All posts by Ayodhya

INTELLIGENT TECHNOLOGIES FROM SAP – THE FUTURE OF MODERN TECHNOLOGY

Intelligent Technologies from SAP is a digital innovation system, an umbrella term that helps customers access SAP’s components and products across emerging technologies, such as Machine Learning, Big Data, Internet of Things (IoT) and Blockchain. It is often associated with SAP Cloud Platform services but it’s not limited to this, as it covers anything that fits into modern technologies and includes e.g. predictive capabilities in S/4HANA – whether on premise or in the cloud.

INTELLIGENT TECHNOLOGIES FROM SAP– IT’S NOT JUST TECHNOLOGY – IT’S DESIGN THINKING

But Intelligent Technologies from SAP is not just about technology; it is focused on design thinking and about packaging technologies and defining methodologies to address business challenges. Design thinking is a methodology that focuses around creative ideas and solutions to resolve use cases. The premise is that customers don’t just need good technology; they need an approach to find out the value of how and what the technology can do for them.

INTELLIGENT TECHNOLOGIES FROM SAP – A LEADING BRAND IN THE MARKET

SAP is not alone in their design thinking methodologies. It is a crowded market place with the likes of IBM, Microsoft and leading research universities such as Stanford offering their own innovations. The catch though is that their products often operate in silo – and this is where SAP comes in.

The challenge for SAP is that companies do not often think of SAP as a vendor for Blockchain, IoT and so on – when you think of SAP you mainly think of ERPs. But the strength of SAP’s brand lies in integration across the SAP portfolio. So if you already have SAP ERP, S/4HANA or other SAP solutions, then Intelligent Technologies from SAP has the capability and is designed to be integrated.

INTELLIGENT TECHNOLOGIES FROM SAP – AN INTEGRATED APPROACH WITH EMERGING TECHNOLOGIES

One of the key benefits of Intelligent Technologies from SAP is that it allows you to integrate multiple SAP products with emerging technologies. For example in the SAP Cloud Platform you can create Fiori apps that use IoT services. When integrated into your business processes as an end user you won’t necessarily know there is Machine Learning behind the scenes and you won’t see anything different but you will experience automatic decision-making or recommendations.

INTELLIGENT TECHNOLOGIES FROM SAP – THE GROWTH IS MACHINE LEARNING

SAP provides Machine Learning technology models at different levels which you yourself can train on without too much expertise. These standard models would currently cover around 80% of your needs. It’s possible to train your own models but you’ll need deeper expertise and you’ll probably need the services of a data scientist – in other words you need to know what you’re doing.

INTELLIGENT TECHNOLOGIES FROM SAP – EMBRACING INTERNET OF THINGS

Intelligent Technologies from SAP is bringing new technologies and services together to help businesses power their digital transformation. In supply chain and logistics, for example, IoT processes across SAP S/4HANA, ECC and Hybris permit you to monitor goods as well as assets in-transit and survey the lifecycle of mass-market products, maximizing the value of your fleet and IoT-enabled business assets. IoT enabled processes in SAP solutions enable you to maximize the value of products, including raw materials, semi-finished or finished products, combine real-time sensor data with business data from SAP and non-SAP systems and provide insight into areas such as product inventory and replenishment, product consumption and utilization and consumer interactions.

The Future Of RPA: 2021 Trends And Future

Would RPA be the new ERP by 2021? The world is slowly moving towards high-end data usage. Most of the industries are using the data for gathering the insights of the future and working accordingly. Moreover, all businesses have turned digital to enjoy the maximum benefits. Would RPA be the new ERP by 2021?

A report from IDC states that global enterprises are expected to invest a large amount which will be around $2.3 trillion on Digital Transformation within 2023 it seems! The world is already digital here by unfolding all possibilities.    

To make the business operations simple, one of the popular futuristic technologies is Robotic Process Automation. If you are constantly worried about the efficiency of the business operations, this can be a perfect choice.   

So what is RPA all about? How can this technology disrupt your business? We have discussed the answers to all your questions in this blog. Let’s get started! 

Robotic Process Automation: Why is this needed?

Automation is the term that can turn the revenue of the businesses to a higher level. RPA is here to support such automation. Though the name deals with robots, the truth is the technology doesn’t employ physical robots but business-critical software robots which automates even a complex task. 

Robotic Process Automation (RPA) requires no coding efforts and performs repetitive tasks for 24*7. These processes are handled by software bots which are work by blending automation, machine learning, computer vision, etc.  

For instance, consider you are hooked up with a bunch of copy and paste & data entry jobs. Will you sit for long hours and keep on working with this complex task or go with a software robot that can perform them in seconds?

