Modern Technology Platforms: From Complexity to High-Impact Potential

When solving complex problems, everyone wants time and space to think, ask questions, and arrive at conclusions through debate, ideation, and discourse. No one likes being rushed and forced into a decision.

Unfortunately, time doesn’t stand still long enough ‒ especially when complex questions bring even more complex answers. Just to be clear, I am not advising business leaders to stop this exercise altogether. They just need to first consider how decision-making is affected by their broadly distributed landscape containing multiple data types located on premise and in the cloud and across numerous national and global jurisdictions.

According to the IDC analyst connection, “Unlocking Business Potential Through Accelerated Innovation on a Modern Technology Platform,” many organizations still find the ability to integrate numerous puddles of data and applications challenging. But the data and applications themselves are not the problems; the external data sets and shared data with third parties are the obstacles.

Moving beyond data management with a unified platform

For most businesses, it’s not unusual to have data scattered across 100 or more applications living on different platforms. But this also means that they don’t have the visibility and control to understand where the data lives, what its purpose is, what it looks like, and how to sort it.

This all-too-common reality is compelling organizations to implement a modern technology platform as part of their overall digital transformation journey. By bringing together multiple integration points on a single platform, they can raise enterprise intelligence and overcome the drawbacks of siloed information.

IDC recommends choosing a modern technology platform that supports four core capabilities: enterprise intelligence services, integration and orchestration services, developer services, and engagement and experience services. These capabilities can be used as building blocks to drive new digital ones ‒ such as artificial and contextual intelligence, automation, machine learning, and natural-language processing ‒ that help solve complex challenges.

Elevating service for the core business 

A prime example of how a modern technology platform can help businesses innovate at speed and scale is the experience of Schnellecke Logistics. The global logistics service provider for the automotive industry adopted SAP Business Technology Platform (SAP BTP) to gain innovation and technology leadership in automotive supply chain management by offering customers unprecedented quality of service.

Using SAP BTP as a technical foundation, Schnellecke Logistics developed its digital control tower by aggregating and processing data from various internal and external sources. The system provides real-time insights into company-wide operational data, automated reporting on key performance indicators, digital incident management, and digital shift protocols through role-specific applications and advanced analytics.

Cloud-based, dynamic, self-organizing, and self-optimizing, the digital control tower enables employees and customers to substantially improve business operations, employee productivity, and customer service, including 70% faster availability of operational insights and impact analysis. The company also saved two hours every day through automated reporting and accelerated issue resolutions by a factor of three. In recognition of this innovative approach, Schnellecke’s CIO was also named one of the top 10 CIOs in 2021 by the German IT magazine Computerwoche.

Assessing the business impacts of a global issue

PwC is taking its implementation of SAP BTP in a different direction to benefit society. The global professional services network dedicated resources to help businesses counteract the impact of climate change, which is predicted to put US$43 trillion worth of fixed assets at risk by the end of this century.

PwC’s multicultural, multidisciplinary climate excellence team unites expertise from different business units, sectors, and scientific disciplines, all of which are integrated into its climate excellence solution. The solution enables companies to understand the financial implications of climate scenarios and the material drivers based on hazards, technology change, demand and price changes, and a range of regulatory measures. In addition, it identifies climate change opportunities and risks in portfolios and reveals how those risks might play out over time. Companies can then integrate these variables into their credit and investment processes and decisions.

With SAP BTP at the core of this innovation initiative, PwC gives an awareness of the risk drivers, potential impacts, and opportunities of climate change ‒ which was not possible before. The solution enables organizations to automatically comply with the latest regulations and create transparent climate reporting, which is always up to date and compliant. In addition, PwC’s climate excellence solution built the basis for sector decarbonization strategies and alignment with the European Union taxonomy.

Unlocking complexity to discover new potential

While the scope of a modern technology platform is not limited by a particular use case or workload, it does mix the two to unlock innovative solutions to complex, real-world problems. Just think of the possibilities that automating workflows and extending intelligence across all internal and external processes can do for your business.

Find out how a modern technology platform can accelerate your business transformation initiatives across internal departments and external stakeholders, such as customers and partners. Read the IDC analyst connection, “Unlocking Business Potential Through Accelerated Innovation on a Modern Technology Platform.”