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Flowgear > Case Studies > ECN Overcomes SAP Business One Integration Challenges with Flowgear

ECN Overcomes SAP Business One Integration Challenges with Flowgear

Technology Category

Application Infrastructure & Middleware - Data Exchange & Integration
Application Infrastructure & Middleware - Middleware, SDKs & Libraries

Applicable Industries

Telecommunications

Use Cases

Inventory Management
Time Sensitive Networking

Services

System Integration

The Challenge

Electronic Communications Network (ECN), a rapidly growing telecommunications network provider in South Africa, was facing a significant challenge in integrating its various line-of-business applications with the SAP Business One business management software. ECN operates a converged next-generation network over a number of mediums including copper, fibre, and microwave, and offers a unique 'one network many services' approach. While it uses SAP Business One as a management system, it also has a number of customized industry-specific applications that enable it to operate its networks, provide customer service, and manage aspects of the business. The information from these systems needed to be integrated with SAP Business One so that the company could have 'a single source of the truth' for the information. However, integrating these systems with SAP was not an easy task.

About The Customer

Electronic Communications Network (ECN), formerly Nashua ECN, is the fastest growing alternative telecommunications network provider in South Africa. ECN operates a converged next-generation network over a number of mediums including copper, fibre, and microwave, and offers a unique 'one network many services' approach. It uses SAP Business One as a management system, but also has a number of customized industry-specific applications that enable it to operate its networks, provide customer service, and manage aspects of the business. ECN is committed to ongoing transformation in the telecommunications industry and aims to provide an integration layer for its business applications.

The Solution

To overcome the integration challenge, ECN turned to Flowgear’s integration platform-as-a-service (iPaaS) solution. Flowgear solved the integration issues ECN had with SAP B1I, and the Flowgear SAP connector enabled ECN to expose the SAP APIs quickly and easily. With their in-house technical expertise, ECN was able to get up and running with Flowgear in a short time. The cost of Flowgear was also much more competitive than using SAP’s own integration solution. As part of ECN’s IT goals to provide an integration layer so that as business applications change all they will need to do is interface the new application to that layer, they plan to integrate their MetaStorm business process management software with Flowgear to automate and streamline the data integration flows between various applications.

Operational Impact

The implementation of Flowgear's iPaaS solution has proven to be a powerful and flexible platform for integration for ECN. For some specific integration requirements, ECN was able to quickly develop additional scripts. When they encountered problems, they found that Flowgear support was responsive and helpful. The fact that Flowgear is a public cloud platform wasn’t a problem for ECN. The Flowgear DropPoint system works well and latency is good, indicating a smooth and efficient operation. The use of Flowgear has also been cost-effective for ECN, being more competitive than SAP’s own integration solution.