Solving Business Problems with SAP Leonardo IoT and Edge

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In her latest blog, Elvira Wallis, SVP and Global Head of IoT at SAP, highlighted that customers can gain benefits in three main ways by employing IoT - a step change in productivity, deliver a better customer experience, and enable new business models.

Let me walk you through how SAP customers enjoy those benefits today, by providing a few examples of customer use cases leveraging SAP IoT solutions like SAP Leonardo IoT and SAP Leonardo IoT Edge.



A step change in productivity

Customers are optimizing their internal processes with insights based on IoT data.

• A leading provider of packaging materials like bubble wrap, air pillows, and foam sheeting, found in everyday packages, uses IoT to improve technician productivity and lower costs by allowing technicians to remotely monitor chemicals consumption, product utilization, and remotely control the configuration of packaging machines at customers, reducing the need for technician travel. By using IoT data, the company was able to reduce technician service visits by 20%. They are able to enhance customer experience and achieve greater productivity for improved customer satisfaction.


• A large defense and security company wanted to improve its processes to improve operational readiness. By employing IoT, the customer can automatically take action based on sensor data at the edge, even without network connectivity and ensure maintenance of its equipment when in an “intentionally disconnected mode”. In addition, the customer can throttle all data that is flowing in from different equipment and store just “interesting” or relevant data.

 Deliver a better customer experience

Customers are offering services to consumers that improve product or service handling

• By using IoT, a leading company that provides hardware, software, and services for the professional construction industry, offers new digital service to its customers, such as tool specific data and warranty status. Based on insights on usage patterns, the company innovated the creation of new hardware and new business models like offering an integrated tool service request for repair order creation. The company provides its customers with real-time data on last-known locations of assets which minimize the theft and loss.  All these enabled the company to realize continuous revenue streams from new services.


• A leading heating and ventilation manufacturer is using IoT to monitor the heating and ventilation systems installed in buildings across the world. With the help of predictive algorithms, they are able to predict upcoming breakdowns and move upcoming repairs into a planned maintenance window. The solution reduces downtimes significantly, hence reducing maintenance and repair costs and increasing customer satisfaction.

Enable new business models

Customer are building their own platforms to allow new business services based on IoT data

• An independent service provider for energy companies and investors provides a solution for management of wind and solar assets. The platform uses IoT data from wind parks and solar farms, and then associates it with meteorological and financial data to derive insights. By using this solution, customers can make informed decisions based on the analytics and predictive analytics information available. The platform helps customers achieve the goals of Paris Climate Agreement. It also helps investors in making investment decisions in their renewable energy portfolios with the aim to maximize portfolio performance and to minimize investment risks.


• A global leader in access control and security solutions creates a digital offering for access control and time recording. Access control and time recording are available as a SaaS offering or directly in the customer’s account. Customers benefit from a best-in-class solution, with a minimum effort for administration, maintenance, training, and process integration.

All of the above use cases are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to how customer problems pertaining to a variety of industry can be solved using SAP Leonardo IoT and SAP Leonardo IoT Edge. Contextualising and integrating IoT data with business process information, combined with concepts such as cloud-edge interoperability provides end to end solutions to problems that customers face across industries.

In my future blog, I will be focusing on Cloud-to-Edge interoperability, where customers can choose to run IoT enabled business processes on their Edge or on the Cloud allowing for distributed computing across the cloud and multiple Edge nodes.

Solving customers’ problems is at the heart of any solution SAP provides. I hope I was able to give some concrete examples of how our SAP IoT offerings – SAP Leonardo IoT and SAP Leonardo IoT Edge are all about solving business problems and can help you take your business to new levels.