Key Aspects of SAP Global Track and Trace

⇨ SAP Global Track and Trace can help Route Optimization and cost reduction

⇨ It is essential for supply chains to predict time for arrival and report planned/unplanned events.

⇨ SAP's tools can also bolster internal efficiency.

Overview

SAP, being the market leader for ERP software, provides solutions across all business processes suitable for companies of all sizes. It contains hundreds of fully integrated modules that cover nearly all the aspects of business management across industries.

In an industry which relies heavily on Supply Chain, Logistics is the key to interconnect entire process. SAP SCM (Supply chain management) offers various advanced functions compared to the SAP ERP and is suitable for the entire supply chain: from the supplier to the customer, from the carrier to the shipper etc.

Below is a list of SAP Supply Chain Logistics solutions which help companies with risk-resilient, reliable, and sustainable logistics operations:

• SAP Extended Warehouse Management (SAP EWM)
• SAP Transportation Management (SAP TMS)
• SAP Yard Logistics
• SAP Business Network Freight Collaboration (SAP BN4L)
• SAP Business Network Global Track and Trace (SAP GTT)

I’ve another article published which is specifically focused on SAP BN4L. Please refer to this link for more information.

In this article, we’ll focus on the overview and key aspects of SAP GTT (Global Track and Trace) solution and the APIs provided by SAP.

Purpose

SAP BN4L is a collaborative cloud network for shippers and carriers based on SAP BTP (Business Technology Platform). SAP GTT (Global Track and Trace) can be considered the cloud version of SAP EM (Event Management) and is available as one of the options in SAP BN4L (Business Network for Logistics) to track the business processes based on deliveries and shipments from SAP S/4 HANA or SAP ERP.

Some of the key features of SAP BN4L GTT solution are:

1. End-to-end tracking of shipments visually through global geolocation-enriched UI
2. Real-time insights and predictive arrival times
3. Planned and unplanned events
4. Accommodation of custom business process rules through GTT model
5. Automated alerts and rule-based notifications
6. Collaboration in a Global network of carriers
7. Tight integration with other SAP solutions like SAP ERP and SAP S/4 HANA (OTC, P2P etc.)

*Planned Event:  Events with a planned date / time, location, and other planned data

*Unplanned event: unexpected events without a planned date and time.

Picture 1- SAP BN4L (Image Source – SAP)

Look and Feel

The GTT solution is a part of overall SAP BN4L which is pretty much in line with SAP’s cloud-based SaaS offering while fully utilizing the native capabilities of tile-based SAP FIORI framework.

Below diagram explains a typical process of Shipment tracking through SAP BN4L GTT:

                                                           

The GTT tenant also has an option to Discover and invite business partners:

These options are useful if GTT must be used as a standalone solution but if the shippers are already utilizing the BN4L Freight Collaboration where the carriers have already been onboarded on the BN4L network through Freight Collaboration tenant, these options become redundant. To avoid this, Shipper must deploy the GTT tenant in the same BTP subaccount where Freight Collaboration tenant is deployed so that these settings can be referenced without additional efforts.

Integrating backend system (SAP S/4 HANA TM) with SAP BN4L-GTT

Extractors are used to send the tracked processes and events to SAP Business Network Global Track and Trace via IDOCs (ABAP).

SAP has a GitHub project which provides sample code on an as-is basis to support the fulfillment tracking apps via SAP BN4L GTT for SAP S/4 HANA 1909 SP03 or higher. Please refer to this link for more details:

SAP doesn’t support the code versions and further adaptations/customizations might be necessary depending on the business requirement.

 

IDOC Message Type: GTTMSG

Port: The port should be targeting the GTT tenant via SM59 (XML HTTP) connection.

Important IDOC Segments:

E1EHPAO: Application Object Identification (Contains the SAP S/4 system ID, Object Type (e.g., GTT Shipment) and the object ID for tracking.

E1EHPCP: Control Parameters

E1EHPEE: Expected Events 

E1EHPTID: Tracking Identifications and Numbers

After the tracking details are sent to the GTT via IDOCs, the further processing is handled via a GTT model deployed within the GTT tenant.

Please refer to the Manage Models option tile as shown below:

In the above screenshot, on the left side we can see the GTT model currently deployed (status = Active). It allows the deployment of only one active model at a time. On the right side, there are options to create as well as delete a model. There are options to export and import the model as well which is generally used to migrate the model to the subsequent environments (e.g., PRODUCTION). The model can be downloaded as either a Deployed version or a draft version:

Inside the GTT model, we can see the below options:

Tracked Process: e.g., Purchase Order, Sales Order, Resource, Inbound and Outbound delivery etc. In this tab, we can define all the custom fields sent via IDOCs.

Field Type Pool: Pool of fields can be defined related to one category (e.g., for STOP we can have location type, location ID, stop ID etc.)

Event Type Pool: Fields related to a particular event (e.g., for Shipment tracking where the delivery is DELAYED, we can define fields like ‘Delay Reason’).

Code List: Custom fields related to event tracking (e.g., an Event reason code not provided in standard model can be defined here).

IDOC Integration: Select the tracked process to map the custom IDOC fields (user-defined fields):

Visibility provider integration: Choose the tracked process (e.g., Shipment) to map any additional fields w.r.t the visibility provider’s(carrier’s) system:

Planned Event Extension: Define your own planned event extension fields.

Event to Action: This allows you to incorporate business rules into your model (e.g., trigger an email alert on certain conditions).

Please note that the standard sections are not editable. Only the user scripts can be edited. There are two parts of user scripts which trigger before and after the standard script. It can be correlated with the implicit enhancements where the custom code block can be inserted before and after the standard code block.

GTT APIs:

There are two GTT APIs provided by SAP:

Detailed documentation about these APIs is provided in API HUB which can be accessed by the link below:

https://api.sap.com/package/LbnGlobalTrackAndTrace/rest

Project 44: It’s robust multimodal network which enables seamless tracking of goods from end-to-end across every mode, including ocean, air, and rail, truckload, LTL, volume LTL, groupage, and parcel.

Project 44 Add-on for SAP BN4L:

SAP has also started supporting the integration of Project 44 (P44) with SAP BN4L and GTT for most of the scenarios (e.g., tracking of small parcels):

SAP Business Network, project44 FTL visibility add-on

• SAP Business Network, project44 LTL visibility add-on
• SAP Business Network, project44 ocean visibility add-on
• SAP Business Network, project44 air visibility add-on
• SAP Business Network, project44 parcel visibility add-on
• SAP Business Network, project44 rail visibility add-on*

The RAIL visibility add-on is not yet available but custom integrations are supported by P44. Please refer to the documentation using the link below:

https://help.sap.com/doc/118b0466917a4f188912e43a161c7fd9/LBN/en-US/SAP_LBN_p44_config_guide.pdf

Requesting a Carrier test tenant by Shippers:

Shippers can also request Carrier test tenants for validating the various API based integrations. The detailed steps are provided in the link below:

https://help.sap.com/docs/business-network-freight-collaboration/administration-shipper/set-up-carrier-test-tenant-in-scenario-2