The German enterprise software giant’s third-quarter financial results showed that an increasing number of customers globally acknowledge its technologies and services as critical in achieving digital transformation during these challenging times. SAP’s current cloud backlog grew significantly in Q3 across its cloud portfolio, particularly with SAP S/4HANA Cloud. The solution represents the company’s cloud offering for core enterprise resource planning (ERP) processes such as supply chain management, financial management, engineering, and manufacturing, as well as associated data analytics, development, and integration capabilities.

Recently, SAP has announced that SLNG, a Singaporean developer and operator of liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminals, has been added to its roster of clients that have adopted SAP S/4HANA Cloud, Private Edition. According to SLNG, the implementation will support the streamlining of its business operations as part of its goal to meet and exceed its Energy Security mandate, promote the growth of Singapore’s LNG sector, and develop newer and more sustainable energy sources.

Furthermore, SLNG continuously explores innovation in its industry considering its objective to promote Singapore’s development as an LNG hub and the expansion of the LNG ecosystem. In May, the company unveiled a project in collaboration with Surbana Jurong, the National Supercomputing Centre (NSCC) Singapore, and the National University of Singapore (NUS) intending to produce a Proof of Value (POV) for a green modular data centre system that has a potential to save 0.2 megawatts of power and demonstrate the value of industrial symbiosis.

SLNG Adopts SAP Cloud ERP Solution for Digital Transformation

Committed to transitioning towards becoming an intelligent enterprise with sustainable operations, SLNG tapped SAP to modernise its data that was once stored in disparate systems for finance, HR, procurement, and maintenance. Selecting SAP S/4HANA Cloud, Private Edition as its integrated platform to link all data at the source, the company hopes to utilise the SAP cloud ERP solution to address data discrepancies.

Since 2012, SLNG has used SAP Finance for financial administration and reporting. Aside from this solution, the company also tackles employee experience management using Qualtrics, digitises procurement with SAP Ariba, manages asset reliability using SAP Intelligent Asset Management, and runs core HR processes and employee claims with SAP Concur.

Eileen Chua, Managing Director at SAP Singapore, believes a strong digital core is needed to adapt to today’s digital economy in the “never normal.” Commenting on SAP’s expanded partnership with SLNG, she stated:

“With SAP S/4HANA Cloud, the objective is for SLNG to simplify operational processes, reduce downtime with predictive technology, and transition employees to high-value work. SLNG is now empowered with the latest leading business processes and practices from SAP to become an intelligent enterprise and aid in cementing Singapore’s role as a regional LNG hub, as Southeast Asia nations move from coal to cleaner energy sources.”

Moreover, SLNG Director of the Information Technology Group Chong Nai Min said that SAP S/4HANA Cloud allows the organisation to have an integrated platform that provides a single source of truth for more accurate and effective data analysis. He added:

“The integrated platform also enables greater productivity through enhanced automation and embedded analytics, scalability to support future business growth, as well as reliability by reducing data discrepancies across multiple systems.”

In addition, SAP Intelligent Robotic Process Automation (SAP Intelligent RPA) is leveraged by the company to automate administrative functions and operations, allowing staff to focus on more strategic work while saving time. SLNG developed bots to automate the payment process for non-PO payments that had previously been manually entered.

“The real-time insights that we gain allow us to be more agile and competitive as we respond to market demands and new opportunities in LNG and beyond,” Chong Nai Min concluded.

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Robotic processing automation (RPA) has been driving efficiency and productivity in many enterprises even before the pandemic disrupted the world. Designed to augment repetitive tasks that require significant manpower, RPA enables the workforce to focus on more complex problems that require human assessment.

The surge in demand for RPA has been evident in recent years as reported in a Forrester survey of 45 companies in Australia, India, Malaysia, New Zealand, the Philippines, and Singapore. In the report, the Asia-Pacific region accounts for 17{aa282f308afcc222aaa21b0478c79e01a8fedd01972e2180867097bd93930f22} of RPA’s global market and is the driving force behind the technology’s growth.

RPA Technology in the COVID Environment

With COVID-19 in the background, RPA technology has been gaining more traction not only in addressing business-process vulnerabilities of enterprises but also in helping the healthcare industry automate patient data. One example of its use case in healthcare is the recent initiative of Singapore’s National University Health System (NUHS) to deploy RPA bots to automate and facilitate the administration of COVID-19 swab patient records in an SAP system. By utilising RPA technology, NUHS has significantly reduced the patient registration time from two minutes to just 30 seconds, which gives staff more time to focus on critical tasks.

“In healthcare, a lot of staff are very experienced, and they can be a little reluctant to change because they are worried about bots taking over their jobs,” shared Lily Loo, Director at NUHS. “So, when we embarked on RPA, we told the staff that their jobs would not be replaced and that they would be upskilling their expertise.”

