SAP Brings SAP Global Certification Program to the Cloud

Established in 1995, the award-winning SAP Global Certification program offers multitiered certification paths for specific subjects and roles. Of the approximately 70,000 individuals certified through the program in 2018, over 38,000 were certified online. This evolution of the program reflects increased demand to gain certification digitally, with learners intent on gaining knowledge required to lead in the digital economy. SAP’s investment demonstrates its commitment to equip businesses as workplaces of the future.

“Roughly 87 percent of the world’s leading companies use SAP solutions in some capacity,” said Bernd Welz, executive vice president and chief knowledge officer, Intelligent Enterprise Group, SAP. “As these customers move to the cloud, they will need to adapt to its fast-paced nature and the frequent updates that come with it. As such, certification cannot be a ‘one-and-done.’ By providing improved access to SAP Global Certification in the cloud, SAP is ensuring that partners, customers and professionals can easily and consistently stay current on skills related to SAP software and get the most out of their solutions.”

As part of the shift to the cloud, SAP has introduced “stay current” programs for cloud solutions, such as for SAP S/4HANA Cloud. Accessible through SAP Learning Hub, stay-current content gives SAP learners access to videos, Webinars, tutorials and other resources focused on the cloud software updates associated with quarterly product release cycles. This real-time access to the latest information enables certified users of SAP software to keep their skills up-to-date.

In January 2018, SAP introduced digital badges for the SAP Global Certification program to help SAP certificate holders showcase their achievements through social media and demonstrate a commitment to continuous learning to their employers. Digital badges help recruiters verify education and skill claims more quickly and securely, thus speeding recruitment and helping employers hire the right talent faster and at lower cost. Through Acclaim, SAP’s official credential and badge management platform, certified individuals will now be able to promote their certifications, those from SAP and industry-wide, in the cloud.

The full rollout of all cloud-based certification exams is expected to take place in June 2019. As the demand for flexible learning and cloud-based skills grows, SAP will continue to develop relevant, high-quality certifications to match the demands of the modern workforce.

SAP to Fund Internal Collaboration Startup Ruum With €10 Million

Ruum is the simplest software-as-a-service (SaaS) solution that connects enterprise business processes with team productivity, enabling 1 billion SAP software users to connect business data with an intuitive, adaptable collaboration suite. Ruum integrates with the core SAP product portfolio as well as popular collaboration platforms, such as Microsoft Teams and Box Inc.

While most business-to-business (B2B) SaaS companies begin in the small and midsize business (SMB) market, Ruum has achieved early success in the enterprise segment. The €10 million investment from SAP will allow Ruum’s core team of 20 to continue to devote resources to its enterprise offering while moving into the global SMB market.

The project management software was initially developed by a team of SAP employees. It has already acquired more than 30,000 users from 2,000 companies; 200 nonprofits, which can use the software free of charge; and six blue-chip enterprise customers, including NIVEA parent company Beiersdorf AG. Ruum’s growth over the past two years has been totally organic with almost no marketing spending.

Martin Böhm, chief digital officer, Beiersdorf, said: “Ruum has changed the way my teams collaborate and get work done. They spend far more time adding value to the business and far less time on repetitive admin. It has increased team productivity by at least 30 percent, and this has a direct impact on our bottom line.”

“Ruum provides a lightweight collaboration layer across the SAP portfolio and allows users to put operational data into action,” said Max Wessel, chief innovation officer, SAP. “This has the potential to streamline messy workflows across the enterprise. It’s a great idea coming from a group of employees who’ve lived through the pain.”

About SAP

As the cloud company powered by SAP HANA, SAP is the market leader in enterprise application software, helping companies of all sizes and in all industries run at their best: 77% of the world’s transaction revenue touches an SAP system. Our machine learning, Internet of Things (IoT), and advanced analytics technologies help turn customers’ businesses into intelligent enterprises. SAP helps give people and organizations deep business insight and fosters collaboration that helps them stay ahead of their competition. We simplify technology for companies so they can consume our software the way they want – without disruption. Our end-to-end suite of applications and services enables more than 437,000 business and public customers to operate profitably, adapt continuously, and make a difference. With a global network of customers, partners, employees, and thought leaders, SAP helps the world run better and improve people’s lives. 

