Issue

For Road Freight order placement, tendering, track and trace and carrier settlement regions utilise the following TMS solutions:

• EMEA - Transwide
• NAM - BlueJay
• LAM - n/a
• APAC - n/a

For these functions SAP offers a cloud based solution: SAP Business Network for Logistics (BNL).

This document is to provide more information on the SAP BNL solution. BNL could be considered to replace Transwide and possibly BluJay for Road Freight.
As LAM and APAC is currently not using a TMS solution, BNL could be utilised in these regions.

Recommendation

As BNL is THE solution for SAP to integrate with trucking companies, it makes sense for Syensqo to include it in the To-Be landscape.

As the functionality of BNL is overlapping with Transwide, then this system will be retired.

For North America the decision is solely based on the decision what is going to happen with BluJay (KDD). If BluJay stays operational, then it makes sense to integrate with BluJay.

Background & Context

Overview of SAP TM with BNL

To be be able to assess if SAP TM with integration to BNL is a fitting solution for Syensqo, an understanding of the SAP TM processes is essential. In this section a more detailed explanation is provided how the process works in this system configuration.

System Landscape

SAP Business Network for Logistics is SAP's new collaborative cloud network that empowers logistics businesses to work together. There are two submodules within BNL:

SAP Business Network Freight Collaboration improves supply chain efficiency by connecting business partners on a collaborative network that supports jointly managing transactions, exchanging documents, and sharing insights across the value chain. For instance, upon invitation from a shipper, a carrier can onboard onto the network and collaborate with shippers on freight tendering, subcontracting, freight settlement and dock appointment scheduling.

The aim of SAP Business Network Global Track and Trace is to capture, process and store tracking information about tracked business processes. Then, it allows business users to get real-time transparency of the execution of those processes. They can query any tracked process and display its retrieved data from end to end.

Following image provides a simplified view of the system landscape:

Process Flow

The functionality of this setup will be explained by the following process steps:

Transportation Planning

During Transportation Planning, Freight Orders (Road and Rail) or Freight Bookings (Air and Ocean) are created. These transportation orders are the starting point for integration to BNL and communication with carriers. There are multiple ways how these transportation orders are created:

1. Manual Planning in the Transportation Cockpit.
2. Manual creation from the Freight Unit or Container Unit.
3. Short cut planning where a Freight Order is created directly from delivery.
4. Automated planning.

Tendering

 SAP TM supports peer-to-peer tendering, broadcast tendering or a combination of the two.

Peer-to-Peer Tendering initiates the tendering process with one or more carriers sequentially. This means that the system will wait for a (negative) response from the first carrier before contacting the second (or third and so on) carrier.

Broadcast Tendering is executed in which several carriers are contacted simultaneously. With a 'best offer' mechanism the carrier is selected that quoted the best price within a pre-defined timeframe. With a 'first acceptable offer' mechanism the carrier is selected that has the fastest response with a quote below a specific price limit (price limits can be communicated or can be hidden from carrier).

With a combination of the two tendering approaches, the most likely process is that first a peer-to-peer tendering step is completed. If these carriers are not accepting the orders, then a broadcast tender can be performed to a selected group of carriers.

The tendering approach is defined in a Tendering Profile. This tendering profile can be selected by the user in the Freight Order, or it can be automatically selected by the system.

Example of Tendering Profile:

Monitoring tendering status with response of carriers in Freight Order:

Example of Request for Quotation that is send to carrier for response:

Dock Appointment Scheduling

As a shipper, you can use dock appointment scheduling functionality in SAP Business Network Freight Collaboration to book dock appointments for a loading point on behalf of the carrier for loading or unloading services in the docking locations of your organization.

Key features:

• Enable collaboration on dock appointments and gate-in and gate-out processes
  Starting from planning and scheduling of dock appointments to check-in and check-out at the gates as
  well as loading and unloading.
  
  
• Share responsibilities between shipper and (external) warehouse / yard operators
  Share master data as well as operational data instantly across the involved parties.
  
  
• Integrate into logistics backend systems for seamless processes
  Open APIs available for integration into SAP Logistics suite and 3rd party systems. Standard integration
  available for SAP Yard Logistics.
  
  
• Manage dock appointments centrally
  Configure master data and share with business partners e.g. on appointment creation, define docking
  locations and loading points.
  Leverage calendar view and color coding to keep track of dock appointment status.
  
  
• Manage gate processing centrally
  Maintain gate master data related to docking locations and docking points.
  View dock appointments and access worklists to assign gates, perform check-in, add notes and
  attachments.

Transportation Execution

Transportation execution comprises all activities involved with handling and documenting shipments in transit. It is more than just tracking a vehicle on the road, and includes recording any changes to the planned transport and handovers to other business partners or entities.

