/1

EMEA |

The CIO’s ViewHear Mike Golz’s predictions for the future of IT.

The Rise of the CDOAre chief digital officers the secret to future business success? Get the full story.

Build an effective foundation for context awareness.

Unlock the power of predictive maintenance.

Discover how SAP is helping VELUX connect with customers.

And much more.

/2

Welcome to IT & MeWelcome to the latest issue of IT & Me. This month, Anders Reinhardt, head of global business intelligence at VELUX, tells us how his business uses flexible reporting technology from SAP to connect with customers. Madhur Aggarwal explores the emerging role of the chief digital officer. Sven Denecken looks at how businesses have changed as a result of the consumerization of IT. Plus, we interview Mike Golz, senior vice president and chief information officer of SAP America and you can find out what he thinks about the changing relationship between business and IT. It’s all inside, plus much more.

3 IT & Me: The CIO’s View

6 Are you a Big Data Innovator?

7 VELUX: Shining Light on Business Intelligence

9 The Rise of the Chief Digital Officer

11 Innovate, Adapt and Embrace Digital Transformation

13 Context-Aware: Are You Building for the Future of Mobile?

15 Get Ahead with Simple Finance

17 The Power of Predictive Maintenance

19 The Real-Time Platform with Real Business Benefits

21 Where to Next?

/3

Tell us about your role as a CIO

I think the job of a CIO is threefold. First, you need to provide the solutions and services the business needs to function efficiently. That’s the foundation. The next thing is integration – no business wants to have disjointed processes, where one department can’t cooperate with another because systems aren’t working together. Then lastly, but most importantly I believe, is innovation. How can technology help the company get to the next level? How can it help solve a customer problem or enhance a service? The

CIO has to be a driver for innovation. You need your feelers out for what’s new, what’s coming, and how it can be applied to what the company does.

If IT and the business don’t work together in the long run, it’s going to lead to isolated, disconnected, disjointed solutions.

Has the role changed over the last decade?

Yes. I think 10 years ago the role was much more about service provisioning, service quality, stability, reliability – the typical, more technical aspects of IT. Now, it’s evolved into something much bigger. It’s about agility in solving business problems, and thinking about technology’s impact on the company’s products and solutions. For example, think about how digital is changing the world and how companies are moving from physical products to services, all enabled by technology and data.

IT & Me The CIO’s ViewHow is the role of the CIO changing? And what does that mean for businesses? To find out, we interviewed Mike Golz, senior vice president and chief information officer of SAP America. He tells us all about his role, reveals his IT predictions, and shares his insights on the changing relationship between business and IT.

/4

How has this changed the relationship between the business and IT?

There’s a lot of discussion about buying decisions now moving towards the lines of business and no longer being taken solely by IT. If you have a good relationship with your business stakeholders, it’s a joint conversation and it’s a joint decision. But if there’s disconnect, those decisions may be taken without consulting IT – and that could cause problems. If IT and the business don’t work together, in the long run it will lead to isolated, disconnected, disjointed solutions, which are very complex and expensive to maintain.

Is technology as important to you in your personal life?

I love gadgets. I buy everything that comes out in terms of wearables, Internet of Things, home automation – and I love seeing how all of these are coming together. They help me track my movement, calorie burn, and sleep. They know when best to wake me up and they tell me my weight, pulse, and body fat percentage. If you look at all of this combined, what that means for healthcare, for me personally in terms of well-being, it’s tremendous.

Try things out, fail fast, use simple solutions, and see where it leads.

So, do you think the way people use technology is changing?

A lot of people still think that technology is complex or scary – I have a different view. Look at what our kids are doing with technology. I did a small experiment. One of my boys dropped his phone into a lake and he had to work on an old flip phone for just a day. I watched him type on the keyboard and try to write an SMS message. It was hilarious. It shows you how easy technology is today and how complicated and cumbersome it was in the past. It also shows that kids have a different way of adopting technology. I think that’s sometimes what we need to do in a business environment – try things out, fail fast, use simple solutions, and see where it leads.

“A lot of people still think that technology is complex or scary – I have a different view.”

/5

What do you think the role of the CIO will look like in the next 10 years?

I think it’s going to be even more about innovation, new ideas, and how to bring technology into the business. By then, most of the current operations topics will be trivial – they will have been commoditized and will be done by service providers. I believe there will be two distinct career paths for IT professionals: either be one of those service providers or use the technology they offer to provide business value.

And, finally, what IT issues are on your mind right now?

There’s always this element of delivering the services and making sure everything is running because the business depends on it. Moving to the cloud is a big priority in our organization, and enabling true real-time business is front and center. More and more, I’m focusing on identifying the important trends early and making sure that we capture them.

