t’s no secret that in order to compete and thrive in today’s competitive business environment, it is critical to find ways to go faster, and be more agile while improving data quality and integrity. For many companies, automation is the key to unlocking these success factors and ultimately getting better business results, even in challenging times.
Join us on January 31st for this can’t-miss webinar as our experts discuss how to leverage automation to achieve faster processes, greater business agility, and improved data quality. By adopting a complete automation platform, you can tackle your most complex, data-intensive SAP® master data processes through:
• Workflow automation
• API connectivity
• A low-code/no-code environment for citizen developers
• A portal framework to allow outside parties to access and modify SAP data
• Data management automation for mass data processes
• Process governance and audibility
See why these 6 features deliver the ultimate formula for automation success – agility, speed, and integrity – and will help you solve your most complex SAP process challenges, all while empowering your organization to make an even bigger impact across your SAP landscape.
1. 6 Key Features
You Need for
Automation
Success
How automation that excels at
agility, speed and integrity solves
your most challenging SAP
processes
Andrew Hayden | Sr. Product Marketing Manager
4. The global leader
in data integrity
software
Our data integrity
software, data enrichment
products, and strategic
services deliver accuracy,
consistency, and context
to power confident
business decisions.
Brands you trust, trust us
Data leaders partner with us
of the Fortune
100
99
Customers in more than
100
2,300
employees
customers
12,000
countries
Integrate
Enrich Locate
Verify
Data
Integrity
Suite
6. 6 Features you need for automation
success
• Low-code Platform approach
• Workflow automation
• Portals
• API connectivity
• Data management automation for mass data processes
• Process governance and audibility
7. Agenda
• Why Process Automation
• Complex Process Challenge
• Precisely Automate: A complete automation platform
• 6 Key Features for Automation Success
• Low-code citizen development
• Workflow
• Self-service Portals
• API connectivity
• Mass data management
• Governance and reporting
• Key Takeaways
9. Be more agile
9
Companies need to:
Go faster Improve the quality and
integrity of your most
important data
10. KPMG’s 2019 CEO Outlook
“Acting with agility is the
new currency of business;
if we are too slow, we will
be bankrupt.”
67% of global
CEOs agree with
this statement:
12. Accelerating digital transformation
Data is the fuel for decision-making today
$1.04 trillion
spent
on
Hyperautomation
by 2026
80% of CEOs
accelerating
digital
transformation
45% of
enterprises
using SAP are
leveraging
automation
67% spending
more on
technology than
people
Market is growing at 12% per year
17. Common product challenges
17
• Complex materials environment:
Many raw and semi-finished
goods
• Multiple vendors and suppliers
• Complex data objects
• Complex processes
• Manual data management
& spreadsheets
• Often multiple plants
• Frequent changes
• Complex customer environment
• Tight margins
• Seasonal exceptions
• Promotional packaging
• Sales alignment
• Multiple systems involved
• SAP in the middle of it all
18. Upstream process components
Plus other, non-SAP systems
Vendors
Procurement
Product
Development
Controlling Finance Materials
Production
Planning
Warehouse
Manufacturing
Operations
19. Make an impact across your business
Financial
Accounting
Controlling
Sales and
Distribution
Materials
Management
Plant
Maintenance
Asset
Management
Project
Systems
Production
Planning
Quality
Management
Human
Resources
21. Precisely Automate Platform
22
WORKFLOW-ENABLED PROCESS AUTOMATION
Automate and streamline SAP
processes using workflows
• Advanced form and workflow capabilities
• Advanced data stewardship capabilities via web forms
• Data automaton and management (Excel – SAP)
• Extensive Audit and ROI reporting
• Detailed process analytics
• Process governance
• Centralized management
• Server-side file management and execution
• Attended or unattended automation
• Business-focused, low-code environment
Business users work
in Excel or web forms
Automate Evolve Automate Studio
STANDALONE DESKTOP
Exchange data with SAP quickly and
easily using Excel
• Data creation and maintenance
• Data migration
• Operational reporting
• Data stewardship
Business users work in Excel
+
22. A complete automation platform
Excel to SAP
Exchange data with SAP
quickly and easily using
Excel
Form &
Workflow
Automate and accelerate
SAP business processes
with integrated forms and
workflows
Excel Workflow
Automate and accelerate
SAP business processes
through Excel file
management workflows
Process
Automation
Data
Automation
23. Automate platform: Benefits
Agility Speed Improved data
quality
Business team
focus
Automation
flexibility
Scalability Proven track
record
Process visibility
24. The Automate platform delivers
Workflow Connectivity
(APIs)
Self-service
Governance Low-code
development
Attended &
unattended
automation
Forms
Data
Management
Data quality
Cloud
deployment
27. Build SAP data exchange scripts in 3
easy steps
Create
the SAP data
exchange script
Map
the fields to
Excel or form
Run
Exchange data
with SAP during
workflow
28. Build
solutions,
fast
Drag-and-drop design
• Design on a visual canvas
• Drag-and-drop workflow nodes
and plug-ins
• Define roles with swim lanes
• Manage non-SAP related tasks
• No ABAP or other technical
programming skills required
29
Nodes & plug-ins
30. Digitize and accelerate
complex master data
processes, while
improving data quality
and compliance—using
forms and workflow or
Excel workflow.
