SAP20Tips Week Four: Run Better by Driving Operational Excellence

Three weeks ago, we launched a 20 tips campaign – a tip a day over four weeks – that introduces real-life scenarios of customers using predictive analytics to overcome business challenges. Each week focuses on a different topic. Week one looked at predictive and customer relationship management. Week two examined how predictive analytics can help boost your marketing. Week three explored how predictive analytics can help you anticipate risks and reduce fraud. This week, we conclude with how predictive analytics can help drive operational excellence and run better.

Financial forecasting is a key component to defining your organization’s strategy, and predictive analytics can help paint a much more accurate picture of your financial forecast compared to traditional analytics. Add to that real-time processing capabilities, and you can increase your agility and readjust your budget as needed to meet ever-changing market conditions.

Execution is equally critical. Wouldn’t it be great if you could streamline and optimize your operations to cope with things like material pricing volatility, suppliers, distribution channels, and customer demands?

The latest technologies connect everything together – people to people, people to things, and even things to things – resulting in a whole lot of information to collect and analyze. This provides organizations with tremendous opportunities to streamline and simplify processes, anticipate changes, and spot areas for improvements, driving operational excellence and competitive advantage.

A great example is the use of geo location by retailers to determine the best store locations and how to place items within a store to optimize sales based upon how customers move inside the store.

Predictive analytics can even be used to optimize the design of a sports stadium by determining the best placement for food courts, exits, etc. to minimize crowd traffic.

Manufacturers can optimize plant equipment to maximize capacity, shifting from reactive to predictive maintenance and operating at peak energy efficiency.

If driving operational excellence in your organization is of interest to you, make sure to follow #SAP20Tips and @SAPAnalytics over the coming week for daily tips posted to STAY AHEAD: 20 Tips from SAP Predictive Analytics on SAP.com, including real-life customer stories! And watch the video below to see SAP Predictive Maintenance in action:

Week 4 – Originally published on the Analytics blog and republished with permission