Overview

Among the many things that can be accomplished with SAP Cloud Platform Workflow Management, accelerating digital process automation to address common yet critical business problems stands out as the cherry on top of the cake.

With the live process content packages that are shipped with Workflow Management, you can find content to address your business requirement and adopt them with minimum configurations, augmenting your business processes quickly.

Problem Statement

One such business problem that is identified is the need for automation and an approval and review mechanism for posting Invoices without referenced Purchase Orders into SAP ERP.

In order to deal with such requirements, companies/customers need to invest a lot of resources: time as well as person hours, to build the desired solution from ground up. This would require development to integrate with SAP ERP, and also investing in developing an application to ease the data entry involved in such processes.

Solution

Solution Diagram

‘Manage Invoices without Purchase Order‘ live process content package provides the necessary content to automate the posting of such Non-PO invoices with validations at the back-end as well as with business rules, approval and review steps with workflows, and end-to-end visibility of the process with process visibility.

Along with the package, we have shipped Integration Content to seamlessly integrate with the backend RFCs.

The live process package comes with a responsive and dynamic SAP UI5 application that enables the Accounts Payable executive to fill in the invoice details and the corresponding order items and submit it for the necessary approvals before posting it into the system.

In addition, the application is integrated with SAP’s Document Information Extraction service which uses machine learning to extract details from an uploaded invoice (pdf) and fill in the relevant fields in the application. This reduces the effort of manually filling such information.

Discover the Live Process Content

Process Flexibility Cockpit enables business experts to discover and configure process variants. It also provides a view on the imported process content packages from SAP API Business Hub.

Process Content

The live process content packages can be searched and imported in the Process Hub available within Process Flexibility Cockpit delivered with SAP Cloud Platform Workflow Management.

• In Process Flexibility Cockpit, click on ‘Discover Packages’

• Select the package
• You will find the option to import the package

High-level information about the content is available in SAP API Business Hub under Content Type – Workflow Management; search for Manage Invoices without Purchase Order

Manage Invoices without Purchase Order

You will be able to see details of the process content, as well as the supporting setup, configuration, and end-user guides.

Artifact Details

Integration Content

The Integration content used with the solution is available in SAP API Business Hub – SAP Cloud Platform Workflow Management Integration with SAP ERP – Invoice

SAP Cloud Platform Workflow Management Integration with SAP ERP – Invoice

Application Content

Application and the header workflow used in conjunction with the solution is available in the GitHub here – cf-manageinvoiceswithoutpo-lp

cf-manageinvoiceswithoutpo-lp

Configuring and using the live process content

The live process content package has the necessary guides to configure and use the content.

Process Flexibility Cockpit

Process Flexibility Cockpit provides a single view of all content in a package including

• Process Variants in active and draft state.
• Decisions consumed by the process variants.
• Visibility Scenario and access to the scenario editor.
• An aggregated view of current state of run time instances of a process area and access to process visibility workspace.

Process Flexibility Cockpit

Manage Process Variants

The business process expert can model process variants to cater to immediate business requirements.

Note: once the process is activated, ensure that the process definition id is maintained in the Business Rule – ‘Determine Approval Process Variant’

Example process variant

Manage Decisions

Similarly, decisions and policies can be modified using the Manage Decisions application.

Manage Decisions

Visibility

With process visibility capability of SAP Cloud Platform Workflow Management, line of business experts can gain real time visibility into their end to end business process. The business expert can further enhance the visibility scenario and add in desired process participants and performance indicators to suit the business requirement.

Visibility Scenario

UI5 Applications

Shipped with this package is the application to enter the invoice details. This seamlessly integrates with the backend to perform necessary validations. It is also integrated with Document Information Extraction to automate the data input.

Once the invoice data and corresponding order items are provided by the accounts payable execute, it can be submitted for approval and review. The business rule will decide which process variant should be triggered for approvals based on cost object etc.

Manage Invoices Application

The executive can attach the required invoices for further reference.

Check duplicates that are either in process or already posted.

Summary

SAP Cloud Platform Workflow Management can accelerate the digital process automation journey of customers by providing various services and content, lowering the total cost of development and  ownership.

The Manage Invoices without Purchase Order content package from SAP Cloud Platform Workflow Management provides an option to quickly set up an approval process for posting invoices without referenced purchase orders, with zero development in SAP ERP. By using the process flexibility cockpit, the business experts/users can quickly adapt to any new requirement, such as adding additional validations using business rules, additional approvals using manage process variants etc… with no coding involved.

Get more information around Digital Process Automation with SAP Cloud Platform Workflow Management in SAP Community.

Also visit the following for more information on the product.

SAP Cloud Platform Discovery Center

SAP Cloud Platform Workflow Management – Help Portal