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Mario
Product and Topic Expert
Product and Topic Expert
Digital transformation has helped many companies slice through the storms of disruption in recent years. But as the global economy favors digital customer experiences, business operations, and supply networks, a new chapter in this digital journey is beginning to emerge. And it starts with a strategic shift – less on transforming with technology and more on running a digital business.

Investments are beginning to show signs of the multiplying effect of this budding digital business era. According to the IDC, spending is expected to increase to $3.4 trillion by the end of 2026, as more organizations concentrate on running a sustainable, digital business.

Now, you may want to ask: “how important is this changing mindset to my business?” The answer points to the growing pressure to build resilient, intelligent, and socially responsible business models. And this reality requires a strong integration platform as a service (iPaaS) that drives continuous transformation with greater speed and confidence.

On to the next phase of digital transformation

Value drivers for revenue generation, operational efficiency, and risk mitigation have steadily embraced the refinement of business purpose and broader societal goals. For CEOs, this development has led to a big appetite for the right digital expertise and technology capabilities to not only boost bottom-line growth but also deliver new service-oriented revenue streams to accelerate top-line growth.

However, are current digital investments translating into business value and outcomes? IDC says not always. Only 38% of organizations have seen bottom-line improvements thanks to digital initiatives, while one in four organizations have seen top-line growth due to new digital products and services.

Global organizations are still experiencing challenges in digital execution – particularly in logistics, supply chain, and skills – because of an extra layer of complexity in evolving technology architectures. For years, they have gradually gained a diversified and disconnected landscape of multiple collaboration tools, cloud solutions, cybersecurity capabilities, and automation algorithms.

With a push toward iPaaS investment, IDC believes that technology architectures can move away from such monolithic applications and adopt modular applications supported in a unified environment. And it seems that most organizations are getting this message – iPaaS is the fastest growth area of the software market right now.

iPaaS cuts across the application-oriented functional areas in the past and enables the digital flywheel and network effect. The technology drives flexibility critical in the face of extreme volatility by providing free flow data, advanced and predictive analysis, low-code and no-code application development and extension, and integration across organizational silos.

Where intelligent and sustainable enterprises emerge

iPaaS technologies – such as SAP Business Technology Platform (SAP BTP) – are becoming competitive choices for running a genuinely digital business. In its business value white paper, IDC calculated that surveyed SAP customers realize an average value of $195,100 per 100 users each year from their use of SAP BTP – translating into $1.62 million per organization*.

Such an outcome can be attributed to four critical capabilities of the cloud platform:

  • Empowerment of teams responsible for creating value through improved data management, better use and access to higher-quality data, advanced and predictive analytics, and more-comprehensive, real-time reporting

  • Effective and impactful development and integration efforts and faster completion of projects by leveraging deeper integration and more efficient approaches that include low-code and no-code tools

  • Cross-organizational efficiencies through automation of business processes enabled by embedded solutions for intelligent technologies, such as AI

  • Increased cost savings and staff productivity by moving to a unified, cloud-based platform to run a unified SAP ecosystem


Villeroy & Boch Group is a prime example of the value that SAP BTP brings to SAP customers. With a rich heritage as one of Europe’s oldest brands, the premium bathroom ceramics and tableware manufacturer wanted to optimize its productivity by improving process efficiency and reducing time spent on repetitive tasks. So the company developed automation bots by harnessing the latest intelligent robotic process automation and AI technologies through SAP BTP to carry out routine, low-value tasks and make ERP processes intelligent.

With its bot-building program, Villeroy & Boch Group can flexibly and quickly automate workflows in many functional areas. This enables the business to improve efficiency and devote more time to delivering better customer service.

How to measure the potential value of SAP BTP

Available and scalable worldwide, SAP BTP includes on-premise and cloud-native technologies and services and integrates five technology portfolios into one unified environment hosted and managed by SAP. The platform is fully optimized for SAP applications and supports compliance with industry-specific and local regulations, even as SAP customers and partners quickly innovate new capabilities and applications as needed.

How will your business benefit from SAP BTP? Through an online value assessment based on your organization’s needs and IDC research data, you can find the answer to that question in a matter of minutes – today.

The assessment takes you through the business value impacts identified by IDC: analytics and data, integration and development, intelligent processes, and cost and infrastructure. It also aligns with the feedback and experiences of SAP customers.

Based on the results, you can consider the outcomes your business needs and level-set expectations on the improvements SAP BTP can provide. Then, your organization can connect with your company’s function leaders and technology decision-makers to evaluate any gap in soft and hard skills and look for integration, data analytics, and automation capabilities that can make a difference.

Ahead of the curve with a platform-centric mindset

Every company has or will become a digital company. Unfortunately, there’s no way to avoid this shift – competitors across every industry are undergoing projects and processes that make them more intelligent and sustainable.

Your organization can get involved in this new digital business era now with an enterprise-ready and secure platform, such as the SAP BTP. By getting the foundation to innovate and run applications confidently, you can break down departmental silos, deliver optimal experiences, and adopt dynamic and cross-functional processes – all hallmarks of a successful digital business.

 

*Source: IDC White Paper, sponsored by SAP, The Business Value of SAP Business Technology Platform, IDC #EUR149650022, September 2022