Discover

Want to hear more IT & Me stories? Get the inside story on technology from Stuart, Kerri, Andrew – and many more – on the IT & Me Web site.

Follow

You can follow Mike on Twitter @MikeGolz

10 years ago, the role was much more about the more technical aspects of IT. Now, it’s morphed into something much bigger.

The CIO has to be a trigger for innovation.

/6

The IDC white paper, “Using Big Data to Drive Business Transformation: Learning From the Big Data Innovators”, explores the subject in detail. It identifies the seven characteristics of organizations that are achieving Big Data mastery and reveals the five phases of its Big Data Maturity Model. You can use this to benchmark your own progress and to find out how your business can advance along the five stages of the framework to maximize the benefits derived from Big Data and analytics.

Only 28% of organizations believe that the IT department is fully integrated within business transformation and innovation.

In the report, you’ll discover more about how the innovators are using Big Data technologies. Find out about the processes and people they have in place to help them get the most business value from their Big Data projects. Plus, learn more about the role of IT in their Big Data transformations.

77% of IT executives believe that Big Data and analytics capabilities will improve the ability of IT to play a more significant role in enabling business transformation.

Real-time and predictive analytics were once the stuff of futuristic fiction. But, not anymore. Big Data innovators are successfully applying real-time capabilities to real-world scenarios – and with great success.

Download

You can download the white paper now.

Fact

The IDC white paper is sponsored by SAP and Intel. Together we have been co-innovating for over a decade to help organizations run simpler. We deliver cutting-edge performance – from real-time business insights to simplified IT that can handle mission-critical applications and the ever-growing volumes of data.

Are you a Big Data Innovator?

/7

VELUX: Shining Light on Business Intelligence

What’s the best part of your job?

I come here every day with a smile on my face – working in my line of business with analytics and BI is extremely exciting. At the moment, everybody is interested in analytics, and it’s great. It’s nice to work with something that people care about. As the area evolves so quickly, it’s difficult to keep track – you really have to be sharp. It’s very interesting, though, because we’re allowed to be innovative and try new stuff out. For me, that’s a dream scenario.

By rolling out a self-service concept, I think we’ve been able to reduce dependency on IT and finance.

What are the tougher aspects of your job?

It takes a lot of patience. That means not being too ambitious in terms of what technology is actually available on the market to help you. Also, being patient in relation to not doing it all at once – rolling out a really stable and great platform for users is a very long project. It takes years, and by the time you roll something out, it’s most likely redundant or old. It also takes a lot of guts; you have to be able to make some strategic decisions, where you have to guess where your business is going to be in four or five years.

What are some of the biggest challenges you face?

It’s not easy to construct a setup where everybody, whether they’re an analytics expert or an amateur, can

use the systems and feel that they can benefit. That’s one of our ambitions. It’s also a bit of a challenge for us to make sure that with one system we can more or less cover different cultures and time zones. Also, because we work as a matrix organization, that provides some challenges. In some instances, we have at least two views of the same story and that’s something that we need to juggle.

Simplicity really does matter – and it matters a lot within BI and analytics.

How are BI and analytics viewed by everybody in the organization?

Over the last three or four years, we’ve seen a growing interest all over the business in sharing information using analytics. Some are far ahead, while others are only just beginning their journey. For us to drive our business today without information, without analytics, wouldn’t be possible. It’s immensely important and it’s important that we’re able to package it in a way where our users find it relevant.

VELUX has been working for 70 years to bring daylight and fresh air indoors to help create better living environments. Its iconic products, including everything from skylights to sun tunnels, can be found all over the world. In this interview, Anders Reinhardt, the head of Global Business Intelligence (BI) at VELUX, tells us how the business uses flexible reporting technology from SAP to collaborate better, react to markets faster, and stay close to its customers.

/8

How do you create a good user experience?

Simplicity really does matter – and it matters a lot within BI and analytics. We try to arrive quickly at an answer and then convey the results in an easy-to-understand way. If you’re able to do it in a simple manner, then you’ll succeed.

We can’t survive without the proper use of analytics and without sharing information.

On what scale are you using SAP® software?

More or less all lines of business are using business intelligence software from SAP now. Three years ago, before we ventured into our journey with BI software from SAP, we had around 800 users on the platform. Now, we have 2,200 users and expect an increase next year to 4,000. So that means more or less everybody who has a PC can access this information.

How does where you are now differ to where you were previously?

Our journey with SAP began with trying to establish one set of numbers – getting everything into one data warehouse. We used to have quite a lot of discussions about figures and who has the right figures. So establishing a single set of numbers was very important for us.

When we had the information in place, we moved towards a strategy of sharing it. That has a lot to do with self-service in our view – making users able to work with information, such as publishing new reports, without calling somebody from IT. So, creating some kind of BI agility.

