2023 OpenText Deep Dive

Paul van Rouwendaal - Senior SAP Invoice Management and Master Data Governance consultant

Because of our long running partnership with OpenText we were recently invited again for an exciting OpenText Deep Dive session. This is a yearly event which was on location for the first time since 2020. During this technology focused event OpenText shared with us the latest strategic roadmap for Vendor Invoice Management (VIM) (also known as SAP Invoice Management (SIM)) and the related products like VIM Beyond Finance and Intelligent Capture.

New features SAP Invoice Management 7.6 SP5 / 20.4 SP5 / OpenText VIM and Intelligent Capture version 23.2

Below a clear overview of the various VIM related products:

On top of the VIM Foundation, you can have one or more VIM Solutions (or so called VIM Invoice and VIM Beyond Finance scenarios) active. For the OCR component, you now have two options: either you run Intelligent Capture for SAP (IC4SAP) on-premise or you run Core Capture for SAP (CC4SAP) in the cloud.

Before we go into the exciting details of the new features and improvements that introduced in the newest versions of these products, it might be very helpful to understand a few things about product version numbering and product names also. This can be a bit challenging for people new to the product, as well as people who are familiar with it.

Every new release of VIM knows three version numbers. Two of them are depending on the type of SAP system it is installed on. In case of the SAP ECC version, the newest release coming out in April 2023 is version 7.6 SP5. When using VIM on an SAP S/4 system, the equivalent version number is 20.4 SP5.

In addition, OpenText also has an internal version number for the newest release, which is 23.2 (indicating when it is released: year 2023, Q2). For the sake of readability and consistency, I will refer to these internal version numbers in the rest of the blog.

Nowadays, it is really nice that you can not only use VIM for invoice processing, but also for processing other inbound documents. For example sales orders or delivery notes. This is possible by implementing so called ‘VIM Beyond Finance’ scenarios. Previously you could do this with Business Center, but this product has now evolved into VIM Beyond Finance, which is now an integrated solution on top of the VIM Foundation. For more about this, have a look at our other blog on VIM Beyond Finance.

Focus new features in 2023

Looking at the roadmap of VIM for this year, all new features can be tied to one of the focus points on the strategy roadmap for VIM:

The improvements focus on:

Processing of all possible e-invoices compliant with global e-invoice standards
Cloud-readiness so that VIM is ready to support different types of cloud scenarios.
Better user interfaces, using Fiori and UI5 techniques
Smart & automation, making invoice processing smarter and enabling more Beyond Invoice scenarios

The roadmap for Intelligent Capture (IC4SAP/CC4SAP) is mostly focused on improvements to the Fiori Validation Client. In addition, there are also many technical improvements to the core OCR technology, which now provides the same and even better customization options than BCC 16.7 has to offer. This should make the transition from BCC to Intelligent Capture more smooth than before.

New e-invoicing features

More and more countries are adopting one or more e-invoicing standards. Below is an overview of the main e-invoicing standards per country that are prescribed or enforced by the government as mandatory standards:

In the recent VIM releases, a new ‘magical’ XML parser has been introduced that helps companies to process e-invoices from different standards in a consistent way in VIM.

With a few simple configuration steps, you can easily map any known XML standard to VIM data. The XML parser recognizes the e-invoicing standard automatically after uploading and parsing a single e-invoice. Then it makes a standard mapping proposal, that you can then adapt and enhance with mapping user exits, where required.

In some cases, the PO number field contains the number preceded by the letters ‘PO’ for example. If that happens, you can implement a mapping user exit to remove these letters and transfer only the number of the PO to the PO number field in the VIM index data.

Better user interface experience with Fiori

Switching from the traditional SAP GUI when you use SAP ECC to Fiori when using an S/4 system is now also more natural in the recent version of VIM. In total there are now more than 9 Fiori Apps available. Many of them have already been covered in one of our previous blogs: previous blogs on this topic.

In the newer versions of VIM, there is also a new Fiori app available, the VIM Accounts Payable Workplace:

This VIM Accounts Payable Workplace does not only contain tabs to process indexed invoices, but also seamlessly integrates the Fiori Validation client. This means that you can easily switch from invoice processing to invoice validation and vice versa, without the need to go to another Fiori app or even to another Windows application (in case you currently use the Windows Validation Client).

