The perfect storm of technology innovations is reshaping the future of business. The convergence of cloud (and commoditization of cloud), mobile (empowered users), Networks(connecting like never before) and big data act as a catalyst to empower individuals as employees, consumers, and as partners to increase their reach and relevance.
Cloud: Precursor for Innovation
Cloud has been around for a while now. In fact, IDC predicts that worldwide spending on public IT cloud services is expected to reach $127
billion in 2018. But the commoditization of cloud has allowed businesses to truly outsource their IT and workloads and trust that this deployment model will work for them. And, allows IT to align closer with the lines of business to focus on value creation, enabling them to do more and go faster.
“Cloud users are realizing benefits in ways that impact the line of business directly via agility, simplicity, collaboration and innovation.” says Robert Mahowald, Program Vice President at IDC and leader of IDC’s SaaS & Cloud Services practice
On Wednesday, May 27th, IDC and SAP will reveal new insights on how companies are driving innovation into their business processes using mature cloud strategies. I’ll leave it to IDC to reveal key findings from their CloudView survey. But in anticipation of these findings, I wanted to share two compelling stories on how our customers are using cloud to engage with employees, customers, and partners in new ways; providing unique experiences to differentiate themselves, innovate, and grow.
What if you could…Accelerate the integration of newly acquired companies?
Ever wonder how the baked goods you indulge in reach the retail store where you purchase them? Aryzta is one of the largest frozen bakery companies in the world. The group has a leadership position in the specialty frozen bakery sector and is a global supplier of baked goods to the foodservice, retail and quick service restaurant sectors. Aryzta operates 60 bakeries and kitchens across Europe, North America, South America, Asia, Australia and New Zealand with products ranging from artisan breads, sweet baked goods to pizza’s, tarts and pies.
You can imagine how the importance of service delivery and business agility impact their success. A major strategy for Aryzta is growth through acquisitions. To integrate new companies more quickly, Aryzta needed a centralized, standardized, cloud-based HR system to help gain better insight and improve talent management. They had a variety of parallel HR systems, but SuccessFactors laid the foundation for them to build consistent workflows and integrate acquisitions quickly.
What if you could…close a sale from a Tweet in two minutes?
Our world has certainly changed with the onset of social networks. What started as a social trend has transformed the way businesses engage their network of resources including employees, customers, suppliers, and partners. Those companies that can unleash their resources both within and outside the four walls of their organization can leverage an ecosystem that constantly creates new value.
“Social business is becoming not just a B-to-C phenomenon, with nearly 60% of B-to-B companies saying that social business initiatives are positively impacting business outcomes.”
But how do you manage and make sense of the massive amounts of dark data; bring it to light and make it available for analysis? Or, gain insights from the conversations taking place 24 x 7 about your organization?
Let’s take a look at Mohawk Industries. Mohawk is the world’s largest flooring company, with operations in North America, Europe, Asia, and Australia. The company is headquartered in Georgia and encompasses 32,000 employees. With Cloud, they can comprehensively engage their end consumers, channel partners and internal sales and marketing personnel to create a unique, unified and cherished experience for everyone involved. By simplifying Mohawk’s processes, SAP Cloud for Social has enabled Mohawk to easily monitor and engage with their customers to drive sales. 80% of deals that began by monitoring and directing social conversations closed. $8 million in revenue was driven from 14,000 leads found on social media. Mohawk even set a new record—2 minutes to close a sale initiated in response to a customer tweet.
These are just a couple of examples of how companies are creating business value using cloud.
NEW Insights from IDC
In late 2014, IDC conducted a global cloud benchmarking survey of more than 4,100 organizations of all sizes on a wide range of questions specific to vendor choices, transformation, spending decisions, and expected benefits of public, private, and hybrid cloud.
On Wednesday, May 27th, at 11a.m. ET, IDC and SAP will host a lively discussion on how companies are embracing cloud and optimizing their strategy to spark innovation and growth.
You won’t want to miss these groundbreaking insights. Register today!
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