Currently some person receives an Excel file and alt+tabs frantically to SAP, taking ~9 minutes to fill its several forms. We'll replace this "process" with a XML file and a bot, which does everything in ~1 minute.
It's easier, cheaper, faster and less riskier than asking SAP to have some type of API or access to its DB.
Welcome to enterprise IT :)
Less riskier? Really? I'd be worried about accidentally ending up making changes on a completely unrelated screen, or accidentally hitting "delete" instead of "modify" or something like that after some ordering somewhere changes. Or perhaps some unescaped data ends up manipulating the GUI instead of being entered in as data (eg. a tab).
At least with an API data is parameterized (cf. bobby tables) and the operations that you are doing are fixed.
The "riskier" part is about DB access. In most environment, the powers that be will not allow you to touch it (correctly), doing INSERTS/DELETES/ETC. So you can pass through the risk management gate a form-filler robot, while if you ask for direct DB access you'll hear a "no".
Anyway, even if you read me associating risk+API, I said "it's less riskier than asking SAP for an API". If your project depends on SAP doing anything, you have a high risk of not happening :p