RPA: Employee Out Of The Cloud

Numerous systems are usually involved in the execution of end-to-end business processes, and ERP systems like S/4 Hana take a central role. However, efficiency in process execution is often impeded by the automation limits of involved systems. Frequently, employees are stuck with repetitive tasks which are time consuming and often prone to errors. Infamous examples are monitoring and maintaining master data, data transfers from or to Microsoft Office applications, or the collection of data from systems for reporting or similar purposes. As backoffice employee out of the cloud, Robotic Process Automation (RPA) can be a much-needed alternative.

Software solution SAP Intelligent Robotic Process Automation (SAP Intelligent RPA) has been gaining traction lately in this context. The solution can help to cost-efficiently avoid system or media discontinuity and keep processes as stable as possible. SAP Intelligent RPA is a software solution hosted on SAP Cloud Platform (SCP) which orchestrates interactions of a graphical user interface and manages the programming interfaces of systems. The central orchestration of automations happens on this cloud service, which then proceeds to distribute the individual functions to local instances. Consequently, SAP Intelligent RPA supports employees in daily business processes – if required, the service can even autonomously take care of them itself.

Thanks to the SAP Cloud Platform, the integration of SAP Intelligent RPA in existing SAP system landscapes is easy. After successful activation of the SAP Intelligent RPA service, any desired systems can be integrated. Connectors of the software solution quickly recognize the user interface of systems, including but not limited to UIs of Microsoft Office applications, web applications, and SAP GUI. Especially concerning integration with S/4, SAP offers numerous predefined automations which simplify subsequent process automation.

Benefits of SAP Intelligent RPA

The biggest benefits of SAP Intelligent RPA are cost savings, improved quality, and time savings. Compared to a lot of other common process automation solutions, automations based on SAP Intelligent RPA are easier, quicker, and more cost efficient to implement. Concrete cost savings through automation can be calculated based on time savings – time which employees would have usually needed for the manual processing of tasks.

Manual processing and execution of repetitive tasks is usually prone to errors. An adequately implemented automation can remedy any possible processing mistakes. Concerning critical processes, any automation should be tested diligently to avoid systemic automation errors and achieve an improvement in quality.

Time savings achieved by automation usually also mean subsequent process cost savings through less processing time. On top of processing time savings, processing speed can also be increased which leads to even more benefits – for example, processes can be executed without time buffers. It’s reasonable to assume that processing time savings lead to an increase in employee productivity rather than job cuts.

SAP Intelligent RPA plays an important part in the integrated and automated execution of business processes across multiple different systems. Manual repetitive tasks are ideally suited for automation. Human employees should focus on more important areas that RPA cannot yet replace. Furthermore, adequately automating repetitive tasks avoids inadvertent mistakes through manual processing and thus increases the quality of processes and throughput.