Many people are talking about digital transformation and its affect in our daily lives.
What about the effects in business?
In our role, responsible for the Global SAP Business One Roll-out, we come across a lot of touching points on this topic, and research the importance it will play in the markets. Digital transformation will revolutionize processes, customer relations, buying behaviors and much more.
It is changing the world as we know it!
Why now and what makes it possible now?
Today, we are in a position, to use technologies which are affordable and feasible. The costs and size of technological “things” have plummeted tremendously.
What is meant by the word “things”?
Did you ever think about how many technologies you hold in your hand?
Nearly every person has a smartphone which they use to make their lives more comfortable.
Many people take the power of this small thing for granted; there are so many sensors built in and enhancing the user experience. Think of a sensor
- to detect the needed light
- to determine the rotation of the screen
- to monitor the temperature and so on.
These kind of technologies were previously unattainable to the consumer on the street due to high costs and dimensions. But now, we have stepped into a revolution as these technologies are available and catapult us into a totally new area to transform businesses.
The world is at the forefront of technological advancements, such as cloud computing, machine learning, artificial intelligence, and loosely coupling solutions via edge computing. As business systems and these technological progressions converge, we start to see the advent of business model innovation, business process automation, and business operation improvements.
What is necessary to use these tools and to realize digital transformation?
The fundamental need for any company is to have a solid business system with well-defined processes in place. SAP has enabled many companies of all sizes with this foundation by being the leaders in Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems. These systems are positioned as the “Digital Core” and include the ERP solutions S/4 HANA, SAP Business ByDesign, and SAP Business One.
What is the “Intelligent Enterprise”?
Part 1: The “Digital Core” and the Components of the “Intelligent Suite”
SAP is providing intelligent, integrated applications that enable our customers to automate their daily business processes and improve interaction with their customers, suppliers, and employees.
SAP Business One is positioned as the Digital Core for the SMB. All the best practice processes are in place and will be further enhanced. The importance of the Digital Core is that it holds the transactional data to connect with the outside world and enhance the business processes. Other applications, such as SAP Ariba, SAP Concur, SAP Hybris, and SAP Successfactors can be integrated to create the Intelligent Suite.
The combination of the above-mentioned capabilities allows the SAP Business One customer to achieve the vision of the “Intelligent Suite” which is the first step towards the “Intelligent Enterprise”.
Part 2: The “Digital Platform”
The digital platform is a key enabler for the Intelligent Enterprise. The digital platform consists of the SAP HANA In-Memory Platform, with the combination of the SAP Cloud Platform.
For our SMB market, SAP Business One leverages SAP HANA allowing companies to act with agility and to fulfill the digital transformation expectation, by:
- Including real-time analytical capabilities to obtain company insights
- Offering an open interface to integrate external software applications via
the Integration Framework - Allowing application extensions using the next generation API via the Service Layer
- Moving into a Cloud environment, thereby allowing interactions with loosely coupled solutions
- Enabling the exchange of data beyond business application boundaries
thereby realizing use cases for the Internet of Things (IoT)
Part 3: The “Intelligent System”
The Intelligent Business Systems are built on the foundation of intelligent technologies, such as machine learning, artificial intelligence, advanced analytics, internet of things, and blockchain. SAP offers a toolbox of these technologies in the form of SAP Leonardo. Within the context of intelligent systems, methodologies such as Design Thinking and Business Model Innovation can be used to successfully support and create desirable, viable, and feasible products.
Design Thinking assists you in understanding the end users’ problems and create a desirable solution.
Business Model Innovation assists you in creating an appropriate business model for your organization and your customers.
The combination of the above-mentioned capabilities allows the SAP Business One customer to achieve the vision of the “Intelligent Enterprise”.
The Intelligent Enterprise will help our customers empower their employees by doing more with less, innovate faster than the competition, deliver a best-in-class experience to their customers, and break new grounds by introducing new revenue streams and market opportunities.
Ideas, which were dreams can be realized now!
Be creative, unleash it….
Miriam Rieger and Marc Siefert
Read this blog on What is the simple meaning of the Internet of Things for SAP Business One?
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