Automate Workflow
Process automation for your core SAP
business data
SAP
31. Reduce cycle
times &
improve
compliance
Enterprise-grade workflow
capabilities
• Create parallel or sequential
tasks
• Create workflow loops
• Setup task, approval, and past
due, reminder, and escalation
email notifications
• Utilize bulk task reassignment
and out-of-office functions
• Collect supporting documents
32
Parallel tasks
Workflow Loops
Email Notifications
32. Streamline
complex
processes
Dynamic process linking
• Automate complex multi-
layered processes
• Streamline data collection
across data objects and
business units
• Handle centralized and
decentralized data in one
solution
33
Create new finished good
Plant A
Routing
PIR
BoM
Source list
Plant B
Routing
PIR
BoM
Source list
Plant C
Routing
PIR
BoM
Source list
Create shell
material
Collect plant-
specific data
33. CUSTOMER STORY:
Energy Drink Company
34
CHALLENGE
• Slow, manual processes causing product
launch bottlenecks
• Lack of visibility into launch project status
SOLUTION
• Digitized three launch processes
• Reduced product launch cycle times by 50-75%
• Increased visibility and improved governance
• Achieved repeatable, predictable processes
35. 36
Automate
Evolve
Portals
Secure internet access
for your SAP data
• Create custom portals for
customer, vendor, partner and
employee self-service data
management
• Streamline master data
processes
• Simplified portal development
experience
• Internal portals for Winshuttle
form users
36. 37
Widget-based
design
experience
Simple to create and
deploy
• No-code portal development
• Visual designer
• Drag and drop simplicity
• Connect to workflows
• Enable customized user
experiences
• Collect supporting files
37. Adding
external
portals
Custom web portals
for external (and
internal)
stakeholders
EXAMPLE USE CASES:
• External vendor or customer
portals for managing SAP data
• Internal portals with custom landing
pages
38
SAP ERP
WFM
Deployed
Portal
Portal users
Hosted on
Azure
Automate
Evolve
Private Cloud
or On-Premise
38. Evolve Portals capabilities &
features
39
User Self-service Chat Users manage SAP data
User dashboards Launch workflows Multilingual UI
39. Evolve Portals
Example use cases
Vendors/suppliers
1. Onboarding
2. Change requests
3. Profile management
4. Cost price updates
5. Etc.
Presentation name
40
Customer
1. Onboarding
2. Change requests
3. Profile management
4. Etc.
Distribution/partners/m&a
1. Onboarding
2. Joint Product Launch
3. Wholesale alliance
4. Cost price updates
5. Etc.
41. 42
APIs
Connected SAP data
management and process
automation
• RESTful API’s for automating
end-to-end processes
• Efficiently integrate systems to
processes and eliminate manual
data management
• Connect multiple systems and
cloud services with SAP
• Streamlined master data
processes
42. Set of RESTful APIs for
SAP data & process
automation
SAP Data API
REST API that enables direct
integration with SAP for scenarios that
don’t require data enrichment. Applies
to Studio Manager and Evolve. Easy
Inbox upgrade.
Presentation name
43
Digital Access API
REST based API that enables external
software to kick start or update an
Evolve workflow for users to
contribute data before it is ultimately
posted to SAP.
3rd-party API
support
Connecting to other REST APIs that
enables an Evolve process to connect
to different system of records to read
or update data.
