A year ago the SAP India IT and Marketing teams came together to brainstorm on an innovative idea of bringing SAP products to the biggest market in India comprised of small and mid-size companies. The challenge was ‘to cover the vast geography of India’.
Post a small workshop with Marketing team, the idea of ‘The Innovation Express’ (literally a moving Bus) was conceptualized. The Innovation Express would be a first of its kind travelling showcase of advanced business solutions exclusively designed to help realize customers’ ambitions. But the biggest challenge that haunted IT was how to provide connectivity on this moving vehicle? The Innovation Express route was traversing through customer premises located in small towns and cities of where the telecom infrastructure wasn't very advanced.
The IT Team in India worked with various telecom vendors on the above idea. The concept of VSAT too was proposed, but budget was very limited, and IT team had to work on cost effective solutions. Based on these constraints, a solution combining various technologies like 4G/ 3G and CMDA was conceptualized to provide seamless data connectivity to SAP cloud.
Below is a detailed view of the Technology implementation on the Innovation Express:
- Setting up the ecosystem of technology: a holistic network of technology that ensured all application in Innovation Express are available real-time for the customers
- Secure it: Enforce company security policies (e.g. password encryption), conduct remote actions (e.g. lock, wipe, remove password), and identify required security systems that ensure protected environment for the solutions
- Manage it: Ensure strong, continuous and reliable network for the technology to perform seamlessly without users impact, and optimize support with troubleshooting and hardware inventory
The top 3 business drivers behind the genesis of The Innovation Express:
- Position SAP as a SME solution provider: SAP solutions are perceived to cater to only big corporates or enterprise customers. In reality, SAP solutions are extremely relevant for SMEs. We want to reach out to SMEs through this initiative and position SAP as SME solution provider.
- Coverage: India is a large country and taking SAP new innovations to those customers (especially outside metros) is a constant challenge. This program will approx. cover 12 cities and 5000 Km
- Customer Experience: While many would have used or heard about SAP, they would not have seen or used the actual SAP solutions or the new SAP Innovations. This program allows customers to get the first-hand experience on a close proximity.
Besides providing connectivity on the Innovation Express, the IT team also provided support in building demo pods in the bus for indulging customer in live demos. The champions from IT team supporting this project were Praveen Shetty, Savio Cardoz and Prakesh M. They were ably guided by Anil Khatri in making The Innovation Express an on-road reality.
If you would like to know more information about “The Innovation Express”, please contact Shetty Praveen or visit: www.theinnovationexpress.com
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