OpenText – Solutions and Implementations

Reading time: 7 min.
Tomasz Jurgielewicz

OpenText is a world leader in the market of Enterprise Content Management (ECM) solutions that allow the optimization and automation of document management processes in a company. OpenText solutions are used in medium and large enterprises, including shared service centers.

OpenText ECM for SAP solutions were - as the only ones in this category - qualified by SAP to the group of so-called Solution Extensions, which means that they are developed, offered and serviced together with SAP. An additional confirmation of the successful cooperation with SAP is the multiple awarding of the "SAP® Pinnacle Award" to OpenText

Thanks to the integration of Open Text + SAP products, a completely transparent, comprehensive flow of invoices and other types of documents is possible, from registration and acceptance to accounting to archiving. Process handling becomes much faster than before, and handling costs are reduced.

Introduction to OpenText

OpenText is the name of a Canadian company that specializes in Enterprise Content Management (OpenText ECM) software. The company is present all over the world, and since 2006 it has also had its headquarters in Poland, in Poznań.

The company's significant product in the SAP offer is SAP Invoice Management by OpenText (VIM), which means a tool that allows you to automate the circulation of various invoices of the type of documents incoming to SAP, e.g. cost invoices (FI) and warehouse invoices (MM), delivery confirmations, order confirmations, and others.

Document-oriented business processes are typical VIM use cases. After the documents are captured by the VIM system, the data is automatically completed and checked against predefined business rules.

The main goal of VIM is to process the document in such a way that human intervention is not necessary, but in cases where such a need arises, VIM offers the possibility of fast, efficient handling and solving exceptions detected in the background.

Depending on the type of document processed, the system enables the automatic posting of invoices, automatic creation of a sales order or automatic verification of the data contained in the order confirmation with the order data in SAP.

Thanks to it, it is also possible to archive invoices and other types of documents in electronic form.

VIM integrates with Intelligent Capture for SAP Solutions (OCR), which uses advanced machine learning algorithms to extract/extract metadata from image-based documents such as PDF and TIFF.

Managing content and various types of documents in an enterprise can be further greatly facilitated by the OpenText Content Suite Platform/SAP xECM solution.

The offered solution enables content acquisition (e.g. by scanning), creating workspaces and assigning documents to them, metadata management, versioning, searching, long-term content storage or group work.

The solution can store any content from any source. The key differentiator of the OpenText approach is the combination and synchronization of structured content (stored in relational databases) and unstructured content (usually stored in the form of scans, documents and other content in ECM repositories).

The ECM (Enterprise Content Management) solution aims to organize, manage and share information in the company in order to save time and user involvement as much as possible. The system uses the Enterprise Library - a centrally managed, secure repository that allows you to store and easily find data. Thanks to this, they are always delivered to the right people when they need it.

OpenText Content Suite Platform/Extended ECM Platform allows you to manage information at all stages of its life cycle. As part of the modules available as standard, it is possible to handle an electronic document from its creation to its archiving.

The Content Suite platform provides, among others:

  • secure document management for version control, access permissions, so the organization avoids issues with versioning and access permission management
  • registration of documents in paper form and e-mail
  • the ability to search in full text and by specific criteria with the use of filters
  • workflow and document workflow for approval/acceptance to increase work efficiency
  • user view Smart User Interface (web interface)
  • records management for the purpose of storing enterprise information assets, thanks to which the organization is able to reduce the risks associated with non-compliance with legal regulations and litigation
  • automatic classification
  • possibility of cooperation/communication between users within workspaces for internal and external teams
  • access from mobile devices
  • archiving of data and documents, thanks to which the organization can reduce storage costs

OpenText - functionalities


Document management

The OpenText document management system enables you to securely classify, organize and share documents and other corporate content.

A big advantage is also the possibility of full-text search; high search precision is guaranteed by extended metadata attributes.

Important functionalities of OpenText solutions in document management also include integrated notification mechanisms and a comprehensive audit of operations with the option of sending notifications (single and collective) via e-mail.

Data management

The key distinguishing feature of the OpenText approach is the combination and synchronization of structured content (stored in relational databases, e.g. in SAP business applications) and unstructured content (usually stored in the form of scans, documents and other content in ECM repositories). Business processes controlled by SAP are enriched with unstructured content, thus giving selected steps in the business process the right context.

The xECM solution also provides mechanisms for secure, long-term storage of content in accordance with the law and internal company policies (records management).

Data archivization

OpenText applications such as Document Access or Archiving allow you to manage the enterprise's information resources using the latest technologies and expert knowledge of the leaders of the business software market, while ensuring a high level of integration, e.g. with SAP systems. They create a unified platform that allows you to securely manage all business information, both structured and unstructured, using a central repository. They also allow you to link the content of documents with business processes.