Has that agility given users more independence and ownership with BI?

There used to be a lot of dependency on core resources. Whenever you wanted new reports or you wanted something changed, you would go to finance or you would go to IT. We’ve really tried to spread the message: why not try to help yourself? If we can create systems that are easy to use, you can do your own report if you want to, you don’t have to ask somebody for help. We’ve really tried to foster that idea and roll out systems so they support that.

At the moment, everybody is interested in analytics and it’s great.

By rolling out a self-service concept, I think we’ve been able to reduce dependency on IT and finance. It’s about making data easy to understand and access, and making relevant data available. So, not overloading everyone with all kinds of other data that’s not really relevant for their line of business or for them personally.

How important is BI for VELUX’s future?

We can’t survive without the proper use of analytics and without sharing information. I think we’ve succeeded in sharing information; we’ve succeeded in reaching a lot of users in the VELUX group, so we now have one clear picture of how things are going. Running and operating a large reporting system is a lot about happy users who feel that we are assisting them in getting their jobs done – in an easier, faster way than before. And if we can get the sense that we are actually achieving this, then I think it’s been a success.

We are allowed to be innovative and try new stuff out. For me, that’s a dream scenario.

Discover

The right insight can help transform a business. To learn more, explore the BI & Me page on our Web site.

Follow

You can follow Anders Reinhardt on Twitter @ReinhardtAnders

/9

Years ago, the roles of the CMO and the CIO were clearly defined and there was little crossover. But, as consumers began to adopt more technologies that influenced the way they shop and spend, those roles started to blur. It left many businesses wondering who was in charge of what and how best to use their CMO’s and CIO’s skills. As a result, a new ‘hybrid’ role soon began to emerge, a role known today as the chief digital officer (CDO).

Is Three a Crowd?

CDOs are both business-savvy and technology-savvy. As such, they’re perfectly positioned to lead the digital transformation that will carry the organization into the future. But, with a CIO and CMO already in the mix, what does that actually mean for all three parties? Is three a crowd – or have businesses discovered the great trinity of modern commerce?

The answer varies. Mainly, it depends on three points: how the roles and responsibilities of the CMO, CIO, and CDO are defined; what role digital plays in the business strategy; and at what stage the company is on its way to digital transformation.

Spotlight on the CMO

A CMO study conducted in 2014 by SAP, in partnership with Forbes and Gyro, indicated that CMOs’ responsibilities vary widely – they range from advertising, branding, and public relations to lead generation, marketing analytics, and customer engagement. As you’d expect though, there are some prevalent commonalities.

The study revealed that, on the whole, a CMO’s aspiration is to influence the corporate, market, and product strategy. Also, one of their main areas of responsibility is customer

engagement. Despite this, less than half of the CMOs surveyed are responsible for digital and social media – even though their companies generate, on average, around 40% of their revenue online. This indicates that there’s still a disconnect between IT and marketing.

An earlier CMO study conducted by SAP, The CMO Club, and Human 1.01 also found that, for CMOs, customer satisfaction, retention, and loyalty are the most important outcomes of effective customer experience – not profitability or revenue. This suggests that creating a bridge between content and commerce remains a challenge for marketing organizations and CMOs.

CDOs are both business-savvy and technology-savvy. They’re in charge of leading the digital transformation that will carry the organization into the future.

The Rise of the Chief Digital Officer

As the popularity of mobile and social has grown, businesses have turned to digital to help them connect better with their audiences and generate new revenue streams. But, as marketing and technology come closer together, how does that impact those in charge of it – the chief marketing officer (CMO) and chief information officer (CIO)? Madhur Aggarwal, vice president at SAP, takes a look.

/10

Put Customers First

At a corporate level, bridging the content-commerce gap can’t wait. Businesses need a customer-centric approach to technology that will help them reduce complexity and enable seamless discovery, trial, and purchase. The role of the CDO rises to fill this gap. Rather than polarize marketing and IT and ‘take over,’ the idea is for the CDO to bind them together. But, that can’t happen without clear leadership. So, it is the CDO that will lead the digital transformation to drive growth for the company, “a will that doesn’t come without formal ownership,” as mentioned in “Every Company Needs a Chief Digital Officer”2.

Collaboration Is Key

The alignment and effective collaboration between CMO, CDO, and CIO is an art that makes or breaks the success of any digital initiative. So all three experts must step up their game, put customers at the center, and work in close collaboration.

Company barriers and internal processes don’t matter to customers with high expectations.

The CDO will look at the best way technology and data can be used to deliver a digitized, seamless customer experience – but will need the CIO’s expertise to source, select, implement, and maintain this technology while optimizing existing systems and IT capabilities. As customer advocates, CMOs

understand that digital is part of the overall experience and they must collaborate closely with the CDO to ensure consistency across touch points. Company barriers and internal processes don’t matter to customers with high expectations.

