After three great days at SAPPHIRE it is clear how SAP will have customers realize “advanced technology conversation” (IoT) to have them digitize their business. The energy was palpable as Bill McDermott took the stage and announced major strategic alliances with companies such as Microsoft, Apple, and Intel. As my previous blog post stated, no one technology or solution will drive IoT applications and SAP has taken this a step further by creating alliances that will enable customers to run applications with the most advanced integration (Microsoft), the best mobile experience (Apple), and premium hardware (Intel).
Two apparent messages were clear; SAP is an open platform and they will offer you an expansive suite of solutions powered by the fastest digital core. SAP’s solution portfolio provides an a la carte approach to your digitized business. At the center of IoT is data, which provides the information to all your business processes and systems. S4 and HANA provide the ability for you to compute with in-memory capability reducing the size of your core and enabling it to run in real time, speeding up analysis between machines and people. Once you enable the power of a real-time database, you can then connect SAP applications such as Supply Chain, Workforce Management, Customer Experience, and Analytics through the HANA Cloud Platform. The image above provides a great visual of this completeness of vision.
It’s the company’s flexibility of applications, platform, and database offerings that provides a clear path for customers to start their journey on a digital transformation. Toyota Material Handling presented a great example of how they have enabled IoT in their forklift division by creating a connected vehicle fleet solution. Toyota first upgraded their Business Warehouse to run on HANA, which resulted in a 90% improvement in application speed. The SAP Fiori Launchpad created an application user design that was intuitive and a usability environment that is similar to what you would expect from a consumer application. SAP Lumira was used to easily visualize data from the connected fleets. Lastly, HCP was used as the development platform to connect the data, application, and end user. All these capabilities while still providing live updated insights in the speed of seconds. Alan Cseresznyak Toyota Material Handling’s CIO cited that they went with SAP’s offerings because the solutions were feasible, functional, fast, and simple.
Why did they embark on this journey? Because by digitizing their products and leveraging big data they have created a competitive advantage. A digitized fleet of forklift allows Toyota to get insights into when a forklift is about to break, identify when to schedule maintenance, and leverage those insights into manufacturing and product development changes instantly. Furthermore, these insights provide predictive part replacement issues, which can help them better defend against third party part suppliers. We are entering a world of Technology Darwinism where the companies who embrace technology will prosper. Toyota Material Handling is investing in their future to ensure they maintain their place as the number one forklift manufacturer in the world.