Five Technologies Impacting Healthcare

Leading healthcare organizations investing in digital capabilities require a framework designed for change –one that supports new business strategies and ensures agility while delivering value-added patient services.

We are witnessing an unmatched era of digitally driven innovation. Breakthrough technologies have matured and hit scale together, which will change how we provide healthcare. A digital network solution is arising that blurs the lines between patient, professional, and provider for more responsive, patient-centric care. Five defining technology trends have already emerged which are powering this digital healthcare network according to SAP:

• CLOUD COMPUTING - Technology adoption and business innovation now move at lightning speed. Technology infrastructure can be rented to eliminate barriers to entry, and transactions among healthcare players are moving to new cloud-based collaboration platforms that can connect millions of users.
• SMARTER DEVICES - “Smart” devices, wearables, sensors, robotics, 3D printing, and artificial intelligence are the new normal. This technology can turn Big Data in healthcare into smart data, resulting in insights for clinical decisions relevant to each patient’s specific situation.
• HYPERCONNECTIVITY - Every patient, healthcare organization, and machine is connected –changing all the established rules for healthcare channels. Connectivity drives the collaboration of patients, providers, and supporting businesses and assets in the digital healthcare network.
• SUPER COMPUTING - Networking and in-memory computing allow for the creation of an infinite number of new business opportunities for the healthcare industry. For example, genome sequencing costs decrease even faster than Moore’s law.
• SECURITY - The digital healthcare network is a prime target for digital attacks and sabotage. Because trust remains the ultimate business currency, healthcare organizations must make cybersecurity a top priority in designing and operating a digital business network.

Start your path to the Intelligent Enterprise with Approyo
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Digital Transformation for the Oil and Gas Industry with SAP

We are at the dawn of the next monumental technology change, where everything is connected and software is embedded in our lives. This technology change is bringing new opportunities and new threats. Cycle time for innovation is 5 to 10 times faster, and oil and gas companies can compete only if they reduce complexity, reinvent business, and use data as the fuel for value creation for customers and shareholders. The Intelligent Enterprise builds upon the promise of digital transformation by applying data-driven intelligence to power automated actions and decisions based on superior insights. With SAP S/4HANA, your oil and gas company can now enable your digital enterprise and drive this value creation.

The digital economy is disruptive. Oil and gas companies need strategic priorities that drive transformation. SAP powered by Approyo supports a reimagined set of E2E business scenarios to support the strategic priorities of working in a digital environment.

Beyond the barrel - Energy outcome providers
Consumers are more empowered than ever and are demanding simplicity and service quality. Energy providers are extending “beyond the barrel” to master consumer energy usage analytics to offer services that optimize delivery of transportation, heating and cooling, and power. Examples include delivering the outcomes of transportation, climate control, or a powered device –not just the traditional fuel inputs

Products and service digitization
Logistics providers are disrupting the entire value chain by managing physical deliveries across the network, often without owning or operating any of the necessary inventory or assets or hiring the necessary employees.

Competing as an ecosystem
In an increasingly volatile energy market with a broadening range of asset types and energy sources, the success of energy operators is largely determined by three variables: safety, cost, and agility. Operators are pushing the boundaries of augmented reality and use of robotics in operations activities to improve safety and productivity, and they are seamlessly sharing data and calling on ecosystem partners to work together to ensure production, profitability, and safety targets are met.

Digital platform
Continued investment and ingenuity are expanding the energy network infrastructure. Digital leaders are delivering operationally ready assets, often on a performance or revenue-share basis, by using the power of supercomputing for more accurate exploration and effective asset design and constructability. Others are using a networked platform for collaborative project management that will orchestrate work and logistics across multiple trades and disciplines.


The Need for an Intelligent ERP System

Agility to respond to market conditions
A digital core is an IT architecture that offers stability and long-term reliability for core enterprise processes, yet also provides the flexibility to adapt quickly to new opportunities, challenges, and regulations. This solid foundation gives you a single source of truth, which in turn enables flexibility for innovation to accommodate things like new business models, new regulations, and business events, such as mergers or acquisitions.

Predictive analytics and services
The ability to respond quickly is an essential part of managing an oil and gas company. To do this, simulation, prediction, and analytical capabilities are important components. Data is critical for gaining the insight to make decisions. This insight must be at a granular level, so that decision-makers have the detail they need to understand trends, opportunities, and risks and quickly carry out what-if analysis using predictive algorithms.

Real-time access to information
Every oil and gas company needs the computing capability to carry out complex algorithms with large data sets to support timely, real-time analysis. Everyone in the company must have access to data they need, whenever and wherever they need it. This is also true for the rest of the ecosystem so that suppliers can stay up to date with a company’s orders, traders can see inventory history information, and accurate delivery schedules can be provided.