Definitely, you would move with the second choice. This is why RPA is needed for most of the business sectors. Moreover, industries that haven’t turned digital are adopting this futuristic technique which can enhance the business operations and minimize the costs involved. 

Any Company which uses labours on a large scale can implement RPA to enhance productivity by minimizing the manual efforts. Would RPA be the new ERP by 2021? This can in turn save a lot of money and time as well. Similar to industrial robots, these software robots can also improve the quality and production rates.  This has made most of the Small & Medium Scale industries as well as giant Enterprises to implement RPA and align the business processes. Moreover, these robots are trained to follow a series of steps such as filling out the data, updating user permissions, creating & sending invoices, updating spreadsheets, etc.

There are a couple of robots available in Robotic Process Automation that are adopted by various industries. They are:

• Programmable Bots

Programmable Bots are the ones that work on the defined set of rules and instructions. It means that bots will figure out the processes, program themselves for specific functions, and maintain throughout the process. 

• Intelligent Bots

These bots are implemented with AI and ML capabilities which can identify and analyze how employees interact via various applications. Once they perform these tasks, they would check for the priority of these tasks and perform them. 

How RPA differentiates from the traditional automation process?

In particular, both RPA and traditional automation processes are implemented to enhance and automate business operations either through human processes or software robots. However, here are the ways in which they can are differentiated: Would RPA be the new ERP by 2021?

• The traditional automation process would involve an entire change in the working system. On the other hand, in the case of RPA, bots work on the front-level UI and interact with the systems similar to humans.
• Moreover, these RPA robots are agnostic which can automate processes for multiple processes. 
• Traditional Automation cannot be updated once set. But with RPA, it can be upgraded and is also scalable when compared to the former. 

How RPA actually works?

Similar to industrial robots that transform the floors, these software robots transform the back office. It replicates employee work such as operating files, inputting data, copy-pasting data, etc in an automated manner. Added, they also integrate with various systems through integrations and screen scraping which enables RPA tools to perform tasks. 

1minute of RPA’s work equals to 15minutes of manual work. This has made most of the Digital Transformation Companies to also adopt RPA and work for their clients. 

Added, Robots can run from employee’s desktops or from the cloud systems. Here are a couple of features with RPA:

• Integrations

In order to work on the tasks, it is essential to integrate RPA with enterprise applications. Though the bots can scrape and perform the tasks, it is important that it should be reliable to have app integration compared to screen scraping which has a high possibility of errors. Most of the bots work with legacy applications, desktop applications, web applications, and other major software applications which include SAP, Citrix, Java, etc.

• Programming Interfaces

As RPA’s are programmed, there should be a programmable interface. Moreover, it is simple compared to other types of programming and there are code-free ways to program these bots. 

• Launching & using different applications which includes opening emails & attachments, logging into applications, moving files, and folders. 
• Integrating with multiple enterprise tools by connecting to system APIs, reading & writing databases.
• Augmenting your data by scraping data from the web which also includes social media.
• Processing different types of data such as extracting & inputting data, merging data from multiple sources, following logical rules (if/else). 

There are a lot of RPA tools available with various features and challenges. They specialize with the following set of characteristics:

• Single Platform Architecture.
• AI Capabilities. 
• Built-in Analytics.
• Ease of Usage.
• Customer Support.
• Hassle-free integration with top technologies. 

All these RPA tools can be categorized into three major dimensions:

• Programming options.

RPA needs to be programmed and there are a few ways to program the bots which can also be less complex and reduce the programming time. 

• Cognitive Capabilities.

These programmed bots should be capable of making decisions or inputs based on the systems. RPA tools are designed in such a way that it can provide cognitive capabilities. This can be noted as one of the best RPA Trends in 2021.

• Usage.

These software bots are built in a way that it can be used for specific operations or industries if required. For instance, there are RPA tools which can be used for customer support services for instant support. 

What to expect for the Future of RPA?

Looking at the current market of RPA and its latest trends in the industry, we can expect several ways which can be the future. Here are a few Future Predictions of RPA:

• Premier RPA solutions implemented by AI

Artificial intelligence is yet another popular technology solution ruling the world. When both these giants are combined, we can predict a superfine and well-automated solution for all the industry. The trend will continue since AI offers wider opportunities by automating judgemental processes that involve both unstructured and non-digital data. 

• Greater adoption of automation

Though most of them wear automation since it may eliminate manual works, the implementation of RPA can accelerate the growth of organizations which can also enhance the revenues and reduce the time & cost involved. 

