Innovation Highlights

Our environment is changing, at an unprecedented pace and fast innovators hungry for success disrupted established markets. From 2000 to 2010, 52% of the Fortune 500 companies were gone and in the middle of last century, most companies though they would least forever. If you look back since 1955, the number is even bigger, +80% of the Forbes 500 companies have either gone bankrupt, been acquired or ceased to exist.

In today’s world, companies are chased by disruption everywhere. The most successful companies started to become conservative the time they started to be successful and this is the beginning of the end of innovation to those companies. Things happen far quick that we thought it would, the competition is out there, working on their innovation and digital transformation strategies.

If you look to new business models like UBER, AIRBNB, NETFLIX and etc., in today’s business it is less about the product and more about the user experience. Customers wants to be treated as individuals, not as market’s segment. You could use a Taxi to any place you travel, you could book a room in a hotel to the weekend or summer vacation, and you could rent movies and series from other places, rental location, redbox, and etc. But the experience that those 3 companies I mentioned above can offer, goes far beyond the product, it is the user experience… I did use Uber in Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Washington DC, Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro/Brazil, Rotterdam/NL, Dubai and Abu-Dhabi/UAE… the experience in those cities, in 4 different countries was exactly the same. I didn’t have to worry on how I would call a driver, what number or app to use, how to pay, if I had to tip or not and etc… additionally, I got the invoice in my email, didn’t have to take the wallet out of my pocket for anything and etc… Same personalized and “simple” experience you can find booking a room/house via AirBnB and watching a movie on Netflix…

Between the biggest SAP customers, the average value of invoices are decreasing as the number of invoices are exploding. In logistics, the average value inside the logistics units are going down, while the number of units transported are growing, stretching the supply chain and the financial execution as you still need accounts receivable, ATP, Inventory Management, Accounts Payable, but all on a much higher volume now.

The world is changing faster than ever before, Tesla forces old car manufacturers towards electrification, Google and Uber are investing in transportation-as-a-service with autonomous cars. Consumer Expectations are transforming, and while incremental innovation was enough in an age of relative stability with reduced means, radical new ideas are holding all the cards now.

This is one of the reasons why S/4HANA and the Digital Transformation are needed. The ability to drive through this storm requires new strategy and perspective, therefore new technologies are required.

From a technological perspective, everything seems possible. After the explosion of the internet social media came along, then mobile, Artificial Intelligence, Internet of Things (IoT), Big Data, End-to-end Business Collaboration, Real-Time Predictive Analysis, it’s the perfect storm.

The IT organization transforming from service provider to the innovation driver of the company and it will provide the tools that will help our company differentiate from our competitors.

Quick check on the new S/4HANA Paradigms:

Great User Experience for SAP S/4HANA 1610 with SAP Fiori 2.0

 

Real Time Inventory with SAP S/4HANA

 

Between all the changes that S/4HANA can bring, the one that most affect the SAP end-users is what they will see on their screens. It is not a nice-looking screen, but new services and concepts, analytical and real-time data, personalization at their fingerprints.

UX is responsible for a large part of the end-to-end customer experience, which starts with IT analysts, business experts, key users, end-users, all way to the customers. We need to ensure that they feel comfortable to adopt the new technologies and processes changes.

For those needs, the new SAP Fiori 2.0 is the perfect fit… I will not talk about Fiori in this post, but I will save it for a next post…