SAP B1 and Scend
Integration Agency & Consultants
Cogent2 combines AI-powered delivery with operators who have managed both fulfilment and finance. When Scend’s warehouse speed causes inventory drift in SAP B1, the connection isn't working properly. We build integrations that keep both systems aligned, providing confidence in stock valuation and ensuring accurate order status reporting across the business.
Auditing your ERP and warehouse ecosystem
Cogent connects your SAP B1 and Scend systems efficiently, ensuring your ERP and WMS/3PL operations are optimised. Our consulting services, particularly our system audit, are invaluable. They provide a comprehensive analysis of your tech ecosystem, allowing our consultants and your team to address issues proactively. This ensures your SAP B1 and Scend integrations run smoothly, enhancing your ERP and WMS/3PL functionalities. By doing so, you can deliver an exceptional experience to your customers, maintaining operational efficiency and effectiveness.
Solution Design
Our team collaborates with you to craft a blueprint for success, putting you in control of your SAP B1 and Scend integrations. By designing a robust ERP and WMS/3PL architecture, we ensure your systems are aligned for efficiency. Our consultants focus on creating a tech stack that supports your SAP B1 and Scend needs, saving time and energy. This strategic approach lays the groundwork for sustainable growth, optimising your ERP and WMS/3PL operations.
Mapping SKU records and fulfilment triggers
Cogent2's ERP & WMS/3PL integration services supercharge your tech stack with SAP B1 and Scend. By implementing SAP B1 and Scend, you can swiftly integrate ERP and WMS/3PL systems using cutting-edge iPaaS technology. This approach accelerates your market entry, ensuring your operations are efficient and connected. With SAP B1 and Scend, you gain a competitive edge, leveraging ERP and WMS/3PL capabilities to optimise your business processes and drive success.
Orchestrating workflows via secure middleware platforms
Cogent2 leverages iPaaS to integrate SAP B1 and Scend with ERP and WMS/3PL systems securely. iPaaS platforms, with ISO 27001 and SOC 2 compliance and above, ensure data security and efficient operations. This integration supports SAP B1 and Scend, enhancing ERP and WMS/3PL connectivity, improving data flow, and maintaining high security standards.
Surfacing order status and inventory drift
Standard dashboards often fail to show status drift, where an order is fulfilled in Scend but stays open in SAP B1. This visibility gap leads to inaccurate reporting and customer service confusion. We focus on surfacing these exceptions, highlighting unposted shipments or inventory mismatches between the ERP and WMS. By isolating these failures early, we prevent the compound errors that typically complicate month-end reconciliation. This proactive monitoring ensures that the data in SAP B1 reflects the real-world state of your fulfilment operation.
Enabling teams to manage stock reconciliation
Finance, warehouse, and ecommerce teams must own the integration logic to prevent stock drift. We hand over a documented operating model that defines how SAP B1 acts as the financial master while Scend executes real-time fulfilment. Teams learn to perform daily stock reconciliations and weekly order status audits to ensure the ERP matches the WMS. We train CX and ops staff to read alerts from the integration layer, specifying who owns exceptions like unmapped SKUs or failed shipment postings. Documentation is delivered as a practical operational manual for the people running the business, not a technical archive for IT.
Managing data flow and sync reliability
Cogent2 offers comprehensive support for production ERP and WMS/3PL systems, ensuring business continuity and peace of mind. With expertise in SAP B1 and Scend, they provide on-hand technical knowledge and support. Their services include maintaining ERP and WMS/3PL systems, addressing technical challenges, and ensuring smooth operations. SAP B1 and Scend are integral to their approach, providing reliable solutions for your business needs.
Common failures
Inventory latency and overselling
Operational impact: When Scend's available stock levels do not synchronise with SAP B1 correctly, the business risks overselling. This creates poor customer experiences and increases the workload for CX teams managing cancellations. If stock received in SAP B1 is not pushed to Scend promptly, it also causes missed sales on items that are physically available in the warehouse.
Prevention / Action: Design the integration so Scend is the source of truth for 'available to sell' inventory. Updates from SAP B1, such as goods receipts against purchase orders, should be queued to avoid record locking issues in the ERP. The integration logic must correctly map multiple SAP B1 warehouse codes (OWHS) to their corresponding Scend locations to prevent false stockouts.
