Currently, there are vast computing powers available to the end customer. However, this can cause complete chaos when it comes to managing the entire IT landscape. Organizations often have disconnected business applications performing single tasks in a wider enterprise process, but these business applications run in isolation. This causes additional complexities and eliminates all the efficiencies offered by the latest technology advances – as the end user has to switch between different applications, doesn’t know to which software the process belongs, and doesn’t have an accurate view of the entire process.
With OpenText Vendor Invoice Management (VIM) CE 20.4, we have fully unified all the SAP document processing capabilities under one hood. Now, using a single application we can automate both order-to-cash (O2C) and procure-to-pay (P2P) processes. However, our solution goes even beyond that! With VIM CE 20.4 we now ship a powerful foundation which allows, with minimum effort, the processing of any document type, going beyond the standard document processes we ship with VIM.
Now, if you already use VIM for processing invoices, you can easily extend to other documents like sales orders, delivery notes, order confirmations, quotations or even remittance advices – all from a familiar interface and a single application.
This simplifies not only the support routine, as now all the incoming information is processed by a single application, but also helps to streamline entire processes. For example, in most cases an invoice comes together with a delivery note and order confirmation – and if we use a single, well-connected process to tend to them, then it helps to drive efficiency and improves operational excellence.
Modern user experience
Customers are starting to leverage the capabilities offered by SAP S/4HANA and the latest SAP Fiori 3.0 user interface standard. With VIM CE 20.4, we deliver an innovation to support that: a single click entry validation widget for Sales Orders, directly from Fiori!
With that feature, you get 360 degrees control over the sales orders processing from a single interface – from SAP Fiori.
There is no need to switch between applications or install any additional software on your machine. All operations can now be executed from your browser, offering even better flexibility for our users.
Intelligent automation
Moreover, we have extended our machine learning capabilities to cover all document types. Now our intelligent algorithms learn not only during the OCR process, but also during the data enrichment step for both P2P and O2C.
Another important enhancement is a new feature which is used for enhanced business entity determination. The feature is fully integrated with our OpenText Intelligent Capture for SAP Solutions as well as with our SaaS capture offering – OpenText Core Capture for SAP Solutions. Now when determining the business entity, we rely on a two-step capture process. First, data is sent to SAP and then matched there. No permanent downloads are required – no data resides in the cloud. The technology is seamlessly running in the background and works on improving the capture results while the end user performs day-to-day tasks. This innovative approach is used to reach even higher levels of automation when determining partners, vendors, company codes and customers.
In addition, we constantly work on improving our existing solutions which includes extending our support for global standards. VIM CE 20.4 contains information extraction improvements for Chinese and Russian documents, and from now on the machine learning covers them to the full extent.
In the modern world, QR codes on an invoice is becoming a widespread best practice, and we are committed to offering the best support for new country specific requirements. VIM CE 20.4 offers enhanced automation for several countries (like Switzerland or India) and delivers an improved QR code data extraction model.
Another unique feature we are glad to introduce today is smart coding for invoices. Our machine learning engine constantly learns from posted invoices and detects similar invoices to apply coding to. Cost elements and G/L can be inserted automatically based on confidence levels and each time there is some manual data entry required – the end user gets a coding line proposal in Fiori or in SAP GUI. With each run the system gets smarter and the number of cases where manual effort is required decreases.
Further increasing automation using iRPA
Recently we have announced the enhanced integration with SAP iRPA and even brought several compelling joint cases to the market. This integration allows us to expand the boundaries and cover applications outside the standard ERP scope. To learn more, please visit the SAP blog.
Biggest ever release
By leveraging our experience in invoice processing and applying that to additional document types, supported by key enhancements in machine learning and automation, VIM CE 20.4 is considered our largest VIM release ever. Please visit our website for more details on our VIM or our Capture offerings.
The current version of OpenText Vendor Invoice Management for SAP Solutions offers new levels of automation, integrations, usability and once again proves to be the best-in-class solution for automating entire document processes.