What’s Ahead?

With the speed at which technology innovation unlocks new business models, the CMO, CIO, and CDO will all have their plates full. What’s more, they all need to prepare for having their roles change. As businesses become increasingly digitized, each will benefit from working across silos, keeping abreast of technology, and developing new skills to stay relevant. Moreover, in unison, they will need to be “unreasonably aspirational” and “challenge everything,” two of the seven traits of effective digital enterprises described by McKinsey & Company3. They need to think of new ways of creating value and disrupting their own business in the same way a start-up would. SAP believes in this approach and just announced Jonathan Becher as the first ever CDO and head of SAP Digital4.

Organizations need to understand that effective digital change is all about working together quickly and effectively to serve the customer. And, they need to be prepared to adapt roles continuously – and even create new ones – to meet those expectations.

Rather than polarize marketing and IT and ‘take over,’ the idea is for the CDO to become the glue that binds them.

Sources:1. http://www.growthmarketer.org/resources/whitepaper/the-dna-of-a-growth-cmo2. http://techcrunch.com/2014/11/22/every-company-needs-a-chief-digital-officer/3. http://www.mckinsey.com/insights/organization/the_seven_traits_of_effective_digital_enterprises4. http://www.news-sap.com/jonathan-becher-chief-digital-officer-maggie-chan-jones-sap-chief-marketing-officer/

See

To find out how digital technologies and Big Data are transforming the way businesses operate, take a look at the Data & Me page on our Web site.

Follow

You can follow Madhur on Twitter @aggarwalmadhur

/11

It’s easy to see why things changed – they had to. Ambitious business executives got fed up with waiting too long for information and answers from IT. So, they took matters into their own hands. For the first time, they got freedom of choice from various best-of-breed providers and could choose the solutions they wanted to drive business innovation – fast. However, in doing this, they failed to keep an eye on the overall company context.

Scattered ThinkingAs different lines of business pursued different solutions, offices soon filled up with innumerable cloud and mobile solutions. With the added arrival of more disruptive technologies and the digital transformation, these solutions have fast become unmanageable. Ironically, this has left businesses hamstrung in their ability to be more agile

and react faster to changing market demands. They are trapped in exactly the very situation they thought they were escaping. So, what’s the solution?

In this new era of ‘Digital Darwinism,’ it’s not the strongest businesses that will survive, but those that are able to adapt fast to change.

Together Again

Businesses need a center of gravity that can pull things back together.

Innovate, Adapt and Embrace Digital Transformation A few years ago, when the ‘consumerization of IT’ took grip, businesses saw a huge power shift in IT decision-making. Technology investments were no longer owned and managed by the CIO and IT department – lines of business (LoB) were suddenly taking control. But, a few years on, what’s been the impact of these changes? Sven Denecken, global vice president of Strategy for Cloud Solutions at SAP, finds out.

/12

They need somebody who can develop use cases and strategies built on new, disruptive technologies, and lead the business into the digital age.

To lead the company successfully through digital transformation, a combination of strong business and technology leadership is required.

Adapt and Innovate

With today’s unprecedented pace of change, digital transformation is inevitable. In fact, it’s already begun. Smart and innovative challengers are leapfrogging industry borders and disrupting business models. They’re selling digital services to former physical product markets and leaving established market leaders in their shadow. In this new era of ‘Digital Darwinism,’ it’s not the strongest businesses – the market leaders – that will survive, but those who are able to keep up with consumers and technology and adapt fast to change. Because if they don’t, they will simply be out-innovated by peers and new challengers.

Look at the arrival of the smartphone, for example. It disrupted the business models of torch producers and camera producers from outside the niche.

There is the unique opportunity for CIOs to transform the role of IT – not to be chief ‘information’ officer, but chief ‘innovation’ officer.

So, where does the disruptive, digital transformation leave the CIO? And what does it mean for the traditional role of IT – is it still relevant to businesses?

Innovation over Information

Before the digital transformation, analyzing the business model of an organization was easy and allocating roles was straightforward. LoB executives’ responsibility was to innovate their department and grow the business. IT executives’ role was to run the company: to ‘keep the lights on at highest efficiency.’ But these roles are no longer so clear cut.

Smart and innovative challengers are leapfrogging industry borders and disrupting business models.

Today, there is the unique opportunity for CIOs to transform the role of IT – not to be a chief ‘information’ officer, but a chief ‘innovation’ officer. They can create use cases and strategies for market innovations and help the company to gain new market shares built on the technology foundations of cloud, mobile, Big Data, and the networked economy.

Time for Change

Achieving success in digital transformation will be a balancing act. While the company will still need people to help ‘keep the lights on,’ there will also be new, different requirements.

