Companies of all stripes everywhere are suffering. In Canada, 220,000 businesses are at risk of closing today due to Covid-19, according to The Canadian Federation of Independent Business.
Many reasons explain why. But one common factor that kept others open was data. Armed with actionable insights, many businesses were able to adapt to rapidly changing market conditions. They adjusted prices, changed suppliers, created new deliverables and relocated staff better than most.
Organizations were able to do these things because they had the foresight to invest in becoming an intelligent enterprise.
In this article, we examine what an Intelligent Enterprise is and — more importantly — what underpins it. If you or your colleagues endured sleepless nights as a result of the pandemic, then here’s valuable information that will help you fortify your organization with the resiliency and flexibility it needs to survive almost any business challenge, including Covid-19.
Why Smarter Is Better
At any given moment, smart grocers know where their inventory is, how well it is selling and how perishable it may be. Similarly, smart footwear manufacturers know where their products are in a global supply chain, and what customers are saying about them on social media. They know these things because they run on data.
Simply put, an Intelligent Enterprise is an organization that leverages data to improve business outcomes. The idea behind the concept has been around since the early 1990s when author James Brian Quinn first championed the idea of applying data-driven insights to everyday business challenges.
An Intelligent Enterprise can leverage and responsibly use data captured throughout its operations. Today, this includes information generated by a multitude of sources including customers, suppliers, partners, employees, transactions and more.
But data is only one component required to build an Intelligent Enterprise. In addition to it, organizations also need the right talent and technology infrastructure to create an Intelligent Enterprise, according to the MIT Sloan Management Review. Better still, Intelligent Enterprises make sure these elements are based on open standards, inter-connected with other digital innovations and thoughtfully engineered to anticipate new technologies that can be harnessed to create new business value.
Intelligent Enterprises can be assembled in a myriad of ways. But in recent years, more companies have built their information and communications technology (ICT) infrastructures on flexible cloud platforms. Such platforms make it easy to store and retrieve data, deploy new applications and provision new compute services. And they do so in a scalable, robust and secure way. Put simply, cloud technology is providing companies the tools and other services that are essential for a modern business, says Manuel Moerbach, CEO of the influential research house Statista, Inc.
The New SAP Cloud: Introducing the SAP Business Technology Platform
Among the many options customers have to choose from, there is the new SAP Business Technology Platform. SAP’s cloud platforms were purpose-built to help companies of all sizes get the most from corporate intelligence created with SAP Digital Core solutions (SAP S/4HANA, SAP Business ByDesign) and Lines of Businesses insights produced by Concur, SuccessFactors, Ariba and other SAP applications.
A nice illustration of the SAP Business Technology Platform can be found below:
Not only the new SAP BTP offers a collection of technological solutions to answer almost any of your needs with no/low code and easy deployment, but it also includes the same strong integration and extension capabilities that made the SAP Business Technology Platform the pick of more than 16,000 customer and partners worldwide. With these capabilities, now called SAP Integration Suite and SAP Extension Suite, customers and partners alike can develop, manage, extend and deliver applications that address virtually any industry, business function or technology need.
At Projexia, we believe that the path to the intelligent enterprise by leveraging the SAP BTP capabilities can be pictured in 4 areas:
- More intelligent together: securely integrate your SAP solutions with your ecosystem (clients, suppliers, partners, etc.) to fluidify your business processes. Example: our customer in the cement industry allows its clients to manage themselves their orders to automatically trigger the delivery and invoicing process.
- More intelligent well informed: collect the most accurate data, one single time, in real time, from the right source of information. Example: our client in the marine services industry merges financial and operational data coming from various sources for more accuracy in management decisions.
- More intelligent by being one step ahead: getting the right data in real time is a must … but in today’s world, it may not be enough; leveraging machine learning and other SAP BTP capabilities will allow your organization to be one step ahead. Example: our owned solution MPRS for project management anticipates the right resource needed for a new project by building intelligence based on previous allocations.
- More intelligent by being different: build business applications that make you unique, on top of SAP’s state of the art business processes. Example: our client in the utilities industry has equipped its technicians with a custom mobile application to perform customer service interventions with the highest level of satisfaction.
If you have questions on how your company can evolve into an Intelligent Enterprise, then we have answers. We’re experts in SAP, cloud and applications technology. More than just consultants, we are also developers, too. We’re developing business applications for the SAP Business Technology Platform, such as MPRS (Multi Project Resource Scheduler), an extension to SAP Business ByDesign for project management.
We’re doing so for two reasons: we see an immediate need among our customers for business-specific applications, and we absolutely believe in the promise of the Intelligent Enterprise underpinned by SAP cloud platforms.
As we see it, SAP’s ability to help build the Intelligent Enterprise is second to none in the industry. We relied on it in 2020 and so did our customers. Many of whom are prospering today as a result. Let us show you how you can, too.