Item master data conflicts
Operational impact: If SAP B1 Item Master Data contains formats or characters that Scend cannot process, those SKUs will fail to sync, making them unsellable. For controlled goods, if the 'Batch/Serial' flag on the SAP B1 Item record is not communicated correctly, Scend cannot enforce validation during picking. This creates significant compliance risk and fulfilment errors requiring manual correction by warehouse and finance teams.
Prevention / Action: Establish SAP B1 as the definitive source for all Item Master Data. The integration should include logic to validate or transform SAP B1 Item Codes into a format that Scend accepts before the data is sent. Ensure all critical item attributes, especially batch or serial tracking requirements, are explicitly mapped and tested from the SAP B1 Item record to Scend.
Incomplete order-to-cash cycle
Operational impact: If shipment confirmations from Scend fail to trigger the creation of the corresponding Delivery and AR Invoice documents in SAP B1, the order-to-cash process breaks. This leaves the finance team with un-invoiced dispatches, leading to inaccurate revenue reporting and a complex month-end reconciliation. Without a link between the Scend shipment and the SAP B1 invoice, the customer service team cannot answer queries effectively.
Prevention / Action: An integration should be state-aware, processing a shipment notification from Scend only when a related open Sales Order exists in SAP B1. Use a queuing mechanism with a retry strategy for shipments whose orders have not yet appeared in the ERP. Implement monitoring to flag any Scend shipment that cannot be matched to a SAP B1 Sales Order within an agreed timeframe.
Incorrect fulfilment of bundled products
Operational impact: If the integration does not correctly translate a bundle's parent SKU from a Sales Order into its component SKUs for the warehouse, the wrong items are picked. This erodes customer trust and creates costly work for CX and fulfilment teams handling returns and re-shipments. It also corrupts inventory records for both the bundle and its components in SAP B1 and Scend, requiring manual stock adjustments.
Prevention / Action: The integration must be designed to correctly interpret SAP B1's Bill of Materials (BOM) data for 'Sales' type assemblies. Before sending an order to Scend, the integration must transform the order line, replacing the single parent bundle SKU with the correct list of component SKUs and quantities. This ensures Scend receives a direct, pickable list of items while SAP B1 retains the original Sales Order for accurate financial reporting.
Frequently asked questions
We use multiple warehouses in SAP B1. How does the integration prevent stock inaccuracies with Scend?
This requires a precise mapping where each SAP B1 warehouse (OWHS) corresponds to a distinct location in Scend. A common failure is to map multiple SAP B1 warehouses to a single Scend location, which corrupts stock level data sent back to the ERP. This leads to overselling against a consolidated figure, even if individual warehouses cannot fulfil the order.
How does the integration handle real-time stock updates without slowing down SAP B1?
High-frequency inventory updates from Scend can cause 'record locking' in SAP B1 if using older API methods, preventing users from accessing item records. A correctly designed integration avoids the DI API for these tasks, instead using the Service Layer or batching updates strategically. This ensures the stock sync process does not disrupt core finance and operations teams using SAP B1.
How are Scend shipment confirmations reflected in SAP B1's financials?
When Scend confirms a shipment, the integration must create a Delivery document against the Sales Order in SAP B1, not just update a status field. Creating the Delivery document correctly relieves the inventory from stock and posts the Cost of Goods Sold to the general ledger. This ensures the order-to-cash process is accurately represented in SAP B1 without manual intervention from the finance team.
Can the integration handle products that require batch or serial number tracking?
Yes, but this depends on correct master data setup in SAP B1. The 'Batch/Serial' property must be active on the Item Master Data record for Scend to process them correctly. If this is not configured, Scend may reject goods-in advice or fail to record the specific bach number on an outbound shipment, breaking traceability.
How do we manage different stock types like 'available' vs 'quarantined' between the two systems?
This is managed by mapping SAP B1 Storage Locations (LGORT) to equivalent virtual warehouses or statuses within Scend. Failing to map these locations means Scend may treat all stock as available, even if it is held for quality control in SAP B1. This can lead to dispatching incorrect inventory or overselling, impacting both reporting and the customer experience.
What happens if our SAP B1 Item Codes have special characters?
This commonly causes synchronisation failures, as SAP B1 Item Codes with characters like '/' or '#' can be rejected by Scend's API. This prevents SKUs and subsequent item records from being created or updated correctly in the warehouse system. Enforcing a clean SKU format before integration is essential to ensure master data flows reliably between SAP B1 and Scend.