Fundamentally, commodity-oriented roles will become less relevant. Many basic services will be consumed via specialized providers based on new technologies, such as cloud and the networked economy. In contrast, businesses will need people who can analyze and understand the impact of technology and its opportunities for the company. This is about delivering added value and having business specialists, with strong business expertise, who are keen to define and adopt best practices.

Align with the Business

To lead the company successfully through the digital transformation and win the race for new market shares, a combination of strong business and technology leadership is required. IT roles need to change – not necessarily with fast speed but at the right speed and, more importantly, in the right direction to support the business strategy.

Discover

Take a simple approach to innovation and help your business grow in the digital age. Learn more on the Innovation & Me page on our Web site.

Follow

You can follow Sven on Twitter @SDenecken

/13

Context-Aware: Are You Building for the Future of Mobile?

Context-aware mobility is the information intersection where the physical and digital worlds meet. It’s that extra layer of insight, understanding, and interaction that connects users to information in practical, convenient ways.

Smartphones are crucial to context because they are the devices most commonly by our side. But businesses aren’t stopping there. They’re also using connected, wearable devices alongside applications that take advantage of contextual data to allow people to work from anywhere and any place. And this, we believe, is the future of the workplace – and beyond.

Invest in end-to-end mobile platforms that automate how end users discover apps related to their business.

Changing Lives, Saving Lives

The implications of context-aware mobility are huge for industries such as healthcare, oil and gas, and transportation. Imagine a field maintenance worker being able to use his voice to log activity and monitor his biometrics for safety. By combining wearables with analytics and data, we can literally save lives. Even the standard office or warehouse can see huge benefits – it really is an opportunity for us all to develop something of great impact.

A Seamless ExperienceYou might be wondering, what’s new about that? The drive to deliver context-aware opportunities has been around for some time. Portals and e-commerce sites have depended on context to improve their UIs over the last 10 years. And we’re already all using smartphones, tablets, and a near-infinite number of connected smart devices like appliances, cars, glasses, and watches. The significant aspect now, though, is that connected applications don’t live on just one device, but can work seamlessly across them all.

This puts huge pressure on businesses. They have to deliver apps that sync across multiple devices, while also making sure that they’re simpler, smarter, and faster than ever before.

So, does this mean that developers can just keep coding (and recoding) mobile apps every time a new smart device or feature emerges? Surely there’s a better way.

Connectivity is everywhere. The significant aspect now, though, is that connected applications don’t live on just one device anymore.

Scale and Flexibility

The answer is cloud computing. It’s scalable and flexible, allowing developers to bring as much context as possible to their apps, regardless of device. Cloud has helped Apple and Google disrupt the mobile industry – and other mobile developers should be looking to follow in their footsteps. Our advice? Embrace the cloud.

Bill McDermott, CEO of SAP SE, recently made the case that the key to simplicity through mobile is moving beyond just getting information first. It’s now about getting precise information – in just the right format, on the right screen, at the exact moment it’s needed. In other words, knowing the context of the user and situation is critical. So, how can your business build a foundation for context-awareness? Amisha Gandhi, director of Global Product Marketing Mobile, and Bill Clark, global vice president of Mobile Strategy, share their advice.

/14

Build a Foundation for Context-Awareness

Before embarking on building for the future of mobile, it’s important to have a clear strategy and strong foundation, as Rick Costanzo, head of mobile business at SAP, points out in this article “The Truth about Mobile Today”. The enterprises, software, and content providers that will gain the most advantage with context will be the ones who take a long-term, disciplined approach to mobile. Here’s a quick, step-by-step guide to get you started.

1. Create an awareness of context and the kinds of context engines your organization will need. Build your mind-set at the individual level. For example, take the use case of setting a home thermostat and integrating the smartphone app with weather content from the cloud to automatically adjust your home heating or cooling.

2. Invest in end-to-end mobile platforms that automate how people or groups discover apps related to their business, how IT administrators push out and update applications, and how developers pull together all the contextual clues to bring the right stuff in the right format, to the right user, at the right time.

3. Link your investments in end-to-end mobility with Big Data projects. Think about the kind of cloud services you will need to feed the context engines and understand the real-time requirements your new mobile applications will bring.

4. Refine step one and then repeat the whole cycle. As new trends emerge – such as the Internet of Things or wearables – incorporate them at each pass. This is a long-term strategy, so be sure to set the right expectations.

The implications of context-aware mobility are huge for industries such as healthcare, oil and gas, and transportation.

The Next Level

Context awareness brings value to users at multiple levels. But, the combination of “smart” mobile apps, “risk-sensitive” security, and “multichannel” usability is what really will bring mobile computing to the next level.