With the SAP Business Network Global Track and Trace solution, you can seize each moment by connecting the physical movement of orders and goods with the flow of information – providing situational awareness beyond milestone reporting

Key features:

• Track your order fulfillment progress and goods in-transit
  Monitor shipments standalone (Freight Orders and Freight Bookings) or as part of the end-to-end order fulfillment (Sales Orders and Purchase Orders) for maximum insight with milestone monitoring and exception management
  
  
• Understand the impact of deviations from the plan
  Conduct impact analysis and view the document flow. Benefit from event correlation between orders, deliveries, shipments and external identifiers
  
  
• Inform stakeholders of progress and exceptions
  Set up exception and information notifications, such as an email with tracking link upon order confirmation, and notify stakeholders when an exception occurs
  
  
• Enrich milestones monitoring by real-time visibility
  Perform geolocation tracking with predictive expected time of arrival across multiple modes of transport, integrated out-of-the-box with visibility vendors for parcel, road, ocean and air
  
  
• Ease transacting with your logistics service providers
  Receive milestone updates via API or EDI (ANSI X12)
  
  
• Flexible and extensible setup, supported by standard apps & templates
  Supports customer-defined fields, event types and event-to-action scripts. Or build custom scenarios from scratch
  
  
• Integrate with your ERP and logistics systems for seamless transparency
  Standard / extractor-based integration via Idocs. Provide insights to end users in their preferred working environment

Self-Billing

Depending on your system integration with SAP
Business Network for Logistics, carriers can upload
their freight-order based invoices to your system.
• Assign charge types and condition types that you use
in your transportation system to a set of unified charge
codes in SAP Business Network for Logistics.
• Dispute unplanned freight costs in invoices that the carrier has submitted.
• Manage all the disputes submitted by the carrier. For
each disputed charge you can choose to accept the
carrier’s proposal, propose a change, or reject the
carrier’s proposal.
• Collaborate on the disputes from your carrier, either
from within SAP Business Network for Logistics or from
your transportation management system.
• Configure and apply tolerance rules for disputes created from invoices or self-billing documents.
• After resolving charge disputes in SAP Business
Network for Logistics, the freight order in your transportation management system will be automatically updated with the new charges. Note, this is only possible with Transportation Management (TM) on SAP S/
4HANA 1809 FPS03 and upwards.
• Restrict the dispute documents that the user can see to
only those that belong to the purchasing organizations
that are assigned to the user ID of the shipper.
• Enable a multi-step dispute approval process within
your organization before submitting the dispute to the
carrier.
Business operations • Monitor the inbound and outbound messages that are
processed from SAP Business Network for Logistics.
Experience management • Request feedback from your business partners via surveys about logistics processes.

SAP Business Network for Logistics is SAP's new collaborative cloud network that empowers logistics businesses to work together more easily than ever before. It consists of the solutions and add-ons below. SAP Business Network for Logistics is a cloud-service solution based on SAP Business Technology Platform.

SAP Business Network Freight Collaboration

SAP Business Network Freight Collaboration improves supply chain efficiency by connecting business partners on a collaborative network that supports jointly managing transactions, exchanging documents, and sharing insights across the value chain. For instance, upon invitation from a shipper, a carrier can onboard onto the network and collaborate with shippers on freight tendering, subcontracting, freight settlement, milestone reporting and dock appointment scheduling.

SAP Business Network Global Track and Trace

The aim of SAP Business Network Global Track and Trace is to capture, process and store tracking information about tracked business processes. Then, it allows business users to get real-time transparency of the execution of those processes. They can query any tracked process and display its retrieved data from end to end.

SAP Business Network Logistics Provider

SAP Business Network for Logistics is a cloud-based suite of solutions specifically built to connect logistics business partners to collaborate across companies and jointly manage transactions, exchange documents, and share insights. This page is the central entry point for carriers and data contributors into SAP Business Network Freight Collaboration and SAP Business Network Global Track and Trace to find all relevant assets regarding activation, integration and operation of SAP Business Network for Logistics.

SAP Business Network Material Traceability

SAP Business Network Material Traceability improves transparency, visibility, sustainability, and efficiency by connecting the entire supply chain. It is augmented by blockchain technology.

SAP Business Network, Intelligent Insights Add-On

SAP Business Network, intelligent insights add-on is a highly-customizable data visualization and reporting platform that presents real-time insights on your supply chain execution.

SAP Business Network, project44 Add-Ons

With the add-ons for project44 visibility services, SAP Business Network for Logistics users can benefit from the availability of actual shipment execution insights, such as shipment location and event status updates for full truckload, air and ocean shipments, as well as real-time milestone status for less than truckload shipments.

Assumptions

n/a

Constraints

SAP Inputs that are required

Some information is available online, but SAP might be better able to give more insight into the following points.

• Is there a way to determine which Syensqo carriers are currently using BNL?
• How does BNL integrate back to TM directly, or should Event Management be included?

Capture any additional constraints that the chosen alternative (i.e. the decision made) might impose on other parts of the overall design, solution, or processes.

Impacts

• Infrastructure: Integration with cloud based BNL needs to be set up.
• Project scope: Account for about 30 days of consulting to set up basic BNL integration.

Business Rules

n/a

Options considered

Evaluation

n/a

See also

https://help.sap.com/docs/business-network-for-logistics?locale=en-US

Change log

Workflow history