SAP S/4 HANA is already going a great job in streamlining business processes and with the launch of RPA, it has become more competent and powerful as vendors are going to uses a set of prebuilt bots for tons of tasks.
RPA or Robotic process automation is already making high waves and has been welcomed by industries of all sorts with open arms. What wonders it can do for an SAP S/4HANA user or how it empowers SAP S/4HANA are some of the key topics discussed extensively in this post.
Also Read: Digital Transformation and SAP S/4 HANA
So if want to include RPA in your SAP S/4HANA subscriptions, or have already done that, read this post to know about the pro-term and long-term benefits of doing so.
SAP S/4HANA & RPA- A Bit of History
Seeing the rise in the popularity of RPA, it was hard to ignore it by SAP and it started working on Intelligent RPA technology at the beginning of 2018. To gain adequate expertise and excellence, required for RPA development, SAP acquired Contextor in November 2018.
After tons of hits & trials, SAP launched the first version of Intelligent RPA in May 2019. Gladly, the hard work invested in RPA development paid off well and SAP became the global RPA leader within two years.
Also Read: RPA is like the Band-aid Feature for the Future
It’s referred to as iRPA as well and offers a wide range of intelligent bots to automate repetitive yet crucial business operations & processes. Its key aim is to automate SAP’s business technology platforms, including SAP S/4HANA. Presently, SAP Intelligent RPA 2.0 is on the floor and is winning many hearts because of few key traits.
- It comes with impressive integration for SAP applications
There is a simplified UI integration for SAP Fiori and SAP GUI. Using a couple of third-party integration for impressive automated data collection. Native integration with tools like SAP Workflow Management, SAP Ruum& Spotlight, and technology connectors makes things smoother than ever.
- It is less demanding at coding front
SAP Intelligent RPA has gained an edge over other RPAs because of its low-code or no-code requirement. Yes, you read it right. It’s not so demanding at this front. It’s so easy to use that citizen developers can also perform the bot development job like a pro. It features a drag-and-drop editor, in-built workflow builder, event-based capturing facility, amazing de-bugger, and detailed document and community-based support. So, you don’t have to be an expert to try this.
- Instant start enablement
SAP Intelligent RPA understands what it means to be proactive and leaves no stone unturned to grant quick start enablement facility to its users. To make sure that the bot development process is less time-consuming, SAP offers a dedicated RPA store, a wide range of in-built bot templates for SAP S/4HANA and ECC, cross lab content, attended/unattended mode, and bundled offering. So, there won’t be any long waiting time.
Benefits of Using SAP Intelligent RAP for S/4HANA Users
While SAP Intelligent RPA is going to make a difference in each product module and type, its offerings in S/4HANA are definitely on the higher side. Have a look at the below-mentioned text and you’ll have a better understanding of what we’re trying to convey:
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- Automate best practices
SAP Intelligent RPA allows integration of pre-built RPA components into the S/4HANA application of your choice and enjoys speedy RPA automation. Presently, more than 100 pre-built automation are offered for SAP S/4HANA to make things go smooth.
The great thing about these pre-configured RPA components is that they all are designed to enforce the industry’s best practices, observed by SAP.
With SAP Intelligent RPA, it’s easier to develop bots as guided assistance and a set of dependencies are provided. During the bot development process, one is even allowed to attach a trigger mechanism in case of attended or scheduled autonomous bots. To empower the bots and make them a bit more prudent, SAP Intelligent RAP allows users to apply APIs and machine-learning of their choice.
- Comprehensive repository for bot skills and analytics
SAP Intelligent RPA comes with a detailed repository for purposes like instant tapping into a container of automation steps, use available RPA bots as per the need of the hours, and quick analysis of bot-operations statistics.
- Access quality prebuilt bots for instance assistance
SAP S/4HANA migration & transition is going to be effortless there are more than 200 pre-configured content and predefined bots that are ready to help instantly. Full freedom is granted to the end-user when it comes to managing the bots. Customers can use the APIs and metadata as per their choice. This kind of freedom support 100% customization to empower your SAP S/4 HANA deployment which is highly impressive manner!