Fiori Validation Client

Already released since version 21.4, the Fiori Validation Client is now improved even more. Since the version 22.4, the Fiori Validation Client has ‘Feature Parity’ with the Windows Validation Client. This means that they offer the same functionality, in terms of both standard functionality and enhancement possibilities.

Looking at the standard functionality, with version 22.4 you now have a fully functional Table-Auto-Completion (TAC) feature. This allows you to add line item details to your validation results with relatively ease, like you can also do in the Windows Validation Client.

In terms of customization of the Fiori Validation Client, for example, it is now possible to do validation and checks on the data that is being provided by the user in any of the invoice fields. This was previously only possible in the Windows Validation Client by implementing scripting on the ICC server. Now there are multiple ABAP user exits available where you can do same. For example to check if the PO number contains a valid number format, especially if a company uses less standard PO number ranges (less than 10 digits or including letters).

Or you can do custom checks on the line item amounts and then provide an error message, like shown in the following screenshot:

You can use the Fiori Validation Client also when you are using VIM on SAP ECC. By doing so, you eliminate the need to install the Windows Validation Client locally. This simplifies the use and maintenance of the Validation Client significantly, since you can run the Fiori Validation Client in just a modern internet browser.

New analytics Fiori app in version 23.4

In the upcoming version 23.4, planned to be released in October 2023, a nice, new analytics Fiori app will be available:

This graphically oriented Fiori app shows you many key figures, all presented in different tiles, as well as multiple different graphs. For example, it is possible to see how many documents are in a particular exception. But not only that, you can immediately take action by clicking the overview. This takes you to the VIM Accounts Payable Workplace app immediately, where you can start processing these invoices. This opens up more opportunities to focus on the invoices that really need be processed to achieve a better on time payment of the invoices.

Extensibility of the Fiori apps

The Fiori apps for VIM are built around an framework containing both Hybrid Apps and Native Fiori apps:

For example, the VIM Accounts Payable Workplace uses multiple SAP UI5 techniques to show the invoice list, but it will show the DP indexing screens via SAP GUI for HTML. Since the SAP GUI for HTML also uses SAP UI5 and Fiori themes to show the GUI screens looking similar to the native Fiori screens, the user experience is very fluid and transparant for the user.

On top of this, it is possible to make all kinds of enhancements to the Fiori apps, because of the many extensibility areas that the Fiori framework has to offer, without the need to do any SAP UI5 developments.

For example, it is possible to add new fields to the VIM AP Workplace invoice list, with via the standard extensibility options that are available by standard. Also you can relatively easily add new header and/or line item fields in almost all of the Fiori apps that are available in VIM.

New features in Intelligent Capture

Most improvements in the recent version of Intelligent Capture are under the hood. Now you have many user exits that you can implement. Some of them can be used to improve the extraction results, while others are more focused on the validation process. For example, you can create a custom user exit that decided based on certain business rules if an invoice should be validated, or if the OCR data can be transferred to VIM directly without validation. Also you have a user exit where you can decide with custom business rule logic which user should do the validation.

Also new from version 22.4 is the ability to process tax blocks. This can be important for your company in case you receive many invoices with multiple tax rates. The tax block with multiple rates is automatically recognized on the invoice by Intelligent Capture. Then this data is mapped into the index data in VIM and transferred to the relevant fields in MIRO and/or FB60.

Below the processing of the tax data on the invoice is explained in more detail with an example:

Support and maintenance

Last but not least, an important note about the support and maintenance for different versions of VIM. For some product versions, the end of support is in the near future:

If your business is still running either VIM 7.5, we strongly advise you to consider upgrading to a newer version this year, to continue your support on VIM by SAP/OpenText. In case your business is currently running BCC or ICC version 16.7, you should consider to upgrade to the newest Intelligent Capture for SAP (IC4SAP). Or to Core Capture for SAP (CC4SAP), which is the cloud version of IC4SAP.

The image contains the latest data on versions and how the support changes if a version goes from current maintenance to sustaining maintenance:

More information

For further questions or information on this topic or for other questions in the area of SAP Workflow, Fiori or SAP Master Data Governance, please contact Martijn Wever. For more information on Vendor Invoice Management and VIM Beyond Finance see here.

New features in SAP Invoice Management