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Customer Problem Definition
Currently, the supplier registration process supports the upload documents, such as PDF, Word, etc., which are kept in the different questionnaires as attachments which must then be processed manually to obtain the required information, thus opening the possibility of introducing errors, increasing the supplier registration time and requiring a person to manually review the content to approve it or ask the supplier to correct the information.
Customer Value Proposition
Have an automated workflow that processes the information in attached documents to:
- Validate that the information is as required; if not, automatically request the supplier to correct it.
- Extract information from documents to enrich it and update internal forms.
In a previous article, I mentioned how to extend this same process but with AI capabilities. Take a look if you missed it Extending SLP functionalities with SAP BTP and Art... - SAP Community
Solution Architecture Design
On the Ariba side, we will extract and write the information via APIs. This extraction will be done via SAP Build Process Automation, which is a BTP service and already has OCR for our purposes.
Solution Business Process Design
As you can see in the proposed design, the starting point is based on the tasks generated by the supplier registration flow, which gives us the ability to efficiently process new requests and questionnaire updates.
SAP Ariba Supplier Registration Process Design
On the other hand, once the supplier has completed the required information, the automation can be responsible for validating that the information provided is correct. If it is not, it can request its correction. If all the information is correct, it can auto-approve the process and/or leave it in a final state where a person can make the final approval decision.
SAP Build Process Automation Document Information Extraction Process Design
At SAP Build Process Automation there are two options to perform the OCR with different capabilities each one
Results & Conclusions
The following is an example of the standard legal document uploaded to the supplier registration questionnaire, extracted via API by BTP, processed by applying OCR and writing the desired fields in an internal questionnaire of the supplier registration project in SAP Ariba.
On the SAP Ariba side, we can validate that the approval nodes are auto-rejected to request information correction and/or auto-approved if the information provided is correct.
More Information About:
APIs
Blog - Consume Ariba APIs using Postman
SAP Build Process Automation