Ability to innovate
Customers in every industry are demanding innovation. Companies are responding with new products and services that better meet individual needs. These new offerings impact every facet of business, not just the front office. Companies must address end-to-end (E2E) processes across departments and lines of business to deliver on new customer experiences, products, and services.

The intelligent ERP
Bringing SAP S/4HANA and SAP Leonardo technologies together as a digital core will result in a more flexible and intelligent enterprise. To achieve next-generation business processes, companies need an intelligent ERP solution that can be continuously enhanced and extended with innovative business services and applications built on emerging technologies, including machine learning, blockchain, and the Internet of Things (IoT). Oil and gas companies that have big innovation appetites or prefer to be early adopters have already begun this journey.

3 Major Business Benefits of SAP HANA

SAP HANA provides a single in-memory data platform that supports both transactions and analytics on diverse data, a key requirement for applications supporting a modern, real-time digital business. In today’s digital economy, businesses cannot take action on stale insights, thus a true in-memory data platform should support real-time processing for transactions and analytics for all of a company’s data. This is a key differentiator of the SAP HANA platform against other traditional database vendors. Here are the top three benefits of deploying SAP HANA according to SAP.

In-Memory First
SAP achieved a true transaction and analytical (i.e. translytical) platform by designing SAP HANA from the ground up with a new data processing architecture in mind.  This architecture greatly simplifies applications built on this platform removing many of the legacy overhead required to optimize applications on traditional disk-based database solutions.

SAP HANA is the only true in-memory columnar data store optimized for both high-speed transactional scenarios and also very fast query performance optimally supporting both OLTP and OLAP application scenarios. With SAP HANA, there is a single copy of data as there is no need to move data to external systems to offload analytic workloads or populate materialized views and in-memory caches to achieve acceptable performance.  This allows applications built on SAP HANA to process transactional and analytical workloads at high speed without any data duplication enabling businesses to have accurate insights based on the latest data.

Other solutions in the market typically provide an in-memory “option” to existing disk-based, row-oriented solutions, requiring a copy of data to be made into in-memory storage.  Row-based storages don’t yield the same level of data compression as columnar storages leading to higher costs and inefficiencies. These solutions may provide some performance improvements in certain use-cases, but they do not deliver the overall value that SAP HANA does by truly reducing the data footprint, increasing overall performance for all data and reducing management costs of the solution.

Managing Data of All Sizes
Does it always make sense to have all data in-memory?  Realistically, this is not necessary. SAP HANA provides an innovative way to manage hot and warm data storage in an optimal way to strike the right balance between price and performance.

SAP HANA Dynamic Data Tiering provides multistore table partitions which easily allow a single table to span across memory and disk.  This greatly simplifies access to hot and warm data in consuming applications and greatly reduces the administrative effort to manage large data volumes. This provides for much lower total cost of ownership by reducing the amount of hardware needed, lower administration costs, and more efficient IT operations overall.

Foundation for a Modern Data Platform and the Intelligent Enterprise
SAP HANA is a modern multi-tenant in-memory platform to build next-generation Big Data, IoT, translytical, and advanced analytics applications. SAP HANA allows advanced analytics using a single data platform.  How is this done?

SAP HANA natively provides capabilities for machine learning, spatial processing, graph, streaming analytics, time series, text analytics/search, and cognitive services all within the same platform.  Applications on SAP HANA can provide real-time actionable insights from a wide-variety of data types.

Combining these innovative technologies with SAP HANA’s advanced application development, modeling and custom algorithm support inside the database layer, more business logic can be executed close to the data.   Specifically, SAP HANA’s support technology like stored procedures, business functions, core data services, rules framework, calculation views, and the application function library provide developers with a way to easily model complex data-intensive operations as close to the data as possible.  Most competitive solutions require that you copy the data between core data storage and other technology stacks to perform these advanced analytics on the data.

View the full post on www.approyo.com

Approyo Honored 3 Years in a Row as an Inc. 5000 Company, Ranking No. 895

Inc. magazine today ranked Approyo NO. 895 on its 37th annual Inc. 5000, the most prestigious ranking of the nation's fastest-growing private companies. It’s Approyo’s third straight year on the list, driven by several years of strong revenue growth. Only 20% of all companies on the list have been honored 3 or more times.

The list represents a unique look at the most successful companies within the American economy's most dynamic segment—its independent small businesses. Microsoft, Dell, Domino's Pizza, Pandora, Timberland, LinkedIn, Yelp, Zillow, and many other well-known names gained their first national exposure as honorees on the Inc. 5000.

