SAP rolls out new release of its SAP Logistics Business Network offering

Earlier this week, SAP, the global leader in enterprise application management software, rolled out a new release of its SAP Logistics Business Network (LBN).

Company officials said that this offering is a cloud-based network platform, which is designed to seamlessly connect SAP customers’ back-end systems to their freight collaboration, tracking, order fulfillment, and material traceablity networks. And they added that this new release offers up the next step in the company’s strategy to enable end-to-end visibility, increased efficiency, and seamless collaboration through a unified business network.

“As further proof of SAP’s commitment to the SAP Business Network strategy announced at SAPPHIRE NOW, we continue to add new capabilities to SAP Logistics Business Network and to advance our partner strategy,” said Paige Cox, SAP senior vice president and head of SAP Business Network, in a statement. “The open APIs and expanded partnerships are proof points of our strategy to create a true network of networks.”

In an interview, which follows below, Till Dengel, Global Head of Digital Logistics Solution Management at SAP, provided a detailed overview of this new SAP LBN release.

LM: What drove the need for SAP to release its new SAP Logistics Business Network? 

Dengel: The SAP Logistics Business Network has been in the market for more than a year, with customers across many industries that were mostly tracking full-and less-than-truckload shipments. Since many customers also seek to track multi-modal shipments and also want to expand into international shipment visibility, SAP decided to invest in new functionality to support that—and at the same time, open the network to allow for partner collaboration to increase reach and scale. The new release of the SAP Logistics Business Network is another step in our direction towards global, end-to-end visibility, increased efficiency, and seamless collaboration. We’re looking to create a multifaceted and holistic partner ecosystem, and the new capabilities with the SAP Logistics Business Network allow us to take our coverage a step further for additional modes of transportation through new and existing partnerships, such as project44, ClearMetal and Shippeo. Through these partners, customers will now be able to access actual shipment locations, status changes and estimated time of arrival during transportation by road and ocean carriers. Logistics visibility was the driving force behind this new release which addresses an increasing market need, especially as companies aim to build more resilient supply chains in times of COVID-19 and to cope with other supply chain vulnerabilities. 

LM: What does this offer, or provide, for customers (i.e. what are its main benefits)?

Dengel: The customer benefits from this release, as they can achieve end-to-end visibility and provide an improved delivery experience to their customers. Customers can track their shipments, react on any deviations and alert either their own customer service or the client directly. The approach to collaborate closely with partner visibility networks like Shippeo, project44, or Clearmetal provides a path for customers to expand from their existing visibility networks and increase the coverage into multi-modal and more global transparency, leveraging the SAP Logistics Business Network. Another, more IT-related benefit is that customers don’t have to connect multiple visibility networks using point-to-point interfaces to integrate with their fulfillment or transportation solutions—they can instead go through LBN as a single point of access. In case customers run SAP S/4HANA sales order fulfillment or SAP Transportation management solutions, this connectivity is delivered out of the box.

LM: Can you please offer up a basic example of how it is used/leveraged by a customer?

Dengel: One of SAP’s fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) customers in the grocery business uses the new release of the SAP Logistics Business Network to track inbound movements from the harvest at farm to the production line in their plants. This ensures that the high quality of the products are maintained throughout the process and also allows for increased transparency around when goods are delivered so they can avoid congestion at their plant. Additionally, SAP has a mining customer that tracks their trucks as they move throughout the customer’s large facilities in order to have visibility and achieve an optimized flow between different departments, including demand planning, production planning and purchasing. Another FMCG customer of SAP’s uses the SAP Logistics Business Network for real-time visibility for road transportation of shipment to retailers. Their goal is to improve customer service by providing accurate delivery dates and by keeping the customer appraised proactively of any deviations. Overall, this new release provides our customers with greater visibility and transparency so they can improve customer service, increase efficiency and stay connected to their processes.

LM: What are the main competitive advantages of the SAP Logistics Business Network, from an SAP perspective?

Dengel: With the SAP Business Network strategy announced at SAPPHIRE NOW, SAP is furthering our commitment to advancing our partner strategy in order to enable a true network of networks. By adding new capabilities to the SAP Logistics Business Network, we are providing our customers a way to seamlessly leverage our partnerships on both the road and the ocean. Additionally, we are providing seamless integration with SAP’s S/4HANA portfolio for sales order fulfillment, transportation and yard logistics which results in increased business accuracy and efficiency on the business and lowers total cost of ownership on the IT side. SAP is delivering collective intelligence through an open and interoperable business network to enable sustainable and resilient supply chains, transform business models and provide the agility to safeguard against global disruptions.