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The CIO’s ViewHelen Arnold tells us what it’s like to be the head of IT at a multibillion dollar tech company

From Information to Innovation:Can co-innovation help businesses prepare for digital transformation?

Use the Networked Economy to your

advantage

Win with business intelligence

Uncover the benefits of augmented reality in

the workplace

And much more

EMEA |

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Welcome to IT & MeIn issue two of IT & Me, you’ll find more inspirational IT stories from the people who live them. Helen Arnold, CIO and member of the Global Managing Board of SAP SE, reveals her favorite business technologies. McLaren CIO, Stuart Birrell, tells us what it’s like to work for a business that’s always pushing the boundaries. And, Mahira Kalim, Director of Internet of Things Marketing at SAP, looks at how Harley-Davidson used innovative technologies to fight through the recession. It’s all inside.

3 IT & Me: The CIO’s View

5 McLaren: Driving Innovation

8 Intel and SAP: An Unstoppable Partnership That’s Transforming Businesses

9 Insight & Me: David’s Story

11 Is the Internet of Things Driving a New Trend in Manufacturing?

13 Get the Networked Economy to Work for You

16 Visualize This: Data That Everybody Understands

17 SAP Business Suite powered by SAP HANA: Delivering Real Value to Real Businesses

19 Bringing Augmented Reality to the Enterprise

22 Transforming Tomorrow, Today

24 From Information to Innovation: The Changing Role of IT

25 Where to Next?

You’ve spent 18 years at SAP. Which of your roles has had the biggest impact on you?

From 2012 through 2013, I headed Enterprise Analytics and Innovative Solutions at SAP. It’s responsible for driving the adoption of innovative SAP® solutions internally, before they go to customers. The team works closely with development to fine-tune solutions and ensure they function correctly. We can then adopt these best practices for customers, making implementations effective and fast.

Can you tell us about any innovations you’re currently using internally?

We use them all. We are SAP’s first reference and ramp-up customer, acting as first validator of all SAP products. We’re focused on reducing complexity and championing simplicity. A great example of this is the SAP Fiori® launchpad, which we’ve just released internally. It’s a role-based, personalized, central entry point where users can access everything they need to do their jobs, across multiple systems and multiple portals. Before, people used to work with long lists of favorites in their browsers. Now, all they need to do is go to their launchpad. Talk about simplicity!

Can you tell us about your internal adoption of SAP Simple Finance?

Taking an entire core application from SAP Business Suite to the cloud is a massive step. But, with the SAP Simple Finance solution, we’ve eliminated data silos and created a homogeneous, simplified data structure and basis. That’s nothing short of revolutionary.

It means we can work at line-item level, without repeated reconciliations. Consequently, we can complete a quarterly financial close much faster than before. We’re looking at 70% less reconciliation time, 40% fewer posting corrections at financial close, and a reduction in database footprint from 7.1 terabytes to 1.5 terabytes. The system is also much easier and quicker for personnel to work with. We expect this solution to really shake the market up!

Are other businesses finding success with SAP HANA?

Absolutely. I talk to customers all the time. They not only report increases in speed of processing, but also better data. For instance, SAP HANA software helps John Deere (the global market leader in agricultural machinery) and ConAgra Foods (one of North America’s largest food companies), identify

IT & Me:The CIO’s ViewWhat’s it like to be the head of IT at a multibillion dollar tech company? We interviewed Helen Arnold to find out. Helen was appointed CIO and member of the Global Managing Board of SAP SE in May 2014. She’s a business administration graduate who advocates innovation and values the trial-and-error approach.

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issues in production and maintenance processes sooner. It also gives them up-to-date analyses on which to base their planning. This is a major business benefit that was never open to them in the past. That’s innovation. Businesses such as Schaidt Innovations in Germany are also passing on the benefits they’ve gained to their customers. We’re seeing these kinds of gains constantly.

The cloud is a real game-changer for businesses. What can SAP offer cloud customers?

We’re one of the fastest-growing cloud companies and already have more than 44 million users in the cloud.

Our offering is unique. We don’t just offer our customers discrete slices of cloud functionality – we offer them a cloud journey, at their own pace, in a way that best suits their business, all fully integrated across a hybrid landscape. We have reliable and secure data centers where we run our customers’ mission-critical systems for them. And we provide a number of different delivery methods, from public cloud (such as offerings from SuccessFactors® and Ariba, both SAP companies), private cloud (such as the SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud), and hybrid environments that incorporate on-premise solutions. Our customers can choose how and when they wish to commit to cloud.

Do you think SAP’s own cloud experience helps it provide a better cloud experience to customers?

Yes, definitely. We’ve done it ourselves already – and that’s where our strength lies. Our expertise is unparalleled.

We’ve been running our data centers smoothly for decades, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.

We run our own mission-critical software on SAP HANA in the cloud. We are the first validators so that our customers experience nothing but success.

