AI and ERP – the powerful duo

February 21, 2019

SAP Senior Solution Architect, Gerhard Heinzerling, explains how ERP systems can be expanded with the help of image recognition and artificial intelligence.

What artificial intelligence applications exist in the manufacturing industry?

In the manufacturing industry, the objective is to realize competitively relevant potential savings with the help of IoT and artificial intelligence (AI) – 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. At Sycor, we connect this recognition to the in-house ERP system, such as Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Finance & Operations or SAP S/4HANA, to obtain the maximum benefit for companies.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) with SAP S/4HANA

A concrete example?

Why just one? We have many great application examples! For one of our customers, we trained the algorithm to recognize how many products there are on a pallet with almost one hundred percent accuracy. 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 email. Employees processed these emails 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 Dynamics 365 using simple voice commands.

What about customer relationship management?

Artificial intelligence can lead to greater efficiency in customer relationship management (CRM). We have, for example, developed the marketing and sales solution Sycor.IntelliCamp, 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, email campaigns, telephone calls, social media campaigns – more purposefully.

Artificial intelligence can also help with the qualification of business visitors on your 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 that data could be analyzed manually to find the companies that actually match the target customer profile, or existing customers interested in new products. Or the algorithm can do the work for you, much faster and more precise. In short, AI helps with the smartest possible use of your time.