How The Home Depot is innovating with Google Cloud using the ABAP SDK

The Home Depot, the world's largest home-improvement retailer, has been on a transformation journey on Google Cloud since 2017. We've harnessed the power of Google Cloud to enhance our customer experience, optimize critical SAP applications, and build an efficient and integrated supply chain.

Our supply chain, fueled by a data platform on Google Cloud, is a well-oiled machine. Inventory movement across our vast network of stores, online platforms, and replenishment systems is synced in near real-time, thanks to the streaming capabilities of our data platform. This aggregated inventory data is then integrated with our SAP ERP application for financial accounting.

Traditionally, we relied on middleware platforms and third-party add-ons to integrate SAP applications with our data platform. While effective, this approach added complexity and cost to our operations. We needed a solution that would streamline the integration process, reduce costs, and accelerate development. The ABAP SDK for Google Cloud was the answer.

As seasoned ABAP developers at The Home Depot, we've been managing our SAP applications for over two decades. The ABAP SDK empowers us to leverage the capabilities of Google Cloud directly within our preferred programming language, ABAP. By handling the complexities of connectivity, authentication, data serialization, and error handling, the SDK allows us to focus on crafting business logic. This has enabled us to rapidly build and deploy a range of impactful use cases, from concept to go-live in just a few weeks. Let's explore a few use cases:

#1. Boosting financial accounting accuracy with near real-time inventory data

Historically, inventory movement in our physical and online stores was reflected in our ERP system only as aggregated financial transactions. This limited our ability to delve into the details. Now, with the ABAP SDK, we can pull thousands of inventory transactions directly from Google Cloud Pub/Sub into SAP. This provides near real-time inventory visibility, granular transaction details, and improved accuracy in financial postings.

#2. Safeguarding sensitive financial data in integrations

We use third-party systems to manage financial transactions in stores. Data from these systems are ingested into SAP daily. To protect this sensitive data, we create asymmetric keys in Google Cloud Key Management (KMS) and share the public key with these systems. The third-party systems encrypt files using the public key before sending them to SAP, where we decrypt them using Google Cloud KMS with ABAP SDK. This architecture significantly enhances the security of our financial integrations.

#3. Cutting costs and improving performance in data sharing

We have file-based integrations between SAP and various non-SAP systems, including our customer portals. These integrations handle both structured and unstructured data of varying sizes and volumes. Using the ABAP SDK, we leverage Google Cloud Storage as a landing zone for these files, providing a scalable, reliable, and cost-effective file-sharing solution.

At The Home Depot, we've taken the ABAP SDK even further by adding monitoring and error handling using the SAP Application Interface Framework. This allows us to proactively monitor the health of our interfaces, respond to issues promptly, and ensure the overall efficiency of our integrations.

Getting started with the ABAP SDK for Google Cloud is easy. You can install the On-premise or any cloud edition in your SAP application for in-place integrations or the BTP edition in your BTP ABAP environment for side-by-side integrations. Google Cloud also offers code samples and sample solutions to help you hit the ground running.

With the ABAP SDK supporting over 75 Google APIs, we've only scratched the surface of what's possible. We're constantly exploring new use cases to drive efficiencies across our integration landscape. We'd love to hear how you're using the ABAP SDK for Google Cloud to innovate and transform your business.