Thanks bot
Peggy handles routine, time-consuming and often laborious tasks without complaint – and she works faster than any human being. Peggy is a bot, an automated application in use at Evonik Procurement. Bots like Peggy lighten the load on workers who perform repetitive yet exacting tasks. They create the space we need to use our time more profitably.
Bot is short for robot. When we first hear the term, industrial robots in fully automated factories often come to mind. But purchasing employees perform a range of recurring tasks – not unlike work on an assembly line – that can be handled much more efficiently with process automation.
The power of routine
OLAUPDATE is one example. It is an application which updates rates in SAP contracts and adjust the prices in all relevant purchase orders afterwards. After each pass, Peggy distributes a report so the result can be checked at any time,” explains Joachim Mohr, Senior Process Designer and an intellectual father of the use of robotics in Evonik Procurement. “Robots are a powerful solution, particularly for routine tasks of this kind,” he adds.
One-time mass changes
Beyond ongoing, repetitive work, bots are also suited to one-time, large-scale tasks. For example, during pandemic-battered 2020, a temporary value-added-tax (VAT) reduction for more than 1,000 purchasing contracts had to be handled manually. The work would have taken several days. “It was clearly a job for Peggy,” says Heiko Volkmer, Solution Architect with Evonik IT’s Smart Administration product line. “We created a so-called ‘one-time bot’ that did the job in a single night shift.” The application is also available to Peggy for future ad hoc changes.
One Name – Many Bots
The name Peggy doesn‘t just stand for a single robot but for a range of applications. The number of applications can be expanded in the future as needed.