Process-optimized mobile apps will take advantage of built-in knowledge of process and key UI patterns to give users the precise information they need. Cloud-based security will be able to adapt in real time to trade off ease-of-use based on real-time calculation of personal and business risk. Responsive design and superior architecture will make sure that the information is in the right format, on the right screen or wearable, at exactly the time needed.

Context-aware solutions will make business simpler. Besides making technology more enjoyable, they will also create a virtual cycle of adoption that will drive productivity and effectiveness. The business implications are huge – and there are exciting times ahead for enterprises and developers who can make computing simpler and safer for everyone.

Sources: http://scn.sap.com/community/business-trends/blog/2014/10/22/wearables-in-the-enterprise--beyond-fitness-bands?source=social-newsletter-SAPFlash&Campaigncode=CRM-XU14-INT-MSMLPSNhttp://scn.sap.com/community/business-trends/blog/2014/10/14/how-byox-can-help-you-reinvent-your-business

Read

To learn more about how mobile is changing the way we work, visit the Mobile & Me page on our Web site.

Follow

You can follow Amisha and Bill on Twitter @amishagandhi @mobilebillclark

Sources: http://scn.sap.com/community/business-trends/blog/2014/10/22/wearables-in-the-enterprise--beyond-fitness-bands?source=social-newsletter-SAPFlash&Campaigncode=CRM-XU14-INT-MSMLPSNhttp://scn.sap.com/community/business-trends/blog/2014/10/14/how-byox-can-help-you-reinvent-your-business

/15

Get Ahead with Simple Finance

We’re all living at breakneck speed. From our bank balance to our weekly groceries, almost everything in our personal lives is just a few, simple clicks away. And because we’re so used to this instant way of living, we’ve come to expect the same speed inside our workplaces, too.

Forget about waiting for financial reports and analysis – today’s finance experts want instant, up-to-the-minute insight that they can share across the business in a way that each line of business (LoB) can easily understand – even if they have no financial analysis expertise. That

information needs to be delivered in a simple way so the business can react quickly and capitalize on opportunities before it’s too late.

80% of finance experts believe their companies could better meet growth targets if their IT systems were easier to use.

Stay Ahead

To give finance teams the instant information they need and keep them up to speed with the rapid pace of change, businesses must be innovative. They need to embrace technology and new ways of working. Even “real time” isn’t fast enough in some cases. Users also want insight into reasonable predictive outcomes, so they can seize new opportunities and stay ahead of the competition.

But how easy is it to deliver all this information quickly and clearly to the right people?

Time for Change

According to a report by CFO Research1, finance executives recognize the “need for speed,” but 87% agree they need to be faster and only 12% can actually deliver in real time. What’s more, 89% agree they need more forward-looking analytics.

Innovative, self-service technologies are reshaping the roles of IT and the CIO. But their influence on business and the way we work doesn’t end there. In this article, Neil Krefsky, senior director at SAP of Product Marketing for Cloud Solutions focused on the finance line of business, looks at how the latest finance software from SAP is empowering CFOs and helping them to become both finance experts and valued business strategists.

/16

See

To find out more about SAP Simple Finance, visit our landing page or for a quick overview, check out the video.

Follow

You can connect with Neil on Twitter @krefsky

However, we know that the technology exists to give users real-time and predictive insight. And we know businesses are using it. So what’s creating the barrier between data and its users? What’s not connecting?

SAP wants to make finance data easily accessible, understandable, and actionable to all users.

Speed and Simplicity

According to the CFO Research, 83% of finance experts agree that better information reporting and data visualization would help LoB managers make better decisions. What’s more, 80% believe their companies could better meet growth targets if their IT systems were easier to use. And while 62% say they have self-service systems,

58% feel LoB managers struggle to use the information to identify and understand the data they need to make effective business decisions.

So, it seems the problem is not in aggregating and delivering the information. The problem is delivering it in a way that users can interpret, use, and present. To remedy this, the user experience needs to be simpler. But that’s where many technologies fail.

The Future of Finance

SAP wants to make finance data easily accessible to all users. To help achieve this, SAP has worked closely with customers to identify the most complex tasks in finance and make them simpler to perform. Now, with the new “simple finance” software from SAP, finance departments can run their mission-critical processes in real time – from planning to analysis. They can perform what-if analyses and simulate business results to make more accurate decisions about the future.

With self-service access to real-time reporting and analytics and a beautiful user experience, the SAP® Simple Finance solution has removed the barriers between finance information and users. It’s making everything simpler and faster – reporting, collaboration, and analysis.

Finance executives recognize the “need for speed,” but 87% agree they need to be faster.

This new, agile approach to financial management and planning will help to transform the role of finance and the CFO. They can react faster and better predict elements of the future. They can give the business the information it needs to succeed in a way non-finance professionals can interpret and, as a result, can cement their own role as influential business strategist.

