Digital Transformation

1. ERP Embracing RPA and Becoming Eco-friendly
Much of the finance and accounting automation is tied to ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning)
applications such as Oracle and SAP. These applications transform only the core processes and always
require human efforts, paper work and clerical activities. That kind of tasks are laborious and error
prone. The employees need to spend more time to collect the information to feed into the transactional
systems. So, the ERP implementations are not fully automatable.
There are ways to fully automate the existing rot processes in this digital world. This is part of digital
transformation, the RPA (Robotic Process Automation) or automation. These are digital workforce for
both front and back office automation. It is a task to train digital robots to execute processes using same

2. process steps, business rules and systems that a person does today. It requires structured digital data,
same type of data used in the ERP applications. Front office robot share the same workstation/desktop
with a human agent while back office robot can run in batch mode, in virtual environments such as
VMware. The employee has direct control over the robot; when and where it is used.
Compared to all other software applications RPA has its own specific features:
It can handle any process works at GUI level
No need to change the existing process, automate current process
No change to systems – No data level (API) interfaces required
Faster and lower cost to deploy and maintain; day/weeks vs. months/years
Enterprise-ready security, control, auditability, analytics, scalability and reporting
RPA can reduce the repetitive tasks and FTE in finance functions such as order to cash, procure to pay,
record to report, human capital management and management reporting. Many organizations already
use some form of robotic process automation in the areas of O2C, P2P, R2R and HCM.
How automation can improve transactional systems or ERP applications processes? For example: the
accounts payable process in SAP. The accounts payable department has to deal with large volume of
documents from purchase order generation to invoice receipt and approval. Usually the supplier will
send an invoice to the company that had received goods or services on credit. The invoice can arrive via
e-mail, post mail, or fax. Once the invoice is received the AP team will verify and categorize the invoices
to obtain approval. After the invoice is verified and approved, the amount will be credited to the
company’s accounts payable account.
SAP Accounts Payable application will automate the primary processes starting from vendor master
creation, invoice review, invoice verification, process invoice for payment, reconciliation, periodic
processing and reporting. However, there are several steps required to get the information into the
system. This requires support team engagement, mainly for invoice indexing, sorting and invoice
posting.
The indispensable areas where robots can support in these swivel chair processes are:
1. Invoice Capturing - Invoices are coming from multiple channels and often it’s coming in a paper
format or via e-mail with a PDF attachment. Organizations can apply Optical Character

3. Recognition (OCR) technology to automate the capture of invoices from multiple channels and
they can process these invoices in high volumes.
2. Workflow – for invoice management and matching. This involves automation of highly
repetitive labor intensive processes for escalation and for approval.
3. Analytics and reporting – This helps to generate reports to get insight into the status of invoices
such as how long does it take to process an invoice, to look at invoice volumes, looking at the
throughput and how long does it take to process an invoice from initial capture to payment etc.
Robots can perform several structured and rule based tasks before feeding data into the system
and within the SAP system. What are they?
1. Sort the captured images
2. Reads the invoice image
3. Logs into the required system
4. Enter the invoice data into the SAP system
5. Perform validation
6. Decide whether to post, park or block the invoice.
7. Robots can follow the entire process flow and communicating with all the systems involved.
There is no conflict of security, governance and compliance. RPA operates within all existing security
controls and access restrictions.
Thus, with the help of bots SAP accounts payable can be completely automated or a paper free process.
It reduces costs and improve efficiencies. Accounts payable department can be re-deployed the
employees to higher-value areas such as improve customer relations and perform analytical activities.