As I get back to the office routine this week I finally have time to reflect on the sheer amount of information I was exposed to at this year’s SAP Sapphire in Orlando. It was amazing, informative and overwhelming all at the same time. If you did not have a chance to be there in person or follow it online, here is a short summary of the top highlights.
The Intelligent Enterprise
SAP CEO Bill McDermott stated in his SAPPHIRENOW opening speech that there is an urgent need to build a digital civilization, providing opportunities for all people globally and even in uncertain periods helping the word run better. He emphasized SAP ‘s dedication to
empathy, commitment and collaboration. Bill announced a new
simplified pricing strategy. As he said, now every order to cash and procure to pay scenarios will be based on orders as a measurable outcome for all businesses. While competitors charge customers for static data and third party systems SAP will not. He as well, discussed with special guest Michael Dell, Dell Founder, Chairman and CEO the possibilities of business transformation. Bill McDermott also introduced and outlined the vision of SAP Leonardo’s digital innovation system for the
intelligent enterprise. Watch the speech
here.
Software as a Strategy
Bernd Leukert, member of the Executive Board of SAP SE in Products & Innovation Group explained in his keynote how software is becoming a strategy today for every business in the world to succeed in the competitive market. The ultimate way to grow the business is to simplify and innovate the core processes and SAP is the only solution for this by providing
cloud applications in an open and fully automated fashion. Bernd also empathized that moving to the cloud and adopting business
intelligent applications is the key to success, leveraging
digital innovation and
automate the processes at the maximum possible rate. He said that the fundamental core of the digitalization is
S/4 HANA as the best software as a service in the ERP market. He also presented the latest
SAP Leonardo SAP Solution as a digital system helping businesses rapidly innovate and offering a guaranteed win. Bernd showed how SAP Leonardo intelligently connects people, things and businesses. Watch the speech
here.
The Intelligent Future
Hasso Plattner had a great speech at SAPPHIRENOW where he highlighted the intelligent future through
SAP Cloud Platform,
Sap Leonardo and
SAP S/4HANA Cloud boosting and accelerating the digital transformation. He introduced the
New Intelligent Business Applications with the four focus areas as
Intelligent Transactions to automate high frequency repetitive tasks,
Analytics to make data-driven insights available to everyone,
Collaboration to tap into the collective intelligence of knowledge workers and
Digital Assistants to provide the right answer to the right time. He also emphasized that the businesses now are connected to new levels of intelligence thanks to
machine learning,
IoT,
blockchain and
analytics. Watch the speech
here.
SAP Leonardo
SAP Leonardo was one of the biggest highlights of SAPPHIRENOW. It is SAP’s newest innovation for digital business. Mala Anand, the SAP Leonard President opened her speech by emphasizing that to become a digital business, both the business model and the business process must be adapted. Therefore, SAP Leonardo combines
Analytics,
IOT,
Big Data,
Machine Learning,
Blockchain and
design thinking into a single solution offering to scale intelligence across business processes. SAP Leonardo integrats several technologies, running them flawlessly in the
cloud and uses huge amount of data to transform asset management and improve customer experience. For more information on SAP Leonardo visit the official
website and to watch the Mala’s speech
here.
I hope I was able to give you an overview of the highlights of this year’s Sapphire in Orlando. Feel free to add some comments and share what you think or what your personal highlights were from the conference.