43. Presentation name
Connecting to more systems of record
Use Evolve to manage end-to-end processes
44
Example use cases
• Collecting data from multiple systems
• Multi-system data governance
• Multi-system master data governance
• Complex process automation
SAP ERP
WFM
Data
Process and Data
management
Automate
Evolve
44. Presentation name
Connecting to more systems of record
Third-party RESTful API support
45
SAP ERP
WFM
EnterWorks
Automate Evolve
Generic Protocols
SOAP SQL ODBC
OLEDB ODATA REST
47. Build
solutions
that handle
volume
Excel workflow
• Route Excel workbooks to
collect or change data en
masse.
• Easily switch between Excel
and form-based workflow
processes.
• Create an audit trail in SAP by
attaching documents.
• Re-use Excel workflows for new
automation scenarios.
48
48. Speed through
mass pricing
changes
• Extract existing prices, apply
changes, and upload new prices in
SAP all from within Excel
• Cope with seasonal demand peaks
without adding headcount
• Address a huge volume of updates
in a short timeframe
• Enable automatic backups of
existing data before updating data in
SAP
• Reduce errors and ensure data
quality with real-time validation
against SAP before uploading
49
49. Fast, simple
material
creation and
updates
• Extract existing materials, apply
changes, and upload updated
records in SAP all from within
Excel
• Enable automatic backups of
existing data before updating data
in SAP
• Reduce errors and ensure data
quality with real-time validation
against SAP before uploading
50
51. Accelerate
GL, AR, and
AP processes
• Minimize journal entry errors and
reduce your closing time
• Validate data in real time before
posting to SAP
• Use ‘document splitting’ feature to
upload journal entries with more
than 999 lines
• Safely download real-time SAP
financial data for ad hoc analysis
and custom reports
52
52. Fast,
simple
data
migration
• Extract, manipulate and upload
hundreds of thousands of records
to SAP directly from Excel
• Validate data against SAP before
uploading
• Schedule unattended data
uploads/downloads
• Reduce costs, minimize errors
and meet deadlines
53
53. 54
CHALLENGE
• Change subset of materials from ‘Manufactured’ to
‘Kitted’
• Update BoMs and Routings
• Change sales order to reflect non-kitted materials
SOLUTION
• Used Automate Studio to automate their master
data processes
• Reduced the time it took to complete this
process from 60 to 5 hours per 100 materials
• Saved over $123,000
• Improved quality with minimal business impact
Hours Total Cost Difference
Manual Processes 60 $4,500
Using Automate Studio 5 $375 $4,125 saved
3,000 materials converted in Q4, 2016
Savings = $123,750
RESULTS Per 100 materials
55. Get more
visibility
Process dashboards &
reporting
• Develop dashboards and
reports for process participants
and management with your tool
of choice
• View status of in-process
projects to keep projects on
track
• View historical data to
continuously improve processes
56
56. Make
audits easier
Audit trails for
processes & data
• See at a glance who did
what and when with SAP
• Quickly get to data files
exchanged with SAP
57
57. Track key
metrics over
time
KPI reporting
Out-of-the-box and custom reporting
to track:
• Time and cost savings
• Records processed by transaction
• Process status
• Active users
• Usage by transaction
• Usage by workflow
• Data errors
58
58. Key
Takeaways
Automation is in great
demand by enterprises
today to deliver on the
promise of digital
transformation.
• Citizen development is emerging as an effective
way to relieve some of the burden on IT staffs
• Workflow as part of your process automation
solution improves governance and management of
complex processes
• Flexible interface options – forms or Excel –
enable you to choose the best route to automation
success
• Visibility, reporting and audit trails are as important
as speed and agility for automation success
• Our complete, integrated automation platform
delivers a track record of success
59. “The pace of change
has never been this
fast, but it will never
be this slow again.”
Justin Trudeau
Prime Minister of Canada
61. Let’s continue the
conversation…
Contact us
Set up a 30-minute
personalized demo
+1-877-700-0970
“Get in touch” on
www.precisely.com
www.precisely.com
Demos
White Papers
Case Studies
Note to sales:
This session is a follow up to the sessions yesterday from Tim, Martin and myself covering the overall automation market, and the new SAP Build Process Automation offerings
As Martin mentioned yesterday, there is going to be a recorded deep dive on the SAP Build Process Automation offering coming out in the next few weeks.
There will also be a recorded deep dive on our platform and the updated slide library in the next few weeks too.
Andrew
What are we going to talk about today…
What are we going to talk about today…
Talk track
And CEO’s are acknowledging this need to be more agile and able to quickly respond to changes in the business climate.