The most frequently used functionalities of the system include archiving documents of various types, including financial documents such as cost invoices.

Thanks to additional integration with tools for text recognition and data extraction from scans and PDF documents, it is enough to scan invoices to enable them to be classified and easily found if necessary, without having to rewrite them

OpenText - solutions

It is estimated that up to 90% of business information is stored in an unstructured, i.e. having no obvious connections with business processes, characters. The system of electronic document flow allows linking this information and processes.

The OpenText Content Suite/xECM manages content at all stages of its lifecycle, starting with its creation. Content can be created electronically in applications such as Office 365 or as paper documents such as invoices. Regardless of origin, the Content Suite is able to capture and manage digital content, making content easy to find and use. It allows individuals to share and interact with content to complete tasks, solve problems, and use the information to support the progress and completion of processes. One of the key features of the Content Suite is the ability to ensure consistent and systematic management of content in line with compliance regulations to minimize regulatory risk. When the content is complete; it will not be updated or changed as part of any business process, it can be archived and moved to inexpensive storage platforms until it is finally disposed of.

OpenText Vendor Invoice Management (VIM) is actually an ABAP add-on (add-on) to SAP ECC and SAP S/4HANA.

VIM automates the processing of incoming documents into SAP.

Document-oriented business processes such as processing incoming invoices from suppliers or incoming sales orders from customers are typical VIM use cases. After capture, the data is automatically completed and checked against predefined business rules.

For managers, VIM offers a comprehensive set of operational and analytical reports. In addition, VIM offers tools to identify common exceptions that need to be addressed to achieve an even higher level of automation.

Users can choose between the classic SAP GUI interface or the modern SAP Fiori interface.

SAP Fiori offers a responsive web user interface that supports desktop and mobile devices.

VIM supports various input channels, including scan, fax, e-mail, and web services.

It also supports various input formats including Paper, PDF, TIFF, IDoc and XML.

There are also modules aimed at improving communication - OpenText StreamServe Customer Communications Management (CCM) are solutions that make it possible to generate and distribute documents and personalized content using multiple communication channels

OpenText – implementation and advantages

Elimination of paper document flow and automation of this process, combined with exception handling, allows for a higher level of efficiency in handling various types of documents, including invoices, office letters, contracts, etc., thus - reducing the costs of the entire process.

Thanks to the rules established during system configuration, the process becomes transparent. This allows you to gain complete control over the flow of documents.

Main features and benefits of OpenText solutions

  • capturing documents from any source (e.g. business networks, EDI, XML, e-mail, scan) and transferring them directly to the superior system;
  • possibility of full - native integration with SAP, S/4HANA systems - the system works inside SAP (add-on to SAP)
  • AP GUI and SAP Fiori interface
  • the ability to handle tasks via mobile devices thanks to SAP Fiori
  • the ability to track the process at every stage
  • integration with the Intelligent Capture for SAP/OCR solution providing optical recognition of characters on documents (both headers and lines)
  • process automation for incoming orders/sales invoices self billing
  • automation of creating sales orders
  • automation of entering data contained in the invoice thanks to the use of advanced data recognition mechanisms, including machine learning
  • automation of order confirmation processing, etc.
  • predefined workflows (workflows) allowing for shortening the implementation time
  • automatic assignment of tasks to users assigned to a given role based on business exceptions detected by the system
  • access to the history of the document at any time
  • a huge set of built-in business rules dedicated to supported document types, e.g. automatic detection of price discrepancies, automatic detection of duplicates, automatic detection of payment terms discrepancies, detection of insufficient stock in the warehouse, detection of discrepancies in Incoterms, detection of whether the material contained in the invoice has been entered in SAP, detection of price discrepancies, multiple delivery dates on one document and many others business rules and checks as standard)
  • solution certified by the SAP Integration and Certification Center (SAP ICC)
  • standard Reports available, including graphical ones
  • a common screen at each stage of the process, allowing you to preview the processed document
  • the ability to attach attachments in various formats
  • automatic extraction and data entry from various types of documents
  • significant shortening of document processing time
  • possibility of interaction with a business partner during the process (possibility to send an e-mail with an attachment - without the need to go to e-mail)
  • automatic saving by the system of data entered manually by the user
  • support for various languages
  • the ability to create any number of workspaces
  • the ability to create forms for individual types of documents (below view of the form for the invoice workflow)
  • one list of tasks for different types of documents (according to permissions)
  • the ability to track the history of the document
  • the ability to preview the document at every stage of the process (shared screen)
  • the ability to add comments at any stage of the process
  • support for mobile devices (iOS and Android)
  • workflow modeling for various types of documents (invoices, orders, contracts, office letters)
  • the ability to work in review mode on the final version of a given document
  • the ability to create a document using the Customer's template

Also read: Electronic document flow

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