“It is such a great honor to continue experiencing the kind of growth necessary to be on the Inc. 5000 list for three years in a row,” said Christopher Carter, CEO of Approyo. “Thank you to all our staff and great partners and customers. 2018 continues to be a fantastic year as we grow our staff and footprint in the SAP ecosystem. We look forward to this kind of sustained growth and prosperity for years to come as we continue our commitment to excellence.”

Not only have the companies on the 2018 Inc. 5000 (which are listed online at Inc.com, with the top 500 companies featured in the September issue of Inc., available on newsstands August 15) been very competitive within their markets, but the list as a whole shows staggering growth compared with prior lists. The 2018 Inc. 5000 achieved an astounding three-year average growth of 538.2 percent, and a median rate of 171.8 percent. The Inc. 5000's aggregate revenue was $206.1 billion in 2017, accounting for 664,095 jobs over the past three years.

Complete results of the Inc. 5000, including company profiles and an interactive database that can be sorted by industry, region, and other criteria, can be found at http://www.inc.com/inc5000.

"If your company is on the Inc. 5000, it's unparalleled recognition of your years of hard work and sacrifice," says Inc. editor in chief James Ledbetter. "The lines of business may come and go or come and stay. What doesn't change is the way entrepreneurs create and accelerate the forces that shape our lives."

View Approyo on the Inc 5000 list: https://www.inc.com/profile/approyo

Read the full announcement on www.approyo.com

Migrating your company to the intelligent enterprise

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.

No company has the appetite to replace their systems, as every company has a very different landscape and a different level of focus based on their business priorities. Everyone has to also see the value. Moving to the Intelligent Enterprise is not just a technical upgrade. The real value comes when companies adopt a customer-first, purpose-driven mindset, leverage innovative approaches such as design thinking and agile methodologies to reimagine business processes and business models.

From SAP and Approyo's experience, there are the top three paths to migrating your company architecture to the intelligent enterprise. These paths have one thing in common - a lean enterprise architecture that is low cost and is data driven and ultimately provides you with the architectural agility in the new economy. The path that is right for you should be based on value and strategic alignment. There is no one way to get there, but early adopters are finding success based on the scenarios below:

REIMAGINE BUSINESS PROCESS: 
Many companies are focused on end-to-end business process transformation (such as supply chain, procurement), landscape simplification, and reduction in customization. The goal is to migrate core ERP processes to S/4HANA +Cloud/ LoB with full transformation in mind. These companies are looking to change the front office, supply chain, and more to truly address customer experience. They are looking to drive the next-generation of processes across the value chain. This requires a fresh greenfield approach, and a detailed review of which standard best practices in S/4HANA meet your business requirements. These companies are ready to move their ERP into private / public cloud environments. While a major effort across business processes, it is paying off with a TCO reduction of 20 - 30% and tremendous business value as next practices are adopted.

REIMAGINE BUSINESS MODEL: 
There are also companies that are looking at business model innovation or M&A and are taking advantage of the ability to have many industry solutions in one box. With industry lines blurring, the ability to take business capabilities from one industry and leverage them for a new business model in another industry is tremendous (for example, bringing retail to telco). This requires a fresh greenfield approach.

START WITH MIGRATING LOBS TO BEST-IN-CLASS CLOUD SOLUTIONS:
While some companies are planning and executing the move to S/4HANA they start in parallel to innovate on the edge. These companies are taking 1 LoB at a time - HR, Procurement, Supply Chain, Manufacturing and are focusing on driving value short-term with ECC + LoB cloud portfolio. Once moved to S/4HANA these companies will fully benefit from the latest innovative solutions end-to-end.

Read the full blog post on www.approyo.com 

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 

Mid-year review – 2018 Technology Predictions from Approyo

Every year, the team at Approyo puts together a few predictions for the upcoming year. We published our original predictions back at the start of 2018 and now that we are half through the year, we thought we would revisit these predictions.

IT predictions for 2018

• Cloud First - It's not a question of "if" the Cloud and more. Companies of all shapes and sizes need the cloud to innovate in a digital world. You can't be on the sidelines anymore and 2018 is the year to fully embrace the cloud. 
• Everything as a service - Traditional business products are being re-imagined as services.
• AI and Machine Learning - Creating systems that learn, adapt and potentially act autonomously. SAP introduces SAP Leonardo this year that has many features for AI and Machine Learning that can help companies today. 
• Security – As we mentioned in our first bullet point, the cloud is the new normal. Your data is one of the most important aspects of your business. Cloud and hosting partners will need to continue to adapt security measures to protect this valuable information.

Observations from the first half of 2018
Through the first half of the year, the Cloud continues to be more and more important. One of the major themes from this years SAP SAPPHIRE NOW conference was that the cloud is the foundation to achieve the intelligent enterprise through SAP Solutions.

