After completing this lesson, you will be able to:
After completing this lesson, you will be able to:
Assess ideal scenarios for process automation
Explore end-to-end processes with sub-processes for automation
Review the sales order management process you will build
Assess Ideal Scenarios for Process Automation
You‘re probably wondering which of your business processes are potential candidates for automation, or if there are any limitations. It’s true you should choose your scenarios and use cases wisely, especially as you get started as a citizen developer, but in fact, you are not limited to a dedicated line of business or industry with what you can do. You can use SAP Build Process Automation anywhere and take advantage of native integrations with SAP applications.
Assessing ideal scenarios for process automation
You can build, adapt, improve, and innovate many kinds of business processes with minimum assistance from IT – for example:
Automate manual, repetitive tasks such as copy-pasting data into a spreadsheet.
Digitalize manual and semi-automated processes, for example, capital expenditure approvals.
Automate when there is a high volume of process steps, think of entering sales order data.
Automatically aggregate data from multiple systems, and purchase record updates.
Extend and adapt the standard flows of your business applications (SAP or non-SAP, on-premise or in the cloud), for example adding several levels of approvals for a sales order.
Automate end-to-end cross-application workflows, that span several systems (for example your ERP and your human resources (HR) systems), in employee onboarding processes.
Exploring End-to-End Processes With Sub-Processes for Automation
Quick Wins for Process Automation by LoB
Exploring end-to-end processes with sub-processes for automation:
Lead-to-cash –capital expenditure approvals, invoice approvals, and account opening.
Hire-to-retire —relocation, visa permits, HR employee self-services, managing contingent workers.
Design-to-operate –updating master data records, document approval, and lead generation workflows.
Source-to-pay –return order process, incident management, procurement data collection.
Sales Order Management Process Review
Let's learn how to build a sales order management process. This process contains many manual steps and e-mails are sent back and forth. This is not a good experience for the sales employee nor for customers whose orders might be delayed or even lost during the manual process. Using SAP Build Process Automation, we can change this.
What is a Sales Order?
A sales order is a document that confirms a sale. It is generated by the seller after receiving a purchase order from the buyer. This document contains information regarding the sales, such as the price, quantity, and buyer details. This information is vital for the sales and operational staff of a company. Sales orders from different customers must be handled differently, for example, based on the sales order amount.
Then, the following procedure can happen:
First, a sales department employee receives sales orders via different channels and enters them in a spreadsheet, which is manually maintained and updated by different employees as the order status changes.
Second, if an order is above a certain amount, it must be approved. Sales department employees mark such orders as urgent and send either a physical paper or a scanned copy of the paper or what they have received via a phone order. After checking who the correct approver is, depending on the kind of sales order, in yet another spreadsheet of course, the sales department employee emails it to an approver.
Third, the approver replies to the sales employee via email about the order status whether it is approved or not. The sales department employees may need to send the approver a reminder if the approver does not respond in time.
Finally, the sales employee enters the approved sales order in the SAP S/4HANA system for order fulfillment.
As you can see, this process contains many manual steps and e-mails are sent back and forth. This is not a good experience for the sales employee or for the customers whose orders might be delayed or even lost along the manual process. We will change this with you.
Check out the following animation to find out what you are going to build in the next lessons.
