FLUID
What is Fluid?
In a nutshell, Fluid is an innovation enabler for SAP-based purchasing, developed by apsolut.
Just imagine:
- What if you always had access to the latest technological innovations for use in your purchasing processes?
- If you could automatically advertise your purchasing needs, and a bot with artificial intelligence (AI) could automatically negotiate prices?
- If you had material master data that was harmonised by AI, and requisitioners no longer had to worry about material groups or G/L accounts?
- What if all the software solutions you need for your work were linked and could communicate with each other?
- If you no longer needed to maintain duplicate data?
This is where the innovation enabler Fluid comes in!
Fluid is a platform developed by apsolut; it merges the various solutions your company uses into an overarching ecosystem in which processes can be automated and data is made available wherever it is needed. The innovation enabler Fluid connects the SAP system (SAP S/4HANA, SAP ECC, SAP Ariba) to our innovative partner solutions to provide out-of-the-box processes and integration.
Fluid operates on 3 levels:
Fluid knows the best way to connect your systems and solutions. It serves as a link between your solutions, guaranteeing the best possible flow of data.
What benefits does Fluid offer?
Fluid shows you ways to make your purchasing more innovative.
Our partner solutions operate in the following areas:
Fluid also has the following advantages:
- Max efficiency through best possible integration of best-of-breed solutions
- Quick enablement - benefit quickly through pre-defined integration solutions, automation solutions and process best practices
- Innovation Integration as Service – service provided by apsolut - development, run and maintenance by apsolut – focus on your core business – no development required
- No need for own cloud integration infrastructure - Leverage apsolut Infrastructure powered by SAP BTP
- Subscription model offers flexibility
How to make optimum use of Fluid
To help you better understand how you can use Fluid, we’ve prepared two use cases: The The German Supply Chain Act (LKSG) ensures that suppliers are monitored and audited according to specific criteria. This process is handled by Integrity Next and similar companies. The suppliers are provided with questionnaires.
Fluid compiles all the necessary suppliers from the SAP system and sends them to Integrity Next. Integrity Next can then assess the suppliers, and Fluid ensures that the results are automatically fed back to the SAP system. Price negotiations with suppliers are another example. There are already solutions that can automatically negotiate prices; they are known as bots. Bots work automatically so that purchases no longer need to be negotiated manually, as the bot communicates with suppliers itself. Bots are based on AI (artificial intelligence) and use NLP (natural language processing) to exchange information. However, it would be ideal if the bot also had a ‘brain’ that could store data and access it every time the bot negotiated with the supplier.
The bot should be able to identify the volume of past orders. And with Fluid, a bot can simulate this background knowledge. Fluid extracts the necessary information about suppliers and provides this knowledge to the bot, allowing the bot to communicate appropriately in a given situation.
Fluid with SAP BTP
Innovation integration as a service
The Fluid platform is based on SAP BTP. SAP BTP allows Fluid to send data to SAP systems via a secure pathway thanks to the SAP Cloud Connector. There is no need for you to set up your own BTP infrastructure here. Fluid is operated as software as a service, or as we call it: innovation integration as a service. In fact, you won’t even notice that SAP BTP is behind it. Since we operate the platform as a service, support and maintenance for the platform are included in our monthly usage fee.
We ensure that the systems can communicate with each other, even if they have different interfaces.
Fluid with Squando
apsolut Squando is a supplier management solution developed especially for supplier onboarding, qualification and certificate management. There are already platforms that compile information about suppliers and make it available; Fluid can be used as a hub to connect these data sources to Squando, making supplier management more efficient. Fluid links Squando to external data sources, so Fluid can ensure that the figures from Integrity Next are also visible in Squando, for example.
Who should use Fluid?
Fluid is designed for future-oriented companies of any size that are looking for innovative ways to update their purchasing processes. Which software solutions do we work with? We work with the following innovative solution providers, and based on your architecture and requirements, we can help to evaluate whether Fluid is the right platform for you:
- Creactives
- Icertis
- Integrity Next
- Keelvar
- Lhotse
- mySupply
- Pactum
- Scoutbee