From KPMGs 2019 CEO Outlook survey – Ironic that this was 2019 given that when the pandemic hit in 2020, this idea was put to the test.
Talk track
Our software enables you to go faster, be more agile, and improve the quality of your most important data so your business can compete and thrive in today’s digital economy. <click>
Gartner – And growing at 12% CAGR
KPMG
KPMG
ASUG
Gartner
Our research confirms that manufacturers across different market segments are feeling under pressure to move faster.
We recently surveyed over 120 manufacturing launch professionals and discovered that while 75% want to move faster, there are a number of issues that it tough to meet that goal. <click>
The number one issue they faced was slow launch processes, <click> followed by a lack of visibility <click> into launch status and poor data quality
75% of respondents also told us that they expect the number of new products to increase over the next four years, making it even tougher to move faster.
Audience: The primary personas is the BDM, Champion and Business users.
Note to sales:
Use this slide to explain that our platforms can make an impact across their SAP landscape—whether it’s master data or transactional data use cases.
Here is how the new products fit into our landscape.
Desktop Studio, Studio Manager (Server based) , and Evolve (Server based).
Studio Manager contains all the features of Studio desktop.
Evolve has all the features of Studio Desktop and Studio Manager.
Agility to quickly adapt to changes in your business environment through flexible workflow automation
Also – Low code/no code environment enables faster solution development through citizen development
Speed for faster, more efficient processes
Improved initial data quality through elimination of manual data entry and integrated data stewardship capabilities
Visibility throughout a complex process for:
Reporting
Process Intelligence
Process linking - real-time process tracking (Does this get called out separately?)
Audit support
Historical comparison/analysis
Business team focus – Low code/no code environment enables business teams and those closest to a process to develop automation solutions
Automation flexibility - to determine best automation route (attended vs unattended, form or Excel interface, connection to other systems of record through APIs for end-to-end process automation)
Scalability to process almost any amount of SAP data as needed by a process step
Proven track record – Nearly twenty years of SAP ERP process automation success has demonstrated why Evolve is the leading process automation platform/solution for thousands of customers world-wide.
Note to sales:
Our ability of offer a choice of front ends is another key differentiator against both BPA vendors and SAP MDG.
Note to sales:
On this slide we want to highlight that we have a number of design features that enable people without SAP programming skills to quickly build solutions.
Note to sales:
This slide is section header to transition into the discussion about Evolve
Note to sales:
Use this slide to highlight some of the key features of our workflow capabilities and how we can enable customers to dramatically reduce cycle times and improve compliance.
[Note to sales:] This is our “parent/child” capability. We’re not using parent/child as a marketing market-facing term. This is a big differentiator against SAP MDG. This capability is key in automating complex processes like NPI.
Note to sales:
This is a one slide version of the Monster story. The NPI section of the deck has the bigger story. Please watch the webinar on Precisely.com to hear the full story.
Note to sales:
Automate Evolve is built with a modern, intuitive user interface to speed up solution development.
Note to sales:
On this slide we want to highlight that we have a number of design features that enable people without SAP programming skills to quickly build solutions.
Why Portals?
A common request we have received from customers is to extend vendor/customer onboarding scenarios to stakeholders outside the organization. With Evolve Portals, you can build your own supplier self-service and customer self-service portals.
And you will also be able to use this for internal portals, to build specific landing pages for specific groups of users.
This extends Evolve use cases and opens up new opportunities for you to deliver more and better service for your customers and suppliers. External Portal deployment is available as an add-on to Evolve 20.2 and later. Talk to your sales rep about pricing for external portals based on your needs.
You can also develop and deploy portals for internal audiences at no cost.
In our conversations with Gartner, it’s been evident that this is an area that is still largely unsolved for a lot of customers. Companies are left trying piece together their own solutions. With Evolve Portals we are providing the fastest path to a custom portal.
Note to sales:
Our ability of offer a choice of front ends is another key differentiator against both BPA vendors and SAP MDG.
Here are some of the use cases that we planning to address with the initial release of Evolve Portals.
Onboarding, change requests, data updates and more can be accomplished through the portals.
With the 20.2 release of Winshuttle Evolve, the platform now includes a set of RESTful APIs that enable Evolve to manage and automate broader, end-to-end processes by connecting multiple systems and cloud services with SAP.
These API's help solution developers efficiently integrate systems to and processes to eliminate manual data management that often leads to poor data quality and ungoverned process tracking.
