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Nihilent Wins SAP Surround on Microsoft Cloud Hackathon 2020

Expertise comes with experience. And the experience is often the most valuable thing you offer. Rewards and recognitions are an affirmation of our experience. At Nihilent, passion for performance is ingrained in our core work culture.

We are happy to announce that Nihilent has won the first prize at the ‘SAP Surround on Microsoft Cloud Hackathon 2020’ held recently. This Hackathon was a joint effort by Microsoft and SAP, is aimed at showcasing use cases leveraging SAP workflows on Microsoft Cloud by using Data & AI and the Power Platform. The competition was intense, with names like IBM, PwC, KPMG, Birlasoft vying for the top spot.

Winning this Hackathon demonstrates our strong capabilities on:

  • Leveraging new tools like Power Platform to build solutions.
  • Strong business workflows understanding of SAP.
  • Infrastructure capabilities to set up new things.

The use case demonstrated by Nihilent was on Customer Credit Risk management applicable in the Distribution and Manufacturing industry. In flat 2 weeks, the team built the actual working demo cutting across:

  • Typical interactions on the customer to distributor/manufacturer using Power Apps.
  • Notifications and alerts and approvals on Teams using Power Automate.
  • Self-service Chatbot on Virtual Agent.
  • Risk profiling and reporting for management on Power BI.
  • Core business logic on SAP S/4HANA.

Use Case: Deep Dive

Scenario: Customer Credit Risk Management

Context

  • Most businesses supply goods or services to their customers on credit. This exposes them to a risk of non-payment or reduced cashflow if the customer does not pay up on time.
  • The credit Management feature in SAP manages this risk by allocating a certain credit limit to each customer. This prevents the sales team from booking orders for customers when the credit limit is exceeded. This is called a credit block.
  • This usually triggers a workflow in the sales hierarchy for approving order booking or dispatch based on the sales representatives’ (SR) inputs – such as customer’s promise to pay, payment is received but not banked, or future potential.

Problem Statement

The request for approval is usually made through a phone call or email to explain why the credit block should be removed. Typically, the SR does not have access to the SAP system and this leads to:

  • Low visibility of real customer outstanding or order status to the SR leading to wrong requests
  • No record of justification for credit release and difficulty in recording subjective reasons
  • Multiple channels of communicating with the sales hierarchy
  • Difficulty in identifying responsibility should things go wrong
  • Lack of insight into potential defaulting customers or SRs

BENEFITS

  • SRs use Power Virtual Agent chatbot to get visibility of customer information without logging in to SAP and can raise credit block removal requests through POWERAPPS – Optimal use of SAP licenses, ease of use, and real-time view
  • Areas Sales and Zonal Managers are immediately notified of the requests on TEAMS reducing delays and without being interrupted by the SR calling on phone – Improved Process agility
  • Informed decision making viewing the SRs video requesting removal of the block – Improved traceability, audit record, and reduced frauds
  • CFOs and CSOs gain 360 Degree view of customers or SRs frequently requesting credit release on POWERBI dashboard – Insights for reducing credit risk



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