SAP Automation Ideas – Get the Most Out of Your ERP

Many business processes involve manual and repetitive tasks that are time-consuming, error-prone, and just plain boring. Whether it’s data collection, document processing, or approvals, these monotonous tasks are great candidates for automation – freeing employees to work on higher-value projects.

I use SAP ERP to manage my company’s operations, and I want to take advantage of SAP’s capabilities to automate these repetitive processes. My main focus is on automating finance processes, but I’d also like to know what other processes we can automate. I also want to know how I can automate these processes – and how much IT investment I may need to make.

Let’s look at the benefits of automating processes within the SAP ecosystem.

Benefits of SAP process automation

In Ep. 26 of the Leaders of Modern Finance podcast, Ryan Myers, CFO at America’s Thrift Stores, discusses the challenges of building better financial systems and relationships. Ryan learned that using good information to maximize efficiency is the foundation of building successful financial systems.

Automating finance functions within SAP software positions your business to access key metrics and make informed decisions based on good data. Here are the key benefits of automation:

Fast access to data builds agility

With SAP automation, I can quickly and easily access my business data across ERP modules and third-party integrations. Having access to timely and accurate data reduces time to action and lets my business anticipate change and plan growth.

Scalability for growth

SAP automations are scalable, which is valuable for performing more tasks in my business. We can do more and process more data, which lets us easily scale to big data volumes.

Stay compliant

We can stay compliant with data governance and regulatory standards by automating SAP processes. Automation ensures tasks are performed exactly as they should be, avoiding costly mistakes.

Improved employee engagement and productivity

Nobody wants to do the same monotonous, repetitive tasks every day. By automating these tasks, SAP automation lets our employees dedicate their time and energy to more engaging, higher-value activities.

Better customer satisfaction

By improving the speed and efficiency of our customer-facing business processes and SAP applications, automation improves our responsiveness and increases customer satisfaction.

Optimized business processes

Automating our SAP workflows and processes reduces the time (and cost) of manual processes, especially when we pair automation with process intelligence tools that can pinpoint which of our processes would benefit the most from automation.

The benefits of automating our business processes in SAP are compelling. Fortunately, we have plenty of options when it comes to SAP automation.

How to automate processes in SAP

As the first (and most widely-used) ERP system, SAP has extensive automation capabilities for our business. I can choose one of SAP’s own automation tools, such as SAP Build Process Automation, SAP or third-party Robotic Process Automation (RPA) or Workflow Management solutions, or integrated third-party solutions for automating specific processes and functions.

Although many automation solutions can be complex, their core functionality is straightforward. In a nutshell, here are the main ways to automate processes in SAP:

SAP Build Process Automation

In 2022, SAP launched Build Process Automation, a bundle of low-code/no-code tools for automating business processes within SAP. Build Process Automation combines workflow management, RPA, AI/ML capabilities, and pre-build functionality, business rules, and templates to allow business users to automate processes and workflows. The solution promises to make creating and deploying process automation easier with minimal SAP Basis involvement or ABAP coding. Build Process Automation supports extensions of processes from SAP HANA, S4/HANA, SAP Ariba solutions, and SAP ERP.

Robotic Process Automation (RPA)

RPA helps businesses automate repetitive manual tasks by engaging a software robot, or bot, to mimic end-user interactions with business systems. For example, RPA can be used to search for specific text in Excel, then copy and paste the text into another app. RPA can also be used to automate manual data transfers from legacy systems that lack integration with SAP. Although RPA solutions may require coding, some providers offer no or low-code solutions such as pre-built best practice bots.

Workflow management tools

Workflow management tools digitize workflows and manage decision logic to optimize workflow efficiency. These tools can include functionality such as workload automation (WLA) to schedule, execute, and monitor optimized workflows across SAP applications.

Most commonly deployed automation tools

AI, Machine Learning, and Natural Language Processing (NLP)

We can use SAP’s embedded AI and machine learning (ML) capabilities to automate and support complex processes such as document processing. These SAP solutions automate manual document data capture and data entry to improve efficiency and accuracy. NLP enables automated tools such as chatbots and web applications to facilitate customer service and recruiting functions.

Third-party applications and integrations

Purpose-built third-party applications can also automate specific business functions such as CRM, HR, payroll, or accounts payable/accounts receivable. These solutions often provide deeper functionality than SAP modules and offer API integration with SAP to facilitate data sharing. They also have the advantage of being platform-independent, which is a bonus for companies using multiple ERPs.

Now that we have a basic understanding of how we can automate processes in SAP, we can look at a few common use cases for automation.

Use cases for SAP process automation

My company can use process automation for almost any manual, rule-based workflow in our SAP system. Here are some of the use cases for automation that we’ve considered.