On top of that, we’ve purchased top cloud companies from around the world whose unique cloud skills have cross-pollinated with our unique on-premise skills. As a result, we now offer something no-one else can offer: SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud.

Inside SAP• 72,000 internal SAP users • 70 countries • 220 locations • 52,000 smartphones • 28,000 tablets • 85 million e-mails a month

SAP’s Internal Cloud Landscape• 67,000 users in the public

cloud on Success Map • 14,000 users on SAP Cloud

for Customer• 3,000 users on

SAP Supplier through the Ariba® Network

• 67,000 users on SAP ERP on SAP HANA® Enterprise Cloud

• 14,000 users on SAP CRM on SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud

• Over 4,500 users on SAP Business Warehouse on SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud

Discover

Hear more about technology from the people who live it and learn more about SAP’s cloud solutions here.

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The McLaren Group is a technology company with one goal: to win. It’s been pioneering, innovating, and winning in the world of Formula 1 racing since 1963. Since then, it has also successfully diversified with its high-performance sports car business, McLaren Automotive, and with its technology consultancy, McLaren Applied Technologies. The company’s CIO, Stuart Birrell, tells us what it’s like to work for a business that’s always pushing the boundaries.

Case studyMcLaren: Driving

Innovation

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What’s your role at McLaren?

McLaren is a technology business. We are founded on technology and how we apply it. As a CIO, it’s not my role to control all the technology; my role is enabling it to be applied to the business to get results. We work with all the technology teams across the business, helping them get to market, make things faster, or become cheaper.

How critical is technology to McLaren?

It’s the very small changes in technology and performance that can take you to the front, and that’s the difference between winning and losing. We really push that culture. We’re constantly looking for innovative technology that gives us that little edge, either in direct car performance, or in how quickly we can get parts onto the car, design parts, or produce parts.

How do you innovate?

McLaren continually innovates. We’re driven by the business need to win races. Everyone’s going faster and faster, everyone is innovating – we have to keep up with that. So it’s a

real drive to be different, to find that edge, and to invest in technology and in our people. You have to enable the engineers, the creative guys, to think up and deliver on ideas. You can’t constrain them – which is a real dilemma when you’re trying to protect and secure data, and secure your intellectual property. It’s a constant balance between protection and free-flowing information and the exchange of ideas.

How is McLaren using SAP technology?

Right now we are live with the SAP ERP application across the group business. So we’re using it for finance, purchasing, sales, projects – the basic things to run the back office of the business. We’ve got about 2,000 employees now using self-service HR.

In 2015, we’re going live with SAP ERP across the automotive business. It’s replacing a number of legacy software systems that were used when we were a lower-volume, much simpler business. We need to step up the capability in automotive to enable it to grow beyond where it is today, and beyond the capability of legacy systems and spreadsheets. It’s a complex deployment.

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Discover

To hear more from Stuart, watch the McLaren video here.

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And how are you using SAP cloud solutions?

SAP cloud solutions underpin how we are deploying SAP across the business. We were one of the first to go live with SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud. It’s a relatively new service from SAP, but it has settled in really well. It’s been stable and it’s worked. We can do more “what-if” analysis and we can drill down into the data further.

What’s one of the biggest benefits of using SAP technology?

Now that we’re using SAP software, we get a better view – a more real-time view – of what’s happening on our projects. We don’t need to wait until the

month-end, followed by a couple of weeks of analysis. We can see projects live – head count, resourcing, purchasing. We can see what’s going on, and make adjustments throughout the lifecycle far faster.

How important is simplicity?

In the technology world, complexity is easy. Simplicity is actually difficult to achieve. You can’t put lots of bureaucracy or predefined, rigorous processes in place. You need enough to enable a bit of governance, direction, and control. But you also need to build in agility and the ability to change direction or make decisions quickly. It’s a very difficult balance and every company struggles with that.

Where do you see McLaren in five to ten years? And how can SAP help you get there?

McLaren in five to ten years will be a significantly larger business. Most small companies, as they grow, get to a tipping point where they have to invest in the back office. They have to invest in business automation. We’re at that point and we can’t survive on the legacy systems and spreadsheets. If we grow any further, the overheads will grow exponentially. SAP is going to help us pull the data together, make decisions, present information to the decision makers in a way that will allow growth, create innovation, and not add to our overheads while we’re doing all of that.

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Big Data Week

Get all the insights, opportunities, and latest thinking around Big Data – in just 20 minutes. Join tech journalist and broadcaster, David McClelland, for five bite-size shows that will blow your mind. Open your eyes to the limitless possibilities, gain insights that could benefit your whole business, and get new ideas to help drive innovation.

