The Emerging Importance of SAP® as the Digital Center for End-to-End Process Automation

Editor's Notes

• #3: Andrew
• #7: What are we going to talk about today… Agenda: (Note to sales: You will likely modify this to fit your specific customer meeting needs)
• #9: [General finance and accounting audiences - Can be used to intro your audience specific impact slide] As enterprises become more and more reliant on data and the volume of data we use to manage our businesses grows exponentially, it is more important than ever for companies to be able to react and move quickly. And CEO’s are acknowledging this need to be more agile and able to quickly respond to changes in the business climate.
• #10: Story points --- Businesses rely on trusted data to make good business decisions.  Key business initiatives in 2022 revolve around transforming customer experiences, applying AI to proven business cases to derive new insights and increase efficiency, leveraging the power of location to solve new problems (optional light call out to covid-19 problems being solved), and ensuring that the business is secure and compliant. Each of these initiatives is heavily dependent upon integrated, clean, accurate, contextualized, enriched data in order to deliver the maximum benefit to the organization.  (Transition to next slide showing stats on data challenges.)
• #13: [This slide can be used and adapted for many different scenarios to explain where Precisely Automate fits into a customer landscape.]
• #14: [This slide can be used and adapted for many different scenarios to explain where Precisely Automate fits into a customer landscape.]
• #24: 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.
• #25: Note to sales: Use this slide to introduce at a high level the features that make Evolve unique. You do not need to go through each one. For deeper conversations and follow-up meetings there is content around many of these features in the Evolve slide library.
• #26: 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.
• #27: I would like to share with you Monster Energy's process transformation story.
• #28: This Energy Drinks was using spreadsheets and emails to track their product launches (They call it NPW – New Product Worksheet).  Their process even required project managers of new products to invest hours each day tracking down status to report back to meetings and management – just another task that was eating up time.  In their words it was “organized chaos”. <click>
• #29: Then the energy drinks company entered into a partnership with a major global soft drinks company. This gave the energy drinks company access to aspects of their global distribution network <click> and dramatically increasing the number of new product launches (it quadrupled the number of open projects). Their current manual process simply couldn’t scale… <click> [Notes: To be clear the soft drinks company doesn’t own the energy drinks company, however they do have a 17% stake in the company] and getting the data into SAP for all the global sites soon became the bottleneck holding Monster back. So, let me share with you a little about the Energy Drinks company’s transformation journey. <click>
• #30: First, we mapped out their existing process – something they had never done before – and there were some real aha moments here. This is where Precisely’s professional services team really began to shine – by looking beyond just the tools. Like any good process transformation project, we reviewed the people, process and technology.  This was the beginning of the true Transformation that included automation, process redesign and organizational changes needed to allow the Energy Drinks company to move at a faster pace.   <click>
• #31: One of the key learnings from the workshops was that there are many different product launch types … and the Energy Drinks company was faced with examples of almost all of them.
• #32: Out of the process workshop we identified 3 different business solutions, Point-of-Sale Materials (these are salable materials for items like T-shirts, hats and stickers – Note that Merchandise is a big part of the Energy Drinks company revenue stream), Raw materials (ingredients) and the product manufacturing process – the overall process needed to launch a new product.  The product production solution includes more than 8 SAP product data objects, and our modular architecture allows you to dynamically link the sub processes needed for each specific launch, even calling the independent raw material process if needed. It was obvious that the Energy Drinks company needed to help immediately <click>
• #33: [David] Highlevel overview – our solution can handle a lot of complexity and being able to process projects independently of plant was huge for the Energy Drinks company… Total steps = 23
• #34: At the first pass they have already reduced their product launch cycle times by 50-75% depending on launch type. They now have tools and controls in place that easily allows them to collect the right data at the right time from the right people. <click> They have the visibility they need to effectively manage their product launches, <click>and the governance in place to allow business teams to take true ownership of “their” data. <click>This gives the Energy Drinks company trust in a repeatable process that allows them to bring new products to market faster than ever before! <click>
• #37: Note to sales: Automate Evolve is built with a modern, intuitive user interface to speed up solution development.
• #38: 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.
• #39: 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.
• #40: Note to sales: Our ability of offer a choice of front ends is another key differentiator against both BPA vendors and SAP MDG.
• #41: 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.
• #42: Let’s walk through an example use case of how Evolve Portals would work. We consider this an example of “Permission-driven” portal access, meaning that an internal employee will trigger portal registration/on-boarding process for the vendor who is going to be accessing the vendor portal. Employee creates a request to onboard a vendor​ Vendor receives an email with link to a sign up for the portal and register​ Vendor registers on the portal, sets password and logs in to the portal A task is assigned to the Vendor to provide other requested information on the form.  Request is sent to the internal employee to approve the vendor​ If all details are correct, vendor is approved and created in SAP​ At every step of the process, Vendor can be notified about the process details via an email notification. To recap, the solution developer uses the Evolve Portal Builder to create this portal, and it is very easy for the solution developer to create and customize such a portal with the widgets you want.
• #43: 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.
• #44: 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.
• #45: SAP Data API RESTful 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. The SAP Data API enables direct and differentiated integration, via the Winshuttle Function Module, with SAP ERP systems for loading data into SAP and has scalable runtime performance. It is an add-on to Studio Manager and Evolve and activated by a license key. Easy inbox upgrade This API is commonly applied to these types of direct SAP integration RPA Bots Partners software integration like Abbyy Or third party applications that need to get data easily in and out of your SAP ERP system with enormous flexibility offered by the ease of leveraging studio scripts..
• #46: The Digital Access API allows you to seamlessly launch Evolve workflow processes for either human-assisted workflows or completely automated sequences with your SAP ERP system. For human-assisted workflows, you use a web form leveraging all of the functionality in Evolve.  This slide shows how other system of records use the Digital Access API to 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.
• #47: The Digital Access API is an asynchronous API that scales in terms of the amount of data managed and the frequency of process triggering. Doing this enables an external application to kick start or update an Evolve workflow before its data is ultimately posted to SAP. Using this API, you can also get and act on user assignments allowing you to show Evolve tasks on a UI other than Evolve.
• #48: 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 data from your process to third-party systems depending on your use case.   It can also be used in conjunction with the Digital Access API to manage and govern data using Evolve through complex process workflows to support broader digital transformation initiatives.
• #49: 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.
• #50: 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
• #51: Benefits of Machine Learning Improved data entry and decision-making process through recommendations Improved data quality through ML-based checks Create rules that are not possible without ML Reduced effort and complexity to implement and update hard-coded rules Reduced time to determine business rules Reduced time to value in solution development
• #52: 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.
• #53: What are we going to talk about today… Agenda: (Note to sales: You will likely modify this to fit your specific customer meeting needs)
• #54: What are we going to talk about today… Agenda: (Note to sales: You will likely modify this to fit your specific customer meeting needs)
• #57: 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.