SAP and Uber Freight Join Forces to Deliver On-Demand Logistics Through the Power of Networks

The integration of Uber Freight into SAP Logistics Business Network will let customers access transportation rates from Uber’s digitally activated carrier network and gain real-time quotes and guaranteed freight capacity, greatly simplifying load management and execution.

“Finding and booking freight can be the most expensive and often the most complex piece of the supply chain,” said Hala Zeine, president, SAP Digital Supply Chain. “This combined solution will remove roadblocks and offers a simpler, more automated approach that streamlines operations, delivers tangible cost savings and ultimately creates a better customer experience. Adding Uber Freight to our SAP Logistics Business Network will help our customers optimize their logistics and put their customers at the heart of their digital supply chain.”

SAP Logistics Business Network, built on SAP Cloud Platform and the SAP HANA business data platform, expands transportation management to enable shippers, freight forwarders, carriers and other logistics partners to easily onboard, collaborate, exchange logistics information and share insights. With this industry-first Uber Freight integration, shippers and carriers can work together using innovative tools that bypass traditional roadblocks, enabling shippers to select from a much broader carrier base and perform real-time pricing of shipments, while gaining improved utilization and efficiency.

“For the world’s biggest shippers, an efficient, digitalized supply chain is critical to their success,” said Bill Driegert, senior director, Uber Freight. “Uber Freight is partnering with SAP to bring shippers and carriers together at the level where freight decisions are being made. This innovative tech-forward approach to freight means shippers can spend less time sourcing quotes and capacity and more time getting goods to market.”

The Value of a Networked Approach

With this partnership SAP and Uber Freight will work to connect both sides of the freight marketplace, increasing visibility and transparency for all players. These efforts will support easier and faster decision-making based on real-time pricing for shippers and carriers, empowering organizations to maximize daily work time and make more informed decisions about their operations.

A networked approach can also help minimize unloaded mileage, reducing costs and carbon footprint. Uber Freight provides a highly available, dense carrier network that shippers can access directly through SAP Logistics Business Network. Shippers can gain access to capacity by unlocking a larger ecosystem of drivers, and carriers and drivers gain the ability to see and choose loads that fit their business and schedule. This improves utilization, reduces time to plan and minimizes costs at all levels of shipping operations.

An Environmental Advantage

Current entrenched inefficiencies in the supply chain can lead to waste. Every year, underutilized trucks generate 200 million tons of emissions. By leveraging technology to change the freight planning process and better utilize capacity, the industry can make a positive impact toward environmental sustainability.

IDC MarketScape Recognizes SAP S/4HANA Cloud as a Leader in Global SaaS

“SAP S/4HANA Cloud is a well-established operational ERP system, focused on utilizing artificial intelligence to optimize business processes,” said Mickey North Rizza, program vice president, Enterprise Applications and Digital Commerce at IDC.

The report recognizes SAP S/4HANA Cloud as an intelligent ERP solution that enables various business processes such as idea to design, procure to pay, plan to production, order to cash, offer to project, and core finance. Key strengths are listed as:

• A single in-memory, columnar data model for both transactions and analytics, which eliminates redundant data and provides real-time insight. Tied to AI-powered set of functionalities within ERP to automate routine work and flag exceptions for human action, SAP S/4HANA Cloud has a strong commitment to automating half of all ERP activities in the next three years.
• A conversational user experience with an intelligent digital assistant for the enterprise, SAP CoPilot
• SAP’s one code line, one data model and one user experience for both cloud and on-premise deployments, making it easier and cheaper to manage hybrid scenarios

As a market leader in intelligent ERP, SAP S/4HANA offers unmatched intelligence and automation. Driven by machine learning, it is advancing at a more rapid pace than ever, resulting in happy customers and accelerated adoption, according to Jan Gilg, senior vice president and head of SAP S/4HANA.