Sources:1. The Next Stage in Creating the Value-Added Finance Function: Turning Data into Insight and Business Actions, CFO Research

/17

The Power of Predictive Maintenance

From industrial machines to cars, everything has a life-span. To help keep these things in the best condition for as long as possible, most of us commit to a program of regular maintenance – servicing our machines and changing the oil in our cars, for example. But these precautionary checkups can get very expensive – especially if you’re a business built on machines.

Businesses may be replacing healthy parts unnecessarily, wasting engineers’ time – and losing money.

Worst still, these sorts of regular scheduled maintenance checks aren’t even always a necessity. Which means businesses may be wasting the engineers’ time – and losing money on prescheduled monthly and quarterly maintenance checks. That’s bad news for any business. But there is a solution.

Act – Don’t React

Many businesses are now looking to predictive maintenance as a way of proactively monitoring, managing, and maintaining their systems. Predictive maintenance solutions harness the power of the Internet of Things (IoT) and machine-to-machine (M2M) technology to analyze large volumes of operational data and apply

predictive insights in real time. They analyze current and historical data from lots of different sources to make accurate predictions. So, rather than carry out work when it’s not needed, businesses have foresight into when it really will be needed. They can then take the appropriate action before equipment breaks down, thus avoiding disruption in their business processes. This proactive monitoring lowers maintenance costs, predicts failure before it occurs, improves equipment uptime, and improves customer service as a result.

Monitor Equipment Remotely

Predictive maintenance uses remote machine sensors. That’s a huge advantage for businesses that maintain operations in remote locations, such as oil and gas, turbine, and crane companies. For many of these remote assets, sending an engineer to fix them could take days and incur high costs. Imagine the knock-on effect of that. Your employees could be left without work for days, your supply chain could

As the world moves ever faster, businesses are under more pressure than ever to keep up with it. But when your business is built on machines and technology, how do you make sure they keep up? How can you prevent system failures, minimize maintenance downtime, and still improve cost of ownership? Mahira Kalim, director of Internet of Things Marketing at SAP, finds out.

/18

stall, and your users might not get the product or service they need when they need it. Remote monitoring and predictive maintenance helps to alleviate these problems by predicting when remote assets or equipment will fail.

Equipment downtime can lead to big losses for any business. You can damage relationships with buyers and suppliers, lose users, and suffer weighty financial losses.

Avoid Maintenance Downtime

With reactive maintenance – only fixing things when they’re broken – one of the biggest problems is downtime. Equipment downtime can lead to big losses for any business. You can damage relationships with buyers and suppliers, lose users, and suffer weighty financial losses. It can be particularly troublesome for industries that rely on round-the-clock service, such as airlines, banks, emergency services, and energy suppliers. With predictive maintenance, you’ll have full vision of all your systems’ health, 24x7, meaning you can almost eliminate unpredicted maintenance. So you can keep productivity – and profitability – high.

With predictive maintenance, you’ll have full vision of all your systems’ health, 24x7, meaning you can almost eliminate unpredicted maintenance.

Kaeser Compressors

One business already benefitting from a predictive approach to maintenance is Kaeser Compressors Inc. Kaeser is a German-based manufacturer of compressed air systems. It uses predictive maintenance technology from SAP to help it manage its machinery1. The technology takes more than 1 million measurements from Kaeser’s machines every day, monitoring everything from temperature and pressure level to compressed air. This gives the business a complete picture of its systems 24x7, so it can predict machine health and avoid unplanned downtime.

A Valued Investment

As with any investment, predictive maintenance needs to prove its worth before businesses make the leap. But, if you take Kaeser as an example, those results look very promising indeed. Not only has the company improved its performance, it’s also lowered total cost of ownership. These sorts of results are typical with predictive maintenance.

Next time you’re dealing with a routine maintenance service or an out-of-the-blue system failure, ask yourself how much you could save if you employed predictive maintenance instead. The answer might surprise you.

Kaeser has a complete picture of its systems 24x7, so it can predict machine health and avoid unplanned downtime.

Discover

Using the right data in the right way can help you unlock new opportunities and transform your business. To find out more, visit the Data & Me page on our Web site.

Read

You can read more about predictive maintenance here.

Follow

You can connect with Mahira on Twitter @m_kalim

Source:1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9oyInxA5vQ8&list=PLYdj_yQpJjT3GCLoJBkNd-N8BK1dzh0F7&index=7

/19

The Real-Time Platform with Real Business Benefits

With Run Simple, there’s no confusion as to what SAP’s approach is. It filters down through the whole company and forms one of the three pillars of SAP HANA: Simplify. Accelerate. Innovate. But does SAP HANA live up to such a bold marketing mantra? I believe so – and here’s why.