Success Case: SAP S/4 HANA Migration : Utilities Gain Flexibility And Optimization With Operational Excellence
- Application reusing at zero hassle
SAP offers a wide range of development tools with intelligent RPA that allows this technology to get integrated effortlessly with SAP applications. As the UI’s individual components are easy to address from the studio library, automation can be done over a single drag-and-drop. In the case of changes that happened to the target application, the RPA team can make do necessary changes in the Intelligent RPA and make the template capable to reuse easily. It’s a great strength of SAP’s bot development.
- Easy workflow monitoring in SAP S4/HANA
There is hardly any business that which doesn’t face workflow failure. However, when ignored for a longer time, continual workflow failure can have a huge negative impact on the business processes and can exert huge pressure on the team to spot the errors, fixes them, and restart the workflow.
SAP Intelligent RPA ensures that workflow failures are not happening in the first place. And, even if anything occurs, it can be spotted in an early stage and fix it instantly.
Without the completion of raising a support ticket for the workflow failure, it can do workflow management regularly.
- Reduce operational cost
This one is obvious. When tons of tasks are handled by bots, one can operate with less workforce. There is no need to invest in the hiring and training process of new employees.
Real-time use cases of SAP Intelligent RPA
No matter how hard we try, it’s not easy to understand the use cases of SAP Intelligent RPA unless the few examples are not explained or given. So, we’re here to explain this as well:
- SAP Intelligent RAP in Supply Chain Management
Automation of production, purchase, and delivery order- Using the RPA bots, one can reduce the human intervention from a couple of tasks. For instance, a bot can easily read the information mentioned in a business e-mail or any other source, generate a purchase order as per the details provided, and send an email to the concerned departments without any delays and errors.
Additionally, the bot can issue a good purchase order, based upon the existing inventory and future requirements. The high-end AI is so good in the assessment that there is no scope of errors.
- SAP Intelligent RPA In Accounts Payable
By using the SAP Intelligent RPA, one can increase the data accuracy in the account payable and can increase the ROI, process speed, and achieve maximum performance.
It can easily communicate with the vendors, update the master database, delete or update the vendor details, and can even automate the invoicing process. Such technology is so high-end that the data, mentioned in non-digital formats like scanned PDF files or images, can also be captured.
- SAP Intelligent RPA In Reports Generation
Report generation is one of the most complex yet essential tasks and SAP Intelligent RPA is here to help as well. Report generation can be automated from the basic level. The great thing is that the process is strictly rule-based. So, the odds of errors are insignificant. All you need to do is, logging into SAP, enter the data, click on the ‘generate’ button, and send the report via email to the concerned department.
Is It Always A Good Deal?
Even if SAP Intelligent RPA is going a great job and is ruling the world of robotic automation, it has some limitations.
SAP Intelligent RPA comes with a transaction-based license model. This kind of model is too exhaustive and demanding as it demands internal governance and control, without fail. Additionally, incidences of occurring unexpected & unplanned costs also happen at higher rates.
One can also experience the limited usability of this tool because of its all cloud-based deployment. It can be accessed via a browser and is of no use when there is limited network connectivity.
If a quick offering comparison between the SAP Intelligent RPA and other RPAs is done, definitely SAP Intelligent RPA will lose the race as it features less prepackaged activities than its counterparts. It’s a major reason behind SAP Intelligent RPA customers’ switching to others.
What’s The Way Out?
This is not a second opinion that SAP Intelligent RPA is going to be a great addition to one’s business process tools & technology. But, one can’t simply turn a blind eye towards the key drawbacks. So, how can things turn favorable for you?
Well, the only way to reap the maximum SAP Intelligent RPA benefits at least possible risks is to hire a qualified SAP S/4HANA consultant company. Using its expertise, one can easily face as few as possible limitations of SAP Intelligent RPA.
