Gerhard Heinzerling, SAP Senior Solution Architect at SYCOR GmbH, explains how classic SAP systems can be expanded with the help of image recognition and artificial intelligence.
The objective in the manufacturing industry is to realize competitively relevant potential savings with the help of IoT and artificial intelligence – from an economical but definitely also from an ecological perspective. My team and I are working on the automation of recurring tasks using image and text recognition. We connect this recognition to the in-house ERP system, such as SAP S/4HANA or Microsoft D365, to obtain the maximum benefit for companies.
Why just one? We have many great application examples! For one of our customers, we trained the algorithm to recognize with almost one hundred percent accuracy how many products there are on a pallet. This made the customer's logistics chain much more efficient.
In another customer project, we trained the algorithm to recognize the movement of goods, for example in warehouses, with automatic posting in the ERP system. That saves a lot of manual effort and reduces the error rate.
A final example: One of our customers receives a lot of orders by e-mail. Employees processed these e-mails and entered the orders in SAP. Thanks to text recognition and the trained algorithm, this has now been automated and the employees are free to focus on strategic matters. Theoretically any text recognition can be expanded with voice recognition. This makes it possible to carry out postings in SAP S/4HANA or Microsoft D365 using simple voice commands.
Artificial intelligence can lead to greater efficiency in customer relationship management/CRM. We have for example developed the marketing and sales solution Sycor.IntelliCamp. It is based on artificial intelligence. The algorithm identifies customers with especially good up-selling and cross-selling opportunities, and helps sales carry out its activities – customer visits, e-mail campaigns, telephone calls, social media campaigns – more purposefully.
Artificial intelligence can also help with the qualification of business visitors on a company website. Many tools already exist that identify business visitors based on IP. But what is sales supposed to do with this flood of data? Naturally all those data could be analyzed manually to find those few companies that actually match the target customer profile, or existing customers interested in new products. Or the algorithm can do that work. It is faster and more precise. In short, AI helps with the smartest possible use of your time.
You are interested in artificial intelligence and would like more information? Then please contact us. We are looking forward to your inquiry!