Additionally, security continues to be an important topic throughout the year and into the future. As your company continues to create more and more data, securing that data becomes more important. That’s why we recently announced a new partnership with Bohh Labs. BOHH Labs brings an easy to implement service that acts as a layer between the user/ application and the back-end data store. BOHH enables total security on all stored data by uniquely providing database or specific file security, removing it from the source and storing it separately without changing the structure, enabling prioritization and control of sensitive data. BOHH’s security service provides full text search capabilities, even on secured data, and supports Bot technology for data to be conveniently accessed through keyboard, text-and-type from any device and voice commands to enhance the access flow to data within the system. This means sensitive and non-sensitive data residing in SAP HANA can easily be searched at once in real-time to extract valuable analytical insights without putting sensitive data that must stay protected at risk by hiding it away for access by authorized users only.

Data also continues to be an important trend. We already talked about the security side of data, but another important aspect is how companies are using that data. Another major focus on SAP SAPPHIRE NOW 2018 was how companies need to implement the right technology foundation in order to use all the data they are producing in an intelligent way. This will continue to be an important trend for the rest of the year and beyond.

Read the full blog post on www.approyo.com 

The Cloud Helpers Blog Series - Platform as a Service

Welcome to our blog series, The Cloud Helpers. This series focuses on cloud computing topics and helps you understand how the cloud can impact your business today and in the future. Today we are going to focus on one on the definition of Platform as a Service or PaaS.

What is Paas?

Platform as a service (PaaS) is a complete development and deployment environment in the cloud, with resources that enable you to deliver everything from simple cloud-based apps to sophisticated, cloud-enabled enterprise applications. You purchase the resources you need from a cloud service provider on a pay-as-you-go basis and access them over a secure Internet connection.

PaaS includes infrastructure—servers, storage, and networking—but also middleware, development tools, business intelligence (BI) services, database management systems, and more. PaaS is designed to support the complete web application lifecycle: building, testing, deploying, managing, and updating.

PaaS allows you to avoid the expense and complexity of buying and managing software licenses, the underlying application infrastructure and middleware or the development tools and other resources. You manage the applications and services you develop, and the cloud service provider typically manages everything else.

Advantages of PaaS

• DON’T HAVE TO INVEST IN PHYSICAL INFRASTRUCTURE - Being able to ‘rent’ virtual infrastructure has both cost benefits and practical benefits. They don’t need to purchase hardware themselves or employ the expertise to manage it.
• MAKES DEVELOPMENT POSSIBLE FOR ‘NON-EXPERTS’ - With some PaaS offerings anyone can develop an application, simply through their web browser utilising one-click functionality.
• SECURITY - Security is provided, including data security and backup and recovery
• TEAMS IN VARIOUS LOCATIONS CAN WORK TOGETHER - Using the internet, developers spread across several locations can work together on the same application build.
• FLEXIBILITY - Customers have control over the tools that are installed within their platforms and can create a platform that suits their specific requirements.
• ADAPTABILITY - Features can be changed if circumstances dictate that they should.

PaaS vs. SaaS vs. IaaS
PaaS is one of three main categories of cloud computing services. The other two are software as a service (SaaS) and infrastructure as a service (IaaS).

With IaaS, a provider supplies the basic compute, storage and networking infrastructure along with the hypervisor (the virtualization layer). Users must then create virtual machines, install operating systems, support applications and data, and handle all of the configuration and management associated with those tasks.

With PaaS, a provider offers more of the application stack than IaaS providers, adding operating systems, middleware (such as databases) and other runtimes into the cloud environment.

With SaaS, a provider offers an entire application stack. Users simply log in and use the application that runs completely on the provider's infrastructure.

View the complete blog post on the Approyo website

Unleash the Potential of your Business with SAP Hybris

With SAP Hybris increase productivity and customer acquisition and amplify customer satisfaction by having relevant and personalized interactions across any channel. Engage your customers in more proactive and meaningful ways by understanding what matters to them in the moment. SAP Hybris delivers rich predictive insight, flawless execution and contextual customer experience throughout your sales and service organizations.

Mobile (on- and offline)
SAP Hybris supports the three key mobile platforms (Android, iOS and Windows) and is available on mobile devices in an offline mode. That means that SAP Hybris can be used on a tablet even if there is no wireless Internet connection, thus significantly raising user efficiency!

Integration
SAP Hybris features, as standard, out-of-the-box integration. Your CRM platform can thus be easily linked to and from many major (3rd party) applications, such as social networks, SAP on-premise solutions or even ERP software from other providers.

SAP offers an extensive Microsoft Excel add-in, as well as one for Microsoft Outlook. The data is constantly synced between SAP Hybris and the Microsoft platform, so that you can choose which platform you work in (bi-directional).
With native SAP ERP and SAP CRM integration and business application mash-ups, you’re always effortlessly up-to-speed on your customers and accounts.

