SAP Intelligent Robotic Process Automation (RPA): A Quick Glance

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RPA Stands for Robotic Process Automation, its the tool that comes on top of mind of any Enterprise when it comes to automation. So, SAP has come with its own RPA Tool called SAP Intelligent RPA. It was introduced in SAP TechEd 2018, it is released to market already and there will be lot of sessions, demos and panel discussions around it in May in SAPPHIRE NOW. So, get ready and let me give you a glimpse of this amazing offering.

The offering is really interesting, it enables users to do intelligent process automation. There is no limitation, can work anywhere on SAP applications or any third party offering. In short, whatever you currently see on your screen can be automated. So any redundant task that follows particular steps can be scripted & automated. It's just like, record what you want to do once & then let RPA do all your repetitive time consuming boring task, while you relax.

Modes of Operation

So how it works, currently it has 2 modes, Attended Mode & Unattended Mode. Which are based on the type of trigger used for there execution.

Attended Mode

As it suggests there can be some task that requires Human intervention. So these automation scripts are triggered by users. The developer provides a User Interface where the user can choose or select different scripts for different scenarios.

Unattended Mode

As the name suggests doesn't require any human intervention. These are condition triggered automation scripts. The developer set conditions for different automation scripts which are executed once the trigger condition is met in any programmed scenario.

Architecture

The architecture consists of 3 components Developer, Cloud, User. Developer codes the script which is then sent on Cloud & can be accessed by the User. So currently SAP is providing an IDE (Íntegrated development environment), which can be installed on the desktop, developer codes the script (attended/un-attended) which finally generates a ZIP file. This ZIP file is then uploaded on SAP Cloud Platform on SAP Intelligent RPA App. Once uploaded can be accessed from anywhere, just need to be connected to the cloud.

Pricing

So, it's a subscription-based offering. So every time a script is executed its called a "transaction". So you can subscribe to the number of transaction you think, you will need on a monthly basis. These transactions are to be used within that subscription month & are not carried forward to the next month. So, have to choose wisely considering your average & peak time usage.

Conclusion

It's a really good tool, with things like SAP integration, Machine Learning capabilities really have unlimited possibilities.

Reference : Enablement Session : SAP Intelligent RPA, 18 April 2019, 11:00 (EDT)