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In December of 2020 we had a Hackathon with SAP partners that was focused on using SAP Intelligent RPA with SAP Ariba. You can view the summary of that Hackathon in this blogpost from the Co-Innovation Lab. This Hackathon challenged partners to design and develop a use case for automation with Ariba. I have been writing a series of spotlights for the use cases presented in that Hackathon, you can find links to the other blogposts at the bottom of this post.
In our sixth post we will spotlight the use case from HCL. They developed a bot that can migrate open purchase orders from an existing ERP into Ariba. Currently Ariba has a utility to migrate existing requisitions to Ariba from an existing ERP, but it does not have a utility for open PO. Traditionally, this could be overcome by applying the open PO data to the requisition import template for Ariba, and then approve the requisitions to make them POs. However, this approach will lose the original PO number and will not allow the supplier to reference the original PO number.
By creating a bot that addresses this the team is able to reduce manual work while also improving the outcome of the process by maintaining the original PO number. In the process flow below, you can see how HCL planned their bot development. One piece to note is the HCL Accelerator that they include, this is a great example of how flexible Intelligent RPA is and how it can allow you to leverage existing internal programs and allow you to expand their capabilities.
With this automation a company is now able to remove a potential barrier from an ERP migration project, and reduce the amount of rework that may be required if the POs were not transferred with the existing PO number.
Intelligent RPA includes a variety of prebuilt activities for Excel, and in this project the team from HCL used those activities in order to match requisition number and PO number. This matching then allows the bot to comment on the new record in Ariba and include the legacy PO number. You can learn more about the Excel activities and the best practices here in the SAP Help Guide.
By using this bot, a team that is doing a migration can ensure that the transition is smooth. Once the bot is run and has transferred the PO the team can move forward with using Ariba without needing to reference the old system.
Have a great day and happy bot building!
–Max McPhee
This is the sixth use case spotlight in the series, you can check out the first four posts in the links below:
In December of 2020 we had a Hackathon with SAP partners that was focused on using SAP Intelligent RPA with SAP Ariba. You can view the summary of that Hackathon in this blogpost from the Co-Innovation Lab. This Hackathon challenged partners to design and develop a use case for automation with Ariba. I have been writing a series of spotlights for the use cases presented in that Hackathon, you can find links to the other blogposts at the bottom of this post.
In our sixth post we will spotlight the use case from HCL. They developed a bot that can migrate open purchase orders from an existing ERP into Ariba. Currently Ariba has a utility to migrate existing requisitions to Ariba from an existing ERP, but it does not have a utility for open PO. Traditionally, this could be overcome by applying the open PO data to the requisition import template for Ariba, and then approve the requisitions to make them POs. However, this approach will lose the original PO number and will not allow the supplier to reference the original PO number.
By creating a bot that addresses this the team is able to reduce manual work while also improving the outcome of the process by maintaining the original PO number. In the process flow below, you can see how HCL planned their bot development. One piece to note is the HCL Accelerator that they include, this is a great example of how flexible Intelligent RPA is and how it can allow you to leverage existing internal programs and allow you to expand their capabilities.
With this automation a company is now able to remove a potential barrier from an ERP migration project, and reduce the amount of rework that may be required if the POs were not transferred with the existing PO number.
Intelligent RPA includes a variety of prebuilt activities for Excel, and in this project the team from HCL used those activities in order to match requisition number and PO number. This matching then allows the bot to comment on the new record in Ariba and include the legacy PO number. You can learn more about the Excel activities and the best practices here in the SAP Help Guide.
By using this bot, a team that is doing a migration can ensure that the transition is smooth. Once the bot is run and has transferred the PO the team can move forward with using Ariba without needing to reference the old system.
Have a great day and happy bot building!
–Max McPhee
More Information
This is the sixth use case spotlight in the series, you can check out the first four posts in the links below:
SAP Intelligent RPA and Ariba: Contract Workspace Automation
SAP Intelligent RPA and Ariba: Requisition Creation Automation with Chatbot
SAP Intelligent RPA and Ariba: Automate Non-PO Invoicing
SAP Intelligent RPA and Ariba: Catalog Item Check
SAP Intelligent RPA and Ariba: Content Localization
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