How Our Commitment to SAP Clean Core Simplifies Automation

Many organizations rely on SAP’s robust ERP solutions to power vital business functions. But to stay ahead, they often need custom-made features and workflows. 

SAP’s Clean Core Extensibility strategy helps strike a balance between the need for tailored functionality and the demand for reliable, stable systems. This approach gives developers clear guidelines for building SAP solutions that are flexible, cost-effective, and future-proof. It also sets boundaries to protect core SAP code, helping customers minimize the risk of broken upgrades and other process disruptions; such as operational bottlenecks during SAP S/4HANA migration. 

As a long-time SAP partner, Tungsten Automation has always upheld SAP Clean Core principles.  Solutions like Process Director have delivered a clean core approach for 20 years. Enhancing your automation strategies, and maximizing your SAP investment, while leaving its core system intact. By 2026, we’ll be SAP Clean Core certified, formalizing our commitment to intelligent system interoperability. 

With that in mind, this blog will explain what Clean Core is, why it's important for long-term business agility (especially in areas such as tax compliance), and how Tungsten Automation supports your ERP automation journey as a dedicated SAP partner. Read on to learn more. 

What is SAP Clean Core?

For many years, SAP customers often customized the platform’s core code to help them to meet business requirements for short-term wins. However, this practice often created major long-term problems, such as breaking changes when upgrading the core SAP system, or when developers who built the custom code leave the company, taking their in-depth knowledge with them. This skill gap then makes the system harder and more expensive to maintain if problems arise without this specialist knowledge available to hand. 

To address this issue (alongside rolling out its cloud-centric S/4HANA update), SAP developed its Clean Core certification program within its Integration and Certification Center (SAP ICC). This accreditation ensures partners develop effective solutions without customizing the SAP core and only interacting with it in approved ways. For SAP, this approach leads to lower risk and long-term stability when performing core system updates.  For end customer SAP Clean Core brings the following benefits:  

Lower Total Cost of Ownership (TCO): As mentioned previously, customizing core SAP systems can get expensive. In contrast, partnering with vendors who follow Clean Core principles and use standardized interfaces can help you save time and resources on IT support. 

Heightened Business Agility: With Clean Core-compliant applications, your team can quickly and safely launch solutions, helping you stay ahead of the competition and pivot to market changes with ease.

Tungsten Automation’s Commitment to Clean Core Principles

As a long-term SAP partner, we take pride in being a good citizen of the SAP ecosystem. We live inside the SAP in our own namespace, work with approved APIs, and leave SAP’s code untouched.

Our focus on keeping SAP’s Clean Core extensibility principles at the center of how we design and deliver solutions, helps to reassure customers that our products are stable and upgrade-ready.

That’s why we’re looking forward to being formally recognized as Clean Core certified partners in the near future. This move will strengthen our reputation for providing intelligent, flexible solutions that empower businesses to evolve and adapt to future challenges.

Here, Boris Kniess (Senior Sales Engineer at Tungsten Automation) elaborates on our commitment to the Clean Core approach and its benefits to our customers:

“Tungsten Automation has always adhered to the principles of Clean Core, and we are actively working towards achieving formal certification. Our commitment is demonstrated through a solution designed to integrate seamlessly without any modifications to SAP’s core code. This means customers can freely customize Process Director without risking broken functionality during future SAP upgrades. As a trusted partner, our goal is to safeguard your business’s investment in SAP by helping you remain a “Good Citizen” within the SAP ecosystem.”

Process Director: Aligning with SAP Clean Core to Transform Process Orchestration

Process Director delivers advanced automation directly into your SAP environment, acting as a centralized process orchestration engine built on Clean Core principles. This means you can tailor and streamline document-driven and request-driven tasks, whether you use ECC on-premises or SAP’s cloud-based S/4HANA capabilities.

Here is a quick overview of its key features and benefits:

• Centralized Control: Manage all your automated processes in one place. Your team gains full visibility, control, and clear work lists to effectively distribute tasks and processes.
• Deep SAP Integration: We utilize your existing SAP setup to ensure a smooth and cost-effective implementation, aligning with SAP's Clean Core approach for simplified deployment and upgrades.
• Out-of-the-Box Automation: Instantly launch pre-configured processes to capture data, automate postings and approvals, and perform extensive validation checks against SAP.
• Adaptive Process Control: Effortlessly adapt document and request-driven processes to meet changing business needs — no major reconfigurations required.
• Process Analytics: Gain real-time insights and KPIs at a glance, enabling you to measure and improve performance metrics.
• Integrated Document Lifecycle: Our deep expertise and partnership with Zia deliver enterprise-grade AI-powered Content Management — keeping your records organized and driving new levels of efficiency across your business.
• Multi-Interface Accessibility: Our solution is accessible through various interfaces — including SAP GUI, Fiori, mobile apps, and web browsers — simplifying user adoption.
• Streamlined Compliance: Combining Process Director and InvoiceAgility solution gives you certainty that invoices flowing in or out of your SAP environment are meeting the requirements of a complex global compliance landscape, including those documents flowing over a clearance platform. And with Sovos tax determination built in, VAT and SUT tax determinations are no longer a headache. You now have a single platform on which you can handle any complexity that comes your way.

To learn more about Tungsten Process Director and how it can enhance critical processes, such as invoice management, review our latest infographic here.

Tungsten Automation: Proud SAP Partners Committed to Elevating ERP Automation

The Clean Core approach represents the future of SAP, offering a smart and strategic route to full process automation, while allowing organizations to customize solutions to fit their evolving needs.

Tungsten Process Director is designed to help you enhance the value of this approach, offering reliable and future-proofed solutions that enable you to lower costs, improve user experience, and achieve true business agility. To learn more about how our solutions accelerate your automation journey, talk to an invoice automation expert today