SAP Process Automation — a simpler way to enhance business efficiency and agility with confidence — is now generally available, providing a powerful new tool for businesses looking to create value faster.
Previewed last year at SAP TechEd, SAP Process Automation combines the capabilities of SAP Workflow Management and SAP Intelligent Robotic Process Automation in an easy-to-use, no-code experience powered by artificial intelligence (AI).
The new solution enables organizations of all sizes to:
- Simplify automation with visual drag-and-drop tools and industry-specific content
- Automate faster with business context in a unified AI-powered workflow management and robotic process automation solution
- Manage processes and automations with confidence on a trusted, enterprise grade, multi-cloud platform
Here’s a closer look at why process automation is in demand, how it helps modern businesses to create value, and how customers can take advantage of this cutting-edge technology.
The Need for Process Automation Continues to Grow
“Gaining value by focusing on process automation continues to be a key driver for businesses that need to drive down their operating costs or speed up cycle times,” according to Maureen Fleming, program vice president, Intelligent Process Automation Market Research and Advisory Service at IDC. “Organizations are thinking about upskilling business users to become more proficient in using process automation tools for both their own and their team’s productivity efforts, enabled by a next generation of intelligent process automation solutions combining low-code task and workflow automation with AI decision support, intelligent document processing, and process mining.”
Customers like Stadtwerke Gelsenkirchen are already realizing benefits from SAP Process Automation. This offering allows employees to engage in business-critical activities that create value, rather than being trapped in routine tasks.
“SAP Process Automation will support many SAP customers in digitalizing their paper-based processes and optimizing transparency and cycle time,” said Stefan Schmidtke, SAP Application Manager at Stadtwerke Gelsenkirchen. “Integrating it with other SAP solutions offers the possibility for employees to get rid of repetitive tasks so that they can focus on higher value topics.”
Build with Simplicity
SAP Process Automation simplifies process automation with visual drag-and-drop tools and pre-built industry-specific content. Business users can now build workflows as well as automate tasks and decisions with ease and, if needed, collaborate with development teams to meet all their automation needs.
To jump-start projects, users can select from a quickly growing library of more than 340 pre-built process flows, forms, business rules, dashboards, and bot automations across applications, lines of business, and industries. For example, SAP S/4HANA content is available for more than 100 automation scenarios in the finance, manufacturing, sales, services, sourcing and procurement, and supply chain lines of business. SAP SuccessFactors and SAP Ariba software development kits (SDKs) provide predefined activities to easily automate key tasks in these applications, augmented by SDKs for popular office productivity tools for desktop automation. All of this is readily available in a dedicated store accessible directly from SAP Process Automation.
Automate Faster
SAP Process Automation enables organizations to automate faster by giving users easy access to workflow management, task, and decision automation capabilities in a single tool. Built-in AI capabilities enable users to make their processes more intelligent by leveraging machine learning for decision assistance, intelligent document processing, and more.
The solution provides native integration with SAP applications and connectivity to non-SAP applications to enable automation of complex workflows spanning multiple applications and lines of business.
Operate Confidently
With SAP Process Automation, organizations can manage their processes and automations confidently on the cloud of choice while interoperating with their existing infrastructure. IT departments can empower business users to build process workflows, automations, and decision models while safeguarding operations with centralized governance, testing, and monitoring capabilities.
To help ensure compliance and automate processes in a scalable and reliable fashion, the service is designed to meet stringent enterprise-class SLAs, compliance, and privacy regulations.
How to Get Started with SAP Process Automation
SAP Process Automation will soon be available to try free of charge on the free tier model for SAP Business Technology Platform (SAP BTP). Sign up today to be among the first to gain hands-on experience. To learn more, please read “Achieving Hyperautomation with SAP Process Automation,” by Sebastian Schroetel, or watch the keynote of season two of our hyperautomation community series: Boost Development Agility and Unleash Innovation with Low-Code/No-Code.
We recommend existing SAP Workflow Management or SAP Intelligent Robotic Process Automation customers move to SAP Process Automation and benefit from a no-code development experience, additional workflow management and task automation capabilities, as well as access to a growing number of new pre-built content.
Bhagat Nainani is senior vice president of Product Development at SAP.