SAP S/4HANA is an intelligent business software suite that enables companies to address current challenges and future opportunities with flexibility, speed and insight. It is an important part of the digital core that drives digital transformation and delivers instant business value. SAP offers customers a choice of deployment options including cloud, on-premise or hybrid so they can choose any scenario or combination that is right for them. Built to take advantage of SAP’s industry-leading in-memory computing platform, SAP HANA, SAP S/4HANA offers incredible flexibility and speed through a dramatically simplified data model.

About IDC MarketScape:

IDC MarketScape vendor assessment model is designed to provide an overview of the competitive fitness of ICT (information and communications technology) suppliers in a given market. The research methodology utilizes a rigorous scoring methodology based on both qualitative and quantitative criteria that results in a single graphical illustration of each vendor’s position within a given market. IDC MarketScape provides a clear framework in which the product and service offerings, capabilities and strategies, and current and future market success factors of IT and telecommunications vendors can be meaningfully compared. The framework also provides technology buyers with a 360-degree assessment of the strengths and weaknesses of current and prospective vendors.

SAP Offers New SaaS Solution to Onboard Millions of Partner Users

The new software-as-a-service (SaaS) solutions are among the first B2B solutions available today to offer secure identity, consent and access control with built-in authorization processes, helping organizations manage customer and partner data. The solutions help clients grant third parties access to first-party data and exchange sensitive or intellectual property without exposing themselves to security, legal and regulatory risk.

FranklinCovey, a world leader in time management training and assessment services for organizations and individuals, is one of the first customers evaluating SAP Customer Identity and Access Management for B2B.

“When you’re working with multiple types of partner organizations, spread across the globe, the onboarding process could become overly complicated and difficult to manage,” said Blaine Carter, chief information security officer at FranklinCovey. “Solutions like SAP Customer Identity and Access Management for B2B offer the potential to automate our end-to-end partner onboarding process, which may accelerate time to market and reduce IT cost.”

Building B2B relationships between customers and partners in the Experience Economy requires all parties to be provided with the same level of convenience, mobility and relevant information they have become accustomed to as consumers. Proper safeguards are required to ensure that only the right people have the right access to the right data. SAP Customer Identity and Access Management solutions for B2B enable customers to:

• Accelerate revenue growth by deploying a single solution to manage the entire lifecycle of customer and partner digital identities, consent, authentication and authorization
• Simplify customer and partner access and reduce IT complexities with business policy-based access control and organizational access management
• Protect against business risk by capturing and tracking user preferences and consent across their full lifecycle; address data protection and privacy compliance; and build trust with customers and partners

“Effective Experience Management is built on engaging customers and partners at every touch point,” said Ben Jackson, general manager, SAP Customer Data Cloud. “Those first conversations are critical, as they set the tone for the relationship. As the relationship matures, so does the complexity of managing a potentially massive network of external stakeholders globally, with access to internal data. SAP CIAM for B2B is the first package of solutions that offers policy-based access control, looking at the wider context of who you are before granting a partner user access to data. As we reach the first anniversary of GDPR, we are now also providing a smarter way to manage a deeply complex ecosystem while maintaining trust.”

Cybersecurity and Compliance: Finding Digital Balance to Lock Out the Right Risks

Organizational leaders are fascinated with connecting their operations end-to-end. Such digitalization is often inspired by the need to comply with the growing range of regulations and need to protect sensitive data and core systems from near-crippling breaches. While locking down every digital asset may seem to be the answer, employees still need to access information anytime and anywhere, production machines still need to exchange data, and customers still need to engage with the business.

Finding the right balance between cybersecurity, compliance, and operations is a delicate issue. But many of our customers are making the modifications necessary to stay operational as well as compliant and protected – thanks to the cybersecurity and compliance services of the New SAP MaxAttention engagement model.

