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rachael_akalusi
Product and Topic Expert
Product and Topic Expert
Real-time shipment visibility is an essential component of modern supply chain management. As experts in implementing, planning, procurement, and execution solutions for customers, Veerang Shah and his team built the TRACK WELL solution and are helping their customers overcome daily challenges in shipment visibility.


The series highlights success stories from our SAP Builders community. Do you have a project you’d like us to feature? Reach out to us on the Builders Group or comment on this post.

This edition features Veerang Shah from Bristlecone. Veerang Shah is a certified SAP Fiori consultant with 11 years of experience and has worked in different roles from being an SAP developer, a technical consultant, a team lead, to a solution architect. Despite having a bunch of knowledge as a pro-developer, Veerang shares his reasons for taking on the low-code path with his team and shares the experience on this SAP Build project.
PS: This article has been edited for brevity. Enjoy reading…


Builders: Veerang Shah and team (Vivek Jha, Ranjita Panigrahi, Rahul Rajesh, Shriyansh Keserwani, Rakesh Singh, Anmol Patel, Abhimanyu, Pramendu Singh)
Location: Pune, India
Featured Solution: TRACKWELL


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With your pro-developer background, why did you choose low-code?

Veerang Shah: As a full stack developer, I am aware of the time and resources needed to develop a complex app and we want to develop the app within 1-2 weeks of time, so we were exploring the low-code no-code approach to quickly develop apps. Since our app was complex with tables and charts, we decided to go with the low-code approach.


Customer Order Tracking Overview


How does it compare with the traditional pro-code development?

Veerang Shah: "For the traditional application development, one would require highly technical and sophisticated skills in this field. Application development using the no-code/low-code approach becomes much easier for non-technical staff without the mastery of skills in this field. Due to high technicalities and the over complex nature, the custom application development platforms usually produce a lot of bugs".

What is the idea behind your solution “TRACK WELL” and what value does it bring to the users?

Veerang Shah: Real-time shipment visibility is an essential component of modern supply chain management and in our experience with customers, we have seen many challenges in shipment visibility, such as delays due to unplanned events or unknown reasons, no benchmarks to decide between ocean, road, rail and air freight (leading to poor decision making), no-real time updates, lack of mitigation options, poor connectedness with siloed systems and processes.

We knew that an end-to-end tracking and mitigation solution was a whitespace and with TRACKWELL, we are addressing the whitespace using SAP BTP. For our users, our solution offers benefits like the ability to track orders, monitor historical performance and refine lead time inputs in ECC or S/4 HANA, and an integrated multi-level workflow to approve and track shipment expedites.

In cases of delayed inbound shipments, we can foresee impact and arrange interventions with possibility to expedite next leg of transports. In addition, it optimizes logistics costs and budget compliance with live quotes for expedited shipments.


Shipment Tracking 1


How was the Development process? What SAP technologies did you use?

Veerang Shah: We used SAP Analytics Cloud (SAC) for creating a story dashboard to track orders, monitor performance, refine inputs, and optimize logistic cost. We got some help from SAP Developers and SAP Community groups, where experts helped with quick replies to some questions. We also leveraged SAP Build Process Automation for workflow development with less effort and time, used it in our Cloud Application Programming Model via APIs, and lastly SAP Build Work Zone to launch our app.

What is your goal for the intended users of the App?

Veerang Shah: Our goals were greater inventory control with improved “on time and in full” (OTIF) performance, better customer experience and satisfaction, significantly reduced customer support workload, and tracking delivery statuses in real-time.


Shipment Tracking 2


What tips/advice do you have for other low-code builders?

Veerang Shah: “Firstly, try to understand the concept of low-code so it will be very easy for the development, and you are clear with the concepts. SAP Developers is very useful to learn about specific concepts.”

Likewise, take the course in SAP Learning which gives a good foundation to learn about low-code no-code. Also, make use of the forums in the SAP community and as BTP is new and rocking, you will find many active users learning BTP and helping you to get the solutions to your challenges.

Any thoughts, comments, or learnings from this low-code project?

Veerang Shah: “Low-code/no-code generally do not produce bugs while building apps. This leads to smooth running and hassle-free apps created by this system which saves time, cost, and efforts for us.”

Since BTP is new, we have to keep exploring the new features, so we need to keep ourselves updated from time to time.  Finally, this was a good learning for me and my team members, and we can groom ourselves very quickly to become low-code experts.

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💡 What is your experience with SAP Build in your projects or daily work? Feel free to drop your comments below, we would like to hear from you!👉 Don't forget to join the SAP Builders Group.