Integrate OTM with 3rd party solutions

[otmrookie]

Hi all,

Does anyone have experience integrating OTM with Management Dynamics' trade compliance solution and Kewill's Clippership(for parcel mgt)? We're considering integrating OTM with both of these solutions, any thoughts? Thanks!

[bmj_23]

Re: Integrate OTM with 3rd party solutions

Although I don't have direct experience of integrating to those solutions, the majority of integration to 3rd party solutions is via the OTM XML API's.

1. Identify the business process you are trying to support and identify the OTM XML API's you should use.

2. Take real life or example data from all of the systems you are trying to integrate to / from and enter that manually in to OTM.

3. Extract example XML from OTM and use that as the basis for mapping to the 3rd party solutions.

I have been through a similar data mapping process to 3rd party systems, and it really does not take that long if you are clear on what processes you are trying to support. Bear in mind, you should also try to involve an OTM functional consultant in the process to ensure that the integration that is coming in to OTM supports the functional design.

Check that the 3rd party applications you are referring to can support XML based integration.

Once you have

[chrisplough]

Re: Integrate OTM with 3rd party solutions

Just to add onto

If you're going to integrate several systems, you may choose to use an integration engine in order to translate, process and communicate the various flows to each server. This also helps when some of the systems don't speak XML and you need to translate to flat files, EDI, etc. Some examples are Oracle's BPEL, Webmethods, Mercator, eGate...

In addition, OTM comes with a very basic integration engine, written in Python that will allow you to do some basic transformation. It's a good starting point for smaller companies, but it's possible to quickly outgrow it.

--Chris

[gig]

Re: Integrate OTM with 3rd party solutions

It's been a while on the Kewill or any parcel manifesting system, but here's a couple of flow concerns.

1. Make sure when you plan your shipments in OTM, if there is more than one ship unit per shipment make sure you translate each of those into a package for Kewill.
2. If you have more than one ship unit on a shipment, make sure you rationalize you status in OTM. Remember one package may deliver while the other is not.
3. On the return integration you might want to upload the package tracking numbers and change the status in OTM. Also, to do you FP&A get your rates as well.
4. Look at getting your status messages directly from your carriers instead of Kewill. Kewill has a method of getting this information, I'm not a big fan of this, but check into your business needs.

On the Trade Compliance side. I've never done this will OTM, but other TMSs. You need to get both Order and Shipment data over. So make sure you really look into the mapping. You either have to send the order over and match them up with the Shipment in NextLinx (which is possible I think) or send all the information over in the OTM Shipment XML.

Good luck!

John

[otmrookie]

Re: Integrate OTM with 3rd party solutions

Thanks again guys for all of your insights! To Chris's point, if we could have our choice of integration engine it would be WebMethods due to our IT resources' experience. We understand that BPEL is a requirement for OTM-EBS integration but we haven't seen any Oracle white paper or documentation that states specifically that WebMethods is a supported integration engine for OTM-3rd party integration. But it sounds like OTM does have some flexibility here.

[chrisplough]

Re: Integrate OTM with 3rd party solutions

That flexibility is exactly what I'd stress -- OTM has been used for many years with nearly every integration engine out there. In fact, WebMethods was probably the first, due to the popularity it had in the late 90's and early 2000's. In order to use the pre-packaged integration, you need to use BPEL, but for custom integration all options are still open. I'd choose the one that makes best sense for your skills and organization.

--Chris