SAP Hana & Digital Are Trends to Watch for ERP Innovation

Why SAP is Disrupting Now to Avoid Being Disrupted Later

Is your company equipped to survive the current disruptive digital transformation rocking the technology world? There have been many winners and losers brought about by social, mobile, analytics and cloud. Blockbuster and Borders Books are a few of the high profile casualties littering the corporate wastelands.

And technology companies are subject to the same pressures.

But SAP, founded in 1972, has figured out how to thrive in the current environment.

Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) solutions have been a mainstay for organizational change and success for the last few decades. ERP software allows organizations to manage business operations, with a suite of modular applications that collect and integrate data from different aspects of the business. 

SAP, a global market leader in enterprise application software with more than 291,000 customers located in 190 countries, has been not only keeping up with technology innovations, but in many cases leading change.

To learn more about how technology has impacted SAP and the companies that use it, I have asked Sam Tyagi, Managing Director of the ERP Practice for Softtek in North America, to discuss some of the trends that he has seen in the industry.

Denise: Sam, thank you for taking the time to talk to us.  What are the trends that you see emerging in the world of technology and SAP and how should companies prepare for these coming trends?

Sam: There have been several transitions I have seen recently with SAP. One of the key trends is digital transformation.  Organizations are looking to reimagine themselves by using new technologies to drive significant business improvements. With the ever-growing digitization and evolving consumer demands, all businesses will need to face this challenge. While social, mobile, analytics, and cloud still drive these trends, SAP is focused on new ways to weave these technologies into the next generation of business strategies across every industry.

Also, I believe that predictive analytics will lead big data. Real-time is no longer enough. Companies must be able to analyze data and identify patterns, so they can predict "what will happen next". Data driven innovation and decision support will be a key for faster innovation.

Finally, security is still a driving concern. Many companies feel that running SAP in-house provides better security, but this is often a false assumption. While it may seem like a safer choice, an SAP-certified provider must go through a rigorous certification process every two years, which can prove to be more secure than in-house solutions.

Denise: That was very insightful.  With these driving forces, what new technologies and innovations do you think will become available for SAP and how should companies be mindful of these for the future?

Sam: The biggest trend I see happening is that SAP is counting on SAP S/4 HANA to replace the classic ERP and revolutionize the traditional batch process thinking that divides analysis, transactions, and planning into different worlds.

SAP’s slogan is Run Simple, and to do this companies need to be data-driven and seamless. Bernd Leukert, Member of the SAP Executive Board, Products & Innovations, had a clear message for companies: disrupt now or be disrupted later. In his keynote at SAPPHIRE NOW in Orlando, Florida, Leukert told the audience that, “We are at a make or break moment. Now is the time to reimagine your promise to customers and your future in a profoundly changed digital world. This can only happen with software. Companies have to move from selling products to selling outcomes, and S/4HANA is the only path to make this transformation.”

One of the examples he mentioned included special guest speaker, Karenann Terrell, CIO of Walmart.  Walmart serves 250 million customers each week across 11,000 locations, and Ms. Terrell stated that they rely on a combination of SAP HANA and Hadoop to gain transformational speed and transparency. “The success we’ve had in using SAP HANA, putting the data structure with Hadoop’s view of data, and visualizing that is transformational for our overall business,” said Terrell. “Going real-time and being fast with high-end analytics, we’re finding HANA is a technology that actually has a lot of capabilities outside of just floating it on top of ERP.”

SAP S/4 HANA will be a game-changer for companies that run SAP.  There will be applications and capabilities that weren’t possible before these innovations.

Denise: Since you work so closely with companies on a day-in, day-out basis, are there any case studies you could provide us with as an example of how organizations can focus their energies in transformational ideas and fund this agenda?

Sam:  Absolutely. We currently work with one of the largest fast food chains in the world, and we have seen tremendous changes in their operations. By implementing our services in three phases: AMS, Infrastructure Support, and Helpdesk, we have created support for 165 Applications (SAP, Lotus Notes, Informatica, BO, Hyperion), provided 36 Racks and 400+ servers, established a 24/7 Global Help desk service, and implemented a culture with strong six sigma focus that guarantees year-over-year savings thru efficiency gains.  Through these services, they have seen a 33% reduction in IT Operations costs.

This enabled the company to focus on implementing disruptive ideas, while the savings ensured appropriate funding.

About Sam Tyagi:
Sam Tyagi has been successfully building and managing IT consulting businesses for over 20 years. Currently, he is the Managing Director for Softtek a global provider of process-driven IT services and responsible for leading the ERP practice. Prior to Softtek, Sam founded and built multiple successful SAP services organizations including; Softline (acquired by KPMG), Systech Integrators (acquired by ACS and Softtek), and was the global partner in charge of BearingPoint/KPMG’s ERP practice. Softline was ranked as the second fastest growing company in the hot 100 list of companies by Entrepreneur Magazine in 1997. Sam is an executive board member for the American Red Cross - Silicon Valley, is an avid golfer and lives in San Jose with his wife and three children. Sam holds a MS, Mechanical Engineering from Oregon State University