Planning for tomorrow

If your company has seen its growth rocket through the tough economic times, that’s great news. However, rapid growth can bring its own challenges if you don’t have the right infrastructure in place.

With a flurry of activities, you probably don’t even have time for a coffee, let alone to think about whether your software meets your business needs. But as your company expands, accurate, up-to-date information is the key to achieving your business potential. You’ll need an IT solution to monitor and manage every part of your company and it will need to support your growth.

SAP provides fact-based real-time information to help you identify and implement business controls. What’s more, it’ll meet your employees’ needs for mobility. SAP information can be received on mobile devices as well as desktop computers, so you can always be in touch – even when you’re out of the office. Better still, SAP offers the ability to adapt as your business grows – whether you’re handling 100 transactions, or 1 million transactions.

View the Benefits of a Business Intelligence and Analytics Strategy in this infographic

Enterprise mobility can turn downtime into uptime

As employees and customers become increasingly mobile, what they expect from their employers and product or service providers is changing. By managing, securing and supporting devices such as smartphones and tablets, and their apps, businesses can help employees become more agile and productive, while improving the customer service they provide.

SAP mobile solutions are helping bring greater flexibility to the working day. How? By putting the enterprise functionality normally found on the desktop into employees’ palms 24 hours a day 7 days a week. How? They offer an ever-growing range of mobile enterprise apps – portable versions of back-office systems. And these apps have the usability that everyday consumers are getting from smartphones and tablets. So employees are working more effectively because they have the flexibility to manage, sell, service, market, transact, spend and work on the go.

The SAP range of over 200 mobile apps spans industry, line of business and analytics. They let employees perform tasks so easily that what used to be downtime is now very much uptime. For example, a CFO can monitor recent performance while delayed at the airport. Or an installer can check a spares inventory while still on a customer’s site. Retail staff can also resolve customer enquiries immediately on the shop floor. So greater business efficiency and more seamless and impressive customer service are the result.

Why choose SAP mobile solutions? You’ll find that 91% of the world’s leading brands have already opted for at least one SAP mobile app and SAP are leading the way in the enterprise mobility application market. What business isn’t interested in the productivity-enhancing possibilities that will help them compete in today’s business environment?

Read more  on business mobility from the information below:

– SAP Mobility Customer Montage Video: http://bit.ly/Kx5kW1
– Asian Paints Case Study Video: http://bit.ly/MrwvwA
– SAP Runs SAP Mobile: http://bit.ly/Pj538n
– Kardinal Shwarzach Hospital Case Study Video: http://bit.ly/NMyjpL
– Top 50 Mobile Twitter Influencers: http://bit.ly/KJsERD
– Top 10 Blogs / News Sites for Mobile: http://bit.ly/MCULiU
– Three things confounding Business going mobile: http://bit.ly/LvLoUl
– SAP Mobile Blog: http://bit.ly/LZsAKD
– Look how far mobile BI has come: http://bit.ly/LyPIip

Enterprise mobility can mean more customers stay put

The current explosion in enterprise mobility means that there has never been a better opportunity for businesses to engage directly with their customers.

With the right mobile apps and connectivity, businesses can have access to the right information at the right time. This lets them answer customer queries efficiently, resolve issues satisfactorily or delight customers with well-targeted communications or offers. And when customers are happy, that’s when they stay put and spread the good word.

They’ll also be able to transact on their own terms – anytime, anywhere – which will enhance their user experience. Through enterprise mobility, organisations can increase efficiency by eliminating paperwork, reducing travel time, managing tasks, calendars, alerts and more.

SAP’s proven expertise in enterprise mobility can help you unleash your company’s potential. With 91% of the world’s leading brands having at least one SAP mobile app, they’re number one in the enterprise mobility application market. They also offer over 200 mobile apps – a range that spans industry, line of business and analytics. And there are 60 million users who trust the SAP Sybase Unwired Platform and Afaria Mobile Device Management solution.

Users include Asian Paints (India’s largest paint company). The company used Sybase Unwired Platform to make data and information about its 200 plus products easily available to its 1700 sales people in the field.

Read the Asian Paints Case study here: http://bit.ly/MrwvwA

With SAP mobile solutions, businesses can create an enterprise mobility strategy that aligns with their broader IT strategy and helps them engage effectively with their valued customers.