Future-proof
SAP Hybris will grow along with you and is kept up to date. Every quarter (February, May, August and November), SAP launches several new functionalities. Quite often, these updates are inspired by customer feedback, as users are invited to post and vote for the best ideas on SAP’s online.

Multi-everything
Multichannel, multi-vendor, multi-language is the set of core features in this application that seems to dazzle every customer that is into this product as an organization. Gartner has positioned SAP Hybris solution in its Magic Quadrant report meant for management of multichannel campaigns.

Omni Commerce Connect is yet another interesting innovation within SAP Hybris that lets businesses network with customers and clients regardless of location. All this is done while simultaneously leveraging fresh channels and touch points enabling highly efficient interaction. The channels referred to here may range from direct mail, call centers, programmatic advertising, email, social media, mobile and websites.

Download the Whitepaper... 

View the full Blog Post... 

SAP Hybris: A Game Changing Solution for your Business

Organizations are drowning in data that accumulates at an increasingly fast pace. It comes from inside and outside the company, from business transactions, the IoT, and social media interactions. It includes structured data, location information, satellite images, drone video, text files, and more.

Yet, CIOs are asked empower users and machines to analyze this new data universe in real-time as the data comes in. This means running analytics on live transaction so that the business can take Timely actions and be ahead of the competition. Decision makers also demand a complete visibility across all the company’s diverse data assets to achieve situational awareness, which
is essential to avoid the pitfalls of making decisions and devising new strategies on partial, stale or inaccurate data.

Agility/Speed of execution is essential for IT and business success, but business fundamentals still need to be respected. For example, new technology investments need to yield clear ROI and avoid exposing the company to unnecessary risks. CIOs need to ensure that they deploy technology that can adapt to changing needs and requirements. This means embracing data management technology that is modern and can easily take advantage of new innovation – such as advances in hardware (ex, GPU or nonvolatile storage). Also, everybody that browses the daily news knows that, when data is shared, corporate accountability and customer trust are also on the line. CIOs need to ensure that, once readily accessible, data is kept secure in compliance with regulations – such as GSPR – and customer privacy is preserved.

Finally, the cloud has become an essential component of every IT strategy. It provides the unprecedented ability to accelerate provisioning, it elastically scales to adapt to changing needs, and it is ubiquitously present and accessible.

But choosing a cloud strategy that can evolve with the needs of the business is essential for business success. It is paramount that a company maintains its ability to freely decide what service provider can best serve its needs, at every given moment - with no vendor lock-in that could undermine business flexibility.

Companies that can achieve these four imperatives are in a strong position to succeed in the new economy. Some studies have reported they can achieve exponential grow that up to 10X their peers. A transformative success achieved through the mastery of data management.

Enter SAP Hybris

In 1997, SAP® Hybris® was launched to create a better commerce solutions. It consistently ranks among the top commerce software platforms because of its customer engagement and multichannel e-commerce solutions with totally-integrated tools. It serves Business to Consumers and Business to Business brands belonging from industries like insurance telecommunication, financial services, manufacturing, retailing, and media.

With SAP Hybris increase productivity and customer acquisition and amplify customer satisfaction by having relevant and personalized interactions across any channel. Engage your customers in more proactive and meaningful ways by understanding what matters to them in the moment. SAP Hybris delivers rich predictive insight, flawless execution and contextual customer experience throughout your sales and service organizations.

SAP Hybris comes with various advantages with regard to e-commerce project development as given below:

• Bring sales, service, and social engagement in an integrated SaaS CRM system
• Gain a 360° view of customers to understand their needs in any given moment
• Use real-time customer analytics and predictive insight to improve interactions across all channel
• Run your business anywhere, anytime on any device with a mobile-first approach, online and offline
• Get up and running quickly and cost-effectively with subscription-based cloud solutions

Download the Whitepaper now

Read the full Blog post...

Key Takeaways from SAP FKOM

Another SAP FKOM is in the books. This year, Approyo was able to attend multiple SAP FKOM events throughout the globe.

This year the focus of SAP FKOM was new announcements from SAP including SAP Leonardo, the Cloud, IoT, AI and more. Below are some key takeaways from the Approyo team.

SAP Leonardo

SAP Leonardo was announced at SAP SAPPHIRENOW last year and continues to be a major focus for this and year and into the future.

SAP Leonardo integrates new technologies on the SAP Cloud Platform, and offers design thinking services and expertise to help fast-track your digital transformation. Use the system to rapidly adopt new business models and capabilities – and add future technologies as they emerge.