• Get the latest IDC research and industry best practices

• Learn about real-world applications of Big Data

• Hear customer stories from Colgate-Palmolive, Unilever, Intel, SAP, and more

• Gain insights from trusted experts and industry leaders

Big Data Tour 2014

We’re bringing Big Data to life and taking it on the road with the SAP Big Data Tour 2014. Our Big Data truck is travelling across Europe, demonstrating how to harness the potential of Big Data to innovate, simplify work, attract new clients, and increase profits – and we’re bringing the whole show to your screen.

Switch on to the SAP Big Data Virtual Tour. You can watch all our demos and download all the relevant documents. We’ll show you how to transform your business with Big Data, so don’t miss it.

Intel and SAP: An Unstoppable Partnership

That’s Transforming Businesses

SAP and Intel are two of the biggest technology powerhouses on the planet. For over 10 years, they’ve been working together to develop co-innovative solutions that give today’s businesses the powerful performance they demand. If you want to see some of that technology in action, then join us for the Big Data Tour and Big Data Week…

Discover

Watch the demos, download the documents, and view the videos now right here.

Discover

Watch the webinars on demand now right here.

Meet David Poisson. He’s the BI Director of Business Innovation and Application Services at SAP and is responsible for introducing new analytics solutions internally. Here he explains how some of those technologies have helped the business to run better.

INSIGHT & ME: David’s Story

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SAP HANA is the starting point for our transformation strategy. It

offers access to massive amounts of data to create dashboards and reports through a very simplified architecture. It’s helped SAP do away with time-consuming and labor-intensive data extractions. And bringing analytics directly into the SAP software means that millions of records can be sliced and diced to create more accurate and informed insights.

Delivering quality functionality in collaboration with business users on a step-by-step basis helps them feel part of the process and improves buy-in.

Simplifying the Sales Pipeline

The sales pipeline is delivered directly from the SAP Customer Relationship Management application in real time. Senior executives can quickly analyze and visualize data using SAP Lumira® software, even from an iPad.

Feedback from SAP sales personnel and leadership has been very good. Universal adoption has been fast – even by previously reluctant executives – and they’ve even suggested ways to make the solutions simpler.

Executives visiting customers feel confident demonstrating the sales pipeline app using real-time data on their iPad.

Managing Data with an Agile Touch

SAP Data Services software simplifies the process of transferring data from a source to a target system. It allows processes like data cleansing, filtering, and transformation to be automated, even when there are no data matches and complex rules are required. It brings disparate data from around the world together in one location. An overall dashboard then shows relevant key performance indicators uncovered from that body of data.

We can quickly create solutions and automate them, giving us an agility that we wouldn’t have otherwise.

Forecasting Headcount

Predictive analytics provides meaningful insight to support a wide range of future planning – particularly recruitment. SAP currently uses the SAP InfiniteInsight® solution for headcount and internal costs. Users can construct a whole range of scenarios based on key criteria, such as employee age groups, HR data, and salaries. So, although we can’t be certain what the future holds – we do have a pretty accurate idea.

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Discover

Get more real insights from real people here.

Follow

You can follow David Poisson on Twitter @dpoisson

Is the Internet of Things Driving a New Trend in Manufacturing?In 2009, in the depths of the credit

crunch, iconic American motorcycle manufacturer Harley-Davidson was on the verge of collapse. Orders were down and, like many businesses, Harley-Davidson was saddled with a costly, inefficient manufacturing process. But, unlike many businesses, Harley-Davidson chose a successful path to salvation. Mahira Kalim, Director of Internet of Things Marketing at SAP, tells the story.

At the time, offshoring was in full swing. Fueled by cheap foreign labor, comparatively low shipping costs, and an Internet that instantly communicated the information needed to coordinate the logistics of a widely distributed supply chain, many businesses moved costly manufacturing facilities overseas. But this was not an option for Harley-Davidson, the brand that stands for “made in America.”

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A New Beginning

Harley took a different approach. It bulldozed the 41 buildings of its original manufacturing campus in York, Pennsylvania and replaced them with two buildings and a state-of-the-art factory made up of an Internet of Things. Recognizing that humans are better problem solvers than robots, it also retained much of its workforce, but changed how its employees worked.

Predictive and Productive

In Harley’s new manufacturing facility, every machine is a connected device, and every variable is continuously measured and analyzed. Equipment provides performance data that the system uses to anticipate maintenance issues before machines break. This minimizes workflow interruptions.

Harley can tell to the nearest tenth of a second how long it takes to install every component on a motorcycle.

The system alerts floor managers about issues at the individual component level. Harley even measures the temperature and humidity in their buildings, and the rpm of the ventilation fans. All this data is constantly analyzed to identify factors that will improve efficiency and throughput.

Phenomenal Results

Harley’s overhaul was a huge success. It now manufactures 25% more motorcycles with 30% fewer people, and the manufacturing processes accommodate 1,200 models and options without any kind of retooling. The facility in York, Pennsylvania completes 400 motorcycles every shift, and every motorcycle coming down the line may have different options.

