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Dr. Yvonne Avaro
Lea is part of this year'sSAPevent "3days2intelligentrpa". Here she documents her participation in the virtual diary and takes us on a journey to the RPA prototype.
Who takes part in the RPA workshop?
I am Lea and have been a master's student at s-peers AG since 01 March 2022. I am writing my master's thesis on the topic of RPA, which is why the event was a perfect fit for me!
Lea Ross
Master's student
Data workshop
Lea's motivation for participating in the workshop
I took part in the workshop because I am working on the RPA tool from SAP as part of my master's thesis and the workshop gave me the opportunity to develop my first bots very quickly and intuitively.
The topic of my master's thesis at s-peers AG is: Robotic Process Automation in Data Processing: Value Analysis in Finance.
What is RPA?
Robotic Process Automation (RPA) is an automation technology that uses software to imitate human behaviour. The goal of automation is repetitive tasks with low added value such as copying, pasting, exporting, merging or moving data (Aguirre and Rodriguez, 2017, p. 70).
When implementing a software robot, the existing system is not affected, so no changes or adjustments need to be made (Ansari et al. , 2019, p. 3). The robot interacts with operational applications exclusively via the user interface, so it is not necessary to adapt the existing application systems (Barton et al., 2018, p. 125).
SAP Intelligent Robotic Process Automation is the robotic process automation layer of the SAP Business Technology Platform and supports the creation, planning, management and monitoring of bots to free up resources for high value-added activities and processes(SAP, 2022).
What is the 3Days2IntelligentRPA workshop anyway?
The 3Day2IntelligentRPA event is a virtual mini-hackathon organised by SAP. In 3 days, participants are empowered to build a prototype with RPA.
Lea's 3Days2IntelligentRPA diary:
During a kick-off meeting we got an overview of what to expect over the next few days.
In order to be ready to start right away on day 1, we were given information on how to access the tool and how communication and collaboration will work over the next few days.
On day 1 we got an introduction to the SAP tool IRPA. SAP IRPA consists of three components: the Cloud Factory (to monitor created bots), the Cloud Studio (to design bots) and the Desktop Agent (to run bots). Processes that are manual and repetitive, performed in high volume and in different systems, are particularly suitable to be automated with the help of IRPA. As part of the Day 1 tasks, we were able to build our first bot ourselves. The goal was to create a bot that reads data from an Excel file and enters it into an online form.
After we had already gained initial experience in the development of bots, today we got to know the "Bot Store". This can be understood like a marketplace within the Cloud Factory by making predefined bots available. These bot examples are intended to support the introduction of best practice solutions and are available for many different areas. After the theoretical part of the workshop, we were allowed to take a bot from the store today and adapt it accordingly: The data for a sales order entered in an Excel file was used to automatically create a sales order in SAP S/4HANA Cloud.
The third day of the workshop focused mainly on the UI5 connection within IRPA. The goal at the end of the day was to build an S/4HANA-specific bot that reads orders from Excel and processes them in SAP S/4HANA. We mainly used the screen capture function, which captures the screen and then determines in which section an action should take place (e.g. a click or the insertion of data).
Prototype development: These are Lea's 3 robots
Thanks to the provision of practical tasks, we were already able to create some working robots ourselves during the workshop. Here is a selection of the three robots created in IRPA.
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The robot opens an Excel instance, adds a new spreadsheet and writes the text "Hello World" in a defined cell. It then closes the Excel instance again.
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First, a web page was recorded with the help of the "screen capture" function, on which the name and e-mail are to be entered. The robot opens an Excel file in which a name and an e-mail address are stored and saves these values. Then it opens the previously recorded web page and inserts the data into the corresponding fields.
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The robot reads data on a purchase order from an Excel file and saves it. It then starts on the SAP S/4HANA home screen and calls up the Manage Purchase Orders transaction. There it enters the corresponding data and creates a purchase order including header and order data.
Lea's conclusion from the workshop
The workshop was great to get a first insight into the SAP tool. The mix of theory and practical tasks in the workshop makes for a particularly steep learning curve.
For me, it was amazing to see how quickly and easily the first bots could be created. I had a lot of fun testing them and developing them further.
References
Aguirre, Santiago; Rodriguez, Alejandro (2017): Automation of a Business Process Using Robotic Process Automation (RPA): A Case Study. In: Juan Carlos Figueroa-GarcĂa, Eduyn Ramiro LĂłpez-Santana, JosĂ© Luis Villa-RamĂrez and Roberto Ferro-Escobar (eds.): Applied Computer Sciences in Engineering. Cham, 2017. Cham: Springer International Publishing, pp. 65-71.
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Ansari, Wasique Ali; Diya, Paritosh; Patil, Sahishnu; Patil, Sunita (2019): A Review on Robotic Process Automation - The Future of Business Organizations. In: SSRN Journal. DOI: 10.2139/ssrn.3372171.
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Barton, Thomas; MĂĽller, Christian; Seel, Christian (eds.) (2018): Digitalisierung in Unternehmen. Wiesbaden: Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden (Angewandte Wirtschaftsinformatik).
