Business Technology Platform

We recently tried the BOTs SAP has released on their BTP (Business Technology Platform).

SAP’s BTP is going to change the way consumers use their existing ERP software. The BOTs have immense potential to improve business processes within an organisation.

Here’s an example:

1. Purchase Order to Sales Order

   1. An email is received with an attachment.
   2. The BOT makes an educated guess that this attachment is in fact a Purchase Order.
   3. The BOT then identifies the customer that has sent this purchase order.
   4. It then uses OCR technology and AI to read the contents of the order, interprets what is an Item and what is Quantity and what is Price and so on, and goes on to create a Sales Order in SAP.

All of the above without anyone touching the keyboard.

What’s more, is that in the event the BOT is not a 100% sure of the data that it reads and interprets, then it creates a draft Sales Order for the user to check the email attachment and make the correction in the Sales Order created by the BOT.

2. Proof of Delivery

   1. An email is received with an attachment.
   2. The BOT makes an educated guess that this attachment is in fact a Proof of Delivery, i.e. the SAP Sales Delivery document sent to the customer that has been signed, stamped, scanned and emailed to the Supplier as an acknowledgement that the goods have been received.
   3. The BOT then identifies the Sales Delivery document in SAP and attaches the PoD to it.
   4. The BOT then check if the Sales Invoice has already been created. In India this would be the case as it is required by law. The BOT then attaches the PoD to the Sales Invoice too.
   5. If other countries, for instance the US, the Sales Invoice is sent after receipt of PoD. In such a case,  once the BOT attaches the PoD to the Sales Delivery document, B1iF can be triggered to create the Sales Invoice and email it to the customer.

Again, no human interaction.

And finally, the AP Invoice.

3. AP Invoice

   1. An email is received with an attachment.
   2. The BOT makes an educated guess that this attachment is in fact an invoice from a Supplier.
   3. The BOT then identifies Suppler and the GRN, does a 3-way matching, and creates the AP Invoice document.

And the best thing about these BOTs and BTP is that it does not cost an arm and a leg. SAP has priced it very aggressively.

I recommend all to try it.