The locked schedule to build a motorcycle has been slashed from 21 days to 6 hours.

And average lead time for the customer has shrunk from 18 months to just two weeks.

A New Way of Working

Lower manufacturing costs, faster time to market, and a higher quality product saved Harley. As a result, its stock price has increased by a factor of eight over the past five years. And it’s not alone in recognizing the advantages of a data-driven, Internet-of-Things factory.

In the past few years, General Electric, The Dow Chemical Company, Apple, Caterpillar, and over a hundred other companies have begun to shift manufacturing to their home territory in the United States. A similar trend is occurring in Europe. It is being driven in part by a decline in the wage imbalance between domestic

and foreign workers, and by a rise in shipping costs. However, faster time to market, higher quality products, and a reduction in the risks inherent in a widely dispersed supply chain are also important considerations.

A key to onshoring success is the economic power provided by highly automated, data-driven manufacturing processes. In today’s modern factories, every piece of equipment is a connected device. Everything is measured and analyzed – every component, every turn of a screw, every manufacturing variable. The right mix of automation, analytics, and labor makes it possible to cost-effectively produce and bring to market even highly complex and personalized products. That is just one way the industrial Internet is transforming manufacturing today.

Discover

To find out how your business can get value from data, visit the IT & Me Web site.

Read

If you’d like to learn more about the internet of things, take a look at the ‘Managing the Internet of Things revolution’ ebook.

Follow

You can follow Mahira Kalim on Twitter @m_kalim

Great technology starts with great talent. But that talent doesn’t have to just come from within your office walls. Thanks to the Networked Economy, you can open the net far wider and look to your customers, suppliers, and partners for valuable knowledge and expertise. And, as Alex Saric, VP of Business Network Marketing at Ariba, an SAP company, explains, you can gain big benefits.

Companies spend huge amounts of time and money trying to attract

and retain the best talent. And, to make sure their talent can work together effectively, they also invest heavily in knowledge sharing and collaboration technology. All in, it’s a huge expense. But it’s worth it, because the right person can have a significant impact on the performance of a department – and even the whole business.

Isn’t it ironic then, that these same companies spend so little effort tapping the much greater pool of knowledge in their external networks? And, as a result, they could be missing out on fantastic opportunities to grow and improve.

No Business Knows It All

Regardless of how good a company is at attracting the best and brightest employees, the knowledge among them is still only a tiny fraction of what exists across its networks. And when it comes to specialist knowledge – whether understanding the intricacies of operating in a new market or the precise risks in a multitiered supply chain – no single business can know it all. Therein lays the true value of business networks.

It’s Time to Connect

Your business networks connect you to existing and potential trading partners. So, say you or one of your suppliers is looking to access credit. A business network can connect you to your customers for a negotiated early payment discount, or potentially to third-party financing agents who can bid online for your receivables. Or what if you’re looking to drive product innovation? You can post your requirements over a business network, which automatically matches you with potential suppliers that can propose creative solutions. It’s crowdsourcing for business-to-business transactions.

Get the Networked Economy to Work for You

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See the Big Picture

Business networks can also bring relevant insights to decision makers at a critical point in the process.

Looking to hire a contractor or other contingent labor? You can access online labor pools and market rate information. Eager to increase risk-free return on your cash in today’s low-interest-rate environment? Business networks and integrated solutions can show you what invoices are eligible for early payment discounts. Trying to assess the risk of a potential supplier? Third-party risk and financial data can be made available in online supplier profiles.

Make Informed Decisions

Lastly, business networks can also generate entirely new types of data and insights which can be used to make smarter decisions. For example, you can access peer reviews for potential suppliers to help assess and mitigate risk. What’s more, with network analytics – such as those enabled by Big Data technologies such as SAP HANA – you can highlight a range of opportunities. Suppliers can, for instance, access their complete transaction history with a given customer and create intuitive data visualizations that allow them to understand how their payment cycles are trending or whether their invoice rejection rates are improving.

With all these opportunities, it’s surprising that so few businesses are still reaching out to their wider network for the answers. What’s standing in their way?

People Power

Historically, it wasn’t feasible. Companies just didn’t have the ability to access and make sense of the reams of knowledge in their broader networks to derive meaningful insights. Now, though, that’s no longer the story.

In today’s Networked Economy, people, devices, and businesses are better connected than ever before. You can connect with relevant experts and information, and accumulate far greater knowledge than ever before. You can generate new types of data, derive relevant insights, and identify previously hidden opportunities. And with all this behind you, you can make better, faster business decisions and operate more strategically. It’s 21st century “people power” – and every business can benefit from it.

Discover

You can find out more about the Networked Economy here.

