With the rise of Robotic Process Automation (RPA) to automate routine tasks, users might wonder how RPA can automate business workflows in SAP, one of the largest and oldest ERP vendors with ~ €31B revenue.1 However, SAP touches almost every critical aspect of a business. And as a result, businesses have a hard time correctly prioritizing their automation initiatives.
To help businesses prioritize their SAP automation initiatives and achieve greater results earlier, we will go over some of the top priority business applications that can be automated on SAP through RPA.
Use cases in accounting & finance
The finance and accounting world handles many tasks that are the same every time. This consistency makes these tasks perfect for automation. Using Robotic Process Automation (RPA), often powered by software like SAP, businesses can speed up work, lower errors, and free up staff.
1. Procure-to-pay
Procure-to-pay (P2P) is the end-to-end process of receiving invoices from vendors, processing them, and then paying them. Thanks to the consistent nature of the P2P process, they are automatable by SAP software.
1.1. Accounts payable
Accounts payable is receiving invoices from suppliers for the goods/services they provide, verifying them, and paying them on time. Failure to do so could result in supply chain disruptions, thus tampering with operational continuity.
SAP intelligent RPA automation offers end-to-end automation of the process of accounts payable. The bot:
- Creates a list of all contracted suppliers in Excel,
- Confirm the purchase order for each,
- Conducts a 3-way invoice matching to ensure that the amount, the beneficiary, and the description all match,
- Extracts the delivery timeline and payment deadline from the purchase invoice,
- Inputs all the order data in the row corresponding to each supplier,
- Schedules a payment to be processed either on the payment deadline or whenever the delivery has been received,
- Notifies the accounting team if the payment does not go through or if they still need to approve it,
- Makes entries onto the account payables sub-ledger as well as the general ledger.
For other ERP solutions with AP automation capabilities, check:
- Dynamics 365 in Accounts Payable Automation: In-Depth Review
- Blackbaud Accounts Payable (AP) Automation: In-Depth Review
1.2. Invoice capturing
You cannot pay an invoice if you don’t know the due date or what it’s for.
- RPA bots watch the company email inbox for new invoices.
- With Intelligent Automation (IA), the bot uses tools like Optical Character Recognition (OCR) to read the invoice image.
- It captures the data and puts it into a standard, machine-readable format.
- The payment deadline is automatically added to the accounting team’s calendar. A reminder is also scheduled for the due date.
To learn more about invoice capturing, click here.
2. Financial closing
Financial close, the process of balancing and reporting a company’s financial accounts in the last fiscal period, is a lengthy process that involves multiple sub-domains. And financial close, if done manually, can be a time-consuming and error-prone process.
SAP leverages RPA to automate the following sub-categories within the financial close process:
2.1. General ledger entries
General ledger entries are the aggregation of all recurring, sub-ledger transactions – such as accounts payables, accounts receivables, etc. – into one ledger. General ledger entries are among the first steps in the long process of financial closing.
However, with businesses today having multiple selling channels, “traditional” marketplaces such as Amazon, “modern” marketplaces such as Facebook and Instagram, their own website, wholesale, retail, etc., the incoming invoices are to be later authorized and entered onto the ledger, might be unorganized and unstructured in terms of data.
How RPA Helps:
- The bot monitors company emails for sales invoices from different channels.
- Using OCR and Natural Language Processing (NLP), it reads the invoice to extract details like the amount, date, and counterparty name.
- It checks the data against pre-set rules for validation.
- Once approved, the entries are automatically added to the sub-ledger and the General Ledger.
Benefit: Automating this cuts manual work, increases data accuracy, and creates a clear digital record for every entry.
2.2. Intercompany reconciliation
This involves checking and confirming transactions between a parent company and its child companies (subsidiaries). These internal transactions must be removed during the financial close. If they are left in, they can inflate the parent company’s tax or accounting numbers.
If they match, the bot records them in a separate file, removes them from the parent company’s balance sheet, and sends an email to the subsidiary’s finance team to notify them.
RPA bots use a framework of rules to quickly find, record, and remove these transactions.
The bot highlights transactions that are not clear and checks if they match a balance sheet difference.
2.3 Payment reconciliation
Payment reconciliation is matching bank statement transactions (money in and out) with your company’s internal records. This checks for mistakes, prevents fraud, and ensures all owed money is received.
RPA for Reconciliation:
- The bot downloads bank statements as they arrive.
- It reads the data and puts it into a spreadsheet.
- It cross-matches the bank statement with submitted invoices in your database.
- It flags transactions that do not match as exceptions.
- It checks for payments that should have been received or paid but have not been. Overdue transactions are flagged.
- The bot notifies the accounting team of all exceptions that need human attention.
3. Financial planning and analysis
RPA can pull financial data from many different systems. This creates one reliable source for all FP&A work.
- At the end of each period, a bot automatically extracts data (revenue, expenses, etc.) from various systems.
- It generates a current overview of the company’s financial health.
