Smart Process Application on Invoice Management

[Archana]

Install and experience this smart process application on managing invoices in Telecommunication industry– leveraging the power of HANA and SAP Operational Process Intelligence.

Overview

In this application, you will see how business users can have control on the invoices in Accounts Payable process, with real time visibility on the centralized day-to-day operations in Telecommunication Company.

Typically in an accounts payable process, a vendor invoice is received - which undergoes multiple approval steps before the payment is made. This process usually spans across multiple SAP and non-SAP systems, which creates difficulty to monitor the invoices as it moves from one system to another. There are no medium through which the invoices can be tracked (-real time-) and the users are informed of any bottlenecks in the process – that can eventually result in the delay of payments. Also, relevant data is exported from backend systems to excel files, and then graphs and KPIs are prepared manually in PowerPoint files that are then presented to the business heads as monthly/quarterly/annual reports.

In this scenario, we have addressed some of these major challenges of a services manager dealing with such processes in her day-to-day life. They are (a) Limited real-time insight into end-to-end invoice value chain (b) High amount of manual work that are prone to high risk of errors (c) No capability to proactively address invoices that are in/about to be in risk and (d) Delay in payment and escalation from vendors/suppliers.

SAP Operational Process Intelligence, powered by SAP HANA is used to build this smart process application that enables line-of-business users to gain process visibility across their end-to-end business processes, thereby improving the operational decision making to achieve better business outcomes.

Technical Insights
This smart process application is build on HANA Studio and SAP Operational Process Intelligence, installed on top of HANA. It is modeled on a third party system data using Operational Data Store^[1] as process participant. SLT/Data Services or other data provisioning softwares could be used to replicate data from third-party system onto HANA.

[1] Read SAP Operational Process Intelligence Developer’s Guide to know more about the modeling Business Scenario based on Operational Data Store.

Setup Instructions

To begin with, download and extract the zip, from here, in your local system.

Note: You will find SPA Delivery Unit with tgz extension

Before you start with the setup ensure that you fulfil the desired prerequisites

Prerequisite

1. SAP HANA SPS09 (1.00.090.00) and above
2. SAP Operational Process Intelligence 1.0 SPS09 PL0 and above
3. HANA User Privileges to install the Delivery Unit and Activate into HANA System
   HANA User must have these minimum privileges
   1. sap.pi.pv.roles::OPINTDEVELOPER role
   2. MODELING role
   3. Root Package privilege
   4. ROLE ADMIN system privilege
   5. USER ADMIN privilege

Refer SAP HANA and SAP Operational Process Intelligence Installation Guides respectively to setup the system.

Follow these steps to install smart process application into your HANA system.

Steps to Install

1. Open the HANA Studio
   1. Check if you have the right version on HANA Studio
   2. Check if you have right version of SAP Operational Process Intelligence plugins installed
2. Open Quick View from  Windows --> Show View -->Others --> Quick View menu option
3. Click on Import option
4. In the Import Dialog, select SAP HANA Content/Delivery Unit
5. Click Next and select the target HANA System where you want to import the application
6. Select Client option and Browse to the file location where you have extracted the content zip
7. Select the Delivery Unit (i.e. file with .tgz extension)
8. Wait for the import simulation.
   Once the objects are ready to import, the Finish button would be activated
9. Click Finish and observe the Job Log view to know the success/failure of the import

Good!  You have successfully installed the smart process application in your HANA system
… we are now one step behind to experiencing the application.

Configure to Use

1. Execute the setup procedure with name "SYS_PROCESS_VISIBILITY"."opint.telecom.invtrc::SETUP_INVOICE_TRACKING"

        This procedure is needed to setup the application with appropriate users and privileges required to run it

       

        Note: To run the procedure, you need to open the SQL Console of the HANA system and use this command

    call "SYS_PROCESS_VISIBILITY"."opint.telecom.invtrc::SETUP_INVOICE_TRACKING"(‘<HANA User>’)

Hurray! You have just installed Invoice Management Smart Process Application.

Start Using
Access the scenario using the link:
https://<hana-server-host>:80<hana-server-instance>/sap/opi/pv/workspace

Username: ERICA
Password: Abcd1234

Note: Based on the password policy of your HANA system, you may be subjected to change the password.
Please do so if prompted and henceforth use the changed password.

Note: If you need to refresh the data on the dashboard, then execute this procedure:
call ""SYS_PROCESS_VISIBILITY"."opint.telecom.invtrc.refresh::REFRESH_INVOICE_TRACKING";

User Guide

Follow the User Guide to experience the scenario that is built using SAP Operational Process Intelligence, powered by HANA. Explore various rich features of the product and learn how to use them for our own benefit.

You can also consider using this as reference content if you have to build similar use case for your organizational unit.

Do write back to me, if you face any issues while setting up the application in your system and share feedback, if any