Follow

You can follow Alex Saric on Twitter @alexsaric

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Visualize This: Data That Everybody Understands

Technology’s no longer just the domain of IT. Nor is data. Thanks to today’s data visualization tools, it’s now easy for everybody to present data and uncover valuable insights. Steve Lucas, Global President of Platform Solutions at SAP, tells us how his business is leading the way.

From my point of view, there are very few companies on the

planet that don’t have the ability to connect to data, analyze it, and share the information. The market is full of easily-accessible solutions that provide high-level analytics tools for reporting, dashboarding, self-service queries, and so on. But today’s business users want more – they want to be able to quickly query data and also apply beautiful visualizations to it.

Bringing Data to Life

SAP Lumira® software is at the heart of our data visualization strategy. The desktop tool is free to download; you can share your reports using a secure server; and you can even publish them instantly using the SAP Lumira Cloud platform. And the benefits don’t end there. Here are 10 more reasons why SAP Lumira can help you – and all of your business users – get more from data.

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Case Study Daimler Trucks North America

Daimler Trucks is the world’s largest manufacturer of commercial vehicles. It uses SAP Lumira to help it identify and track potential sales for its dealers. It combines sales data, vehicle registrations, and industry failure rates. As Saajan Patel, IT business systems analyst, explains: “It’s an innovative product that allows users to have direct access to live-time data and it’s an opportunity to see real potential in their area for revenue.” The benefits of SAP Lumira have been felt across the whole business and its goal is to roll it out to another 200 users.

Case Study Honeywell Aerospace

SAP Lumira has empowered many Honeywell Aerospace users with the ability to combine multiple sets of data and deliver a cohesive set of information that can be quickly explored and visualized. As a result, the Honeywell Aerospace IT team has effectively enabled two self-service usage models: information that empowers users to create new BI content, and trusted data that empowers analysts to perform advanced, ad hoc data exploration to identify new and unknown insight. Processes that typically took analysts a week to perform, now take just a few hours – or less.

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10 Reasons to Love SAP Lumira

1. It works on your mobile

The SAP BusinessObjects™ Mobile app provides the flexibility to visualize information while still keeping your data secure. So far, it’s had over one million downloads.

2. You can act on data quickly

While many data visualization tools reveal business insights, they don’t let you act on them. But with SAP Lumira, SAP’s performance management solutions are just a click away. So, you can take action when it matters most.

3. Data preparation is easy

With SAP Lumira, you can easily and intuitively combine multiple data sources, create calculations, convert fields, filter, and more. Go even further with enterprise information management solutions including data integration, master data management, and information governance.

4. It will bring your business together

SAP Lumira helps you bring enterprise business intelligence (BI) and departmental BI together. You can break down departmental data silos, and gain agility by combining data discovery with SAP Lumira – all while maintaining

security, governance, administration, management, and trust.

5. It makes the most of what you have

With 45,000 customers using BI technology from SAP, there’s a pretty good chance you can take advantage of your existing BI investments by connecting directly to universes and to the SAP Business Warehouse application with SAP Lumira.

6. You can be creative

With SAP Lumira, you can tell your own story instantly with interactive infographics. You can create imaginative visualizations with custom extensions from D3. And you can go even further with integrated partner solutions like Esri map integration.

7. It uncovers hidden insights

You don’t need to be a data expert to use SAP Lumira – far from it. Anybody can uncover hidden insights and improve their knowledge, in just a few clicks.

8. You can see into the future

The real value for business analysts lies in using predictive analytics, not lag reporting. With SAP Lumira, you can put the results of predictive models into the hands of any user. You can extend the visualization capabilities in SAP Lumira with

more advanced analysis with SAP Predictive Analysis software, including R library integration and support for custom predictive models.

9. It gives you a complete BI picture

Data discovery is just one aspect of a BI strategy. With SAP Lumira, you can take advantage of the most complete portfolio of BI solutions on the market to address the needs across your organization from developers and IT, to administrators, analysts, and decision makers.

10. You don’t have to compromise

With SAP Lumira, you can grow your BI solution as your business grows. So, there’s nothing to hold you back.

Discover

Find out how you can access the insights you need to drive your business forward here.

Download

If you’d like to try SAP Lumira for yourself, you can download it here.

Follow

You can follow Steve Lucas on Twitter @nstevenlucas

Sources: http://scn.sap.com/community/lumira/blog/2014/01/15/empowered-self-service-bi-with-sap-hana-and-sap-lumira-with-honeywell-asug-webcasthttp://scn.sap.com/message/15016753https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1k8f2u-oVjc

SAP Business Suite powered by SAP HANA: Delivering Real Value to Real Businesses

As the number of customers using SAP Business Suite powered by SAP HANA continues to grow rapidly, so too does the number of success stories. In this article Amr El Meleegy, Product Marketing Director at SAP, looks at how customers are winning with SAP’s leading suite for business innovation.