In the broader context of digital innovation, it quickly becomes clear that topics like the Internet of Things, machine learning, blockchain, analytics, artificial intelligence, and Big Data often need to be viewed in combination: This is the key to creating a framework for harnessing the latest digital breakthroughs. As well as technologies, services, and applications, the SAP Leonardo portfolio includes design thinking methodologies, data intelligence tools, benchmarking, and more.

Emerging Technology, IoT and AI

One of the big announcements was  the new gloabl partner network around IoT adoption. From SAP: This global network of partners will provide implementation services for SAP Leonardo IoT accelerator packages, which are designed to help customers quickly build IoT solutions specific to their business needs at a predictable price.


SAP Leonardo IoT accelerators provide an open, flexible path to digital innovation for customers in multiple industries. SAP and its partners will support customer deployments of 10 SAP Leonardo IoT accelerators including packages for the SAP Predictive Maintenance and Service solution, SAP Asset Intelligence Network, SAP Connected Goods software, SAP Vehicle Insights application, SAP Global Track and Trace solution, and SAP Leonardo IoT Foundation and SAP Edge Services. The accelerators follow a fixed-scope engagement with explore, design and deliver phases completed in less than 10 weeks. Read the full announcement.


SAP HCM On-Premise Option for SAP S/4HANA

SAP also continues to support our customers using SAP ERP HCM, the on-premise HCM solution. While an increasing number of them are migrating to SAP SuccessFactors solutions to accelerate their digital HR journeys, SAP also recognizes that every customer journey is unique and must be undertaken at each customer’s own pace. For some SAP customers this includes a desire to deploy their HCM solution in an on-premise environment for the foreseeable future. To support these customers’ needs, SAP plans to offer a new on-premise HCM option based on SAP ERP HCM with a comparable functional scope (except for the SAP E-Recruiting application and SAP Learning Solution).”  It is intended to be deployed alongside, and integrated with, SAP S/4HANA. The solution is planned for availability in 2023, with maintenance planned at least through 2030. Read the full announcement.

Read the full blog post on approyo.com 

Ask Approyo - What is the benefit of using an in-memory platform?

In-memory computing is the storage of information in the main random access memory (RAM) of dedicated servers rather than in complicated relational databases operating on comparatively slow disk drives. In-memory computing helps business customers, including retailers, banks and utilities, to quickly detect patterns, analyze massive data volumes on the fly, and perform their operations quickly. The drop in memory prices in the present market is a major factor contributing to the increasing popularity of in-memory computing technology. This has made in-memory computing economical among a wide variety of applications.

Some of the advantages of in-memory computing include:

• The ability to cache countless amounts of data constantly. This ensures extremely fast response times for searches.
• The ability to store session data, allowing for the customization of live sessions and ensuring optimum website performance.
• The ability to process events for improved complex event processing

SAP S/4HANA and In-Memory Computing
SAP  S/4HANA  delivers high-volume online transaction processing (OLTP) and high volume real-time online analytical processing (OLAP) based on a unified data model without the redundant data layers typically required by traditional RDBMS-based systems.  This reduces TCO while providing new opportunities to increase business value from existing investments.

Examples of redundant data layers are custom-built layers based on database tuning efforts such as secondary indexes, or application built-in performance accelerators such as aggregate tables or multiple general ledger versions for different managerial reporting needs. The massive simplifications of the data model and the data processing layers enable business and technological innovations on a broad scale, across all lines of business (LoBs) and industry solutions. The new application architecture simplifies system landscapes and accelerates cloud deployments on an economical scale.

SAP HANA and In-Memory Computing
SAP HANA relies on in-memory computing to quickly analyze massive amounts of data. In-memory computing is a technology that allows the processing of tremendous quantities of data in main memory to provide immediate results from analysis and transaction. The data is available for processing or analysis immediately after it is created. SAP HANA's performance is 10,000 times faster when compared to standard disks, which allows companies to analyze data in a matter of seconds instead of long hours.

Connected Products with SAP Leonardo

Business and IT leaders across industries are constantly searching for new and innovative ways to service and delight customers like no other competitor. With emerging smart assets that can be always-on, industries see a tremendous possibility to transform operational scenarios and re-imagine their business models.

The massive numbers of connected things and the explosion of data generated by connected devices (“Things”) will change the way we do business forever. The journey a company takes to get from “Things to Outcomes” is becoming the catalyst for digitization. IoT is not necessarily new to most companies. However, most are collecting and storing the data and may also have the ability to visualize it.