SAP experts Hartwig Brand, head of the Global Center of Expertise Technology; Manfred Wittmer, head of the Global Security and Governance, Risk, and Compliance Practice Unit; and Fritz Bauspiess, chief security architect, share their observations on the success of this growing segment of our customer base.

Q: You have seen how businesses across all industries and sizes struggle with meeting business requirements cost-effectively while closing security and compliance gaps quickly. Can you share what you have learned from their experiences?

Brand: Cybersecurity is now a top priority – with topics such as political disruption, economic fluctuations, and natural disasters following close behind. Years ago I would have said compliance, but I believe that this is a reflection of how powerful, widespread, and nondiscriminatory data breaches, ransomware attacks, and cryptojacking of connected devices have become. In fact, in 2018 alone, the average data breach cost businesses US$3.86 million worldwide.

Wittmer: It is also important to note that businesses need a better understanding of how their less-critical technologies can open the door to breaches and compliance risk for their more-critical business systems. By looking at their IT landscape as a whole, they can quickly see how their ecosystem of digital investments, users, and captured data impact each other as well as the entire company.

Bauspiess: I am struck by the number of companies that haven’t performed the basic due diligence to keep their IT systems secure and compliant. Most IT organizations are so busy maintaining the overall IT landscape that they are unable to dedicate the time required to inspect connections across their applications and devices, take the right steps to close gaps, and optimize the potential of critical business needs.

Q: It’s interesting to see how connections – whether it’s enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems, such as SAP S/4HANA, or third-party applications – can have such an impact. How do our cybersecurity and compliance services help businesses take the right steps to help ensure those points of interaction are secure and compliant?

Bauspiess: The most considerable step that our services enable is helping customers become aware of the fundamentals of cybersecurity and compliance and familiarize themselves with the tools available to them. This can be an empowering opportunity to gain their first insights into which areas are quick wins as well as those that are the most important to start.

Brand: What Fritz just said is very important. Security and compliance are not all-or-nothing propositions. Businesses can never be 100 percent secure without losing the cost effectiveness and agility of their IT landscapes. But at the same time, they cannot afford to be zero percent secure. With our cybersecurity and compliance services, our customers can work to determine the best way to safeguard their systems while delivering on the needs of both employees and customers with high fidelity to compliance requirements.

Wittmer: When meeting with business leaders worldwide, I can tell that our customers appreciate the advantages that Hartwig and Fritz mentioned. For example, the chief operating officer of a major German customer recently told me that our services enabled his organization to identify and address gaps in a matter of weeks. This realization is a stark contrast to the company’s history of requiring upwards of six months to accomplish the same results.

Q: What are some of the most significant outcomes our customers can achieve after going through the process of system transparency and risk mitigation, continuous improvement, and strategy building and architecture refinement with our cybersecurity and compliance services?

Wittmer: I see three primary advantages our customers can achieve. One, they can gain tremendous transparency that allows them to assess their organizational and digital readiness for adhering to regulations, mitigate security risks, and give their workforce and operational assets access to the data they need. Two, they can gain confidence in the reliability and accuracy of their system and data, which can have a lasting impact on their financial reporting. And last but certainly not least, they can protect themselves against unintended failure and system damage that result from providing a user too much access to a system or containing custom code that is no longer relevant.

Bauspiess: One of the most transformational outcomes that I often observe is the ability to develop a security and compliance improvement road map. This is based on the results of a transparency and mitigation assessment and charts a defined path to help ensure existing and future implementations are safeguarded.

Brand: Steering discussions with more informed insights is also helping our customers evolve their perceptions of their cybersecurity and compliance risks and requirements. Driven by the reassessment of their security activities and their IT landscape, our customers can help ensure existing and new implementations, processes, and innovations are feasible, desirable, and viable as well as secure and compliant.

Pizza Hut Franchisee NPC International Serves Up Exceptional Employee Experience with SAP SuccessFactors Solutions

With the solutions rolled out to 40,000 U.S. employees, NPC has successfully streamlined operations and created a digital path for the future.