For more information on how enterprise mobility can assist your business watch the Kardinal Shwarzach Hospital Case Study video

 

Enterprise mobility for joined-up decision making and greater productivity

As the demand for mobile data explodes and the number of mobile solutions and applications continues to expand, enterprise mobility is gaining momentum at an unprecedented rate.

The consumerisation of IT, increased workforce mobility and flexible computing brought on by the movement towards ‘Bring Your Own Device’ (BYOD) are all drivers of this. And this reflects just how much smartphones and tablets are now part of our daily lives.

Many popular desktop business apps are now being used on consumer devices and the world of enterprise computing is ever changing. This has led to more innovative ways of working and greater productivity, quite simply because users are accessing data and information anytime in their personal lives so they expect this at work too. Enterprise mobility is giving field-based, traveling or customer-facing personnel access to data anytime, anywhere any device – giving them the tools, information and power they need to make critical decisions without even being in the office.

The scale of this evolution can’t be ignored. The world population now stands at over seven million. The number of cellular subscriptions is around six billion and mobile broadband subscriptions are around 1.2 billion. And with the global mobile workforce expected to exceed 1.2 billion by 2013, its clear that the consumerisation of IT is increasing – with far-reaching implications for your business.

It’s little wonder businesses are seeing enterprise mobility as a strategic necessity. A necessity that gives them the connectivity, visibility and timeliness that allow them to be more collaborative, more responsive and more competitive than ever before.

For more information on how enterprise mobility can assist in making your business more responsive watch the following videos.

Read more on how enterprise mobility is changing business in the following blogs:

Look how far mobile Business Intelligence has come, Timo Elliott: http://bit.ly/LyPIip

SAP Mobile Blog: http://bit.ly/LZsAKD

Top 10 Blogs / News Sites for Mobile, Jen Cohen: http://bit.ly/MCULiU

The debate around Big Data has been going on for a while – but what is it?

New data sources are continually emerging through the evolution of mobile devices and advances in technology. By 2020, 50 billion Internet-enabled devices will be connected to the Web and annual data generation will be 44 times greater than it was three years ago.

This predicted growth means considerable benefits to companies. However, this depends on their knowledge of Big Data and whether they see it as a challenge or opportunity.

In a recent studio discussion, Adrian Simpson and Timo Elliott talked about Big Data and the ‘Four Vs’ – which represent volume, velocity, variety and validity. However, there seems to be some disagreement about how many Vs there are. Some say there are only three (volume, velocity and variety) and others say there are more, including veracity, virility and viscosity.

Watch the video below and draw your own opinion.

Many businesses associate big data analytics with marketing and finance management, but a minority view the wider picture about how analytics can be applied “across the board” to integrate systems and drive revenue growth. Read this article I found on Forbes explaining how eBay used Big Data to save millions .

How can big data analytics impact your business functions?

 

Learn more about Big Data with the below information:

-Beyond the Three V’s of Big Data: http://bit.ly/MlRftw

-Ten reasons customers choose SAP HANA: http://slidesha.re/N3OKtc

-SAP HANA Blog: http://bit.ly/LyQ2h2

-Top 50 Big Data Twitter Influencers: http://bit.ly/LZtpmz

 

 

How SMEs can meet their need for speed with SAP

It’s a common assumption that a bigger business is a better business., but it’s not strictly true. Small to medium-sized businesses (SMEs) have a number of advantages over their larger counterparts. Their size is often their strength – it makes them agile. In fact, most SMEs we speak to pride themselves on this. They can respond faster to changes in the market and take advantage of new insight and opportunities faster than larger organisations.

To capitalise on their agility, SMEs need systems that play to this strength. Unfortunately, some SMEs get bogged down by manual processes. They rely on off-the-shelf software that doesn’t quite meet their needs and depend on spreadsheets for their business intelligence. All these things slow their businesses down and mean they’re more likely to miss opportunities. In this environment, executives often resort to making important decisions on a gut feeling rather than the latest data.

That’s why it’s always a surprise to hear an SME wondering if SAP software will slow it down. Maybe the perception is that SAP software is only for enterprise organisations, but this couldn’t be further from the truth. It’s another business myth. Rather than slow these businesses down, SAP helps them become more agile and able to capitalize on opportunities faster.

