From SAP Business Workflow to SAP Intelligent BPM
Organizations can improve the productivity of their business processes by transforming manual and paper processes into digital variants. Through intelligent automation with structured workflows, decisions and tasks can be directed to the relevant people. This not only converts unstructured processes into formal business procedures, it also provides insights into process status and progress, work stocks and who is in charge of current tasks.
The above is also referred to as Business Process Management. In recent years, SAP has delivered various products and tools that help achieve the above objectives.
SAP Cloud Platform enables customers to achieve even faster results with the implementation of live processes by analyzing, configuring, expanding and integrating them with operational workflows.
Below is the evolution of the SAP Business Process Management suite of tools.
Most tools are still in use and continue to be supported by SAP. These tools are grouped by SAP under the denominator Intelligent Business Process Management.
The following tools are discussed in this document:
SAP Workflow
SAP Conversational AI (Chatbots)
SAP Intelligent Robotic Process Automation (iRPA)
SAP Cloud Platform Process Visibility
1. SAP Workflow
SAP Workflow has been a successful tool for years in optimizing business processes within an SAP landscape. SAP offers both an on premise variant (SAP Business Workflow) and a cloud variant (SAP Cloud Platform Workflow). The on premise version is technically equivalent within SAP ECC and S/4HANA.
By using SAP Workflow , complex business processes can easily be modelled within an own SAP environment. SAP Business Workflow is a standard part of the technical SAP basic platform and is therefore available in any SAP environment and can be used for process optimization of virtually any process.
SAP Business Workflow is particularly suitable for process modeling within an application in which user interaction plays an important role. SAP Workflow has the following features:
SAP Workflow is mainly used to automate processes and procedures within an SAP system;
Is not tied to a specific SAP module;
Works uniformly across the modules;
Coordinates task handling and distribution, combined with providing all necessary information.
SAP Workflow is often used to automate a company's stable core processes. SAP Cloud Platform Workflow offers possibilities when processes need to be structured across different systems.
Examples of process optimisation via SAP Workflow:
Accreditation of purchasing documents (purchase orders, ATBs and contracts)
Invoice processing and approval
Master data management (materials/suppliers/customers)
HR self-service scenarios
Sales order approval
From these processes, workflow tasks are created that have to be handled by employees. These tasks can be offered to the user via the SAP GUI or via alternative workflow inboxes. A distinction is made between 2 user groups:
Professional users (users who regularly work with SAP and are familiar with its GUI)
Business users (users who occasionally work with SAP functionality)
The use of SAP Fiori as a user interface is recommended for unlocking SAP workflow tasks to business users.
2. SAP Conversational AI - Chatbots
A chatbot is a software application that can start a conversation with a natural person, such as an employee, customer or supplier of a company. Because the chatbot can "understand" and interpret natural language, the chatbot can answer comments and questions that are put to the chatbot. The chatbot can respond to simple greetings such as "Hi, how are you?", but also to more complex questions such as "How many leave days do I have available for this year?”. For the last question it will be possible to use services from an underlying system such as SAP ECC or SAP S4/HANA.
A chatbot is very suitable for automating parts of business processes, such as improving support to suppliers, customers and employees. Think of a helpdesk within companies, where common questions can be answered automatically by the chatbot. This allows helpdesk employees to focus on more valuable and meaningful interactions with customers. Besides providing information, a chatbot can also perform relatively simple tasks for an employee, without the employee having to have knowledge of the application that is normally used for this. Examples are creating a purchase order, requesting leave or creating a vacancy.
A chatbot is therefore not only a means to increase the service level towards internal and external stakeholders, it also makes them less dependent on the availability of your (support) staff. On balance, this has a positive impact on satisfaction and productivity. The SAP Conversational AI platform offers a development environment in which a chatbot can be set up quickly and easily. The developed chatbot can be accessed via various channels.
More information about SAP Conversational AI can be found here. This blog covers the technical aspects of a chatbot and SAP Conversational AI (SAP CAI).
3. SAP Intelligent RPA
Robotic Process Automation (RPA) accelerates the digital transformation of business processes by automatically adopting manual actions with no added value. SAP Intelligent RPA (iRPA) helps perform repetitive tasks that extend across systems (SAP and non-SAP).
iRPA can be used in two "modes":
Attended fashion, also called a "Digital Assistant"
Runs on a workstation
Automates a subprocess
Started by a user
Unattended fashion, also called a "Digital Worker".
Runs on a server
Automates a whole or partial process
Scheduled or based on triggers
How can an RPA solution generate business value?
Improving the operation
Reduce human error
Higher speed and efficiency
Increasing the quality
Increasing compliance with business rules
through, for example, well-documented audit trails
Suitable processes to optimize using RPA are processes with the following characteristics:
Manual and repetitive
High volume
Multiple systems
Work around for missing native integration
SAP Intelligent Robotic Process Automation consists of 3 components: Desktop Studio, Desktop Agent and Cloud Factory.
4. SAP Cloud Platform Process Visibility
SAP Cloud Platform Process Visibility is a solution that provides operational end-to-end insight into processes running in the Cloud, on premise and in hybrid environments. This SAP Cloud solution provides process insight resulting in transparency and enables process improvement opportunities.
Using SAP Cloud Platform Process Visibility, attractive and insightful process dashboards can be created with which process KPIs across different systems can be displayed in real time. Various SAP BPM tools are supported: both Cloud and on premise custom scenarios. Think of processes automated using on premise SAP Business Workflow on ECC and S/4HANA as well as SAP Cloud Platform Workflows.
By collecting push events from different systems, scenarios can be configured in which status, sub-status, attributes and context can be collected to display real time operational key performance indicators. These KPIs can then be accessed via a tile in the Fiori Launchpad.
Conclusion
Through a pallet of BPM solutions from SAP, processes can be optimized in different ways. SAP Business Workflow is often used to automate a company's stable core processes. SAP Cloud Platform Workflow offers possibilities when processes need to be structured across different systems. SAP Cloud Platform tools such as SAP Conversational AI or Chatbots can be used to start workflows and SAP Intelligent RPA can be applied to provide an alternative when native system integration is (still) difficult to achieve. Finally, SAP Cloud Platform Process Visibility can be used to quickly provide real-time operational insight via dashboards.
For questions or information about the application possibilities of Intelligent Business Process Management or other questions in the field of SAP Workflow, Fiori, Master Data Governance or SAP Invoice Management, please contact Sander van der Wijngaart.
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