NPC, the fifth-largest U.S. restaurant operator, had been working with on-premise software. When it came time to modernize its operations and make the move to the cloud, NPC chose to deploy the SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central, SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central Payroll, SAP SuccessFactors Performance & Goals and SAP SuccessFactors Compensation solutions in conjunction with SAP S/4HANA Cloud. Since the rollout, NPC has gone paperless while dramatically reducing downtime and enhancing functionality for end users, making the organization much more agile.

“Moving to the cloud with SAP SuccessFactors solutions and SAP S/4HANA was an obvious choice for us,” said NPC International CIO Mike Woods. “The restaurant industry has a set of very specific challenges and complexities, and we needed to make sure none of our operations were interrupted during the migration. We’re thrilled with the seamless transition. We are now able to adapt to change much more quickly, and we’re providing a world-class employee experience that enables self-services, a renewed focus on personal development and easy access to accurate people and finance data. This has absolutely enabled better collaboration between our CHRO and CFO in the management of our most important investment: the people who make NPC successful every day.”

The implementation also benefits NPC’s internal charity, The NPC Family Fund, which grants money to employees in times of need. With the SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central Payroll solution, employees can now direct contributions to the fund from their pay.

“NPC International is a long-time SAP customer that shares our mission of putting people first,” said SAP SuccessFactors President Greg Tomb. “The company has a history of supporting not only its employees but also the surrounding community with charities and give-back initiatives. We’re looking forward to continuing our partnership with NPC to take their people experience to the next level.”

Based in Overland Park, Kansas, NPC International operates more than 1,200 Pizza Hut restaurants in 27 states and nearly 400 Wendy’s restaurants across seven states and Washington, D.C. Pizza Hut delivers more pizza, pasta and wings than any other restaurant in the world, making it an iconic global brand.

SAP SuccessFactors solutions help bring organizations’ purpose to life and put more meaning into people’s work, creating engaged workforces that improve both performance and profit. The HCM solutions help customers use intelligence to strengthen engagement across the entire workforce, deliver new, meaningful workplace experiences and join a community defining the future of work. The industry-leading SAP SuccessFactors solutions help more than 6,700 customers around the world turn purpose into performance.

Mike Woods will be presenting at SAP’s annual SAPPHIRE NOW conference taking place May 7–9 in Orlando, Florida. His theater presentation, “Hear About NPC International’s Journey to the Intelligent Enterprise,” takes place May 7, 12:00 p.m.–12:20 p.m.

About SAP

As the cloud company powered by SAP HANA, SAP is the market leader in enterprise application software, helping companies of all sizes and in all industries run at their best: 77% of the world’s transaction revenue touches an SAP system. Our machine learning, Internet of Things (IoT), and advanced analytics technologies help turn customers’ businesses into intelligent enterprises. SAP helps give people and organizations deep business insight and fosters collaboration that helps them stay ahead of their competition. We simplify technology for companies so they can consume our software the way they want – without disruption. Our end-to-end suite of applications and services enables more than 437,000 business and public customers to operate profitably, adapt continuously, and make a difference. With a global network of customers, partners, employees, and thought leaders, SAP helps the world run better and improve people’s lives.

SAP Helps Companies Make Innovation Real in Experience Economy

Q: What are customers telling you about the meaning of innovation to their organizations?

A: Customers measure the impact and value of technology by the business value it drives for them. This includes better experiences, stronger business outcomes, and moments of truth ─ for their customers, employees, and their entire ecosystem. Innovation is a catalyst for value creation within the experience economy. Innovation is no longer just about cloud or digital. Leaders understand the business possibilities in the context of their customer, workforce, industry, and geography.

Can you summarize the top innovation challenges customers face?

The biggest challenge is having clarity on why they’re innovating. Context matters. Do you have a 360-degree view of your customer? Is this a growth opportunity? Is it an efficiency exercise? Do you need to deliver a single view of the enterprise? How can you create coherence across cloud, digital, and traditional systems? How will you manage performance and traceability? The why provides context to how the company shapes its innovation.

