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Extending Existing SAP Solutions Using SAP BTP

SAP BTP offers services, tools, and capabilities to develop, extend, or integrate business applications in the cloud. You can implement additional workflows or modules on top of existing solutions, which lets you benefit from out-of-the-box security, inherited data access governance, user interface embedding, and so on.

Overview

All standard SAP solutions are offered with customizing capabilities. Additionally, customers often have their own requirements for innovative or industry-specific extensions and the extension capability of SAP BTP can help them build, deploy, and operate their new functionalities easily and securely.

You can use SAP BTP to extend standard SAP solutions without disrupting their performance and core processes. When building extension applications, you can also benefit from the automation of the integration between SAP BTP and the extended SAP solutions.

There are three main extension types you can use to extend your SAP solution:

  • In-app extensions: allows you to extend the back end and the UI directly in your SAP solution. You can use in-app extensions only if the SAP solutions that you want to extend provide such a possibility. For example, you can use in-app extensions for extending SAP SuccessFactors, and SAP S/4HANA Cloud. See:

  • Side-by-side extensions: allows you to integrate with your SAP solution additional business functionality deployed in SAP BTP.

    The advantages of the side-by-side extensions can be grouped in these categories:

    • Business: you can include the access of new user groups, you can extend the scope with custom solutions, you can complement data and business services from different back ends.

    • Technology: more developers are enabled, your digital core remains focused, you can add innovative solutions by leveraging new technology services in the cloud.

    • Operations: you can share the extensions

When planning your extension, consider these recommendations:

  • Always start simple to check the result quickly. Later on, you can grow the complexity of your extension slowly.

  • Keep your digital core focused and bring to SAP BTP only the data that makes sense.

  • Define what you want to achieve in the beginning and look for the easiest way to do that. For example, if you want to add a field in SAP S/4HANA, it's better to create an in-app extension, than to implement an extension application on SAP BTP.

  • Ensure the availability of suitable APIs and events, because you will need them when developing and extension application on SAP BTP.

In SAP BTP, you have these options to extend your SAP solution:

  • Extensions with automated configurations in the Cloud Foundry and Kyma environments: applicable for SAP S/4HANA Cloud, and SAP SuccessFactors.

  • Extensions with automated configurations in the Kyma environment: applicable for SAP S/4HANA Cloud, SAP SuccessFactors, SAP Cloud for Customer, SAP Commerce Cloud, and SAP Field Service Management.

Extensions with Automated Configurations

SAP BTP provides a standard way for extending SAP solutions and developing event-driven extensions and applications. This framework includes:

  • Simplified, standardized and unified extensibility and configuration for the SAP solutions.

  • Central catalog per customer for all connected SAP systems where data such as APIs, events, credentials and other is stored. You can benefit from business services and actionable events across end-to-end business processes.

If you have to group the systems of different SAP solutions in the same business case, you can set up the connectivity between all these systems and SAP BTP in a single formation.

The following SAP solutions currently support the automated configurations:

  • SAP S/4HANA Cloud

  • SAP SuccessFactors

  • SAP Cloud for Customer

  • SAP Commerce Cloud

  • SAP Field Service Management

Use Cases

The extension use cases include but are not limited to:

  • Extending the user interface of your SAP cloud solution.

    You can complement an existing SAP solution with a new or improved SAP Fiori user interface without adding any major logic or data.

    You can also provide necessary information and tools on mobile devices.

    For example:

    • Building completely new user interfaces that can be seamlessly integrated in the SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central home page.

    • Adding new functionality to SAP SuccessFactors by connecting it to other SAP solutions, such as SAP Commerce Cloud, SAP Cloud for Customer, SAP Field Service Management, SAP S/4HANA Cloud.

    • Building completely new SAP Fiori-based user interfaces that can be seamlessly integrated in the SAP Fiori launchpad.

  • Enhancing the functionality of your SAP cloud solution by connecting it with other SAP solutions.

    For example:

    • Connecting SAP S/4HANA Cloud with other SAP solutions, such as SAP Commerce Cloud, SAP Cloud for Customer, SAP Field Service Management, SAP SuccessFactors.

    • Connecting SAP SuccessFactors by connecting it to other SAP solutions, such as SAP Commerce Cloud, SAP Cloud for Customer, SAP Field Service Management, SAP S/4HANA Cloud.

  • Enhancing core business processes with analytics and machine learning capabilities.

  • Extend data insights by consolidating and combining data in one central place.

  • Building an extensions ecosystem, by creating and operating SaaS applications and selling them to multiple customers.

    For example, as an SAP Partner, you can build a multi-tenant SaaS extension application and provide it to your customers via:

    • SAP App Center

    • SAP BTP cockpit

Resources

The following resources are available for your extension scenarios. The links to various documents guide you through the configuration tasks that you need to perform to enable the SAP BTP for developing extension applications for your existing SAP solutions, and the learning journeys are collections of links to additional resources.

Related Information

Extensions ↗️

Extension Architecture Guide

SAP Application Extension Methodology Overview