SAP Sales Order Processing and Sales Order Automation

The problem of manual processing of sales orders.

He sales order processing The workflow is an integral part of the collection order process. In most medium to large B2B companies, inside sales reps still manually enter/create sales orders. This is the case even for large organizations that use SAP such as your system of record (ERP) and process large volumes of orders.

Sales representatives at these organizations receive purchase orders with unstructured data sent by buyers via email, fax, or telephone. They then analyze this data to create sales order requisitions or sales orders in SAP for each one manually. This manual method of processing sales orders is extremely inefficient, error-prone, and time-consuming.

In this article we will explore an ideal workflow for SAP Sales Order Automationdiscuss some key challenges and propose an alternative solution to automate sales orders in SAP using Nanonets.

Key takeaways

Looking to automate your manual sales order processing workflows in SAP? Discover how nanonetworks can help your sales teams avoid manual data entry and focus on delivering value to customers.

Automation of sales order processing in SAP

SAP offers a solution that combines RPA (5LT bot) and ML-based data extraction (Application ID F4920) to automate the end-to-end sales order creation workflow:

1. Automate the import of purchase orders into SAP with the 5LT robot

• Details of incoming orders and/or purchase orders are primarily shared via email. He 5LT robot continually scans the subject lines of unread emails for specific or relevant keywords that indicate an incoming order.
• The bot then downloads the order or purchase order file attached from the particular email and uploads it to SAP S/4HANA Cloud.

2. Analyze purchase orders with the Create Sales Orders – Automatic Pull Application (F4920) and create a sales order request

• For each new purchase order, Create Sales Orders – Automatic Extraction The application in SAP S/4HANA Cloud then creates a new Sales Order Request, triggers data extraction, and attaches the purchase order (PDF or image) in the SOR (Sales Order Request).
  • The system flags missing details that prevent automatic creation of SOR, which can then be added or validated manually.
  • He 5LT robot enters the details related to the created SORs into an Excel file and saves it locally.

3. Automate the creation of sales orders from validated SORs with the 5LT bot

• He 5LT robot Retrieves sales order requisition numbers and performs data validations to verify data completeness. If necessary, perform a master data match to update the SOR.
• The bot then uses the Excel file created in the previous step to convert all validated SORs into new sales orders in SAP S/4HANA Cloud.
• Finally, the bot sends an email to all interested parties with a status report and related attachments.

Challenges in SAP’s native sales order automation solution

While the solution mentioned above works, it has its fair share of challenges. After speaking to a group of companies using the SAP ecosystem and getting insights from SAP power users on Reddit, here are some of the concerns users face when setting up SAP sales order automation workflows , as shown above.

Incomplete import of order data from emails

Order data sent as emails or purchase orders is often unstructured and even complex in some cases. And the RPA robot may not always capture these details accurately.

• In addition to attached purchase orders, vital order details are often shared in the email body or even in the email subject line.

Inconsistent customer data that does not match seller data

Getting customers to share consistent and accurate information in purchase orders or emails is a challenge. And this often hinders the data extraction process and sales order creation workflow.

• Matching customer IDs to appropriate material/item IDs is a common challenge; For example, customers will send you an order for item XYZ but in your system the item is recorded as item ABC.
• The same goes for pricing details, delivery dates, and other vital order details that don’t match in the seller’s and buyer’s ERPs.
• Neither automated data extraction nor SAP bot can help 100% in this scenario and manual intervention is inevitable.

Prices and lack of experience

The pricing network for this SAP technology can be prohibitive for some companies and quite complicated to configure and maintain.

• Cost is a huge factor here and pricing details are often opaque, complex or simply not accessible unless you speak to a consultant or sales executive. If it’s cheaper to hire N people to do it manually than to pay for a license, automation would definitely be out of the picture.
• Companies often lack internal resources to regularly maintain the SAP technology stack. While there are many SAP consultants on the market, the cost and lack of direct visibility and control can be a concern.

SAP Sales Order Automation Using Nanonets

While SAP’s technology stack for automating sales order processing is robust, ideal, and widely used by companies in the SAP ecosystem, it has some clear drawbacks that we covered in the previous section. Now we will see how a workflow involving Nanonets can optimize the challenges mentioned above in the SAP sales order automation process.

Nanonets is an intelligent automation ai for all business processes that can automate complex business processes and extract useful insights from unstructured data from multiple sources. Below is a case study on how SaltPay uses Nanonets to integrate with SAP to manage supplier invoices.

Nanogrids can fit seamlessly into your existing SAP setup to automate end-to-end sales order processing. Most importantly, the pricing of Nanonets is quite simple and transparent. And it’s much easier to set up and maintain workflows in Nanonets.

This is what an ideal SAP sales order automation workflow powered by Nanonets would look like:

1. Accurately import and capture ALL order data from customer emails

Collect/forward all incoming emails to a dedicated Nanonets inbox. The ai ​​can then extract all relevant order data from email bodies, subjects, sender information, attachments or signatures.

Setting up email imports is pretty easy with Nanonets. Simply select the appropriate data extractor model (PO extractor) and configure the import workflow using the workflow builder.

2. Validate and approve the extracted/captured order data.

Nanonets ai can compare order data, such as customer ID, SKUs, quantity, address, delivery details, etc., with master data to detect inconsistencies that need to be reviewed.

Nanonetworks can obtain master data from SAP through API connectors, compare the data, and flag inconsistencies for review. Alternatively, ai can perform fuzzy matching to directly choose the best match from the master data. If your master data resides in an external database or Excel sheet, this process is even easier with Nanonets.

You can also set up rule-based approval workflows based on order value, customers, or any other logic.

3. Send the sales order to SAP

The data validated in the previous step can then be published or sent via Nanonets to SAP S/4HANA Cloud via API. Nanonets can also attach supporting documents to the OS in SAP for reference.

Nanonets can create sales order requests or create sales orders directly.