The second challenge is that many customers are confused by the sheer volume of technology choices available. They need a different kind of guidance that typically includes how they consume technology; how different cloud, digital, and platform capabilities interact; and the impact on their end-to-end business processes. They also need to manage the impact of hybrid and complex scenarios on their operating model.

Customers are also challenged to align innovation with current core systems and processes, and to determine their business readiness for taking advantage of the latest capabilities. As always, change management is equally important. People still make it happen!

For all the talk about business model transformation, customers are challenged to get it right. The most successful are those who are clear about how they can monetize their current assets and deliver a seamless, beautiful experience to their customers with new revenue streams to delight their shareholders.

How has the role of services evolved to meet these challenges?

Innovation is fundamentally a services-led space. We’re seeing the fusion of services plus standard and tailored products that will drive adoption of innovations. Customers want to engage on the outcome. Therefore a services team needs to set the stage by helping define a route and path to value, and showing customers how to drive, scale and transform the business with innovations. Customers need the right mix of standard and tailored products to make innovation a reality. For example, Innovation Services and Solutions from SAP works hand in hand with our customers to help create their road map for adoption of new technologies, guiding them from idea generation through prototype and live, tailored productive solution. We help customers make the right choices so they can transform their business by taking advantage of innovations like machine learning and use of data for insight-driven business.

What should customers expect from their vendors as they move ahead with innovation?

They should expect an ability to engage on the why, as well as a guided approach on the outcome, rethinking processes and commercial business models backed by deep expertise on cloud, digital, and traditional technology.

A services organization also needs to provide diverse teams of expertise, able to make the most of standard solutions complemented by the ability to create new ones. They need to understand the end-to-end impact of innovations — say, between the supply chain and sales and marketing. They also need deep industry expertise to understand how to access and use data. Customers should expect innovations that are easy to consume, competitively priced, highly modular, and focused on outcomes and demand. Remember too, this is a partnership. The best services teams have long-term relationships with customers.

How does the Innovation Services and Solutions team at SAP meet these changing expectations?

Decision-makers are realizing they need to balance their single view of their customers with a single view of their enterprise. For example, if you’re a consumer products company, product traceability needs to travel from sourcing and supply chain through consumer insights for relevant business outcomes. This is the practical application of what we call X (experience) and O (operational) data. As customers increasingly engage in end-to-end business transformation, we have the experts to be their value creation engine in this new environment. Pragmatic to the core, we do the heavy lifting, helping customers explore what’s possible with the intelligent use of technology for tangible business value, delivering tailored solutions to make innovation real.

Sneak Peek: See What the Hype around Horizon is All About

As a sneak preview, here is the inaugural article from SAP Chief Innovation Officer Max Wessel, who discusses what it takes to innovate in an era of choice and personalization.

Using Decomposition as a Catalyst for Greater Choice, Personalization, and Innovation

The job of every business leader is to see into the future, anticipating change and taking action that puts the organization on the path to success. Yet in times of rapid change, visualizing the steps needed to prepare for the future has never been more difficult.

Improvements in information technology are largely responsible for the increased pace of change. They are also the source of enormous opportunity facing each industry. Software is permeating every business, imbuing the services and solutions we consume with near-magical characteristics. We can secure transportation wherever and whenever we want with a click of a button, changing the automotive industry forever. Language barriers that terrified travelers for generations melt away through character and voice recognition features residing on tiny computers that fit in our pockets and translate the language at hand, opening worlds of travel to those previously constrained. Small business owners anywhere can access large customers around the world, creating opportunity for development and spurring competition in global markets.

All of this has been made possible by the connections enabled by cellular improvements, cloud computing, and mobile phones. Less than two decades ago, only 360 million people were connected to the Internet. Today, that number is almost 4.4 billion. Cheap, seamless access to software is available to everyone. It’s no wonder that each of our industries has changed so dramatically in such a short period of time.

