The top 5 reasons SAP and ECM are a winning combination
SAP may be the powerhouse system used across your organization, but it’s not a cure-all for processing business transactions. Your staff still needs access to information – like documents, emails and notes – residing outside of SAP to do their jobs.
This is where enterprise content management (ECM) comes into play. The right ECM system can manage and maintain the documents and information residing outside of SAP, presenting them to users within their familiar SAP screens. This improves user satisfaction and eliminates searching for needed information in disparate systems or physical files.
Integrating systems not only eliminates the need to switch applications to complete work, but can also automate processes surrounding this content for further efficiencies.
Curious to learn more? So were attendees during a Q&A session hosted by SAPinsider. Here are what I believe to be the top 5 questions and answers regarding the value of integrating SAP with an ECM system:
1. What scenarios/processes in the organization do you see an ECM solution being used with SAP?
“ECM can be applied across the enterprise whether in an operational department or in the back office such as accounting and finance, human resources, legal and more,” said presenter Chrystal Legan, an SAP sales engineer at Hyland, creator of OnBase.
“Basically, look anywhere you manage information and your processes can benefit from an ECM system.”
2. What type of information about SAP should we expect to have with an ECM solution?
“Look for an ECM system that has a certified integration with SAP,” Legan said. “This ensures seamless transfer of document images and data between the ECM system and SAP.”
Other things to look for in an ECM solution include technology that:
- Compliments, enhances and streamlines SAP business processes
- Provides SAP users with direct access to content that supports SAP transactions
- Drives business processes forward without cumbersome and costly duplicate data entry
- Keeps information in sync with SAP, driving business processes forward with real-time information
3. Does ECM feature automated workflow management that distributes work to multiple users?
“Yes – the right ECM systems provide robust workflow functions that are highly configurable,” said presenter Tim Nero, director of capture and back office solutions at Hyland. “These workflows are intended to automate business processes and distribute work in a variety of ways.”
“For example, work could be distributed in a FIFO order, round robin, based on some type of assignment like region or by security controls,” he continued. “This ensures that work gets to the right people in a timely manner.”
4. How does automated data capture work from documents and what expectations should we have about accuracy of data entry for our SAP system?
“Data capture uses advanced capture software recognition technology, often known as optical character recognition (OCR software), to locate and identify data on a page, then extract that information, validate it and then pass the data into your SAP system,” Legan said.
“Once the data has been captured, it is validated against your organization’s business rules and databases. Some data can be automatically corrected by the software and any questionable characters can be presented to a verifier to further ensure accuracy.”
5. Does an ECM system have the capability to capture performance data and generate reports?
“An ECM system can capture performance metrics for both people and processes,” Nero said.
“These metrics can be viewed through dashboards or data reports. Information such as how many invoices were processed in a day or how many invoices an individual processed can be reported on.”
Ready to learn more? Access the full Q&A on ECM for SAP here.
