AI&ML Managed Email-to-order Automation & Response Service - End to End

[Jit]

A wealth of literature has explored the impact of SAP Business Artificial Intelligence (AI) on SAP RISE customers, emphasizing its benefits. Notable contributions can be found in the thought-provoking blogs authored by experts like Dr. @philipp_herzig  and @Mrinal_Chanda, shedding light on the transformative potential of AI in enhancing business operations.  

In this article, we will explore how SAP’s Artificial Intelligence  (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) driven automation can seamlessly integrate into an end-to-end sales order management process, potentially being offered as a managed service.  In this article, I have adopted the perspective of having this end-to-end service offered as a managed service, which allows businesses to tackle crucial questions: How effectively can SAP RISE customers harness the capabilities of SAP Business AI to drive innovation and efficiency without incurring excessive costs? Additionally, how many organizations have the necessary resources (skill set), knowledge, and strategic vision to leverage AI’s transformative potential without financial strain?

The proposed managed service can combine SAP’s AI and ML capabilities with MS Exchange email and the SAP S/4HANA system and, this technical integration is then woven into the fabric of the entire business operation. By doing so, businesses can not only free up crucial resources but also eliminate errors, optimize processes, boost operational efficiency and reduce the cost of sales significantly. Such strategic integration contributes directly to improved business outcomes, strengthens competitive advantage, and enables organizations to focus more on growth and innovation, ultimately driving substantial business value in today’s highly competitive landscape.

Key Challenges in Sales Order Management

Today, as companies strive to manage the intricacies of sales order processing, they face a multitude of challenges that impede operational efficiency, hindering progress with partial automation, and affect customer satisfaction. The key prevalent issues encountered across industries in sales order management include:

• Untimely order status updates:
  • Inconsistent and delayed updates on the status of orders
  • Lack of communication channels for informing customers in real-time about order progress, resulting in customer dissatisfaction and uncertainty
    
    
• High attrition of Staff and Lack of Succession Handover process
  • Continual turnover of staff managing sales orders, resulting in knowledge gaps and disruptions in workflow
  • Lack of structured succession planning and handover processes leading to ill-trained resource handling critical order management tasks
    
    
• Data entry errors resulting in incomplete and inaccurate order information:
  • Manual data entry leads to inaccuracies, omissions, or duplication in the order of information
  • Lack of data validation checks and quality control measures contributing to incorrect order details and service disruptions
    
    
• Errors and delays in order processing resulting in dissatisfied customers and missed sales opportunities:
  • Manual errors in order entry, processing, or fulfilment leading to inaccurate or incomplete orders
  • Delays in processing orders affect customer satisfaction levels and potentially result in lost sales opportunities
    
    
• Sales staff absorbed in administrative routine order creation activities adding little value to customer service:
  • Diversion of sales resources towards sales administrative tasks limiting their ability to provide personalized service and drive sales growth
  • Sales personnel spend significant time on manual order creation tasks rather than focusing on customer relationship-building
    
    
• Partial automation adoption:
  • Despite adopting automation solutions, the sales force is still engaged in performing partial administrative tasks within the sales order processing workflow
  • Manually handling the customer order forms, downloading the forms from emails and saving them in shared folders for future processing
  • Manually uploading them into SAP to initiate the auto-order creation process
  • Channels of communication to customers are dependent on the sales staff to action the email response
    
    
• Lack of an integrated End-to-End Automated Business Process:
  • Absence of a seamless automated workflow for order processing from initiation to fulfilment
  • Handoffs between departments lead to inefficiencies, errors and breakdowns in communication
    
    
• Timely update of New/Updated Order Control in the Process:
  • Challenges in implementing and updating order controls and compliance measures
  • Delays in incorporating companies' new regulations, and control checks into the order processing system, impact accuracy and compliance
    
    

Service Optimization for Sales Order Processing

The proposed AI&ML Managed Email-to-Order Automation and Response Service optimizes the sales order processing through:

• Streamlining the Order Creation Process:
• Automatically scanning MS Exchange emails or Google emails
• Parsing free-form text content or various attachments, including PDFs, JPEGs, and TIFFs, to identify order creation requests
  
  
• Seamless and Continuous Operation:
• Performing online real-time validations against master data to ensure accuracy and efficiency
• Verifying customer eligibility and cross-checking stock within the S/4HANA system
• Automatically triggering internal sales representatives for any necessary follow-up with customers
  
  
• Efficient Order Generation:
• Generating new orders in S/4HANA upon verification
• Delivering meticulously crafted email responses using advanced Large Language Models (LLMs) to enhance customer experience

Advanced AI Capabilities:

• Leveraging SAP Business AI:
• Utilizing AI, machine learning (ML), and large language models (LLMs) within SAP’s Generative AI Hub housed in the SAP AI Core
  
  
• Centralized Business Rule Framework:
• Customizable by users to apply tailored rules aligned with company-specific requirements, ensuring accurate and prompt communication with customers

Global reach:

• Multilingual Support:
• Available in multiple languages, catering to diverse audiences and enabling seamless communication across international markets

How will the proposed AI&ML AI&ML-managed email-to-order Automation and Response managed service work?