If you want to hear what customers really think about SAP Business

Suite powered by SAP HANA, the article “Over 1,200 Customers and Growing” is a great place to start. It explores customer success stories from Unilever, Hidrovias do Brasil, Pacific Drilling, Mercedes-AMG, and Suzano Pulp and Paper. It also includes videos of their SAPPHIRE® NOW presentations in Orlando in 2014.

While each of the businesses is distinctively different, with its own commercial challenges and goals, there are several similarities when it

comes to the benefits they get from running their SAP Business Suite on SAP HANA. They all report lower total cost of ownership (TCO), clear and compelling business value, and ease of deployment. So, let’s look at these benefits in a bit more detail.

Lower TCO

In the article, lower TCO of running SAP Business Suite on SAP HANA (compared to classical databases) is a consistent theme referenced in the five customer stories. It’s a strong driver behind the product’s fast adoption.

Unilever, Hidrovias do Brasil, and Pacific Drilling have all experienced simplified data footprints since moving to SAP Business Suite powered by SAP HANA. As for Mercedes-AMG, virtualization and tailored data center integration allowed it to simplify the integration and operation of SAP HANA within its own data center. And a cost analysis from Hidrovias do Brasil shows that running SAP Business Suite on SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud will result in 70% savings over five years compared to on-premise alternatives. That’s an impressive statistic.

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Business Value

While lower TCO is a strong value proposition, it cannot by itself drive the rapid market adoption of a new product. There needs to be a clear and compelling business value. As is apparent from the stories in the article, customers today look at SAP Business Suite powered by SAP HANA as a way to move toward becoming a real-time business.

In the case of Suzano, that meant gaining real-time access to data in the general ledger, real-time reconciliation, and real-time stock reassignment. In the case of Hidrovias do Brasil, it was capturing real-time logistics insights from the company’s commodity transportation vessels in the waterways of Latin America. For Pacific Drilling, it was the ability to capture real-time insights from its deepwater drilling vessels off the coasts of Mexico, Brazil, and Nigeria.

Beyond the immediate business value, all five customers also saw SAP Business Suite powered by SAP HANA as an innovation foundation for the future of their business. Yoram Boradaty from Pacific Drilling summarized it well when he said:

“SAP Business Suite powered by SAP HANA is not just a best approach to solve the problem of providing new insight to the business through real-time operational reporting and analytics, but it also positions the organization strategically for the future.”

Ease of Deployment

The third common benefit identified among the businesses is ease of migration. Thanks to a strong and global partner ecosystem of certified hardware and system integrators, customers are able to go live with the solution within a short period of time – and with no disruption to the business.

In the case of Hidrovias, that time was only four months and is expected to go down to three months for its future rollouts. In the case of Suzano, the company logged only six hours of downtime related to SAP HANA during the migration process, while Mercedes-AMG reported no disruption to the business after going live in April 2014 – despite being the first company to go live with SAP Business Suite powered by SAP HANA in a virtualized productive environment. It’s great to see that something so powerful, that can really transform businesses, is so easy to deploy.

An Exciting Outlook

Every day, new customer stories like these are emerging. At the time Bonneau wrote her article, the number of customers was a little over 1,200; today it’s already over 1,400. These stories demonstrate the real value of running SAP Business Suite on SAP HANA. They also lay to rest any misconceptions about the cost and value of SAP HANA. I look forward to sharing with you the benefits that other businesses are reporting in the near future – I think there will be many more to come.

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Discover

Discover more about becoming a real-time business here.

Read

You can also read Bonneau’s article here.

Follow

You can follow Amr El Meleegy on Twitter @Meleegy

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Bringing Augmented Reality to the Enterprise

You might not know much about smart glasses. But in just a couple of years, they could be helping your business to run better. In this article Josh Waddell, Vice President of Mobile Solution Management and Innovation at SAP, takes us on a tour of the future workplace using smart glasses. And it looks very rosy indeed.

Using mobile technology to connect people with their environment

isn’t a new idea. Marketers already use augmented reality (AR) to bring their campaigns to life. Airports use beacons to improve the passenger experience. Banks use near-field communication to enable mobile payments. And as for consumers, they run their lives with personal trackers that can help them monitor and analyze everything from their calorie intake and fitness to their sleep quality. So what’s next?

Smarter Technology

Smart glasses aren’t yet as developed as other mobile technologies. But they’re not far off. In fact, in just a couple of years’ time, they could be helping us

all work and live in a whole new way. And it’s going to be enterprises that lead the adoption.

On the Edge of Adoption

SAP has been codesigning and innovating with customers, partners, and a number of hardware manufacturers to develop wearable enterprise solutions that are capable of being adopted at scale – in the thousands, tens of thousands, and even hundreds of thousands. While there are still challenges to overcome – from hardware limitations and safety, to security and privacy issues – we’re on the edge of adoption at scale. And we’re very excited about the possibilities. Want to know more? Then read our vision for the future: Smart Working – Through John’s Eyes.