But the world isn’t standing still. The cost of computing continues to drop. The potential of emerging technologies such as machine learning continues to unfold. And the number of devices and services enriched with software-based intelligence rises every day.

Less than two decades ago, only 360 million people were connected to the Internet. Today, that number is almost 4.4 billion.

And so, we, as leaders in the IT industry, must ask the obvious question: What’s next? What are the tectonic shifts in enterprise operations that IT can – and should – enable? How should executives prepare to deliver the perfect experiences their customers demand? Which technologies are worth championing and which will go the way of the floppy disk?

As Scale Grows, Infrastructure Components Shrink

Here’s my take: Technology is opening up an era of unprecedented choice. In every market, production costs drop, competition increases, and the ability to customize products expands. For all those reasons, people are demanding more, and we must respond.

If we don’t deliver the experiences our customers demand, we stagnate. We get commoditized. It’s that simple.

In the world of software, that means IT must enable each of our businesses to deliver more of what every individual wants and needs. In the consumer market, we know what this means. Across our operations, the solutions we provide employees and partners must not require users to conform to enterprise systems. Instead, the next generations of software will adapt to users and help them perform better.

Next-generation systems won’t just record activity. They will understand our specific context, interact with tools we already use, and amplify our activities in a way that makes sense.

It may seem that we’re far from that world. But this new horizon is very much within reach. How do we get there? The answer rests with the impact of scale. Every business is becoming a software business. As this transition occurs, demand enables more applications, integrations, and services to emerge. The scale of our digital systems is huge and still growing.

This increasing scale comes with an interesting by-product: The smallest unit of viable software shrinks every day. Applications are more focused on ever-smaller market segments. Standard integrations allow connections among various systems and users. And services are becoming more focused on ever-slimmer customer segments. The world is being decomposed into its smallest units.

As scale enables decomposition, decomposition in turn creates choice. With more offerings, people can select whatever best matches their needs. And vendors can create more personalized offerings designed to attract more customers.

We are deconstructing our IT monoliths into smaller pieces and slotting them into the environment we’ve already constructed, where they integrate with existing modules and those still to come.

This is what’s meant by modularization or modular IT. We are deconstructing our IT monoliths into smaller pieces and slotting them into the environment we’ve already constructed, where they integrate with existing modules and those still to come. Modularity paves the way for reassembling the IT world in new and untried combinations, which supports the innovation of enterprise business and technology teams.

Get Ready for a New Approach

To succeed in this new environment, it’s time to evolve. In the past, our industry bet on decreasing costs and increasing the performance of standard applications. Now we must embrace approaches that help us decompose the monoliths and deliver the most personal and modular software our customers can imagine. We need technology and services that allow us to deliver business models and solutions that exceed the virtual boundaries of application code.

Coming Soon: Horizons by SAP

Horizons by SAP is a future-focused IT journal where thought leaders from the global tech ecosystem share their thinking about how new technologies and major business trends will impact our customers’ landscapes in the fast-arriving future. The first issue will focus on the implications and opportunities of modular IT. The journal will be launched next week at SAPPHIRE NOW.

In the inaugural issue, we address the challenges and opportunities of modular IT. With the help of thought leaders and SAP experts from around the world, we explore a variety of issues and trends that impact and are shaped by modularity. The first issue includes important discussions that will help evaluate your approach to users and partners, the use of emerging technologies such as machine learning and augmented reality, and foundational issues including security and end-to-end business processes. We hope these articles will provide business leaders with the foresight and flexibility to make the best decisions for today and tomorrow – propelling your enterprises into a successful future.

Intelligent Spend Management Takes Procurement From the Back Office to the Boardroom

At the recent SAP Ariba Live event, experts presented their vision for intelligent spend management and explained why it has the potential to change the game for procurement professionals.

