Intelligent document processing is a particularly exciting area. It offers enormous potential for automating document-based business processes and significantly increasing efficiency.
A practical example of this is the automation of sales order creation. With modern apps in SAP S/4HANA Public Cloud, orders can be entered almost automatically, missing information can be added intelligently and, if necessary, reworked manually. This creates a flexible, smart process that adapts to the circumstances.
Automated instead of manual
Every day, dozens to hundreds of customer orders arrive in the inbox by email. Some in PDF format, others as image files - and each document needs to be carefully checked and the information manually entered into the system.
While the sales staff are busy typing in order numbers, comparing article numbers and following up on missing details, there is hardly any time left for the actual core task: providing the best possible customer service.
What's more, manual data entry is prone to errors. Transposed numbers, incomplete entries or incorrectly assigned data can bring the supply chain to a standstill and, in the worst case, jeopardize customer relationships.
This is where AI comes into play. With intelligent automation in SAP S/4HANA Public Cloud, incoming orders can now be processed almost completely automatically - faster, more securely and more efficiently than ever before.
The capabilities of AI go far beyond order entry: in principle, any type of document such as invoices, order confirmations or delivery bills can be processed automatically. In this blog post, we will focus on the automation of sales order creation as an example.
Automatic order system
With the Fiori app "Create customer orders - automatic extraction", companies can upload incoming orders in various formats - such as PDF, JPEG, TIFF or PNG. The process works as follows:
- Extraction of order data
The uploaded documents are transferred to the Document Information Extraction Service on the SAP Business Technology Platform (BTP). There, an AI service analyzes the content using OCR technology and Generative AI. The recognized fields are displayed in a clear file view. - Completeness check
The system automatically checks whether all the information required for order creation is available. - Creation of the sales order
If all the data is available and plausible, the sales order can be created automatically in the SAP system.
Robotic Process Automation (RPA) can be integrated for further optimization: A bot searches the email inbox for orders, extracts the attachments and triggers the automated upload to SAP S/4HANA. Successful and incorrect uploads are documented transparently and reported to the responsible employees.
Recommendations for completing customer orders
If individual data fields are missing, the system offers an AI-supported completion function:
Via the Fiori app "Monitor sales document completion", incomplete orders are identified and intelligent recommendations for completion are displayed.
For example, the AI suggests values for:
- Order header: sales office, salesperson group, payment and delivery terms
- Order lines: Plant and shipping point
The suggestions are based on historical order data and are checked and accepted by employees. This significantly reduces processing time and improves the quality of the order data.
Success factor: Continuous training of AI models
To ensure that the AI always delivers reliable results, regular training of the machine learning model is required.
The "Intelligent Scenario Management" app can be used to schedule the training and this training should ideally be based on at least 1,000 customer order lines. The training data can be further optimized by setting specific filters.
Periodically scheduled re-training can ensure that seasonal fluctuations or changes in the business environment are taken into account.
Summary
Artificial intelligence offers enormous opportunities for optimizing business processes - and has long been a reality in the SAP environment. Tools such as automatic document extraction and AI-supported recommendations can already be used productively today and deliver real benefits.
The key lies in recognizing the available opportunities, actively engaging with the technologies and consistently training the AI models.
To make getting started with S/4HANA Cloud Business AI as easy and successful as possible, we recommend working with experienced partners such as CONSILIO.
With comprehensive SAP and AI expertise, we support companies on their way to intelligent document processing - step by step and always with an eye on practical added value.
