Why Chatbots Should be Used in SAP Supply Chain Management

Chatbots have become an indispensable part of modern digital space as businesses across industries use chatbots for enhanced, and efficient customer engagement. According to a report by MarketsAndMarkets.com, the chatbot market size globally is predicted to increase from $2.6 billion in 2019 to $ 9.4 billion by 2024, at a CAGR of 29.7% during the period.

Powered by Artificial Intelligence (AI), the chatbots are available round-the-clock, cost-effective and help businesses free their human resources from mundane routine tasks that don’t require much skill sets. After their stupendous success in customer-facing operations like customer support and engagement, chatbots are now being leveraged by businesses in complex internal processes like supply chain management. More so, in the current times, when there is a greater need to automate the supply chain process and keep it up and running all the time. Businesses are using both text-based and voice-based chatbots in their processes as per their needs.

SAP Supply Chain Management, popularly called SAP SCM, is one of the key modules of SAP ERP and helps businesses control business forecasting, production planning, and demand planning. SAP ERP always had excellent business functionality, but there was user demand for a simpler User Interface (UI). Chatbots help SAP SCM users to automate and simplify many parts of their supply chain process and make it more effective.

Gemini Consulting & Services is a global SAP partner with deep expertise in all SAP products and solutions. We also have a dedicated team of AI conversational bot developers with experience in building enterprise level chatbots. We can help you build chatbots for SAP SCM as per your specific process requirements. To know more about our SAP services, click here.

While chatbots can be built for any relevant task related to the supply chain process, here are 5 popular use cases of chatbots in SAP SCM.

1. Supply Chain Planning: Chatbots can play an important role in the supply chain and forecasting by providing key decision makers with intelligence and insights derived from data. Supply chain processes create a lot of data and this data can be harnessed with AI and ML. Conversational bots can then be designed to provide real-time insights to decision makers for them to use in their strategic planning and decision-making process. Chatbots can also be used to provide a 360-degree view of the entire operations to key decision makers for them to monitor and intervene when required.
2. Virtual Assistants: Supply chain processes for the large part have been driven by manpower. Deploying human resources to every part is expensive. Chatbots, now driven by AI, are capable of taking over many of the tasks done by humans. Chatbots can be integrated into the SAP SCM system to help manufacturers get updated information on prices of the raw materials, supplier locations, events, the pricing history and various delivery schedules to help them take on-the-move informed decisions and make effective interventions in planning. Similarly, conversational bots in combination with your SAP SCM system can help you in procurement by providing information and responses based on real-time scenarios.
3. Order Management: Managing orders on a scale can be challenging for your team but this process can be automated. Chatbots integrated with your SAP system can help you in managing new orders and keeping track of orders in progress, canceled/delayed orders, and orders for replacement/change etc. The chatbots can be programmed to send order data in real-time to relevant stakeholders to help you align your supply as per demand and make the process speedier and effective.
4. Inventory Management: As companies try to optimize their inventories, chatbots can help them in rethinking their inventory management. Traditional inventory management approaches have several shortcomings like insufficient monitoring abilities, the slower flow of data and human errors. Chatbots integrated with your SAP SCM can help you automate many tasks in inventories to minimize human errors and drive efficiency. Chatbots can be designed to bring real-time information flow on stock status, inventory movements etc., to inventory managers to help them optimize inventory and drive profitability.
5. Employee Management: In the supply chain management process, organizations rely heavily on human resources. Chatbots can be built and integrated with your SAP SCM to handle a lot of employee management tasks like job scheduling, leave management, resource planning etc., to free managers from additional administrative tasks and helping them with core responsibilities.

SAP SCM is an excellent platform to modernize your supply chain process and control various aspects of it. AI chatbots can help your team optimally use SAP SCM in addition to driving productivity and efficiency.