SAP Global Track and Trace: knowing where the goods are – before the customer asks

“Where is my delivery?” is the question that in many companies is still answered by telephone: dispatch calls the carrier, the carrier calls the driver, and the customer waits. SAP Business Network Global Track and Trace brings the status messages of all carriers, visibility providers and your own systems together in one place, checks them against the plan and reports deviations before anyone has to ask. Anyone using SAP Event Management today or moving to S/4HANA should know the product – SAP positions it as the strategic successor to Event Management.

The processes the events come from – freight order and execution – we know from our Transportation Management projects. Global Track and Trace we place with you as a decision in the programme: whether it replaces Event Management, when it comes and what groundwork on process and master data it needs.

How you know shipment tracking is a topic

If one of these signs applies to you, it is worth a look:

You use SAP Event Management and are facing the S/4HANA transformation – and the question of what becomes of shipment tracking is still open.
Your customers expect real-time delivery transparency, and your carriers deliver data via their own portals that nobody consolidates.
Delays only come to light when the customer calls – not when the truck is stuck at the border.
Your board asks for transport emissions for the sustainability report, and the figures come from estimates rather than from the shipments.

What Global Track and Trace is – and what becomes of Event Management

SAP Business Network Global Track and Trace (GTT) is an option of SAP Business Network for Logistics and thus part of the same cloud network through which shippers and carriers collaborate. It collects events – pickup, border crossing, delivery, delay – from carriers, visibility providers and your own systems, compares them with the planned sequence and triggers alerts on deviations. Which processes are tracked and which deviation merits an alert you model yourself; the integration with Transportation Management in S/4HANA is standard.

SAP Event Management, the previous on-premise tool for shipment and process tracking, remains available for S/4HANA; SAP, however, describes GTT as the “strategic successor” to Event Management and focuses further development there. Since late 2025 GTT returns carriers’ emissions data to TM in S/4HANA and brings shipment tracking for shippers and carriers together in a shared interface; SAP is phasing out older applications step by step.

Three situations in which shipment tracking is worth money

The figures are calculated examples, not measurements from a project; they show the order of magnitude at stake.

The dispatch team chasing by phone

A dispatch team with 300 shipments a day gets a call for every tenth one: “Where is the delivery?” Thirty calls, each with a query to the carrier, ten minutes each – five hours a day, 25 a week, in which nobody dispatches. With Global Track and Trace the status is in the system before the customer calls; the query becomes the exception, and the answer to the customer comes from the system, not from the phone.

The delay nobody reported

A group ships 5,000 consignments a month; for 8 percent of them every status message is missing because small carriers deliver no data – 400 shipments flying blind. Global Track and Trace checks every shipment against the plan: if an expected event fails to arrive, an alert is raised – even when the carrier says nothing. 400 silent shipments become 400 alerts with a deadline, sorted by urgency – dispatch deals first with those where the delivery date is genuinely at risk.

The emissions figure for the sustainability report

A board is to report transport emissions; today the figure comes from an average factor per tonne and kilometre, not from the shipments. Since late 2025 Global Track and Trace returns carriers’ emissions data to TM in S/4HANA – from the actual transports instead of an estimate. For the report that is the difference between an assumption and evidence, and for the purchasing of transport services a criterion that can be compared per carrier for the first time.

Whether Global Track and Trace is next for you depends on three things: your shipment volume, which of your carriers can deliver events, and your timeline for S/4HANA. We check that before we recommend anything.

How we place shipment tracking for you

First we establish what you already do – event management, carrier portals, spreadsheets – and which events sales, transport planning and your customers genuinely need.
What matters is what your carriers are able to supply. Events that nobody reports cannot be shown by even the best tool.
If you use event management today, the question of replacing it is part of the work. The answer depends on your S/4HANA timetable, not on the product cycle.
The recommendation says whether shipment tracking comes with the transformation, after it or not for now – and which milestones your transport process has to name unambiguously for it.

The shared sequence of our assessments can be read on the SAP overview. How we work – the shared framework

From your side we need dispatch, sales as the voice of the customers, IT for the connection – and, if you use Event Management, the people who look after it today. They know best which alerts are actually read.

On the same platform

Freight Collaboration – the other side of the network

Global Track and Trace tracks what Freight Collaboration has ordered: both are options of SAP Business Network for Logistics, attached to the same carriers and the same partner master data. If you are planning to connect carriers anyway, it is best to decide on both together – tendering, ordering, time slots and freight settlement we place on the page about the Business Network for Logistics.

What you end up with

A target design for shipment tracking: which processes, which events, which alerts to whom
An answer to the Event Management question – replace, continue, when
An example calculation with your shipment figures: queries, silent shipments, emissions data
The groundwork on partner master data and transport process without which no tracking works

What we do not do

We do not sell shipment tracking for its own sake. If your Event Management still does the job and the transformation is far off, we say so.
We neither build nor operate telematics, carrier interfaces or the platform itself. We define with you which events count, and support the implementation from the process side.
The figures in the scenarios are calculated, not measured. What Global Track and Trace brings you follows from your shipments – and those we count first.

Typical questions

Do we have to replace SAP Event Management?: Not immediately. SAP Event Management remains available for S/4HANA. SAP is, however, focusing further development on Global Track and Trace, and SAP recommends evaluating both for new track-and-trace initiatives. Anyone transforming anyway should place the decision in that project.
Where do the events come from if our carriers deliver no data?: From the large carriers directly, from smaller ones via simple portal and email access, from visibility providers – and from your own systems, such as goods issue in the warehouse. Where nothing arrives regardless, the shipment does not stay invisible: a missing event is itself an alert.
Do we need SAP TM for this?: The integration with Transportation Management in S/4HANA is the standard route: TM delivers the plan against which the events are checked. Anyone implementing TM has the foundation; anyone without it should first clarify which system the plan comes from – that belongs in our assessment.
What does Global Track and Trace cost?: As with the other network options, by volume and booked scope; we deliberately do not quote prices. In our experience the bigger effort lies in the target design: deciding which events count and who acts on a deviation. A system that reports everything soon stops being read.

Initial consultation on SAP Global Track and Trace

How often a day does someone at your company ask “Where is the delivery?” – and who answers it? With that figure and your status on Event Management and S/4HANA, a short conversation is enough to say whether Global Track and Trace is due now or comes with the transformation. And if you are an implementation partner assessing shipment tracking for a client, the target design belongs in a conversation with us just as much.