Combination of digital and manual efforts

Software robots will automate the work of most of the people by taking the complex, repetitive and tedious tasks. This can lead to a combination of both automation and manual efforts. 

The future of RPA will see the usage of futuristic technologies such as AI, Advanced Data Analytics, Blockchain, Business Process Automation, Optical Character Recognition (OCR), combined with RPA to offer effective automation. We can also expect an increased growth with robotic process automation companies. To Close:

RPA is already here to bring dozens of business benefits in the name of the automation. Moreover, getting started with RPA is also going to be simple. There are a couple of ways which can be done:

• Initially, one can get started with small approaches. This can be by identifying high-value RPA processes, measuring vendors against the business requirements, implementing RPA tools & software, setting a system to perform the RPA process, and achieving the business objectives.
• One can also get started with outsourcing RPA development with RPA experts to automate business operations. 

RPA has a very good future scope of RPA 2021. So, if you are a business person looking to make your operations automated, Robotic Process Automation can be a good choice. 

What is UIPATH(RPA)?

RPA stands for Robotics Process Automation which as name suggests automate your process that requires repetitive activities done by human everyday.

Imagine Mr.X has a bundle of high priority task which has to be completed by today and on top of it he has some daily repetitive activities also to be performed, now with add on pressure to complete everything by today neither he is able to concentrate on priority task and is more likely to make error performing the activity which he does daily.

What if someone takes over the ownership to complete his daily repetitive activities, so he could only concentrate on priority tasks, the answer to someone are “ROBOTS” and the tool to develop it is “UIPATH Studio”, don’t worry robots designed in RPA are virtual and does no look like as below.

Integrating SAP with UIPATH(RPA)

Now how UIPATH(RPA) has been integrated with SAP and what all things we can do with it,Let me explain you with a simple example of Mr.X where apart from performing critical activities he also has to create Purchase Orders in SAP on daily basis for some products which are being provided to him by his/her supervisors in Excel sheet.

Purchase Order

Purchase order if I explain in simple terms is a document that acts as an interface between customer and vendor for example Amazon Order placed by you is nothing but a Purchase Order.

Lets see now how RPA reduces the Workload of Mr.X by comparing both creation of Purchase Order manually and automatically in SAP via Robot.

Creating Purchase Order Manually in SAP

Here I have used the below mentioned steps to create Purchase Order, Please note this is not the only way as you can choose to enter more or less details while creating your Purchase Order according to business specifications.

1. Login to SAP
2. Enter transaction “ME21N”
3. Enter Vendor Number
4. Enter Purchase Organisation
5. Enter Purchasing Group
6. Enter Company Code
7. Enter Header Note details in Texts
8. Enter PO Items details including Plant,Quantity, Net Price.
9. Save the Purchase Order
10. Once all steps are done successfully your PO will be created.

Creating Purchase Order Automatically in SAP via RPA.

Below is the link for Video in which i am trying to show how robot creates Purchase Order by logging in into SAP Server, opening transaction ME21N ,entering the required details as mentioned above and finally creating a Purchase Order and highlights the created Purchase Order as popup message.

Robotic Process Automation (RPA) sounds futuristic, but it is the same sort of business process automation functionality that has been around since the 1990s. Back then, RPA was known as “screen scraping” and “macro” technology. In simple terms, RPA allows you to automate laborious tasks and is especially good in scenarios where you copy and paste information between different business systems.  

SAP has offered RPA since late 2018 when it acquired Contextor, a pioneer in the field of RPA. To distinguish its offering, SAP coined the term Intelligent RPA (IRPA) as it combines RPA with machine learning functionality that can recognize document content (invoice number, etc.) based on scanned images and offers out of the box content for SAP’s Intelligent Enterprise suite. 

What Can SAP Intelligent RPA Do? 

To evaluate the capabilities of SAP IRPA, Rizing’s Innovation team solicited input from our HCM Line of Business. Rizing HCM previously assembled a requirements document for the automation of SuccessFactors tasks that ended up being the scope of implementation. The implementation itself was performed by our digital development team, which did not have any prior knowledge of the SAP IRPA technology. Even without prior knowledge, the team learned and successfully implemented the scope within four weeks. The implementation provided valuable intelligence in the SAP IRPA tool and the required implementation patterns that are outlined below

• Compared to other RPA tools, SAP’s IRPA requires a little more technical knowledge, but at the same time seems to be more functional than its competitors. Our recommendation therefore would be to form joint functional, technical teams for an IRPA implementation.  
• At present we believe IRPA should be considered if other proven integration/automation methods (such as Cloud Integration or integration applications using API’s) are not feasible. 
• RPA can simplify end-user processes. The business scenarios that are immediately ripe for IRPA applications are:

Getting Started with SAP IRPA

If you are considering using SAP IRPA, you’ll need to build a business case by identifying processes within your organization that could benefit from intelligent automation. That’s the first step, after that there will be designing of your new automated processes, implementing the SAP IRPA technology, and integrating it with the rest of your systems and processes. SAP IRPA doesn’t have to be limited to SAP SuccessFactors, it can be utilized across the SAP suite.

