The financial business case of using the Dynamics Business Central API Plugin

‍Exploring integration possibilities that will benefit your company and business often relies on logistical ways of thinking – both financially and corporately. Since digitalization is changing the world exponentially, many organizations and businesses grapple with the challenges of integrating the increasing number of applications necessary to stay current and thrive in a digitally laden and demanding IT landscape. Integrations are far and few between when wishing to adapt and conform to a continuously digitalized environment.

Your integration project starts with the question if your Dynamics ERP is able to ‘display, transport and import’ all the necessary information  towards customers, suppliers and other software in a way that is asked these days, so the data of all business processes, handled in your Dynamics needs to be activated and available via API, or so called web services. This brings forth the question of how you should organize this.

You therefore have two scenarios:

1) Let the API Datapoints be created via SAP Consultants

It will take 3-5 months and 100k + to configure the API by your SAP consultants

When an SAP consultant must create and develop all these 22 web services that are needed for  a fully digital B2B eCommerce project, they will spend approximately three whole days per web service to map and configure all the data from SAP to the webservice. Conclusively, this results in a total of sixty-six days to deliver the same outcome. Hypothetically speaking, the total costs of manual integrations would accumulate to €105,600/$125,000 – (€1600 x 66), which surpasses the set costs of an SAP API Plugin.  

Pre-project will take up to 2 months and 25k+ 

Before the SAP Consultant is able to do start building/ configuring the 22 data points, the data definitions of these data points, which fields is needed for each data point, so called webservices, should be invented, which will take time, as well as the risk that the data points as configured in the webservice is incomplete. This will take time, cause you probable will invent this by a project group of your SAP consultant, with the team of the digital partner, your logistics, financials and logistics experts in your organization. 
Let us assume that a project group of your internals, the SAP Consultants and your digital partner will need 3 workshops to define all the data needed for these 22 data points. Off course each team will need some time before and after the workshop. This roughly comes down to; 3 teams x 2 people x 3 workshops + 8 hours preparation time for each workshop =  hours (about 6 days) * 200 euro = 28.800 

Project needed of 40k to map the data from API to digital software or customer

To connect the data from the APIs to digital software,  customers,  or suppliers, most of the time a digital agency or your system integrator needs around one to three days for each web service of the ERP, in order to map it into the given eCommerce environment. This time is essential, as they need to develop all the eCommerce functionalities which 
can handle both ‘batch-lookup’ and ‘real-time’ data. Therefore, the total costs of mapping 22 webservices will cost you around an average 2 days each webservice, max 44 days (about 1 and a half months) * 120 euro = €40,000. Note; When you are ordering only the SAP API Plugin, you still need a budget to connect the data to your eCommerce.  

Risk of low quality & performance errors

If your team will create the data points in the API’s for a fully blown SAP B2B portal, for the first time, the risk of forgetting data fields, the wrong type / logic of creating webservices in a way they will not perform is enormous.    

Let's give you 1 example and insight:   In order to create a customer or so-called self-service portal in your B2B eCommerce, where customers can have a look to their current stats of orders and deliveries, or the history of orders, you need to create 2 separate webservice to make sure you are not over requesting the SAP API. You need to create a separate web service which only requests the header information (invoice number,  for only the latest 10 items, etc and 1 separate which request the detailed information of an invoice. rserd customer will look for a list of first and only will have a look to 1 order/ delivery. The API call of the headers is exceptionally light, and the request of detailed information is a bit heavier. By using 2 APIs call for this feature, you are preventing to request all the detailed information for every user, which will visit the self-service portal. This way if building the API’s is 98% lighter than requesting all detailed information for all orders by all users!

The risk of configuring your webservice in a way which will get a big load to your SAP is enormous. When requesting all products, B2B Prices, Orders or Invoices to your SAP using real-time calls via a wrong logic, it may cause serious  performance problems. It is  therefore extremely important to configure the webservice with the right logic, using a smart caching mechanism, to not request data in real-time by using “call” requests to your  API webservices, however  use a push mechanism to prevent big load and performance issues

Stretched timelines, a longer time to market & failed costs 

Lastly and most importantly, error costs and stretched time frames  when building digital (B2B eCommerce) solutions in a custom integrations project, must be factored in as key points of thought, as they too, increase the time to market and harbor their own uncertainties. Projects of this size often complex and lengthy in nature, which make it difficult to plan both in the first and long-term phases. Miscommunications and misunderstandings, as well as obstacles, are all inevitable. Thus, the total cost of ownership is hard to calculate and more often than enough is extremely expensive. Overall, the approximate cost of a custom-made solution will be  around €220.000/$260,000, which elucidates the expensive nature of manual integrations.    

2) Use an off the shelf certified and proven SAP API Plugin

The SAP API Plugin: a certified ABAP stack, delivering 21 webservices after installation.  

The Alumio SAP API Plugin’s is developed as SAP certified ABAP stack and composition is so solid that your SAP will not encounter/ intercept with technical and performance issues, that potentially can be the case for some B2B eCommerce or Digital data-streams when using the default or bad configured SAP API configurations. By using the Alumio SAP API Plugin, 21 well documented B2B eCommerce webservices become instantly available and are installed in a much more efficient manner that leaves you with an impressionable 75% expenditure rate in saved costs, that wouldn’t be the case otherwise with manual integrations. Alumio’s solution, delivers 21 data points (webservices) as automatic pre-configured configurations in a delivered up and running SOAP webservices, ready to serve your B2B eCommerce, My portal eTrace online digital portal. There are huge financial discrepancies between manual integrations and integrations carried out via an SAP API Plugin. 

Costs of the SAP API Plugin

For the fully blown version with 21 webservices (there is also a variant for only SAP E-Invoicing, SAP EDI, SAP Message broker) you will pay a monthly fee of € 1200 a month. Installation and configuration of the SAP API Plugin will cost 10.000 euro on a fixed prices project. This will bring the total cost of ownership of 3 years on: €53.200. Installation till delivered working production version can be done in 3  days! 

Why choose our Microsoft Dynamics Business Central 365 API Plugin?‍

For more affordable solutions, Alumio’s Dynamics Business Central API Plugin, remains the clear front-runner in this respect. Investing in our toolkit is a cost-effective solution to integrations, that will fully future proof and scale your company and business needs in a way that adheres to our newfound IT landscape. Furthermore, by investing in Alumio, not only do you save 75% in expenditure that can be used in other sectors, however, you also invest your money wisely in a way that will pay dividends in your future endeavors. 

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