SAP is right for SME’s – watch this video to learn more

 

The simple route to real business benefits

Implementing new IT can be a daunting prospect for some businesses. They’re worried that it will interrupt their everyday activities, take time to deploy and that staff will need time to get used to it. Similarly, when our resellers talk to small to medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) about SAP software, they’re often under the misapprehension that SAP software is too complex for a business of their size. They know it can help them, but they’ve always assumed it’s built for large enterprises.

However, this complexity is a myth that vanishes when you start looking at hard facts.  SMEs are looking for software that’s easy to run, install and use, and they want to see real-life examples to prove it. They want to see organisations like theirs that have been there and done it. Thankfully,  SAP has 88,000 SMEs that have been there and done it. You can see what some of them have achieved by reading the case studies here. They’ve got the figures to prove that it doesn’t take long to deploy the software and see a return on investment.

In the last few years, the number of SMEs implementing SAP software has tripled. That’s partly down to the fact that it’s easy to use and install, but also because it delivers all the benefits that SMEs are led to believe are just for the big boys. It’s not usually very long before they’ve automated previously manual processes, gained greater insight into their business and generated significant cost savings.

Still think that SAP is too complicated for you? Watch this video and think again:

 

How spending can be the best way to save

Sometimes popular opinion can be misleading. Things you’ve accepted to be true for years can turn out not to be. And other times, there can be a kernel of truth in these old sayings. A popular piece of received wisdom is that you have to speculate to accumulate, or, in simple terms, you’ve got to spend money to make money. Most businesses know that you can’t just throw money at a problem. However, they also recognise that carefully planned purchases can pay dividends.

SAP has around 88,000 SME customers to prove SAP software can help them reduce costs. These businesses are not only reducing costs with SAP, they’re also boosting profitability. In most cases, that translates into a quick return on investment. As a result, most SMEs conclude that they can’t afford not to deploy SAP software.

Still think SAP is too expensive for you? Think again by watching this video:

Why you don’t have to be an enterprise to work with SAP

Myths and misnomers litter the business world. All small businesses are agile, all enterprises are big corporate entities, sales figures are the most important, customers will always buy the best product. As we all know, these don’t stand up to scrutiny. Some large businesses are agile, some small businesses aren’t, cash flow is more important than sales and the best product isn’t always the most popular – just ask fans of Betamax. Business people can’t afford to make assumptions. That’s why we do our research and base decisions on facts.

The majority of businesses we work with are small to medium-sized enterprises (SME’s). We help them automate processes and gain valuable insight into their businesses with SAP software. By doing this, these businesses take assumptions out of the equation – it means that instead of relying on anecdotal evidence, they work with the facts. The result is they find it easier to spot opportunities and identify areas to improve.

However, before these businesses start dealing with the facts, they often need to challenge another set of preconceptions. One we come across frequently is that SAP only works with enterprise organizations. But this isn’t the case. More than 77% of SAP’s customers are SME’s. That’s about 88,000 businesses. What’s more, SAP has been working with SMEs for nearly 40 years. As a result, the company understands the unique challenges they face and the tools they need to grow.

The Facts:

•77% of SAP’s 97,000 customers are SME customers
•25 new SME customers are added per working day
•55,000 SME channel customers
•9,680 partners in SME Ecosystem
•SME is growing 1.5 times faster than the overall SAP business
•SAP SME customer base tripled in the last 3 years

Still not convinced? Then watch this video ‘Think SAP is too big for you? Think again.’

 

The Way to avoid growing pains

Most businesses want to grow and even the ones that just want to consolidate their positions know they need to stay ahead of their competitors to do so. Markets and business landscapes change constantly, and businesses need to manage this change. Growth is rarely organic. It’s the result of hard work, and, more importantly, careful planning.

First off, formulate a strategy that will take your business to the next level. Without a well-reasoned strategy that filters into a clear tactical plan, your bid to grow could backfire. The businesses that we see growing are the ones that manage organisational change well. They generally have a clear strategy based on accurate business data and projections for different scenarios.

The common element with these businesses is business-intelligence software, specifically SAP Business One. It means they can spot opportunities and identify projects that are working and those that aren’t. What’s more, it’s affordable and quick to implement. It means businesses spend less time pulling together information and operational details from disparate systems and more time making decisions that lead to growth.

Learn how SAP Business One can help you manage organisational change better.

In this real life case study on Paysan, read how they combated their success challenges by integrating SAP Business One with its ecommerce solution but also systematically automated costly employee processes such as data entry and customer notifications.

Find out more about the SAP Business One community on YouTube http://bit.ly/NJQl7K