First, what is intelligent spend management? Drew Hofler, vice president of Portfolio Marketing at SAP Ariba, explains that it’s the process of managing purchases from all sources, including direct, indirect, travel, and external labor. “From source to pay, it’s about bringing all that spend into one unified view and being able to understand the data related to every source and category,” says Hofler.

Hofler says SAP solutions encompass all those areas. Over the past seven years, SAP has acquired companies that allow it to oversee sourcing, procurement, and payment processes as well as spend for travel, external workers, and services. Because these solutions integrate with SAP HANA, procurement experts can easily and quickly access and understand data from those applications – making SAP ready to deliver intelligent spend management.

Platform is Key

Mike Quindazzi is a managing director at PwC and recognized as a top financial-tech influencer. According to him, “Procurement is one of the lower-regarded functions in the organization, but when it gets it on management’s agenda it’s very high value.” To get there proactively, he believes that organizations need an intelligent spend management approach. Primarily, that means a digital platform that allows companies to collaborate with suppliers and offers up a more holistic view of corporate spending across a network.

“It’s also about being ‘fit for growth,’ knowing where your spend and returns are, so management can redirect investments to where they’ll get better returns,” Quindazzi says. Once procurement gets that platform – meaning both the technology and a seat at the management table – then executives from across the company can collectively decide on a company spending strategy that supports and drives the business.

Big Data is the Fuel

Marcell Vollmer is the chief digital officer at SAP Ariba and served as SAP’s chief procurement officer and senior vice president of the Global Procurement Organization for more than four years. He explains, “Everyone knows Big Data is the fuel for the economy. But now we have a way to access and use data for all sourcing and spending activities.”

Procurement is often one of the last back-end processes to be digitized, but having access to that data will allow organizations to better understand every aspect of acquiring goods and services and how it impacts the bottom line. That information can also be fed into machine learning algorithms to analyze, predict, and prescribe spending strategy.

With the insight delivered by intelligent spend management, Vollmer believes procurement will move beyond a contractual orientation and toward a strategic and innovative one. For example, procurement professionals can drive value by creating strategies for risk management and sustainable supply chains. He says, “In most cases, procurement is dealing with the line-of-business executive like the CIO, CMO, or chief supply chain officer. But in many of those cases, the executives tell procurement what they need, and procurement does it.”

Vollmer explains that with spend aggregate data from across all different parts of the business, procurement conversations with top executives become less operational and more strategic. For example, as the head of Procurement at SAP, Vollmer received data about company spend on servers bought outside of the IT organization, which enabled a different kind of conversation on the data center strategy with the CIO. “Once we got beyond debating the veracity or completeness of data and could show where servers were being maintained and existed outside the network, we had a very different discussion about how procurement policies could help protect company intellectual property,” he says.

Context, Culture, Cloud

Dion Hinchcliffe, vice president and principal analyst for Constellation Research, says that, “Intelligent spend management lets you look contextually at everything we’re doing around spend and, now that we have that data, how can we make the most of it.”

That can mean using Internet of Things (IoT) data to show the location of packages and if they are at risk due to abnormally high temperatures, for example. Blockchain can also add context, such as real-time information about products and a layer of trusted data, to the entire procurement process.

But Hinchcliffe cautions that acting on new information and adopting a more holistic approach to spend requires cultural change. “Intelligent spend management can enable new business models but to do that you need to break down barriers and silos across the organization, “he says.

Once on board, however, opportunities abound. For example, he explains that, “With new intelligence, you could tell supply partners how they’re doing in real time and charge for that information or charge for industry-specific spend information. There is a lot of supply chain knowledge that people want, and this is an opportunity to get it to them.”

“SAP is a leader in intelligent spend management. A lot of CFOs and chief procurement officers are not doing anything like what SAP can enable,” says Hinchcliffe. But he believes procurement executives need to start building for future markets and products. The first step means moving to the cloud. “The gateway drug for intelligent spend management is to get procurement and supply chain on the cloud. Without it, you won’t have the networking or easy upgrade capabilities. Until you do that you can’t get to intelligent spend management.”