Finance and accounting

SAP finance modules streamline financial processes, provide financial data, and enable up-to-date financial insights and reporting. We can automate many finance and accounting tasks in SAP, such as:

Accounts Receivable (AR)

We can automate many of the steps in the AR order management process like order placement, order information recording, order fulfillment and delivery, and order entry. For example, we can use automated order management tools such as self-service ordering or document data extraction to reduce errors in order data collection.

Finance functions that can be automated

Accounts Payable (AP)

Many of our AP processes, like document capture, data entry and coding, invoice verification, approvals, vendor management, expenses, and payments, can be streamlined by automation. For example, we can use optical character recognition and ML technology to automate scanning and entering data from paper invoices and purchase orders to improve processing speed and reduce errors.

Account reconciliation

We can use automation tools to streamline the manual process of matching our general ledger entries against bank statement transactions. Automation also reduces the possibility of human error and makes it much easier for us to detect fraud.

Treasury

We can use RPA bots in SAP to automate cash positioning and extract reports from the financial statements to analyze cash flow and financial risks from KPIs, reports, and liquidity plans.

Human resources

Automation can streamline many of our HR processes, particularly recruiting. We can automate the placement of job postings, candidate outreach (searching resources and databases for qualified candidates), application entry and tracking, the interview process, and job offer creation. For example, we can use an automated chatbot to engage with and screen candidates during the interview process.

Monitoring SAP interfaces and connections

Our SAP systems need to be integrated with different SAP and non-SAP systems. Integration is done through interfaces via SAP Process Integration and SAP Process Orchestration. These interfaces process a high volume of transactions every day, and we don’t always detect errors when they happen. Also, when an error occurs, it can take our team a long time to find and fix the problem. We can use RPA or workload automation (WLA) tools to automatically monitor our interfaces, letting us quickly detect and fix errors.  

Supply chain management

We can use automation to streamline procurement, master data, and logistics processes across our global supply chain. For example, we can automate tasks like maintaining vendor records and documents, contract management and tracking, preparing shipment schedules, tracking shipments, inventory management, and reporting.

Next Steps: planning for automation

To kick off our automation initiative, we need to start with a top-down assessment of our existing workflows and needs within SAP and across our business. This assessment will help us identify which SAP business processes are the best candidates for automation and decide which automation tools we should use. 

As part of our assessment, we need to understand the ROI of each automation tool – taking into account the direct and indirect business benefits and costs and the strategic value of automating key functions. For example, automating accounts payable has many direct benefits, such as reduced processing time, costs, and errors, but it also has indirect benefits like increased insight into transactions, reduced fraud, and improved vendor relationships. By doing our homework, we can land on the ideal SAP automation setup for our business.

Stampli – empower SAP with industry-leading AP automation

Stampli is for Accounts Payable teams that want the efficiency of automation but don’t want to rework their ERP or change their existing AP processes. Stampli supports all native functionality for more than 70 ERPs, including those from Sage, Microsoft, SAP S/4HANA, Oracle, QuickBooks, and 70 others, enabling it to deploy in a matter of days, not months. 

Stampli brings all your AP-related communication, documentation, and workflows into one place for complete visibility and control. It’s simple for users to learn and even simpler to use, especially with Billy the Bot™ automating nearly all your capture, coding, routing, fraud detection, and other manual tasks. For even greater efficiency, Stampli’s core AP solution is complemented by a suite of integrated products that include Direct Pay, Credit Cards, Advanced Vendor Management, and others.

Stampli provides complete visibility and control over your entire AP program. It reduces the risk of errors, fraud, and compliance issues while improving vendor relationships and making your AP processes much more efficient.

Stampli customer success stories

How Stampli makes you successful

Get efficiency, visibility, and control from the only AP automation solution purpose-built for Accounts Payable. 

  • Invoice processing: Automate invoice capture, coding, approvals, and more to make AP more efficient and accurate.
  • Extended business-hours customer support: Our team of AP & ERP experts is available when needed, with < 60-second response times, to ensure you get the most out of Stampli.
  • Billy the Botâ„¢: Advanced AI that adapts to your unique AP processes and business structure to automate manual tasks and eliminate manual work in your SAP ERP. 
  • Fast onboarding support: Your dedicated Customer Success team member will help you set up Stampli to match how you already do business.
  • Vendor management: Manage vendor onboarding, information, and documentation to strengthen relationships and maintain compliance.
  • Multi-subsidiary support:  Process and pay invoices across companies, offices, departments, or locations in a single place.
  • Insights: Gain instant visibility into invoices, employee productivity, and AP processes with powerful analytics and reporting tools.

Take control of your SAP accounts payable processes today. Contact Stampli for a free demo.

Transform your SAP AP processes with Stampli. Watch our webinar now!

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