SAP Business One and Artificial Intelligence

The hype around intelligent technologies, such as artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms, natural language-based chatbots, and business intelligence, has existed for some time but with little impact on SME businesses. These intelligent technologies have evolved to the point that they are affordable and accessible and so can bring high business value to SME companies as well.

Following the Intelligent Enterprise strategy, SAP Business One is also aiming to bring intelligent services closer to its customers. From the overall Intelligent Business Document Processing workstream, we are focusing primarily on the traditional Order to Cash (sales) and Procure to Pay processes, which can provide high benefits from new intelligent technologies to SME businesses. Our priority is on the three main areas:

• Usage of the intelligent technologies directly in the SAP Business One core – Considered the most relevant cases to be part of the system core.
• Enablement of SAP Business One partner with capabilities of intelligent technologies and how to use them as part of the partner add-ons.
• Usage of the SAP Intelligent RPA bots together with intelligent technologies. Enablement of SAP Business One partner with capabilities of SAP Intelligent RPA tool.

Enablement of SAP Business One partners with capabilities

The Document Information Extraction service is part of the bigger group of services called Artificial Intelligence Business Services (AI Business Services) provided by SAP. This approach is aimed at encouraging the partners to use the services in their existing or new/planned add-on solutions for SAP Business One.

The possible scenarios in which the services can be used are the following:

• Supplier Invoice upload automation – Document Information Extraction service
• Creating Sales Order from Purchase Order – Document Information Extraction service + DATA Attribute Recommendation Services (autofill capability, propose missing attributes to the document from customer)
• Incoming Documents Classification – Document Classification Services
• Travel Receipts upload automation – Business Entity Recognition
• Lead creation from business cards – Document Information Extraction service
• Service Ticket Intelligence service supporting:
  1. Service Call Management.
  2. Customer Survey results classification
• Contact information enhancements – Business Entity Recognition.
• Reference documents identification – Business Entity Recognition.

Use smart technologies right at the core of SAP Business One

As part of the core of SAP Business One, we are bringing in the Feature Pack 2102 the first version of the SAP Business One and Documentation Information Extraction service integration. The integration includes two parts of the functionality:

• SAP Business One core
• Documentation Information Extraction service from SAP AI Business Services portfolio

As part of the SAP Business One Core, the provided functionality is part of the SAP Business One license.

The costs of the Document Information Extraction Service are not included in the SAP Business One license and must be purchased separately. The relevant package can be purchased directly on SAP Store (Connect to SAP Store by clicking on SAP store).

The packages of documents are in blocks of 100 documents (1 document = 3 pages) per month for a given price in the SAP store.

What's Next?

There is only a summary of possible scenarios and approaches here. The key point is to define the customer's business needs and set specific goals that there is a need to achieve. Then customer should get in touch with the partner (or vice versa, a partner can approach the customer with an idea) and elaborate on the possible approaches, considering which of the Intelligent Technology may fit into the daily operations of a particular company. As a result of this collaboration, the solution of Intelligent Enterprise can be achieved.