For the post-COVID-19 rebound, RPA is foreseen to remain as a key technology investment according to IDC’s Worldwide Digital Transformation Spending Guide. 

Al Hilwa, Senior Director of AI, Machine Learning, and Platform Technology Research at SAP earlier said:

“The coronavirus pandemic has increased demand in RPA. The integration of machine learning into RPA is driving many of the new investments, including more funding and acquisitions.”

Three Years of SAP Intelligent RPA 

Over the course of three years, including the pandemic year of 2020, SAP Intelligent RPA has significantly improved to cater to the evolving needs of SAP customers. Since its launch in 2019, the SAP RPA solution has tapped over 50 partners worldwide and has achieved a major milestone with 1 million automations over the year by end of 2020. Closing back-to-back customer deals, including that of REHAU China and Villeroy and Boch, and offering a free trial experience to customers have remarkably increased the demand and recognition for SAP’s RPA solution. 

Gaining momentum, especially in the last quarter of 2020, SAP was recognised in the Top 3 Automation Product Suppliers across the Global 2000 companies– a testament that SAP’s objective of helping businesses run better remains relevant amidst the pandemic.

This month, SAP was named a “Strong Performer” in The Forrester Wave: Robotic Process Automation for the first quarter of 2021. The recognition is a result of the software giant’s three-year effort to create the best RPA solution for its customers.

“SAP’s RPA solution is a strong alternative for SAP customers, particularly for enterprises concerned with bots disrupting core SAP systems and those usually needing the central SAP development team to design, develop, and maintain RPA for clear accountability, or for companies seeking a feature-rich RPA tool that comes with a broad ecosystem of partners,” the Forrester report stated.

Here are some of the key features offered by SAP Intelligent RPA:

• Visual design of bot-enabled workflows
• Repository for bot skills and analytics
• Prebuilt bots for accelerated processes

SAP’s latest Business Transformation as a Service offering, RISE with SAP, also leverages RPA along with other AI services under its Business Process Intelligence component.

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In recent years, REHAU Group has been attempting to enhance its business model which accommodates both B2B and B2C requirements. There was an urgent need for digital transformation across corporate management. The polymer company needed a fully-integrated cloud-based enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution to help it address the following:

• swiftly respond to business needs
• promote and create an end-to-end modern smart factory
• improve employee experience
• improve productivity and collaboration
• leverage technology to support decision-making
• achieve higher process efficiency across the entire value chain

The company chose SAP S/4HANA Cloud to provide it with a next-generation environment that is scalable, mobile, and offering seamless connectivity to a vast range of other systems and cloud applications. The cloud model of SAP S/4HANA Cloud has proved to be a very suitable ERP solution for the company. It enables REHAU to evade the need and costs of tedious customizing with integrated functions such as MES, WMS, and APS.

Nils Wagner, Executive Director at REHAU Group said,

“Digital transformation is an initiative that is driving the development of our whole group and we specifically chose the Chinese market to implement this lighthouse project of implementing cloud-based ERP system for the first time.”

Automating Around SAP S/4HANA with SAP Intelligent RPA

To help REHAU China achieve a high degree of automation with its financial operational process in SAP S/4HANA Cloud, SAP Labs China and REHAU partnered for a co-innovation project that leverages SAP Intelligent RPA. The team trained a machine learning model that, when used in combination with the RPA bot, was able to achieve greater accuracy and seamless automation.

Timothy Xue, Project Manager at SAP China commented,

“We worked closely together with the technical experts from REHAU, and customized the automatic execution function templates for various operation phases at REHAU based on SAP Intelligent RPA. For example, we streamlined and automated the transfer of financial data from the original ECC into the new S/4HANA Cloud and the monitoring and processing of production orders along the assembly line.”

REHAU China has been live on SAP Intelligent RPA since January 2020. It has helped the company automate its business workflows to boost efficiency and enable employees to focus on fulfilling strategic goals. With the combination of AI and RPA, SAP has enabled REHAU China to:

• reduce its monthly manual processing time of about 1,000 account receivables from four days to 10 minutes
• reduce 50 hours of manual processing time of nearly 3,000 product orders in its IT system to less than 0.5 hours per week

In the future, REHAU Group plans to continue to explore the SAP AI Cloud Platform and promote and deploy it not only in the Asia Pacific Japan region but also in other countries throughout the group.

Wagner said,

“We will facilitate the integration and standardization of the processes within the group and achieve supply chain excellence throughout the whole industrial value chain.”

About REHAU Group

REHAU is a leading global provider of advanced polymer and composite products for industry and end-users. The company develops innovative polymer-based solutions that enable quality, efficiency, and sustainability in homes, on the road, and elsewhere.

REHAU employs about 20,000 people in more than 170 locations. The corporate headquarters for the car industry business and Commercial Construction is in Germany, while the administrative headquarters is located in Muri bei Bern, Switzerland.

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