 

Robots entered industrial processes to automate activities more than a decade ago. Computerising the manual process was considered as automation until recently.  Now it is time for Robots to enter the computerized processes to relieve repetitive human efforts involved. 

SAP is a process-centric solution. Even in this, manual tasks which are repetitive & high volume, continue to exist and SAP has brought in “Intelligent Robotic Process Automation (RPA)” as a solution to mitigate this challenge.  Many times, such manual tasks are repeatedly performed by different groups of people, also in different systems at times, within an organisation. This blog outlines RPA, at a high level, to enable any SAP Consultant to get an understanding of this solution. 

RPA consists of “Bots”, designed and created by an SAP Consultant or an “expert user” for performing certain repetitive tasks in a chosen process. “Bots” can work as a “Digital Assistant” to the user which are classified as “Attended Bots”. Bots can also work in an “unattended mode”, just as a “Digital Worker”, to perform certain tasks in the background. These Bots can be orchestrated and monitored from a supervisor console. This is explained graphically below in Exhibit-1. 

SAP Intelligent RPA is a single unified Cloud based solution. It includes “on-premise” automation tools as well. This is an end-to-end solution to automate steps. Most of us are familiar with “Macros and VBA Scripts” to automate certain tasks in Microsoft (MS) applications such as Excel. However, it can work only within the single application and cannot work across other Non-MS applications. This is where RPA overcomes such limitations. It can work with Non-SAP Systems and Legacy applications, as well as SAP’s solutions such as SAP Digital Core, Ariba, Concur etc…. In addition, RPA does not need any programming skills to build a “Bot”. See exhibit-2 below to understand, how RPA integrates seamlessly across solutions. 

SAP Intelligent RPA has three components as mentioned below. Let’s look at them in detail in the following sections: 

1. Desktop Agent
2. Cloud Factory
3. Desktop Studio 

Desktop Agent-

This component is installed by a cloud administrator in an end user’s computer. Once installed, the administrator privileges are not required by the Agent on the machine. The Agent will adopt the user profile and its Windows credentials for operations. 

Cloud Factory–

Cloud Factory is a dedicated Bot Management Central component that orchestrates all process automations. It monitors and controls jobs and agents in the landscape and presents them in the form of a dashboard. It consists of three different sub-components named Hierarchies, Environments, Packages and Configurations.

Desktop Studio 

Desktop Studio is the component (we will go into more detail later in where the bots are developed. The desktop studio combines all the relevant information of a bot and delivers what is known as the “package”. This package needs to be imported into Cloud Factory.  

Summary:

SAP Intelligent RPA is a very interesting tool. SAP has articulated a great roadmap ahead for Intelligent RPA. RPA creates a layer that sits on top of existing systems and processes without having a need to rewrite thousands of lines of codes. The automation covers end-to-end steps of the process, spanning across a multitude of systems, including SAP and Non-SAP solutions. These create great advantages for every organization. Any organisation can spend minimal amounts of time to review the existing processes and come up with areas of optimization using RPA. It is really a great opportunity for any SAP consultant to review and produce RPA implementations in many areas and it will add great value to every customer.  

SAP Intelligent Robotic Process Automation – The Future of Automation – a Sneak peak

We have seen many automation tools in the market that helps humans in automating some repetitive tasks called as Test Automation tools. More recently we have been hearing about Robotic Process Automation tool. RPA is not to be confused with other test automation tools as RPA consists of software bots (Software Code) that comprehends user actions and it has a flavor of AI or Artificial Intelligence and one of the examples is SAP Intelligent RPA.

When compared to ROI – Return on Investment RPA is the tool that is boosting the ROI and reducing costs. RPA should and must be used if the customer wants to accelerate the business process by replicating the actions and mundane back office end users’ tasks thus enabling the users to focus on more value driven innovative activities.

RPA can replicate many human actions, such as open and close excel files, launch FIORI apps, key in data, modify data and much more.