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Smart Working – Through John’s Eyes

Meet John the serviceman. One of his client’s machines has transmitted data overnight through SAP HANA Cloud Platform and it shows a breakdown possibility of more than 80% within the next 24 hours. It alerts John. John connects to the cloud using his tablet to see the real-time machine-to-machine readings from the machine. He analyzes the 3D model of the area in question, checks the parts inventory to make sure he has the correct parts in his van, and then heads to the job.

Greater Vision

When John arrives at his customer’s site, he grabs the spare parts and tools he needs, pops on his smart glasses, and heads toward the job site.

Through his smart glasses, John can see an augmented view of his environment. He sees an augmented reality (AR) fence with hazardous areas marked with yellow or red and with warning labels. There are also arrows guiding him with turn-by-turn navigation toward the job site.

As he gets closer, John reaches a yellow AR fence, but the arrows tell him to proceed. As he approaches he receives a notification that his safety training is up to date and he is cleared to enter the area.

Left turn ahead

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Extra Insight

As John approaches the equipment, his glasses guide him through the access panels and point out the parts that need attention. John’s proximity to the machine connects him to SAP HANA Cloud Platform and real-time data. His glasses then reveal that the temperature and other settings are incorrect.

Step-by-Step Assistance

John follows the instructions to access the part that needs repairs. Through his glasses he sees a “pick-to-light” type of view, which instructs him which object to remove first, along with a caution sign explaining that the item is hot. Once he removes the board, the glasses recognize the part that needs to be replaced. An AR view of the 3D model of the part is tracked to the object and sent to John.

Real-Time Service History

John sees several notes that provide documentation from earlier service requests. They’re attached to certain parts of the pump and contain valuable information, in the form of pictures, video, text, and voice. John can drag the notes by hand from the virtual world to a tablet/smart watch linked to his glasses to get more details. When carrying out changes, he can set up new notes using his glasses.

Remote Help

John uses voice commands to open a live peer-to-peer connection with an expert. The expert comes online via a video chat and makes some suggestions as to how John can accurately complete the repair. He can see exactly what John is seeing through his glasses so they can make the repair together.

Automatic Updates

AR and computer vision have recognized all of the objects that were used during the operation, using edge tracking. The system displays a summary for John and automatically records the consumption of the part to the work order. It removes it from inventory and records the time onsite for billing purposes. Once all steps are documented, John can directly create a sign-off document on his tablet to give to the customer.

John can see the real-time impact of the repairs on the performance data coming from SAP HANA Cloud Platform – and so can the rest of his business.

Discover

You can find out more about how mobile technology is changing the way we work here.

Read

And you can read more about enterprise mobility on the IT & Me Web site.

This is just a taste of how we could see smart glasses used in enterprises. The possibilities span everything from training employees and improving customer service to providing technical support. They can help us collaborate more easily, work more efficiently, and think more innovatively. And that’s great news for any business.

Transforming Tomorrow, Today

We’ve all heard of predictive analytics. In simple terms, it’s

a way of using current and historical data to make predictions about the future. Unbeknown to some, it’s a very old concept.

They may not have had the sophisticated technology of today to play with but, nonetheless,

government agencies were reportedly using predictive analytics as early as the 1940s.1 And, according to some sources, predictive analytics may have been used in underwriting as long ago as 1689.2

So why then, after so many decades of development, are so few companies still not deploying predictive analytics?

There’s no place for gut instinct in today’s businesses. If you want to succeed, you need to make decisions based on facts and stats. But what if that information doesn’t yet exist? How can you accurately predict what the future holds and be sure you’re making the right business decisions? According to Chandran Saravana, Senior Director of Advanced Analytics at SAP, you need to look to the past.

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Untapped Potential

According to the 2014 Wisdom of Crowds® Advanced and Predictive Analytics Market Study,3 only 30% of respondents have deployed advanced and predictive analytics. That means 70% are missing out on the significant, long-term benefits.

With predictive analytics, businesses can anticipate demand and identify new market opportunities faster. They can minimize fraud and risk, prevent unexpected equipment failures, and increase the accuracy of financial forecasting. From hiring talent to pricing products and managing inventory, predictive analytics can impact the whole business.

Optimizing Customer Interactions

One business that is experiencing the benefits of predictive analytics is Aviva – the United Kingdom’s largest insurer and one of Europe’s leading providers of life and general insurance and asset management.

Aviva has around 31 million customers worldwide. To make sure it’s targeting the right people, with the right message, at the right time – and not wasting valuable marketing resources – it uses predictive analytics software from SAP.

With the SAP software, Aviva can evaluate the characteristics of its customers – in some instances automatically comparing hundreds of different variables per person – to identify the people it knows will respond. It can then improve the success of its future campaigns.