For teams creating seamless, end-to-end solutions, Evolve automates business processes that require complex SAP data interactions with other, third-party systems like Salesforce, or that use the ODATA protocol. Traditionally, processes like these required inflexible, custom solutions that do not easily adjust to dynamic business environments. Evolve gives you the agility and flexibility you need to compete and thrive in today's business landscape.
With Evolve 20.2 we are including access to three RESTful API’s that will further enhance your digital transformation and automation efforts. They are:
SAP Data API: REST API that enables direct integration with SAP for scenarios that don’t require data enrichment. It acts as the last-mile into SAP for other applications and combines eliminates the need for RPA bots to screen-scrape the UI to deliver faster, more stable process automation.
Evolve Digital Access API: This RESTful API allows you to seamlessly launch Evolve workflow processes for either human-assisted workflows or completely automated sequences with your SAP ERP system.
Evolve 3rd-party API support: This RESTful API enables Evolve solution developers to easily integrate with other systems of record that have RESTful APIs, such as Salesforce or SAP’s ODATA service. You can query data from these third-party systems into your process or send
This combination of API’s available with Evolve 20.2 delivers a significant benefit to SAP teams looking to be part of larger, more complex digital transformation and automation efforts.
This slide shows how these other system of records may start or update an Evolve workflow (so both Process and Data are involved in this workflow interaction).
Similarly, the workflow may connect with these systems to store or retrieve information as part of the workflow execution.
In fact, we’re increasingly encountering more and more non-SAP systems in our use cases. Even though SAP is still the dominant system of record, there is often a need to also connect to several other systems for complete automation of a use case.
We have a deeply integrated experience when it comes to SAP and we also support a number of generic protocols for connecting to other systems and data sources.
click
Evolve can now support EnterWorks natively as a data source. In addition to that, we will continue to expand the generic protocols we support for connecting to other systems. More specifically, we’re adding support for REST and ODATA APIs which are typically the APIs you’ll find in a lot of cloud-based third-party applications.
click
This will be how Evolve solutions will connect to other SAP products that support ODATA. Depending on the specific third-party system, there may be additional future work required around authentication methods, but we have connectors for S/4HANA as well as Salesforce and we support a variety of authentication methods for connecting with third party systems coming out with this release.
Next slide
None/Anonymous: No authentication.
Basic Authentication : Required User name and password when accessing APIs
Http Headers : Where system key or secret or license key etc are required to send in Request HTTP headers.
SAP Hana Basic: Required User name and password when accessing SAP Hana APIs
Note to sales:
Note to sales:
Note to sales:
Note to sales:
Note to sales:
Talk track:
Here’s an example of one Precisely customer who saved time and money by automating their master data processes.
Dorman are a leading aftermarket automotive supplier who designs, package and market over 150,000 different products. This rapidly growing company has 5 plants and a high level of master data complexity.
IT were originally using LSMW for data uploads, but this technical tool was not suitable for the business so Dorman chose and deployed Precisely.
This particular use case was driven by the need to change the status of a subset of materials from manufactured to kitted. The process involved blocking materials, querying sales orders, cancelling applicable lines in sales orders and then updating the material master, BoMs and routings. Once the necessary changes were made, the revised order lines were added back to the sales orders.
Dorman reduced the time it took to complete this process from 60 to 5 hours per 100 materials, resulting in over 123 thousand dollars in savings, and enabling business to move faster. This approach minimized business disruption and because data was validated at point of entry, Dorman were able to also improve data quality. <click>
Note to sales:
Getting more visibility into these strategic data processes is one of the key reasons customers are looking for an automation solution. If customers are tackling these processes with spreadsheets and email it’s really tough and time consuming to find out where a request is in the process.
Note to sales:
Being able to easily audit who did what with our software and being able to quickly get to the underlying data for audit purposes is key when it comes to strategic data assets like master data. Having this capability saves our customers a lot of time and enables them to easily spot check processes and data.
Note to sales:
Being able to easily audit who did what with our software and being able to quickly get to the underlying data for audit purposes is key when it comes to strategic data assets like master data. Having this capability saves our customers a lot of time and enables them to easily spot check processes and data.
Questions?
Can you also do Vendor and Customer masters too?
I’m on S4 Hana will this work with my system?
I have custom fields in my material master, does this work for those?
We often have fields that the business is missing can you make them require even if SAP doesn’t require them?
We would love to speak to you in more detail about your product data processes and how we can help you make an impact to your business , so please feel free to reach out to us.