SAPinsider’s recent research on how CIOs are thinking of Transformation in the Enterprise found that almost half are implementing automation tools and technologies in both new and existing systems. Another SAPinsider research on Process automation and SAP S/4HANA discovered that the most important drivers for transformation are the need to become a digital enterprise to compete effectively (51%), becoming an agile organization to manage business uncertainty (50%) and innovating products and services to better compete with new entrants (48%). In this context, the recent acquisition by Worksoft, a leading provider of intelligent process automation, of eureQa, an AI-powered SaaS test automation platform purpose-built for testing digital applications, is a powerful move to bring the holistic power of automation to drive demonstrable value. As Tony Sumpster, Chief Executive Officer at Worksoft says, “The hype on automation has passed. It needs to deliver real transformation. Worksoft looks at digital commerce and automation in a new way – holistically across front and back ends.” Companies need to focus on delivering and testing end-to-end automation across digital commerce, which now is almost always omni-channel spanning digital, mobile, voice, bots, and Internet Of Things (IoT). A dizzying number of SAP and non-SAP applications must integrate to deliver seamless experiences. The complexity is also high with a skyrocketing number of stock-keeping-units (SKUs) that need to change often due to customer demand and seasonality. With the acquisition of eureQa, Worksoft will offer a complete automation platform to customers who are looking to transform and automate such complex business processes at a rapid pace with high quality. eureQa brings in enhanced performance, mobile and API testing with a no-code approach for all applications across web, application programming interface (API), databases, and packaged applications. Customers will have the flexibility to align to cloud, on-premise or hybrid delivery, allowing them to choose the right model to support their unique landscapes. Badri Nittoor, Chief Executive Officer at eureQa explains the challenges faced by digital commerce companies, “The complexity of ecommerce has grown exponentially. Businesses can put a storefront on Shopify, sell through a marketplace or directly, and have returns processed in a third system. The trend now is moving to headless commerce with all transactions happen in an API environment. Being able to seamlessly transact across these interfaces is imperative for businesses today.” With the combined platform from Worksoft and eureQa, businesses can now test such complex flows end-to-end, identify inefficiencies and transform them rapidly. This process can include any commerce system including SAP Hybris. eureQa’s cloud-native cross-platform solution uses artificial intelligence (AI)/machine learning (ML) techniques to support self- healing tests and autonomous troubleshooting to reduce risk for new implementations, business process change, or compliance needs. Further, as companies move to SAP S/4HANA, this platform can help move that data and validate that data in a browser-based interface. Sumpster reiterates, “The issue often is that they don’t test data as well as they test applications. As companies move to new platforms including SAP S/4HANA, data testing is crucial.”               . Requirements such as compliance, data privacy and security can also be very difficult to manage. eureQa has a tool for process capture that can identify personally identifiable information (PII) data and can mask or replace with something that is non-specific, with more to come from the combined platform capabilities. The last few years have established that only companies that can dramatically improve operational execution and be nimble in response to competitive pressures and customer demand can even survive, let alone succeed. What Does This Mean for SAPinsiders? Automation is a journey rather than a destination. Creating a culture for continuous improvement in automation as well as a technology foundation can make this journey impactful at every turn. SAPinsiders can set the foundation for continuous automation in some key ways.

• Nurture an automation mindset across business and IT teams so that automation is not considered a piecemeal replacement of a manual task but a philosophy to dramatically transform the company to deliver vastly different customer and employee experiences.
• Deploy holistic automation technology as a key enabler so it spans across the entire business process workflow. Such technologies can provide deep process intelligence to identify areas of automation and improvement, deliver process automation and enable automated testing.
• Set up the foundation to make data migrations to new platforms successful. Moving to SAP S/4HANA or to another modern platforms can be executed faster, with less risk and at a lower cost with automated testing and validations. Automation platforms can assist in thus delivering higher return on investment for S/4HANA migrations.