How a Clean ERP Core Breaks the Code of Your Data’s Secret Language
By Bala Ram, Global VP, Platform & Industry Sales Programs
– SAP Business Technology Platform, SAP
Known for finding and piecing together incremental bits of information into actionable insight, codebreakers have played a quiet, yet monumental, role in history. They have averted and ended countless wars, uncovered nature's secret patterns, kept billions of people safe, and even ignited an era of digitalization that's now part of our everyday life.
Despite their genius intellect and achievements, codebreakers have yet to overcome a critical challenge: data provides too many alternatives for humans to crack in a lifetime. Even as early as 1936, Alan Turing, whose cryptanalysis skills and universal machine would later contribute to the end of World War II, understood the value of creating tools to break through data's secret language. "It is possible to invent a single machine which can be used to compute any computable sequence," he wrote in the middle of his paper on computable numbers.
Now, many decades (and a few generations) later, most businesses enjoy the flexibility of smart technologies, such as artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning, the IoT, and predictive analytics. However, according
to a IDC Market Spotlight, a need to take data programs to the next level still exists, requiring "a new paradigm and a unified strategy to combine and consume data" to meet business needs quickly.
The solution: A platform of integrated insight
As quickly as our world moves, businesses face intensifying pressure to drastically accelerate their speed of responsiveness,
drive innovation completeness, and deliver valuable outcomes to their employees, partners, and customers. And succeeding in this realm leads to a game-changing, decisive position over the competition.
For many SAP customers using the
RISE with SAP offering, the adoption of our intelligent ERP (
SAP S/4HANA) has opened the door to the speed, agility, and visibility of connected networks, artificial intelligence, and cutting-edge business models. But more importantly, it's becoming a core source of business data collected by every application, function, and device the company owns and shares.
Moving to SAP S/4HANA and using the software's capabilities is the beginning of a significant transformation opportunity. Key business advantages can be achieved by augmenting SAP S/4HANA with a combination of database and data management, analytics, application development and integration, and intelligent technologies – which are available through
SAP Business Technology Platform (SAP BTP).
The reason why our customers find the use of SAP BTP with their deployment of SAP S/4HANA compelling is the ease in which they can "deliver business agility while keeping their core clean." In other words, organizations can innovate with latest cloud technologies while stripping away the burden of complexity, such as data silos, disconnected applications, outdated information, disparate processes, and unexpected technology downtime.
The opportunity: Turning data into business value
A clean core allows businesses to maintain a pristine digital environment while driving cumulative customization that makes sense for their business processes and operations, as well as their partners and customers.
This step in the transformation journey removes the risk of low- or no-value modifications that can get in the way of addressing future business needs. Whenever there is an SAP S/4HANA enhancement is needed, SAP BTP can be evaluated to integrate seamlessly and enable changes – ranging from embedded analytics to scaling process extensions across global locations.
In addition to securing the integrity of SAP S/4HANA, SAP BTP enables organizations to benefit from fundamental scenarios, including:
- Accelerate and simplify migration: Migrate and maintain relevant data, deliver trusted master data, and keep the core clean by decoupling custom code.
- Optimize and automate business processes: Unify, optimize, and automate processes with more than 2,000 prebuilt integrations, 150+ prebuilt bots and comprehensive tools.
- Innovate to gain a sustained competitive advantage: Unlock the power of live data from SAP S/4HANA to deliver real-time insights and build new business models.
Furthermore, by unleashing the power of their enterprise data, our customers can explore the use of cloud-native data warehouse, analytics, automation and management solutions, planning strategies, and new concepts for their business model and processes.
The future: A bold, insight-driven destiny
Companies that act boldly with their technology are, without a doubt, rewarded well by their employees and customers. And for our customers, this means having a unified IT landscape based on SAP S/4HANA and upgraded with capabilities from SAP BTP – keeping their core clean to break the code on their data's full potential.
Energize a bold future for your business. Find out how by reading the IDC market spotlight, “Ignite Your Agile Enterprise: Five Key Trends to Future-Proof the Business in 2021 and Beyond.”
This is the second blog as part of the series on SAP Business Technology Platform, including “Why Technology Completeness Matters to the Success of a Business Technology Platform.”
