On Demand is the “New Norm”
Andrew Flanagan, National Vice President, SME North America
Part of being human is to constantly strive to go faster, be stronger, reach higher. We push boundaries, we innovate, we create new products and processes. In the world of sports, as soon as a record is broken the bar is immediately raised and a new target created. The instant a record falls, the new number becomes the one to beat. The latest record is always the New Norm.
Customer expectations, similarly, are in a continuous state of evolution. The bar of expectations is constantly being raised to match the newest product offering. Consumers are quick to realign their psychology – what was an upgrade yesterday – quickly becomes the expectation or standard. An obvious example is the field of consumer electronics – as soon as a new and exciting product or product upgrade is introduced, it becomes the base standard consumers demand, one that manufacturers rush in to provide.
SAP as an organization is a mass of innovation, and BusinessByDesign, the latest SaaS technology solution from SAP, is just the beginning. As a platform for expansion and innovation, BusinessByDesign is an example of SAP giving customers the tools to be the Best Run business in their industry. SAP, via ByDesign, gives growing companies the opportunity to instantly offer this new technology while serving their existing ecosystem of customers, partners and employees. Customers have the opportunity to completely slice through the ‘user technology’ curve to offer cutting edge enterprise wide solutions to their customers in a seamless fashion.
Growing companies, often in high innovation modes themselves, can seamlessly tap into ByDesign, and showcase a decade worth of planning and expertise. ByDesign arms SMEs with the tools to get ahead of the customer service curve, meet the rapidly changing mantle of consumer expectations, get ahead of the profit curve and capture market share.
On Demand, which was once the ‘new technology’, is now the New Norm.
The innovation has become mainstream and is no longer a niche solution or technology. The sooner companies visualize this shift the sooner they can capture Value with solutions designed to simplify every aspect of a business. SAP BusinessByDesign is a great start.
http://idc.cycloneinteractive.net/sap-business-by-design/landing-page.html
First, OnDemand is not a zero sum game for companies. Moving an application to the cloud has many potential benefits so whichever reason is the driver, the company must obtain incremental value (ROI, Agility, Visibility, Share among others). Any one of these are valid by themselves.
Second, OnDemand is a huge win for the IT Team. This may seem counter intuitive so let me clarify. Successful IT organizations are moving fast to be in front of the needs of their organization. Good examples are Mobility, CRM, Sustainability. Time spent managing applications gets repurposed to managing emerging needs deeper within Line of Business constituent needs.
Third, Companies of all sizes and across all industries can leverage the tremendous innovation in solutions available in the Cloud. Speed and time to Value usually drive the end game.
I promise to continue to expand on these topics in subsequent blogs. This is a deep topic with no silver bullet so our discussions are important. My thanks for your posts! Andy