I get some very interesting feedback from our customers on what they are doing differently to stay ahead of their competitors. As always, we need to make sure our customers are leveraging the full value of their SAP investments.
Not surprisingly, most of them are looking for fast, low risk ways to seize market opportunities and respond dynamically to new business challenges.
Especially CIOs that I spoke to, know that they need to adapt to the new prosumer world and are making steps to become increasingly innovation-enabled. They need immediate access to intelligent real-time information that can allow them to forecast with accuracy. Since everything is tied to the volatile demand, business processes must be reinvented or innovated - as this is the only way to thrive.
Until now, some have already made investments with SAP to innovate. Let me share some thoughts on how business leaders can further extract innovative value from SAP Cloud and HANA to get first mover advantage when they engage with SAP Custom Development.
Realize the Full Potential of Cloud
In my last blog, I talked about how we are having conversations with companies who are expecting faster, simpler cloud transformation, and since then, more are telling us that they are looking at running their full, sophisticated business in an integrated cloud that connects with their existing on-premise setup.
To support their transition to the cloud, SAP Custom Development is already building new applications as well as extending existing cloud solutions to help our customers fully address unique, mission critical and often competitively differentiating business needs.
These individualized solutions are offered on either public, private or hybrid environments and include development, deployment, maintenance and future updates based on monthly subscriptions. Ultimately, this option lowers the total cost of ownership and also makes it easier for businesses to leverage on cloud innovations ahead of their competitors.
Unlock the Power of Data
When it comes to SAP HANA, companies can make a big impact with high-value scenarios aimed at addressing critical business use cases. For instance, moving from preventative to predictive maintenance for in-house machines or the machines and equipment sold to customers is one of those scenarios. SAP Custom Development and Strategic Projects team have built solutions that detect potential maintenance issues and create cost and time savings by limiting production risk.
One recent example is a rail freight operator in Asia who underwent a freight management transformation program, heavily dependent on SAP technology. This customer deals with significant travel volumes, covers a lot of mileage and has a complicated infrastructure. They wanted access to freight information in real-time to make better business decisions so they chose the SAP HANA platform to increase the business value and engaged with SAP Custom Development to build several custom solutions on top of their existing processes. Their result is first mover advantage in their market!
Have a conversation with SAP Custom Development team
I believe it is important that we get as many business leaders to have a conversation with our Custom Development team in APJ (led by Tom Janoshalmi). In particular, we need to help our customers understand that when they work with us, they are teaming up with an organization of experts who have done it all before. Their projects go smoothly –and they are up and running quickly with powerful, new and unique solutions that put their businesses far ahead.
