Robotics Process Automation in SAP S/4HANA

2.1 Procurement

Contract management

The world of contracts involves a lot of paperwork. Every company that I have ever been involved with has conducted a majority of its contract management activities through manual activities. The opportunities to automate here are tremendous. The iRPA steps involved in this scenario are:

1. Bot automatically checks contract conditions in SAP and other systems.

2. Bot sends template to procurement officer for review.

3. Procurement officer approves the template.

4. Bot creates tender online with contract template.

Sourcing through RFPs

Sourcing departments in organizations spend considerable time organizing and communicating during the RFP (request for proposal) creation process. iRPA helps reduce some of the manual work needed. The steps that a bot will carry out are:

1. Workflow or email triggers bot to prepare an RFP request.

2. Bot logs on to system to prepare RFP by collecting data, with appropriate dates filled in.

3. Bot sends email confirmation to the selected vendors that will receive the RFP, after the user finalizes the contracts

Supplier onboarding

Once an enterprise has decided to engage with a particular supplier, there are multiple onboarding activities. These are typically manual and repetitive for most enterprises. In other words, this is a perfect use case for iRPA. In this instance, iRPA performs the following steps:

1. Supplier interacts with Chatbot while entering data for onboarding.

2. Chatbot triggers iRPA bot to validate data in real-time, and gives a response.

3. Bot performs KYC (Know Your Customer), credit and data validation checks.

4. Bot logs into system, creates supplier, and updates all systems.

Purchase requisition creation

The process of creating purchase requisitions is predictable. While each organization might have its own little tweaks here and there, on the whole, it follows a standard script. This makes it a good use case for iRPA. Figure 2.2 shows the automation steps involved in this example. These steps are as follows:

1. The bot creates a purchase requisition from data that is fed from an Excel spreadsheet, and loads it into the S/4HANA system. The purchase requisition then requires approval.

2. ML kicks in for approval determination.

3. Once a purchase requisition has been approved, the bot extracts the purchase order confirmation details from incoming emails to update the purchase order.

4. Situation handling (ML app) notifies the user about missing PO confirmations.

5. Situation handling notifies user of any quantity shortages for a delivery, and proposes alternative suppliers. This is followed by ML predicting a shipment’s delivery date to prevent production delays and rescheduling.

Figure 2.2: Purchase requisition creation process by iRPA bot

Three-way invoice matching

This is one of the most important activities in the procurement-accounts payable convergence space. So, what exactly is three-way matching? When an invoice comes in from your vendor/supplier, you want to pay it on time. Before you do that, you have to match that invoice with the corresponding goods receipt document and the purchase order.

When you have complex procurement processes, doing three-way matching can become complicated because an invoice can have multiple line items that in turn can be tied back to multiple goods receipt documents and/or line items, and multiple purchase order documents and/or line items. Organizations have struggled for years to inject automation and accuracy into this process. The SAP iRPA solution provides both. Let’s walk through the steps involved (see Figure 2.3):

1. Invoices arrive in a central AP email inbox, typically as attachments.

2. The bot reads the emails and downloads the attachments.

3. ML-based Optical Character Recognition (OCR) extracts information from the invoice attachments.

4. The iRPA bot uses invoice details to extract information about the goods receipts and purchase orders.

5. The bot compares item level data such as amount, etc., and if it matches, posts the invoice data for payment, or raises an exception.

Figure 2.3: Three-way invoice matching by iRPA bot

Rate look-ups and scheduling

As part of the procurement process, procurement/sourcing departments need to check shipping rates and determine the appropriate payment amount. This is typically a manual process that is prone to error. Also, the effort required is directly correlated to the volume and variety of goods procured. Automation can help reduce the workload, accelerate the process, and make it more efficient. Figure 2.4 shows us how.

Figure 2.4: Rate look-ups and scheduling bot

By using an iRPA bot, the process is significantly automated. It is the bot that does the checking on the supplier’s portals, approves the correct pricing, triggers the request for the shipment of the procured goods, and performs the actual scheduling.