by Rishab Bucha |
Couple of month back I wrote a blog providing an overview of the SAP FPSL solution and taking through the different layers and processes involved in the SAP FPSL solution. We have taken example of Banking / Financial product for this series as the approach is different for Insurance and will be taken up in separate series. What we want to cover off in this blog is high level details on two specific items:-
| Data load to FSDM- | Details on how to load data to FSDM / Financial Services Database |
| Integration of FSDM & FPSL- | How does FSDM and FPSL link and data is moved to FPSL layers |
This blog may seems more technical in nature and will touch upon some of the component present in the SAP offering. Just like last blog, I will try to follow a Q&A based approach and feel free to provide your feedback / questions in the comment below.
Just to recap from the previous blog, I will mention the architecture of SAP offering for Financial services and highlighted the components we are going to talk about in this blog.
The key aspect of this blog is about how various Trading platforms / TP system can send data to FSDP (data layer) and to FPSL (Sub ledger).
So how does the transformation look like?
As with any ETL process , there are multiple layer and stage in which the data flows to FPSL for processing.
A high level diagram will be:-
This is again a high level diagram and there can be multiple middle layers e.g. data cleansing layers present.
Do I need to always have FSDP as a layer, can I not load data directly to FPSL?
Short answer is no, you need not have FSDP ( data layer) as default for integration to SAP FPSL. You can very well load data directly to FPSL.
One such process is shown below and the key component here is SAP Netweaver BI. The data is flowed into SAP FPSL data load layer (DLL). Again source system can be an TP system or SAP’s own banking solution components.
Another variation I also have a data lake in my setup, do I need to have FSDP again to stage data?
Again the short answer is no, you can still very well move data to DLL (data load layer, more on this later) in FSPL and use it for the subledger processing. However there are advantages to using FSDP. SAP is investing and evolving the FSDP product, and it does have a data model useful for the various financial product as shown in the previous blog. Also as with any ETL process, you might want to stage data between the various layer for cleaning, data reconciliation etc. and you need to plan where this activity will be performed.
How does the technology stack look like?
Data can be loaded to FPSL with FSDP and without FSDP.
In a setup with SAP netweaver BI , to read the source data and events, you solution, below is a flow shown with SAP XI as communication layer. Various stages of mapping and processing is shown below.
With FSDP in picture, the data load to a HANA system can be through one of the many tools available to load data to HANA db, including smart access. There is ETL processing in HANA layers and processing to load data on FPSL.
Does the process need any customizing / work to be done at FPSL level?
Yes you have to setup the target structure in FPSL for the various product and additional dimension needed. Additionally if you have FSDP, you need to setup DB connection and also perform the mapping between FSDP data structure to source data structures. You also need to define BW process chains for loading data into FPSL.
Parting thoughts
SAP FPSL as a solution offers lots of flexibility to support a product subledger for FSI and as such the data processing needs to be nimble to support various scenarios and setups. This also has an impact of sizing of the overall solution, complexity of technology stack and processes needed. Having a trusted partner supporting clients journey in this process is paramount and the data has a lot of weightage in determining the success of FPSL project.