With SAP Leonardo, SAP provides a highly innovative IoT portfolio which extends the digital core with adaptive applications, big data applications and connectivity to enable:

• New business processes
• New business models
• New work environments

Connected Products - Enable end-to-end visibility to product-centric operations and ability to optimize compliance visibility and service availability
As the demand for information and insight increases, we are seeing a
significant increase in the design, manufacturing, and delivery of smart,
connected products across all industries. R&D can utilize data from sensors,
connected products, and other Big Data sources, to support the development
of more reliable and desirable products that meet target requirements.
This leads to increased demand and opportunities for you in the market,
and increased access to information for both you and your customers.

Goods and Equipment: Connect, monitor, and control a large number of customer facing products
Connect smart devices and products with core business processes and back-end systems. SAP Leonardo enables you to easily collect and analyze data from IoT devices from smart products e.g., coolers, coffee machines. At the same time, you can bring back-end business context and processes in real time by converging it with digital twins of physical product within IoT smart applications to improve efficiency, automatic replenishment – and create new product-as-a-service business models.

Product Insights: Design, manufacture, and distribute smart products to leveraging sensor data by manufacturers and consumers
Streamline and orchestrate your design networks with intuitive design and collaboration tools to enhance product and project delivery. Manage internal and external development teams, capture their ideas, and reuse your product and project data throughout the enterprise. Increase efficiency in engineering and manufacturing with a single platform for design tool integration to provide a 360-degree product view (with total transparency across engineering disciplines) through a harmonized and intuitive user experience. And master product cost potential and transparency – at a time when it counts.

Supply Networks : Manage, control, and respond to changing conditions with a digital operations center for response
Reduce planning cycle times and inventory levels and increase service quality by extending the supply chain to the business network. Connect more easily with suppliers, customers, and outsourced manufacturers for enhanced collaboration across demand, supply, and inventory. Optimize service and cost through collaborative planning of inventory, supply, and demand, while establishing a collaborative network with B2B connectivity for proficient supply chain collaboration.

Approyo WhitePaper: 9 Reasons to Upgrade to SAP S/4HANA Today

SAP S/4HANA isn’t just the solution that can transform your company for the future. It is the solution that can grow your business right now. The ability to unite enterprise-wide processes into a synergistic digital core allows you to address today’s challenges, as well as position yourself for success tomorrow.

Why would you choose an enterprise management solution that impacts just one or two business areas, when you can use a single solution for all of your business needs? Learn more in our new SAP S/4HANA White Paper. We dive deep into the top 9 reasons to move to SAP S/4HANA right now.

9 reasons to upgrade to SAP S/4HANA right now:

• Improve order fulfillment
• Increase customer satisfaction
• Reduce manufacturing error rates
• Reduce procurement costs
• Respond to market fluctuations faster than ever
• Streamline your supply chain
• Improve your manufacturing cycle time
• Streamline your supply chain
• Reduce unplanned downtime

Download the Whitepaper: 9 Reasons to Upgrade to SAP S/4HANA Today

SAP S/4HANA is The Next Generation Business Suite For A Digital World
The opportunity exists to transform business processes and achieve the digital transformation of your business with more automation and real-time visibility. Our SAP HANA, SAP S/4HANA and Big Data solutions address these important these needs and more. Let us show you today! Set up a free consultation.

Approyo named one of 10 Most Valuable SAP Solution Providers by Insights Success Magazine

Approyo is honored to announce that it has been selected among The 10 Most Valuable SAP Solution Providers by Insights Success Magazine.

Insights Success is a platform that focuses distinctively on emerging as well as leading companies, their confrontational style of doing business and way of delivering effective and collaborative solutions to strengthen market share. This magazine talks about leaders and orators from the world of technology, which includes CEO’s, CIO’s, VP’s, Managers and other professionals who had set a benchmark in the revolution of the industry.

“Starting their own business, while knowing all the difficulties, obstacles and competition one will have to face, is the greatest challenge the brave entrepreneurs of today are accepting wholeheartedly. One such outstanding influential entrepreneur, who’s running his venture, while influencing the world is Chris Carter of Approyo.” Archana Ghule, Editor-in-Chief of Insights Success.

“We are honored to be named to this great list. We want to be the most customer-centric SAP HANA business in the world. This means our team is focused on our customers and making sure that they are achieving their goals,” said Chris Carter, CEO of Approyo.

Approyo has been providing SAP HANA solutions such as SAP S/4HANA 1610 in the cloud for the last three years. Approyo built an entire platform using the best solutions in the market, allowing clients to move SAP HANA quickly and benefit immediately without the massive upfront cost structure typically seen with those bare metal solutions.

About Insights Success
Insights Success is a forum where top leaders and executives talk and share about their experiences, views, and mantra for success which will help the young and dynamic bloodline of professionals to learn, cater and deliver business needs for customers in order to become futuristic market leaders. FAST is widely recognized as a leader of both on premise and cloud-based software solutions for the insurance industry. Insights Success has listed FAST as one of The 10 Fastest Growing Financial Solution Provider Companies based on its performance, its innovative solutions and its contribution in the changing scenario of financial market.

