The Road to an Intelligent Enterprise Requires Choice, Agility, and an Agile Business Platform

Last year, SAP introduced the concept of the Intelligent Enterprise, based on more than 47 years as a successful business process software company. We have helped companies strive to optimize their business processes while continuously seeking to innovate their business models.

Those successful in these endeavors reinvented themselves and warded off disruptive challengers, while those that failed shuttered their business in many cases. Now, with the advent of cloud-based platforms and intelligent technologies — the Internet of Things (IoT), machine learning, blockchain, Big Data, and experience management — companies are again innovating and changing their business models by embracing and adopting these platform-based solutions on their journey to becoming intelligent enterprises.

SAP Cloud Platform is the agile business platform to enable our customers and partners to foster new innovations and offers choice and flexibility in the delivery of new customer- and employee-facing applications.

At MWC19, we are sharing how we help customers innovate while at the same time talking about lighthouse customers that are truly becoming intelligent enterprises with our agile business platform. Let’s start with the new platform highlights.

Enriched Mobile Software Development Kits

Experience for an intelligent enterprise is not just limited to automating processes, reporting in real-time, and reducing repetitive tasks; it should lead enterprises to perform high-value jobs on the go.

SAP Cloud Platform Mobile Services provide enterprise customers with the choice of deploying native mobile apps that deliver transforming customer experiences.

SAP Cloud Platform SDK for iOS has continuously been updated since its launch almost three years ago. In the latest version, 3.0, you will find many new features as well as improvements based on customer feedback. My favorite feature provides machine learning-based text recognition directly into any app, utilizing pre-trained machine learning capabilities from SAP, even when offline. In addition, we have added many UI control improvements, including an enhanced MapKit control to support rendering routes and location from mobile cells.

The recent enhancements to SAP Cloud Platform SDK for Android version 2.0 tightens integration with SAP Cloud Platform capabilities. Developers can now easily connect to SAP API Business Hub and SAP API Management technology for API discovery and also quickly translate apps using the SAP Translation Hub application. There is deeper support for the Kotlin programming language and improved UI controls for SAP Fiori for Android. The SDK supports access even when the device is not connected to a network. Comprehensive enterprise security and support requirements are met through the SDK’s security, enterprise-grade logging and usage reporting features.

SAP partner Incture Technologies has already developed an order management solution for an innovative customer. Delfi is a distributor of its own brand of confectionery products across Southeast Asia. Delfi developed an Android-native sales order management application using the Android SDK to support its strategy to maintain market leadership and support its extensive sales and distribution network.

All sales data is updated in real time on the app, and with a single interface for all sales order-related processes and information. As a result, order processing time has been reduced from one day to almost real time. Dependency on paperwork is eliminated and the app also provides 100 percent visibility to the full sales cycle, inventory, and collections status.

The SDK also allowed Incture to reduce its go-to-market time and has made delivering new features easier. It also enabled Incture to create an app that accesses SAP S/4HANA and third-party systems while enabling innovation with the full set of SAP Cloud Platform capabilities and services.

SAP Discovery Center Offers Agility

The SAP Cloud Platform Discovery Center site is designed to accelerate every SAP Cloud Platform customer’s journey and offer them learning flexibility to help chart their path to becoming an intelligent enterprise. Designed to be an open and exploratory experience for SAP Cloud Platform customers, the site provides sample use cases and partner-built solutions for business needs, including self-paced learning modules. Combined with project management tools, available subject matter experts, and platform resources, these features enable every customer get up-to-speed on SAP’s agile business platform and ultimately develop and deploy their own solutions more quickly.

Customers can begin their SAP Cloud Platform projects with ready-to-use project templates called missions based on customer use cases or the solution applicable to their business challenges. With the continuous addition of new features, content, and an ongoing reward program for completing missions, there are now more than 1,000 customers using SAP Cloud Platform Discovery Center to support their journey to develop innovative solutions on SAP Cloud Platform.

Piracanjuba, a Brazilian dairy product producer and manufacturer, has been using SAP Cloud Platform Discovery Center to help get started using SAP Cloud Platform. As part of its roadmap to become an intelligent enterprise, the company wanted an intuitive mobile experience for end users to complete tasks more quickly and increase productivity. Simultaneously, Piracanjuba has identified a need to better integrate its IT landscape and is learning different integration scenarios.

“With SAP Cloud Platform Discovery Center, we can have access to learning content much faster,” said Jose Augusto Storti Starkbauer de Souza Negrao, systems analyst at Piracanjuba.“On a single board, the instructions and homework are maintained for all of the activities, bringing clarity and speed to the learning journey. Besides being very intuitive and easy to use, the platform can be accessed very quickly — easy to login. Overall, we are satisfied with the use of the platform and what it has to offer.”

Insights into an Intelligent Enterprise

SAP Cloud Platform is the agile business platform and a key component to the core foundation of an intelligent enterprise, helping customers deliver on their mission — whether to be an industry leader or to transform themselves from a brick and mortar business into a digital enterprise. But don’t take our word for it: With more than 12,000 customers, we see SAP Cloud Platform used across different industries, disciplines, and for different goals, spanning from improving user experiences and digitizing traditional processes to extending new functionality and, in some cases, disrupting entire business models and operations.

E-government solution provider Comm-Unity has developed apps for 500 cities and communities. The company has improved user experiences with SAP Fiori Cloud on SAP Cloud Platform, while at the same time remaining agile enough to add new incremental capabilities to their apps quickly in order to better support and serve their customers.

JK Tyre is a leading tire manufacturer that digitized its distribution network, consisting of hundreds of thousands of dealers, distributors, and sales personnel. The new applications allow distributors and dealers to perform key business transactions, such as order generation and goods receipt creation, with real-time stock visibility and daily reporting. Additionally, the company optimized sales and supply chain processes for enhanced control over pricing strategies. The outcome was improved product availability by five percent and increased sales efficiency by 20 to 25 percent across its sales force.

For businesses that want to leverage their investments and remain agile while supporting changing business demands, SAP Cloud Platform offers the ease of extending functionality quickly. Utility distributor Jemena did just that by extending the core capabilities of SAP SuccessFactors solutions to build a network compliance solution. This system extends management of field worker requirements to include third-party resources and covers network worker inductions, authorizations, compliance, and certifications. The end result is a system enabling proactive management of employees and third-party contractors with increased visibility to help ensure compliance requirements are met across its network of workers.

There are also entities that have completely reinvented their operating model to deliver exceptional value to customers while improving business processes. Government agencies across continents — Christchurch City Council in New Zealand, San Diego, California, Heidelberg, Germany — are leveraging the agility, flexibility, and connectivity of SAP Cloud Platform to deliver on the promise of helping improve citizen customer experiences, optimize business operations while utilizing the smartest and most innovative technologies such as IoT and machine learning to create smart cities.

What we’re sharing at MWC19 is just a preview of what’s to come. SAP offers choice and agility to our customers and partners with continued rollout of new platform-based cloud services, but they are the ones delivering new innovations that have a positive impact on our lives. We expect many, many more customers innovating in the months and years ahead as the cloud platform economy becomes a dominant vehicle for innovation.

Dan Lahl is vice president of Product Marketing at SAP.