Further development of the global sales and service organisation through integration using BizTalk Server

The sales and service organisation (SSO) of ZF is responsible worldwide for the sales and servicing of ZF products. Article master data is viewed, the availability of parts checked, orders processed and deliveries tracked at 119 locations in 25 countries. The associated data and business documents are exchanged electronically without media disruption between the ERP systems of the different locations (Microsoft Dynamics NAV) and the central SAP- and AS/400-based systems.

Solution

The existing solutions based on Basis BizTalk Server 2002 was migrated to BizTalk Server 2009. The business processed encoded until that time thereby become flexibly organisable and declaratively mapped in BizTalk Server 2009. Through applications of SOA principles, the message communication components (e.g. data format conversions) no longer have to be developed to be partner-specific, but can rather be reused as often as required. Routing to business partners is realised dynamically from document contents and contexts. A sophisticated business activity monitoring (BAM) portal is available for monitoring.

Advantages for ZF

• Significant reduction of work required to connect partners
• Increased flexibility in business process control
• Increased operational reliability