Enterprise SOA

ESA for logistic service providers

SAP's solutions for logistic service providers (LSPs) have focused increasingly on using enterprise services to recompose once-innovative, now-standard processes into new, differentiating ones. An industry that began with warehousing and forwarding freight on behalf of its clients began to evolve as early as the 1980s into an externalized supply chain, adding value by essentially adding services and increasing the scope of these services with each iteration. It's no longer enough for UPS to simply deliver coffee machines; these days, the company is prepared to install the machine and replenish the grounds inside on a daily basis if the customer is willing to pay for it. The flip side of these constantly expanding offerings is the need to develop new business processes and implement them.

Meanwhile, supply chains now circle the globe and include multiple tiers of suppliers, contract manufacturers, and service providers such as the logistics companies themselves. Connecting each of these fluid and rapidly changing participants to each other is an incredible strain on applications built along monolithic lines. Enterprise services offer a solution through their ability to begin recomposing commodity supply chain processes such as "track and trace" into differentiating ones, such as "supply chain event management."

"Track and trace" refers to the technology invented by FedEx to track packages via the now-familiar systems of unique IDs and sensors. As ...