Can SAP develop a compelling value proposition for attended RPA?

We have heard a lot about the key reason behind the acquisition of Contextor by SAP. SAP clearly stated that it was buying Contextor to primarily help accelerate the development of its Leonardo platform.

Yes, without any doubt the mid/long term strategy is to combine unattended RPA with SAP Cloud Platform, conversational AI technology and document processing capabilities provided by SAP Leonardo to ultimately deliver “intelligent RPA” (the end goal).

But in the short term, what can be proposed? What SAP can do to start growing its RPA customer base and pave the way for future integration with SAP Leonardo?

I would like to envision the following scenario where SAP decides to make the following 2 bold decisions:

• Offer a packaged/ bundled solution combining SAP Screen Personas/ and Contextor, and;
• Have an attractive commercial value proposition (maintaining the current SAP Screen Personas licensing model).

The key benefits (in my humble view) of integrating SAP Screen Personas with Contextor are highlighted below.

What is SAP Screen Personas?

SAP Screen Personas forms part of the broader SAP user experience strategy. It allows to personalise SAP screens, automate business processes, and run them on phone, tablet, or desktop.

SAP Screen Personas allows users to generate different “flavors” (screen variants) for classical SAP GUI screens in order to change the appearance of SAP transaction screens, making core functionalities more transparent and intuitive to use. The development interface is an intuitive drag and drop builder. These flavors are then assigned to roles such that each user can have a tailored operational console. The need to also run Classic SAP GUI screens on Mobile was fulfilled by the launch of Slipstream Engine for SAP screen Personas. Slipstream Engine provides a Fiori-inspired theme out of the box, giving customer a modernised UX.

The solution also provides an embedded scripting that makes it possible to streamline tasks by automating repetitive keystrokes and combine information from different source screens.

There are compiling customer success stories, such as boosting call centre productivity by 233%. A manufacturing company used SAP Screen Personas to simplify screens for its call centre staff. Now, operators enter all information on a single screen, rather than multiple screens and tabs. This allowed them to reduce the time it takes to create a notification; each person now handles 20 calls per hour, up from 6.

SAP Screen Personas could be augmented by Contextor to provide a best-in-class attended RPA solution

Just imagine end-users being able to easily personalise their screens to create an "enterprise-level" cockpit via SAP Screen Personas and automate daily tasks way beyond SAP systems via Contextor !

Contextor says it loud and clear: their RPA solution is not a screen scraping tool. Unlike many RPA solutions, Contextor is a robust “Kernel” based RPA engine interacting at the Operating System level. Contextor’s engine is coded in C / C++, operates asynchronously and integrates more closely into applications technologies (i.e. for Windows applications, Contextor captures interactions through an optimised driver written in assembly language; for web browsers, Contextor directly access the Document Object Model). This drastically improve both response time and memory footprint.

In addition to the robustness of the RPA platform, the integration of SAP Screen Personas with Contextor could in my view be a very attractive proposition for the following 4 main reasons:

• The integration of SAP Screen Personas scripting engine with Contextor Studio will enhance task automation capabilities and extend coverage beyond SAP systems. Certain properties, methods, and events in SAP Screen Personas do not work in some of the supported GUI so the addition of Contextor will definitely allow to overcome a wide range of scripting limitations. With a common JavaScript language (not confining users to a proprietary), the integration will also ensure scalability and total openness. Complex requirements/ actions can be met via a mix of JavaScript and SAP Screen Personas APIs.
• The integration of SAP Screen Personas screen design capabilities with Contextor Interactive Assistant will enable users to create advanced/extended flavors with contextual information gathered from data sources outside SAP systems. The integration will definitely simplify interface interactions with third-party applications and environments, creating a truly enterprise-class cockpit (which is a very big plus when it comes to enable attended RPA).
• The integration of SAP Screen Personas with Contextor Galaxy Monitoring will add analytics capabilities, allowing to gather and analyse data collected by Contextor Interactive Assistant (from process and human operator interactions).
• SAP Screen Personas is currently included in the ERP license, so no additional license cost to SAP customers. Usage of new capabilities offered by the integration with Contextor (highlighted above) should also be free. With over 425,000 customers (compared with roughly 5000 customers when you combine Automation Anywhere, Blue Prism and UiPath), just imagine how this could impact the market share of key RPA players. Why an existing customer should pay for a robust enterprise RPA solution if they can have it for free (organisations will probably be thinking twice before signing any new contract).

I hope you enjoyed the reading and I would be very interested in hearing your thoughts. If you want to read more about RPA, please check my previous posts or just follow me.

Sources: The Internet and my twisted imagination !

Opinions expressed are solely my own and do not necessarily express the views or opinions of my employer.