Our customer is one of India’s fastest-growing global conglomerates with businesses in Line Pipes, Home Textiles, Infrastructure, Steel, Advanced Textiles, and Flooring solutions. As globally recognized leaders in Home Textiles and Line Pipes, they have a presence in over 50 countries with a strong team of 26,000+ employees.
Textile industries often face problems in maintaining the stock of dyes and other raw materials, managing manpower, maintenance of machines, deliveries, and the like. SAP is specifically designed for textile industries to offer an integrated solution resolving all the major problems faced by this industry and making the processes seamless and efficient.
The master entries in SAP include creating masters for Vendor, Customer & Article registration for which we did POC with one i.e. Vendor. The process was entirely manual, hence resulting in delays and errors. As one of very few Microsoft FastTrack partners in India, Embee was a clear choice when it came to choosing strategic technology partner to implement this POC.
The SAP powered POC seemed worth testing to automate the process of vendor creation and approvals. In the POC, Embee solution architects analyzed the existing scenario and customer requirements and implemented Master data management for SAP on Power Apps & SharePoint to get the desired results.
Manual Vendor Creation Process Results in Delays and Errors
A new vendor creation request must be raised by the team for which the form is filled and send for approval. Post the requester’s entry it goes for approval to HOD followed by finance team and finally to MDM team. The MDM team further validates it and completes the process by creating the new vendor in SAP thru API integration.
Here are some of the key challenges faced by the customer–
- Using excel based templates for new vendor creation.
- Required manual approval on emails.
- Delays in vendor creation and approval process.
- The process was prone to errors.
- Manual intervention required at every step.
Embee implemented Master data management for SAP on Power Apps & SharePoint for seamless and efficient processes.
- Master data entry screens for vendor were created on PowerApps.
- 60 t0 80 fields with validations are configured on PowerApps.
- Approval workflow is configured to give clear visibility of the status with notification.
- Data captured is stored in SharePoint Online Platform.
- Developed scheduler which will pull processed data from SharePoint Online and using API, push the data into SAP application and create vendor details into SAP.
- The scheduler at SharePoint end would integrate with SAP using API and push the vendor details to SAP for vendor creation.
- GST validation in app itself using regex.
- Integration with Bank.
Tools and Technologies Used
Here is the list of tools and technologies we implemented to simplify and streamline the end-to-end vendor creation process.
- PowerApps Platform
- SharePoint Online for data store
- Windows scheduler for API Integration to SAP
Impact of the solution
The implementation of the PowerApps platform automated the overall vendor creation process resulting in lower manual hours, errors, cost savings, and high performance.
Visibility of the Approval Status
Automation of approval process and status visibility.
Cost-Savings
Immediate cost-savings as compared to the existing manual process.
Reduction in manual hours
The time spent on vendor creation and approvals was reduced significantly.
Error free Process
As the entire process can be conducted without any human intervention, the chances of errors are negligible.
Better performance and productivity
The automation resulted in better performance and productivity of the team as they were able to give time to other crucial tasks.
In-app GST validation and integration with Bank
In-app GST validation and integration with banks to automate your financial operations.
