Tracking shipments in SAP—especially when dealing with international purchases and deliveries across multiple countries—can present significant challenges. If you’re using SAP ERP to manage these processes, you’ve likely encountered major difficulties, primarily due to a lack of automation and visibility.
This article explores the most common challenges of shipment tracking in SAP and presents the optimal solution to fully leverage its potential.
Challenges in SAP Shipment Tracking
The first major issue encountered when tracking shipments in SAP is the abundance of manual processes involved in data entry and management. This slows down processes, increases the risk of errors, and makes it difficult to track the real-time status of shipments. As a result, key business areas—such as purchasing, logistics, and receiving—lack accurate and up-to-date information for effective decision-making.
Shipment management complexity increases with each delivery, as:
- A single shipment may involve multiple containers.
- Each container may hold items from one or more purchase orders.
- The data that needs to be recorded and updated goes beyond the goods themselves, including information like the origin and destination ports, shipping or airline details, ETD (Estimated Time of Departure) and ETA (Estimated Time of Arrival), vessel or flight names, as well as technical details of the containers, among others.
Keeping all this information current and correctly synchronized across different teams results in a high manual workload, which easily leads to errors, outdated dates, and a lack of operational coordination.
In a market that increasingly demands agility and precision in deliveries, the volume of data to be processed and the lack of proper tools within the SAP system make shipment tracking particularly critical. When information doesn’t flow effectively between the departments involved, the company loses its ability to plan, anticipate, and coordinate its logistics and procurement operations—negatively impacting productivity, operational efficiency, and ultimately, supply chain profitability.
In summary, the key challenges are:
- The lack of a direct connection between SAP and shipment tracking platforms causes complications.
- Managing the large amount of information generated by each shipment is a major challenge.
- The absence of automatically updates and the risk of manual errors hinder process visibility.
- All of this negatively affects the ability to carry out effective logistics and procurement planning.
Solutions for Comprehensive and Efficient Shipment Tracking in SAP
To address the challenges mentioned in SAP purchasing environments, Innova has developed SITRACK, an advanced application for end-to-end purchase management. SITRACK enables procurement teams to manage bulk operations and centrally track purchases with full traceability from request to receipt.
SITRACK is natively integrated with the SAP ERP environment, directly interacting with MM (Materials Management) – PUR (Purchasing),. This enables comprehensive control across the entire procurement cycle. For example, when a purchase order is created (using standard transaction ME21N), SITRACK allows for automated tracking after linking each document to its corresponding shipment, container number, or Bill of Lading.
However, to specifically resolve the challenges related to shipment tracking in SAP, Innova has taken a step further: it developed a new integration between SITRACK and the Searates API, a global leader in international logistics solutions.
Searates is a digital platform renowned for offering services such as real-time shipment tracking, rate comparison for sea, air, and land freight, and online booking of logistics services. Its direct integration with SAP through SITRACK paves the way for a major transformation in managing international procurement logistics.
Smart Imports: Automatically Update Your Containers in SAP with SITRACK and Searates
This integration achieves two key milestones:
- Automation of Key Logistics Data Registration and Updates. Critical information such as ETD (Estimated Time of Departure), ETA (Estimated Time of Arrival), shipping line or airline, vessel name or flight number, and container details (number, type, weight, volume, contents, etc.) is automatically integrated into SAP via a secure and robust API connection.
This eliminates the need for manual data entry in fields such as purchase order shipping details, significantly reducing the risk of human error. - Automated Reception of Key Shipment Events. The solution includes an intelligent report that automatically update every important shipment milestones such as departure from origin port, arrival at destination port, transit completion, or final delivery.
Practically speaking, this means that when a container’s arrival is properly updated, it facilitates resource planning, warehouse coordination, and meeting commitments with internal or external clients.
Moreover, SITRACK serves as a user-friendly interface between SAP and Searates, featuring customizable dashboards, supplier- or shipment-based tracking lists, and exportable reports for analysis or presentation in logistics meetings.
In short, this integration marks a significant leap forward in international procurement management within SAP, allowing companies to operate with greater agility, precision, and control—even in high-volume logistics operations.
Want to learn more about this solutions?
Whether you’re looking for effective integration between your ERP and platforms like Searates, need greater control over your purchases, or want to improve any aspect of your supply chain management, Innova has the solution you need.
You can request a no-obligation demo tailored to your business needs or consult with one of our experts to clarify any questions related to shipment tracking in SAP, logistics process optimization, or traceability in international purchasing environments.
