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In a world filled with non-integrated software applications of all shapes and sizes, shifting data from one system into another is no small feat. Desktop users spend countless hours manually re-keying and copying/pasting data at a snail’s pace, leaving room for errors, slowing up month-end close, and creating unhappy stakeholders along the way.
Most modern systems come with APIs to help companies create robust process automation. However, unless you can buy off-the-shelf integrations, this requires coding in-house, which is skilled work and expensive, therefore reserved for the smaller number of high-volume tasks where the ROI justifies the expense.
The fallback integration method is Robotic Process Automation, or RPA. This is an increasingly popular way to automate system-to-system data flow in the absence of server-side integrations. RPA bots interact with software at the UI level, and since virtually every system has a UI, this generic software can operate on a huge range of applications.
User interfaces in a SaaS ERP system, such as Oracle ERP Cloud/Fusion, are prone to changes because the application is constantly modified. Oracle makes form changes on their schedule, so customers do not have control over the release of new versions. Bots that use Oracle forms revisit them with each quarterly release to verify that the changes did not break the existing RPA bots. The bots integrating with ERP systems will frequently break if this is not completed seamlessly.
As complexity goes, Oracle’s EBS and Fusion ERP systems are tier I. This means the forms are large, complex with multiple zones, and not particularly fast.
The most difficult part of the integration process an RPA bot has to perform is the last stage, which is the entry of data into the ERP system. Result is fragility.
Such fragility means users have to revert to inefficient manual processes, like still having to spend time making repairs. Even worse, these bots are usually specific to individual users. You could have hundreds or even thousands of them.
The value of a fragile bot quickly disappears and can even become negative, hitting the total cost of ownership (TCO).
The complexity of the data entry operation is handled by the supported More4apps application, removing substantial fragility risk from the bot.
Eliminate complex and slow end-user forms that change without notice when you improve your data management processes by combining RPA bots and data entry with Oracle E-Business Suite and ERP Cloud/Fusion.
See for yourself when you request a live demo from one of our experts.
