With the increasing complexity of global supply chains, businesses need real-time visibility and control over their operations to remain competitive and set themselves up for continued success in the future…
Cue SAP Logistics Business Network (LBN).
The SAP Logistics Business Network provides a unified view of all inbound and outbound logistics processes, including goods transport, order management, and freight order execution, enabling companies to optimize their operations and reduce costs across their enterprise.
This article will discuss the key features and capabilities of SAP Logistics Business Network, as well as how our team of SAP consultants can help make the most of your SAP solutions.
Read on to learn more!
What is SAP LBN?
SAP LBN (Logistics Business Network) is a publicly hosted, cloud-based solution designed to connect carriers, logistics service providers, and other business partners in a collaborative network and provide the tools needed to streamline logistics for improved efficiency and resilience across the entire value chain.
With SAP Logistics Business Network capabilities, companies in any industry are enabled to gain greater insight into their logistics processes, find opportunities to connect with new logistics partners, and leverage better supply chain transparency to avoid supply chain disruption across the entire enterprise.
The Big Three of SAP Logistics Business Network
The SAP Business Network for Logistics is a cloud-based global network that supports and empowers logistics companies to collaborate with others, optimize their logistics business processes, and reduce logistics costs across the board.
Based on the SAP Business Technology Platform, Business Network for Logistics simplifies and streamlines operations across the entire SAP landscape, making it easier for companies to improve logistics performance and support efficient collaboration between users.
The SAP Business Network is comprised of three main applications, including…
1) Freight Collaboration
SAP Business Network Freight Collaboration provides a collaborative network to facilitate better communication and cooperation between logistics service providers, including shippers and carriers.
With the Freight Collaboration network, companies can improve efficiency for their freight order and invoice management processes and support the process of onboarding new logistics business partners into the complete network.
SAP’s Freight Collaboration capabilities also make it easier for business partners to collaboratively manage transactions, share insights, and exchange documents across teams.
2) Material Traceability
SAP Business Network Material Traceability is an application augmented by blockchain technology and designed to improve logistics collaboration, transparency, and visibility by connecting the entire supply chain in a centralized location.
The Material Traceability application uses material genealogy data from a customer’s supply chain to identify and solve quality issues more efficiently and provide product history information and intelligent insights to facilitate and support more informed decisions.
3) Global Track-and-Trace
SAP Business Network Global Track-and-Trace is a solution built to give users real-time transparency into their tracked business processes by collecting, analyzing, and storing valuable tracking information for individual processes and objects.
With Global Track-and-Trace, SAP users can use rule-based triggering to automatically detect predefined conditions, initiate follow-up activities, or query tracked progress to display end-to-end process data and optimize group logistics processes throughout the supply chain.
Key Features of the SAP LBN Solution
Here are a few key features of SAP Logistics Business Network (LBN) that make it an invaluable asset for any company…
Role-Based Access
SAP LBN provides role-based access for every stakeholder, making it easier to leverage tailored transactions to support user needs and streamline daily tasks for improved efficiency.
Customizable LBN solutions, paired with better situational awareness and more informed decisions, can help companies standardize freight collaboration, facilitate real-time freight order tracking, and improve dock appointment scheduling.
Logistics Integration
On one hand, collaborative transactions in SAP Logistics Business Network (LBN) are created with built-in integration capabilities that allow them to connect seamlessly to other backend SAP systems, like SAP Cloud Platform and SAP Business Technology Platform, for improved visibility, transparency, and connectivity.
On the other hand, published interfaces in SAP LBN allow integrations with other third-party solutions to simplify collaboration between systems and reduce overall costs.
Business Partner Directory
With SAP LBN, companies have the opportunity to manage business relationships either locally or centrally, according to their unique needs.
Once new logistics partners are onboarded and relevant connections are set up across the network, users can leverage LBN capabilities to communicate and collaborate across their (now) extended environment.
Intelligent Insights
SAP LBN makes it easier to connect the physical movement of goods with data flows to provide intelligent, actionable insights across the entire supply chain.
Users can also leverage the intelligent insights add-on feature to turn transactional network insights into data intelligence across the SAP Business Network Freight Collaboration and Global Track and Trace solutions.
Collaboration Between SAP LBN and SAP TM
SAP Transportation Management (SAP TM) acts as the central transportation management system for processes like transport planning, execution, and freight cost management.
And, by combining pre-built transport management capabilities in SAP TM with logistics functionality in SAP LBN, customers are enabled to improve collaboration between stakeholders and tap into the full potential of their SAP solutions.
With integrations between SAP LBN and SAP TM, dispatchers who create an order in SAP TM can send their search query to SAP LBN without the need for complex middleware or a transport service provider.
How Can We Help?
Whether you need help implementing SAP Logistics Business Network for the first time, assessing supply chain risks for your organization, or leveraging capabilities in the SAP LBN module to turn transactional network insights into data intelligence across your entire supply chain, Surety Systems is here to help.
Our team of senior-level SAP consultants has the technical skills and functional knowledge needed to lead you to success, wherever your supply chain needs may lie.
Getting Started with Us
Interested in learning where our team of experienced SAP consultants can fit on your team?
Ready to get started with a new SAP system, but don’t know where to begin?
Contact us today for more information!