Attended bot:- This is deployed on a User workstation mimicked by user action

Unattended Bot:- This is deployed on a virtual machine and triggered by a scheduled job

• Bots can be used for Automating Business Process in production, system migration or upgrades
• SAP Intelligent RPA’s core for automation is to Create/develop bots, Run, Monitor
• SAP Intelligent RPA’s components or the main pillars of RPA
• Cloud Factory – This is responsible for Monitoring this is just a web Brower which is used for monitoring bots, provides status of jobs.

Cloud Factory (Hierarchy)

Define set of users (hierarchy)

Environments

Configure

Package (consists of automation script)

Benefits of RPA

• It relies on the Workflow that is created by the bot developer.
• Time to implement RPA compared to traditional automation tools is very fast though we require proper strategy and planning
• Unlike traditional test automation tools that is product specific, RPA automates Products and Business Process that is the core of digital transformation.

Finally, SAP Intelligent RPA is used to create automation scripts for Business processes that can run in attended or unattended mode. The scripts can run in a production environment and can automate processes such as creating a PO, creating an Invoice, etc. This is offered as a cloud service on subscription.

SAP is one of these digital transformation ‘consultants’, helping organisations in their pursuit of becoming an intelligent enterprise digital transformation journey. And, this journey is just as important as the destination — the destination is to become an intelligent enterprise that satisfies customers and employees. A lot of organisations have decided they’re going to do digitally transform, but often, they struggle with it.

SAP’s view (and others) is that digital transformation should have a much more profound affect on an organisation’s assets; it impacts data but most importantly, it also impacts people, both as consumers of things that have been digitally transformed, but also as creators, constructors and builders of digital transformation.

We are digital transformation consultants; we have journeys and roadmaps and customer pathways that capture digital transformations for particular industries, or for organisations that have particular constraints.

But for us we also want people to think about the goal. Don’t digitally transform just for digital transformation’s sake. You want to transform digitally so that your enterprise is more agile, it’s faster, it’s more nimble, it’s more optimised. And these are all examples of intelligence.

Are they any cross-industry trends?

What we tend to find is that the majority of industries want to start on digital transformations that are people facing [user experience, APIs, customer experience, employee experience, partner experience]. That can be relatively straightforward or consistent, in terms of cross-industry demand.

But we’re also cognisant that a lot of industries have a lot of constraints when it comes to reaching out to people, interacting with people, and trying to be intelligent with their interaction with people; things like GDPR for example, make that potentially more complicated in some industries.

The long and the short of it would be yes, we do digital transformation across a range of industries: financial services, retail, telecommunications, energy, public sector, local authorities etcetera. All of these sectors — and the organisations within them — are transforming themselves in different ways and at different speeds to become more digital and become more intelligent. We can provide a range of solutions, technologies and answers to help them choose how and where they want to start that.

 A recently spoke with Francis Carden, VP of digital automation and robotics at Pega. It was a lively and animated conversation in which we discussed where we’re at in terms of robotic process automation (RPA) and the much-vaunted but almost always missing outcomes of digital transformation. It’s a conversation some will find disturbing because at its heart we’re trying to understand what is driving continued interest in RPA while the digital transformation moniker continues to be plastered on (almost) every enterprise software pitch. 

In my view, much of this comes down to the reality that the dream of integrated end to end processes as originally promised in the early 1990s with SAP R/3 but also aped by other vendors never truly materialized. If you buy into that you then understand why IT investments never showed through on financial results in any material way. 

In order for that end-to-end dream to be reality, you’d have to believe that all systems are capable of talking to one another in a seamless fashion. That doesn’t happen in the real world and when it does, it’s often and quite rightly seen as incredibly difficult, hugely expensive and of limited value. And that’s largely because of the following.

Processes exist in all kinds of database and in all kinds of code including UIs and disparate applications. It’s also a fact that the last 20 years have seen an explosion of technology. In the RPA world alone, there are literally hundreds of offerings. So the enterprise software market is both expanding and fragmented. And nothing talks natively to anything else. It is one of the unique characteristics of software that two different developers working on the same codeline can build applications that on the surface look similar but are in fact different. 

Then around 2012, along comes RPA, aided and abetted by certain analyst firms, who were suckered into believing they’d seen the Second Coming but which as most vendors will quietly admit, is really screen scraping UIs. The promise of automation, pitched as a way of removing inefficiencies using RPA looked good.

In terms that buyers will understand, RPA made promises its technology could not keep. While promising that bots would be a cure-all, it turned out that wasn’t the case. Instead of eliminating manual processes and tasks, much of what we’ve seen was really augmented manual processes. There were wins for sure but they were transient. And then along came the pandemic.