The medium-sized tour operator Studiosus, founded in 1954, has implemented SAP financial accounting in its company. The tried-and-tested COBOL-based reservation system was to remain in place, even though it is not compatible with SAP per se. This is where Grothe Technology came into play. Our task was to develop an integration layer based on microservices in order to link SAP financial accounting and the reservation system into a functioning overall system.

Our software development in detail

We implemented the logic for modelling the accounting data records in an external microservice, as the client did not want any adjustments made to the COBOL system. Master data regarding customers and agencies as well as orders and travel bookings are read from the host system and posted in SAP on an event- and time-controlled basis. The SAP Exchange Microservice we developed ensures easily configurable mapping of the host system processes to the correct chart of accounts and automatically makes the necessary financial accounting postings and offsetting entries.



Of course, communication between SAP and the reservation system also works the other way round: incoming payments are now conveniently managed by Studiosus in SAP, from where they are imported via a microservice into the corresponding data records of the booking processes in the host system. The logic in the host system did not have to be adapted for this purpose.

Conclusion

The new, modern IT architecture based on microservices and REST interfaces to the host system enables Studiosus to connect external systems such as SAP. In future, it will be possible to use further standard solutions, such as for customer relationship management, and link them to the existing reservation system. Studiosus thus benefits twice over from our software solution: the company can continue to use its existing reservation system while still benefiting from the advantages of established standard systems.