The Journey to the Intelligent Enterprise with SAP powered by Approyo

In a consumer-driven digital economy, the pace of innovation is relentless. Change has never been this fast, but it will never be this slow again. Companies are beyond the stage of awareness when it comes to digital technologies. They already understand the power of Al, loT, cloud, robotics, and mobile, while others like blockchain and augmented reality are just appearing on the radar.

All of this innovation will be fueled by data, from having the right intelligence to execution. We are entering the era of intelligent mega ­processes, which start by combining the right data sets and converting them into intelligent insights. These insights then trigger automated transactions across the process. Leading companies that are making digital transformation a reality are putting data and intelligence at the center of their future. They are building new capabilities, skills, and technology, and evolving their culture to transform into an 'Intelligent Enterprise' and achieve the aforementioned outcomes. These companies are not only delivering short-term value to shareholders, but are also positioned to thrive and transform their industry.

However, executives are concerned about the path to digital transformation. Early adopters failed to understand their digital ambition and the complexity associated with transformation and are struggling on their journey. Successful companies that are engaged with SAP powered by Approyo are focusing on these five common capabilities:

• Reimagine end-to-end mega-processes - For example, customer experience is not just omni­channel, it's about orchestrating the entire value chain to deliver the best customer experience.
• Enhance enterprise intelligence through smart use of data and Al technologies.
• Run the world economy in real time by connecting industry value chains. For example, leverage end-to-end industry best practices, digital technologies, and SAP HANA to run in real-time
• Manage complexity by simplifying IT's operating model- Focus on clear IT strategy aligned to business priorities and a customer-first mindset.
• Accelerate innovation by moving to the cloud.

Why should your company start the path to digital transformation?

RUN VS. INNOVATE 
Executives struggle to strike a balance between the need to keep running a current profitable business and investing for future innovations. Quite often these two goals conflict, and most executives mistakenly focus only on the former and ignore the latter.

CORPORATE CHOLESTEROL 
The older the company is, the more stuck they are with policies, procedures, layers of management and risk aversion. Their own processes get in the way of change.

INNOVATION CULTURE 
Digital transformation is a journey without a destination. Companies need to build the right talent, skills, and partnerships to capitalize on digital opportunities.

COMPLEX IT INFRASTRUCTURE 
For an average organization with 30+ applications per billion of revenue, 70-80% of the IT budget is spent on keeping the lights on. It is difficult to manage data as a strategic asset and enforce master data governance across a fragmented portfolio. This means considerable value potential is untapped as companies cannot even use 1 % of the available data. Also, executives do not have the necessary visibility into operational and financial performance to manage quick course corrections.

These are complex issues and navigating through them requires change in attitude, mindset, as well as time. Companies that start now will have more time to address these challenges at their own pace.

Given the current speed of change, digital innovations have a short shelf life - today's breakthrough will become a 'me too' in a couple of years. Therefore, it is important to start now, build a foundation and realize value in a step-by-step manner instead of waiting for a proven stack of solutions and proven technologies with which to innovate.

With multiple mature solutions and design thinking led approach to innovation, SAP powered by Approyo is strongly positioned to help companies on their digital transformation journey, so they can become an intelligent enterprise. With the SAP HANA platform and our investments in Al technologies, we will exponentially increase the number of intelligent apps embedded in the Intelligent Suite over the next few years. These new innovations can be consumed at any time through the cloud, but will deliver value much faster if the modern foundation is in place right now.

Read the full blog post on www.approyo.com