Simple But Powerful

Simplicity is the hallmark of transformational technologies. From servers to VoIP, we’re always looking at ways to make repetitive processes easier and faster to perform – whether it’s saving our work or picking up voice mail. In the case of SAP HANA, it gives businesses a simpler data footprint. It eliminates

the divide between data transactions (OLTP) and analytics (OLAP) by processing both with one copy of data managed in a single in-memory computing database. That brings many benefits to a business, including:

• Simpler processing and operations that enable real-time decision making with no data preparation, data movement, or integration

• A simpler landscape that integrates data types, data operations, and application processing in one platform and avoids multiple specialist servers

• Simpler setup with a choice of on-premise or cloud deployment, and integration for hybrid deployments

• Simpler application development with a simpler data model that eliminates data duplication for higher performance

• A simpler user experience that provides comprehensive, personalized real-time information any time and on any device

While it’s easy to see why these benefits are attractive to businesses, there’s still a job to be done to tackle a common misconception about SAP HANA. That is, that such technological simplicity must come at a hefty price.

SAP HANA can save an organization over 70% on software, over 15% on hardware, and over 20% on administration and development labor.

TCO savings modeled

scenarios: 37%

Total cost with SAP HANA:

$19,663,124

Total cost without SAP

HANA: $31,324,017

Net cost savings with SAP HANA:

$11,660,893

Figure 1: Financial Summary Showing Three-Year Results. All figures in US$

The SAP HANA® platform leverages in-memory computing technology to bring together database and application features so businesses can operate in real time. The technology is sophisticated enough to meet the specific needs of almost any company. But while some people believe that must make it complex and expensive, Amit Satoor, senior director of Product and Solution Marketing at SAP, tells a different story.

/20

Consider Costs in the Long Term

While there is an up-front investment to be made by businesses looking to adopt SAP HANA, you also need to consider the total cost of ownership (TCO). To delve deeper into this, SAP commissioned Forrester Research Inc. to undertake a study of the subject. In 2013, the findings were produced in the white paper “Projected Cost Analysis of SAP HANA: Cost Savings Enabled by Transitioning to HANA”.

The simplicity of SAP HANA and impressive TCO make it a winning investment for business and IT investors alike.

The research – which was based on customer interviews conducted independently by Forrester Research – examined the potential cost savings that businesses could gain from using SAP HANA. It projects the reduction in TCO for an organization using SAP HANA in conjunction with the SAP Business Warehouse application, the SAP ERP application, and a custom-developed application.

Before and After

Prior to SAP HANA, customers were using traditional database platforms for their applications (both SAP and non-SAP). They incurred costs associated with required hardware and software for processing and data storage, as well as the labor required for development and administration. By transitioning these applications to SAP HANA, Forrester Research projects that customers are able to reduce the hardware and software required for these applications, as well as reduce the efforts for administration and development resources. This is due to the way that SAP HANA eliminates or reduces the need for a variety of associated software and hardware, and adds efficiency to the development and system maintenance processes. Imagine the savings that could bring to your business.

© 2014 SAP SE or an SAP affiliate company. All rights reserved.

/21

Where to Next?Discover More About IT & Me

The IT & Me Web site is the perfect place to discover more about SAP technology. Watch our customer case study videos, build your knowledge with our collection of IT articles, test how innovative your business is using the Innovation Compass – and more. Take a look here.

Join the #ITandMe Conversation

Read all the latest IT & Me news and views on Twitter. See the topics that have got your peers talking and have your say. Don’t forget to use the #ITandMe hashtag.

Significant Savings

After undertaking interviews with four existing customers, surveying 25 additional customers, and carrying out subsequent financial analysis, Forrester Research concluded that a composite organization could expect to experience significant savings, as shown in Figure 1. It found that SAP HANA can save an organization over 70% on software, over 15% on hardware, and over 20% on administration and development labor.

See the Results for Yourself

The simplicity of SAP HANA and the impressive TCO make it a winning investment for business and IT investors alike. But the benefits go beyond this. The research respondents also reported advantages such as improved decision making and increased productivity – take a look at the white paper here. SAP HANA also promises instant responses to your questions and it’s be shown that it can play a pivotal role in innovation. The University of Kentucky is using the technology to transform higher education, improve student retention – and it’s experiencing a 500% return on investment. The 2014 German World Cup team also scored an unbeatable competitive edge, powered by SAP HANA. So, just think what your business could achieve.

Discover

To learn more about running your business in real time, visit the Innovation & Me page on our Web site.You can also find out more about SAP HANA use cases that meet your business needs using the SAP HANA Interactive Use Case Map.

Follow

You can follow Amit on Twitter @asatoor

© 2014 SAP SE or an SAP affiliate company. All rights reserved.