- Key metrics (like profit margin or expense ratio) are calculated and displayed automatically on a dashboard (e.g., SAP Analytics Cloud).
Benefit: This dashboard provides a single source of truth for all financial analysis and future planning.
4. Accounts receivable
Accounts receivable is the money your customers owe you. Failure to track this accurately can lead to cash shortages or bad debt. Accountants may forget to follow up on late payments.
RPA for AR:
- If a payment is made, the bot matches the bank statement with the invoice, records the entry, and closes the deal.
- During the closing process, the bot flags any unmatched transactions as potential uncollected debt.
- If a transaction is unpaid debt, the accountant can set up a workflow for the bot.
- The bot automatically gets the amount, drafts a follow-up email (using pre-approved text), and sends it to the customer.
- If payment is still missed after an extended deadline, the bot can create a dispute ticket, allowing the company to pursue legal or banking action.
Use cases in retail
5. Dynamic pricing
Dynamic pricing means changing prices based on what competitors charge. In e-commerce, being slightly cheaper than competitors can greatly increase sales.
- An RPA bot scrapes the web to get competitors’ prices for similar items.
- The bot can automatically adjust your price if the change is within a pre-approved range.
- If a competitor’s price falls outside that range, the bot sends an alert to a human manager for a decision.
Benefit: The automated model helps businesses quickly capture profitable margins.
6. Product information query
We’ve discussed chatbots’ use cases in customer service before, specifically about how they can, for instance, answer FAQs on behalf of the employees to save valuable time.
But a less discussed use case of RPA-chatbot integration is what if a customer has a very specific question about a specific product? For instance, a customer wanting to purchase a wristwatch might want to know the lug width of the watch case. He/she can ask the chatbot, “What is the case lug width of X brand watch, model Y?”
The web scraping integration into the RPA chatbot that we’ve mentioned above can also help in this scenario: the scraper will go onto the product’s web page, look for the keyword “lug width,” and thanks to NLP and OCR read the numerical measurement (e.g. 16mm, 18mm, 20mm, etc.) and relay it back to the customer.
The main benefit of this capability is that it won’t be a live agent getting this information across but rather a bot. The other benefit is that the bot will be functioning within a rule-based framework, and so won’t be spreading misinformation.
7. Customer service
Intelligent automation has grown in adoption recently. Chatbots, for instance, are a useful tool for handling large volumes of time-consuming and repetitive tasks, such as answering FAQs, shipping timelines, operating hours, guaranteeing coverage, and more.
- The chatbot connects to different company systems and databases to quickly answer questions.
- For an airline, the chatbot can access a traveler’s ticket data to change a seat booking or upgrade a frequent flyer’s class.
- Bots can also provide payment links. When a payment is made, the bot automatically logs the sale entry in real-time.
To learn more about travel chatbots, click here.
Use Cases in human resources
8. Resume screening
Companies receive many resumes. HR spends a lot of time on the first screening to check basic requirements like education or experience.
- An RPA bot monitors the HR email for resumes.
- The bot downloads the files and uses OCR and NLP to assess them based on rules (e.g., “Must have a bachelor’s degree,” “Age must be < 35”).
- A list of qualified candidates is sent to the HR staff for the next round.
- The bot can also be set to flag close cases (e.g., a candidate meeting all but one requirement) for a human to review. This ensures fairness and prevents missing out on good talent.
Learn more about AI in resume screening.
9. Salary CAP declaration
This is the process of checking employee salaries against industry financial rules (like spending limits on salaries). For large companies with many types of employees (full-time, contract, board members), this is complex.
- A bot automatically checks the employee’s contract against the HR database.
- It verifies the actual wage paid using the invoice data.
- It inputs this verified data into the main system.
- The total salary amount is calculated and filled out on the official declaration form.
- In one real case, this process, which took 480 manual hours, was reduced to less than 7 hours by an RPA bot.
For more on ERP
To learn more about ERP and intelligent automation integration within it, read:
And if you believe your business processes could benefit from adopting an ERP solution, head over to our ERP hub to see a data-driven list of vendors.
Cem's work has been cited by leading global publications including Business Insider, Forbes, Washington Post, global firms like Deloitte, HPE and NGOs like World Economic Forum and supranational organizations like European Commission. You can see more reputable companies and resources that referenced AIMultiple.
Throughout his career, Cem served as a tech consultant, tech buyer and tech entrepreneur. He advised enterprises on their technology decisions at McKinsey & Company and Altman Solon for more than a decade. He also published a McKinsey report on digitalization.
He led technology strategy and procurement of a telco while reporting to the CEO. He has also led commercial growth of deep tech company Hypatos that reached a 7 digit annual recurring revenue and a 9 digit valuation from 0 within 2 years. Cem's work in Hypatos was covered by leading technology publications like TechCrunch and Business Insider.
Cem regularly speaks at international technology conferences. He graduated from Bogazici University as a computer engineer and holds an MBA from Columbia Business School.
Be the first to comment
Your email address will not be published. All fields are required.