Aviva was able to implement the software almost instantly. And because it’s partially automated, it’s very quick and easy to use. Modelling now takes half the time it did previously and can be done with the press of a button.

Getting Personal

By moving from generic, mass customer engagement to a targeted approach, Aviva has been able to create more personalized customer offers. As a result, it has increased relevance, increased response rates, and increased return on marketing and campaign investment. It’s also increased customer lifetime value.

Aviva’s new, predictive approach also means that it can now avoid contacting customers too frequently and – using the latest data to capture the latest trends – it can also be more responsive. Aviva’s customers are getting what they want, when they want – so everybody wins.

Predicting the Future

Aviva is just one of the businesses benefiting from predictive analytics – but it has only just scratched the surface. In the future, we’ll all be using predictive analytics to pre empt crime and prevent car crashes. And we’ll all be talking about how predictive analytics killed mass marketing. Or at least that’s my prediction.

See

See how SAP is helping other organizations, such as Vodafone, unlock the power of predictive analytics here.

Follow

You can follow Chandran Saravana on Twitter @chandransar

Sources:1. http://www.bigdata-startups.com/BigData-startup/history-predictive-analytics-infographic/ 2. http://canworksmart.com/history-of-predictive-analytics/3. http://www.sap.com/bin/sapcom/en_us/downloadasset.2014-07-jul-30-18.advanced-and-predictive-analytics-market-study-pdf.html /23

From Information to Innovation: The Changing Role of IT

The changing role of IT has been a hot topic

for some time. This extract from EY’s recent report on the subject, “Born to be digital: How leading CIOs are preparing for a digital transformation,” sums up the situation:

“Those leading CIOs who are embracing digital find themselves grappling with a new set of demands: learning how to transform business processes around the potential of digital, or identifying where and how they can provide new product and service innovations. The CIOs who can master this, however, are finding their roles more influential and more strategically engaged than ever before. Unsurprisingly, they are more fulfilled.” Norman Lonergan, Global Advisory Leader at EY

Empowering Users

Perhaps one of the most influential factors driving the change of IT is cloud computing. “Old school

IT” was about choosing the right technology, managing it, and deploying it. It demanded technical knowledge and expertise, and decisions were made at arm’s length from users. But the cloud has changed all that.

Cloud technology has eliminated the traditional barriers between the technology supplier and the user. Unlike with previous technologies, anybody can access and use the cloud quickly and easily – without IT assistance.

Collaborating and Co-Innovating

This fundamental change in IT consumption calls for a change in the way an IT department works. Today, the technology vendor, IT department, and the user all have to collaborate. They have to put the needs of the business first and take a co-innovative approach to achieving the business goals.

The role of IT is to help define for the vendor the capabilities of a needed service. It can then provide direct feedback, enhanced security, and trust in what is delivered. And of course, it can have an ongoing dialogue with the users to ensure the business outcome of the services.

If the solutions are done right, and if the adoption need is there, the relationship between IT and users can really flourish.

As the role of IT evolves, it creates new challenges and opportunities. In this article, Sven Denecken, Global Vice President of Strategy for Cloud Solutions at SAP, looks at how today’s business technologies have impacted the traditional role of IT and asks whether co-innovation could be the future.

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Realizing Potential

Despite the opportunities for IT to take a more strategic role in businesses, the EY report states that not enough CIOs are yet grasping the potential for digital transformation. But every organization needs to find a way to transform into the digital age. And that means every CIO must step up to the cloud challenge.

Unlike with previous technologies, anybody can access and use the cloud quickly and easily – without IT assistance.

A New Role

To help the business stay competitive, IT needs to strike a balance between “run the company” and “change/innovate the company.” But thanks to the cloud, IT departments will have more free resources to be able to do this and to focus on value-adding activities.

IT departments must move out of their existing niche and embrace the full scope of new IT roles. Increasingly, commodity-oriented roles will not be as relevant as in the past and new roles will be required to deliver technology-driven added value.

These are roles such as process designers, who can understand and translate an end-to-end business process through various technology stacks. There will also be a need for more data migration experts and data security and privacy experts. Finally, there will be a need for data artists to manage the huge amount of information and interpret signals.

Embrace IT

There have never been so many opportunities for IT-related specialists to help transform business and fulfill their career aspirations. But to succeed, they’ll need to know as much about business as they do about IT – and that’s the real challenge.

Discover

Find out more about the changing role of the CIO in our infographic, “How IT-intensive industry CIOs stand out”, on the IT & Me Web site. Just follow the link on the “What it takes to stand out” section.

Follow

You can follow Sven Denecken on Twitter @SDenecken

Where to Next?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 on Twitter

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Source:http://www.ey.com/Publication/vwLUAssets/EY_CIO_-_Born_to_be_digital/$File/EY-CIOs-Born-to-be-digital.pdf

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