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# Replacing Excel with SAP APIs & Python validation

Aldin Slivar proves you can make fragile Excel reporting workflows entirely unnecessary. Discover how his team automated SAP compliance using Python, REST APIs, and strict data validation.

- **Speakers:** [Aldin Sljivar](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/@aldin-sljivar)
- **Event:** World Congress 2026 Europe - Virtual Stage
- **Published:** July 1, 2026
- **Duration:** 28:25
- **URL:** https://www.wearedevelopers.com/videos/1944-replacing-excel-with-sap-apis-python-validation

## Summary

Aldin Slivar outlines a technical journey to eliminate tedious, manual Excel workflows for infrastructure compliance and reporting. In a strict regulatory environment, hardware updates must be heavily documented in SAP. Historically, tracking these changes required navigating the SAP UI, manually exporting Excel reports, and relying on undocumented preprocessing scripts. To clear these bottlenecks, the engineering team pivoted to an automated architecture driven by Python and the newly available SAP REST API. They intentionally bypassed screen-scraping tools like Playwright and RPA due to high maintenance overhead, and opted out of direct database queries because of complex internal schemas, relying instead on the stable, governed contract of REST APIs.

The migration revealed crucial insights into handling legacy systems and corporate data. Notably, the team discovered that non-production SAP environments lacked accurate data, forcing them to use production data for dual-pipeline testing. Additionally, they learned that the SAP REST API and the SAP UI pulled from entirely different views with misaligned synchronization schedules, requiring careful reconciliation. To manage this safely, they baked stringent business validation rules into their Python scripts, ensuring critical columns and non-null fields passed compliance checks before any records changed hands.

Ultimately, standardizing on Python with structured version control, CI/CD, and transparent documentation drastically reduced the project's bus factor. Beyond swapping technologies, the shift required deep collaboration with business stakeholders, tracking deviations between automated and manual runs to build organizational trust. Slivar emphasizes that "the goal wasn't to automate the manual step. It was to make the manual steps unnecessary," proving that adopting stable API contracts and rigorous real-world data validation can successfully retire outdated manual processes.

**Keywords:** sap rest api integration, excel workflow automation, python data validation, infrastructure compliance reporting, legacy system migration, rpa vs api decision, playwright screen scraping overhead, regulatory compliance documentation, pandas data extraction, dual-pipeline parallel testing, sap ui data synchronization, corporate test data accuracy, ci/cd version control, business stakeholder trust

## Chapters

1. **Infrastructure documentation and regulatory compliance in trading environments** (00:51) — How hardware and system changes are tracked in centralized reporting systems to satisfy strict audit requirements.
1. **Identifying pain points in manual data extraction processes** (04:43) — The hidden costs of manual interface navigation and untracked preprocessing scripts that justify rebuilding data workflows.
1. **Designing a target architecture with Python and SAP APIs** (09:43) — Why programming languages and reliable endpoint connections outperform robotic process automation and direct database access for data validation.
1. **Navigating data synchronization and testing challenges in SAP** (14:45) — Why outdated test environments and discrepancies between user interface views and backend endpoints complicate data validation.
1. **Rolling out automated workflows and retiring manual steps** (19:34) — How running parallel pipelines and implementing proper continuous integration controls builds stakeholder trust during automation rollouts.
1. **Replacing complex manual Excel workflows with automated API integrations** (23:45) — How stable integration contracts provide more reliable data extraction than user interface automation tools.

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