Pillar · Enterprise Architecture & Transformation
Integration, BTP & Enterprise Platforms
Contracts rather than point-to-point: APIs, events and master data flows with named error ownership.
What is at stake for the CIO
Integration is where architecture decisions become visible — usually at night, in monitoring, to someone who did not take them. An interface without a named owner is not an interface; it is an open invoice.
The question behind it
Does this capability belong in the core, in an extension, or on a platform of its own?
- 1Event
- 2Integration contract
- 3Target system
- 4Monitoring and error ownership
Systems and processes
- SAP BTP as extension and integration platform
- APIs and integration contracts
- ALE and EDI
- Event and interface architecture
- Master data flows between core, channels and satellites
- Legacy and satellite systems
- Monitoring, alerting and error ownership
Decisions that go wrong most often
- Every new connection is built point-to-point because it is faster this once.
- The ERP boundary is never decided, so in practice the system integrator decides it.
- Interfaces have owners during the project and none in operations.
- BTP becomes the dumping ground for everything unwelcome in the core — without governance of its own.
Decisions FirstRetail prepares
- 1Where the ERP boundary sits: core, extension or external platform.
- 2Which integration patterns are binding and which exceptions must be argued.
- 3How master data flows and who owns it at each point.
- 4Who stands behind which interface in operations, and within what response time.
Where the experience comes from
ALE and EDI from SAP Retail programmes, integration across ERP core, POS, commerce, CRM and customer service in a multi-brand landscape, and current architecture work with SAP BTP. Written work on landscape and transport architecture is under Insights.
Every name here stands for historical delivery experience from completed programmes. None of them is an endorsement or an indication of a current client relationship. I do not display logos; that would need a permission I do not have.