Figure 1 AI&ML Managed Email-to-Order Automation & Response Service - Conceptual Overview

1. SAP RISE customer receives a new order request from their customer via MS Exchange Email:

Order Request Submission:

• Customers submit order requests via MS Exchange Email, either as attachments or within the email body, including order inquiries like delivery status, product or quantity changes, or delivery date alterations with a specific sales order number for reference.

1. Upon verification and validation, the service delivers meticulously crafted email responses to the initial order request email, using advanced Large Language Models (LLMs) to enhance customer experience.

During the online validation of master data with S/4HANA, any errors, discrepancies, or inconsistencies identified will trigger the system to generate an email notification.  This email will be sent to the internal customer sales representative for further action.  The nature of these subsequent actions can be customized and defined based on the specific requirements and guidelines set forth by the customer, ensuring that resolution processes align closely with their operational preferences and needs.

Any updates made to master data in S/4HANA, such as adjustments to the credit limit, assignment of product succession, or product availability changes, are factored into the online validation process. As part of this validation, customers will receive timely notifications via email to inform them of these updates and changes. This proactive communication ensures that customers are informed of any alterations to their account details, or product availability in real-time.

1. Online real-time master data validation is conducted by the service to identify any discrepancies, inconsistencies, or incorrect attachment types. In the event of such issues, an email is automatically generated and dispatched to an internal customer sales representative for immediate follow-up and resolution. On the flip side, for cases where no errors or discrepancies are detected, the service seamlessly generates new sales orders in S/4HANA, complete with an email response to the customer containing essential details e.g. S/4HANA Sales order number and the original customer Purchase Order number. This ensures a clear reference link back to the original request, streamlining the order fulfilment process.

1. The sales order master data within S/4HANA, encompassing vital details like business partner information and item/product numbers, has undergone rigorous validation processes to uphold accuracy and consistency.  Each order is meticulously created with the correct sales order type, precisely aligning with the unique business rules specified by the customer. This meticulous validation ensures that every facet of the sales order adheres to established guidelines, significantly boosting order accuracy and enhancing overall customer satisfaction.

Order inquires, updates, and changes

Customers can request changes, cancellations, updates, and more via email. The intelligent service efficiently parses and interprets email content, automatically taking action based on the customer’s requests. This streamlined process ensures swift handling of inquiries, improving service delivery and satisfaction. All change requests receive an email acknowledgment, and once changes are made in S/4HANA, a confirmation email is sent.

Service Architecture Overview

Figure 2 AI&ML powered sales order business service – Service Architecture Overview

The AI&ML Managed Email-to-Order Automation and Response Service is an amalgamation of SAP AI Services that helps the customer address the question “How can I connect AI and machine learning capabilities into my day-to-day processes to achieve actual business outcomes?”.

The SAP’s generative AI hub as part of the SAP AI Core has intelligent applications that provide generic machine learning capabilities which can be applied to several business processes. The AI&ML Managed Email-to-Order Automation and Response Service relies on the integrated architecture of separate services on the SAP Business Technology Platform, in which each service is responsible for a different task.   

The SAP Business Technology Platform  Integration Suite is the primary system for orchestrating the process of integrating different systems e.g. S/4HANA and connecting to the necessary services. With the out-of-box adapters scan for incoming email attachments and email content on the company’s mail server and make them available for processing.

The AI&ML Managed Email-to-Order Automation and Response Service is composed of multiple services that have been integrated from an end-to-end service perspective, including SAP AI business services e.g. DOX Service, Cloud Integration, Integration Suite (business rules) and Workflow.

Service Monitoring

The proposed AI&ML Managed Email-to-Order Automation and Response Service includes comprehensive service monitoring tasks to guarantee continuous service uptime. As a proposed managed service, it ensures effective and efficient monitoring, allowing business users to focus on core operations. Benefits include:

• Identification and Resolution:
  • Addressing critical SAP AI business services and integration issues - reactive
• Insights Provision:
  • Providing valuable insights to customer application support teams through SAP root cause analysis
• Enhanced Stability and Performance:
  • Improving solutions and business processes' stability and performance
• Incident Reduction:
  • Reducing incident volume

Conclusion

The AI&ML Managed Email-to-Order Automation and Response Service manage service will revolutionize sales order management by integrating SAP's AI and ML technologies with MS Exchange email and SAP S/4HANA. This managed service tackles key challenges such as untimely order updates, high staff attrition, data entry errors, and partial automation.

By adopting this managed service, SAP RISE customers can harness AI-driven innovation, reduce operational costs, and focus on strategic growth. This integration optimizes business operations, enhances efficiency, improves customer satisfaction, and strengthens competitive advantage, driving substantial business value in a competitive landscape.