM on SAP S/4HANA and side-by-side Transportation Management.

Key assumption is that the customer has SAP ECC EhP8 (CVI completed) and SAP TM 9.5 in their AS-IS landscape, along with other peripheral applications.

Deployment Options

There are two major deployment options for SAP TM application:

System internal integration of SAP Transportation Management with S/4HANA Enterprise Management applications in the same system instance ("Embedded")
System external integration of SAP Transportation Management with S/4HANA Enterprise Management or ERP applications in other system instances ("Side-by-Side")

Note:

Basic Transportation Management in SAP S/4HANA is only available in the embedded deployment option. Side-by-Side deployment of SAP TM is always considered advanced.

Embedded deployment of SAP S/4 HANA TM comes with two added advantages:
- No master data replication is required.
- No major SAP ERP configurations required to be copied.

As there is no global switch for Transportation Management which decides between the two capabilities, it is also possible to use both scenarios in the same S/4HANA instance at the same time. As a result, there is no technical need to only use Transportation Management out of an S/4HANA instance in the case that multi-instance support of Transportation Management is needed as a global system ("hub scenario").

Criteria to determine the most suitable target solution

Do you have SAP ECC or SAP S/4 HANA in your landscape?

If you have SAP ECC in your landscape – only option #2 (side-by-side) deployment option is available.
In case of SAP S/4 HANA – both options #1 (embedded) and option #2 (side-by-side) are available.

Have you checked which Business capabilities would you like to implement?

If Business capability of Basic Transportation Management is chosen, options #1 (embedded) deployment is only available.
If Business capabilities of Advanced Transportation management is chosen, both options #1 (embedded) and option #2 (side-by-side) are available.

Do the distribution/transportation flows have high volumes?

In case volumes are low/medium, option #1 (embedded) can be chosen.
For High volume driven distribution, option #2 (side-by-side) will be more suited.

Overall Organization landscape and Vision:

Multiple ERP’s:
- ERP instances which are not yet converted to S/4HANA must be integrated to SAP Transportation Management as part of S/4HANA.
- There are multiple S/4HANA instances in a system landscape which must be integrated to SAP Transportation Management as part of S/4HANA.
- In this case option #2 (side-by-side) is advised.
Implementing SAP S/4 HANA EWM:
- In case SAP S/4 HANA EWM is a getting implemented, lower TCO can be achieved by keeping multiple applications on the same instance, thus option #2 (side-by-side).
- Furthermore, as of today customers can take advantage of implementing new ASR (advance shipping and receiving) integration scenarios between warehouse and transportation applications. The ASR can be deployed in two landscapes:
  - It means applications SD, LE, TM and EWM can be deployed together in one box or
  - SD, LE are in one system and TM, EWM in a second system. Currently outbound scenarios are only released for this option followed by a strong roadmap.
- Information about the usage of SAP Transportation Management and decentralized EWM in the same SAP S/4HANA system and client is describe in SAP Note 2812981.
- Considering above use cases option #2 (side-by-side) is generally advised. Given the continuous integration of new functional capabilities into ASR, it is recommended to perform a functional scope assessment aligned with your specific requirements, as outlined in Note 3369482, prior to finalizing the deployment decision.
Other application products/add-ons like SAP TRP or SAP S/4 EM:
- SAP TRP:
  - SAP TRP is an application, which can be installed on SAP S/4 HANA TM.In case of one SAP S/4 HANA TM system, it is recommended to keep it in same instance on top of SAP S/4 HANA TM system. This has significant advantages on achieving fully integrated data replication mode between both applications without additional replication system layer.
- SAP S/4 Event Management:
  - SAP S/4 EM is a track and trace application which can produce significant volumes. If SAP S/4 EM is planned to be implemented alongside SAP S/4 HANA TM, the general guideline will be using option #2 (side-by-side) SAP S/4 HANA TM and EM deployed together in same instance.

Depending upon above factors and considering the organization landscape and vision, we see the implementing option #2 (side-by-side) would be a wiser option as part of their North star Architecture.

Do you want to have same release cycles with ERP system?

One reason for having option #2 (side-by-side) could be the need for different software lifecycle management requirements, meaning implementation/upgrade/system availability timelines of SPs and releases for SAP Transportation Management as part of S/4HANA should be independent from other S/4HANA Enterprise Management applications and as a result higher TCO for running a side-by-side scenario is accepted.

Decision Tree

A simple decision tree to select a deployment option for SAP S/4 HANA Transportation Management is illustrated below:

Conclusion

SAP TM deployment option #2 (side-by-side on SAP S/4HANA) offers best future scalability options, provides best independent upgrade capabilities, and does not restrict future ERP integration scenarios.

For additional documentation, refer following SAP notes on this topic:

www.sap.com

MartinMysyk · ‎02-02-2024

Thanks for posting this guidance on Transportation Management. It helps for the decision making process.