In this blog, we introduce SAP Build overview, examples for process automation scenario and one of the recent customer success story on end-to-end automation use case using SAP Build Process Automation.

SAP Build – Automate your ERP Business Process 

SAP Build was announced last year at  TechEd, 2022. SAP Build is powered by SAP Business Technology Platform (BTP) which enables business experts to easily create and augment enterprise applications, automate tedious processes, and design engaging business sites by using visual tools and a rich set of services and pre-built content.

SAP Build has below key capabilities:

• SAP Build Apps – Evolution of AppGyver to build mobile and web applications with pixel-perfect design using the drag-and drop functionality and a rich component library.
• SAP Build Process Automation – Offers task and process automation leveraging robotic process automation (RPA) bots, workflows, forms, embedded artificial intelligence (AI), business rules, and decisions.
• SAP Build Work Zone – allows to create beautiful, custom business sites using new capabilities such as a flexible page builder and context-aware integrated UI cards. They can easily deploy the new applications and processes created in SAP Build Apps and SAP Build Processes Automation to an SAP Build Work Zone business site.

Process Automation for your Line of Business:

• Explore how you can automate processes and enhance business value across five lines of business here
• See how other customers are innovating with SAP Build low-code solutions here

Hyperautomation is quickly becoming the norm for organizations to achieve business goals for gaining higher efficiency and productivity. This is mostly due to the interlinking of advanced technologies such as Robotic Process Automation (RPA), Workflow Management, aided by Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning.

Process Automation Examples:

1. Automate the comparison of files with the goal of returning a list of matching values. Create a form where users could attach their two or more files and their email address, and the automation would run as soon as the form was submitted and emailed them a result file with a list of the matches.
2. Collect Requests with the goal of adding structure to a process that had been done via email. Process requests were being sent to a team and they would copy the input information they received in the email request and save it to excel. Create a process where we received the input with a form and the values were automatically added to the excel sheet. We can then expand this process to include an approval process where the new requests were sent to the team for approval before moving on to the next step.
3. Approval Process with the goal of adding structure to the process while gaining insight on the efficiency of the process with Process Visibility features. A form can be used to take in initial requests and then the input information can be used to route the approval to the correct approver or automatically approve the request. Then the approved requests can be automatically processed, and the requestor can get notified when their request was processed. Additionally, this approach makes it easier to change the process in the future because approvers or automatic approval thresholds can be changed without retraining end users.
4. Automate handling of emails and attachments by utilizing capabilities to automatically scan/monitor email inboxes for specific emails (e.g., from/to specific parties, with attachments, etc.), download and store attachments as needed (e.g., shared folder, OpenText, etc.), extract data from attachments using intelligent business services, and more.  Some customers have created this as a modular component that can be quickly used by different processes or other automations to ensure consistent and standardized handling of email scenarios.

Infusing AI/ML algorithms into Business Process:

• Predictive billing: can analyze customer usage patterns and predict future billing amounts. This can help customer to anticipate revenue and plan for future financial activities.
• Fraud detection: can use machine learning algorithms to detect fraudulent activities in billing and revenue management. The solution can identify unusual patterns or activities and alert customer to potentially fraudulent behavior.
• Revenue optimization: can analyze customer usage data and provide insights to optimize revenue. The solution can identify upsell and cross-sell opportunities, provide personalized pricing, and recommend products or services that are likely to be of interest to customer.
• Customer churn prevention: can analyze customer behavior data and identify factors that may contribute to customer churn. By using machine learning algorithms to predict customer churn, the solution can help customers to take proactive measures to retain customers.
• Payment optimization: can analyze payment data and provide insights to optimize payment processes. The solution can identify payment trends, reduce payment errors, and provide recommendations to improve payment processing efficiency.
• Cash flow forecasting: can analyze historical cash flow data and provide insights to improve cash flow forecasting. The system can predict cash inflows and outflows, helping businesses to plan customer’s financial activities and optimize cash flow.
• Customer payment behavior prediction: can analyze customer payment behavior and predict the likelihood of payment delays or non-payment. By using predictive analytics, businesses can take proactive measures to manage cash flow and improve payment collections.
• Invoice automation: can automate invoice processing and matching, reducing manual work and errors. The system can extract data from invoices, validate it against sales ,purchase or freight orders, and post invoices automatically, saving time and reducing the risk of errors.
• Payment prediction and optimization: can use AI/ML algorithms to predict payment amounts and optimize payment schedules. By analyzing historical payment patterns, the system can predict the likelihood of future payments and optimize payment schedules accordingly.

OG&E Customer’s Business Challenges:

As company focuses on operational excellence, with the assets, people, and financial strength to compete globally, the Accounts Payable (AP) team was facing a plethora of business challenges in automating their invoicing  processes. The existing automation product was not flexible and required deep IT expertise. The vendor invoice identification rate was less than 7% and customer was keen to consider other options and to look at SAP Build Process Automation tool. Some of the key challenges are illustrated below:

Customer Success Services Engagement: 

SAP MaxAttention team was engaged to evaluate company’s Vendor Invoice Management existing automation process and explore the feasibility of porting the existing solution to SAP Business Technology Platform (BTP). Project started in the Pilot mode to prove the solution that not only supported existing business process but also superior with 80% invoice recognition and posting rate. Since Go-Live, over 70K Invoices have been processed and posted to S/4HANA. 

Capabilities and Benefits: 

The automation solution developed using SAP BTP Build Process Automation provides a rich set of end-to-end capabilities which helps in realizing business values as highlighted below:

Architecture Design 

Following image illustrate the Automation BOT architecture diagram:

SAP Analytics Dashboard for LIVE Monitoring  

The following is the analytical dashboard was created exclusively to monitor the end-to-end process automation. SAP CAP (Cloud Application Programming) Application, SAP HANA Cloud and SAP Analytics Cloud are main building blocks for the development of the monitoring dashboard:

Among the main Key Performance Indicators presented in this dashboard, following are some more additional KPIs presented in the dashboard:

1. Total invoice documents posted, and different statuses count.
2. Chart analysis of documents based on status by ‘Top 10 Vendor Number’.
3. Chart analysis of documents created for different ‘Company Codes’.
4. Chart of ‘Top 10 Vendors’ without template.
5. Trend line of total document posted by Posting Date.
6. Confidence details of the extracted information of the invoice data
7. View of document information extraction confidence metric, helping with a prognostic in case new template should be annotated.
8. Errors monitoring during the automation execution.

Customer Outcomes 

The following are the business and financial KPIs of the Automation BOT. Some of the financial KPIs are based on the feedback received from customer:

Key Highlights

• Build with Simplicity: Followed Agile Methodology and Citizen Developer-centric approach
• Automate Faster: Achieved end-to-end project execution under ~3 months’ timeline
• Operate Confidently: Prove that the solution is not like-to-like but superior to the existing solution with greater value-add by automating end-to-end process with clear responsibilities, short time to value and improved user experience. Demonstrated the power of SAP BTP, SAP Build Process Automation and SAP AI Business Services
• BTP Innovation Platform: Established the foundational basis of an innovation platform which now enables customer to realize other innovation use-cases. This maximizes the value of existing investments through the usage of simplified SAP Integrations
• First step in the process automation journey with Low-Code No-Code Development & Automation

Contact Persons:  Rohit Dwivedi, Kiran Kola