Transform Research and Development with SAP S/4HANA

A successful research and development (R&D) department brings new designs to life with speed and accuracy based on market, customer, and quality insights. R&D prepares the downstream departments to manufacture, sell, and service products with high quality and low cost while continuously iterating designs to create more profitable, desirable, and reliable products. Digital tools are needed for rapid design-prototype-test iterations to foster a “fail fast and fail cheap” approach. There is also pressing need to simplify the complexity in downstream processes such as manufacturing, service, and sales to execute a “lot size of one.” An intelligent, integrated, and visual product innovation platform is essential for efficient product development, faster time to market, and fundamentally better initiative success rates.

With SAP S/4HANA as the digital core, customers can iteratively and more collaboratively build a foundation of requirements-driven smart products that are brought to the market faster with full compliance and a wide range of configurations and variants. SAP S/4HANA allows companies to gain live visibility into idea pipeline, portfolio prioritization, project actuals versus budget, new product design, development history, engineering changes, and finally phase-out.

SAP S/4HANA enables companies to integrate, embed intelligence,and visualize the entire R & D process from idea, to product, to production, to service, and disposal. Connected and individualized products can be developed with full compliance and shorter time to market.

• Run design processes on live insights into customer needs and market opportunities
• Perform multilevel “what if” analyses with predictive insights to drive better design decisions
• Analyze live performance of the project portfolio with predictive insights at any stage of the innovation process
• Simplify access to project information for stakeholders and team members with the ability to drill down
• Define and analyze product costs and manage all engineering changes effectively along the lifecycle
• Create a platform as the single digital backbone of product master data for internal and external collaborations across the enterprise
• Provide connected design capabilities, integrating requirements, mechanics, electronics, software components, and simulation, as well as synchronizing all downstream product development needs internally and externally
• Manage flexible, high-performing, and ease-of-use configuration and classification for product individualization
• Integrate and validate compliance requirements in the development process and manage product declarations as part of the product properties for all variants across the product supply chain and lifecycle
• Plan and communicate resource demand to match available resources in the long and short term
• Simplify decisionmaking and processes across the enterprise for manufacturing, service,and marketing through intuitive visualization

Ideation and Concept Development

• Innovation campaigns running inside and outside the enterprise
• Repository for ideas and feedback for development-to-concept stage

Portfolio and Project Management 

• Respond quickly to customer inquiries and requirements
• Coordinate resources across a project’s lifecycle
• Use performance metrics to make informed decisions
• Support for product, service, and asset lifecycles

Product Development 

• Reuse existing components and recipes
• Do costing simulations
• Manage change-controlled structures and variants
• Hand over to manufacturing and service, with full design authoring tool integration

Compliance Management

• Design products keeping material, global, regional, and industry compliance
• Prepare quality and safety sheets for downstream use

SAP S/4HANA is The Next Generation Business Suite For A Digital World
The opportunity exists to transform business processes and achieve the digital transformation of your business with more automation and real-time visibility. Our SAP HANA and Big Data solutions address these important these needs and more. Let us show you today! Set up a free consultation.

Ask Approyo - 2017 Technology Predictions

It's the start of 2017 and everyone wants to know, what are some predictions in technology for the new year. In the latest edition of Ask Approyo, Approyo CEO Chris Carter talks about some big technology predictions for 2017.

 

The predictions for 2017 differ from 2016. Big Data will have an impact on both personal and business standpoints. Companies will no longer just dip their toe in Big Data, they will be all in by the end of the year. in fact, we will start to refer to Big Data as just "data".

Additionally, more things will be automated from personal devices from Google and Amazon to business applications. Plus, Virtual Reality will start to go more mainstream.

Are you ready for the New Year
Don’t let the new digital world pass you by. Approyo can help your company deal with the changing world. Our SAP HANA and Big Data solutions address these important questions and more. Let us show you today! Set up a free consultation.

Why is SAP S/4HANA a game changer for your company?

SAP S/4HANA, the modern digital core, is designed to integrate with and utilize IoT, Big Data, Mobile, Business Networks, and more. SAP S/4HANA helps our customers create a truly Live Business:

• SAP S/4HANA is immediate – empowering business users with insights to act in the moment
• SAP S/4HANA is intelligent – beyond automation to predictive suggestion
• SAP S/4HANA is integrated – not only between your departments, but connected to the world

Instant, real-time insight for better decisions
• In-memory technology
• Embedded analytics

Reinvented processes for higher performance
• Maximized throughput and speed
• Native integration to SAP solutions

SAP Fiori user experience for higher productivity
• Intuitive on all devices, mobile first
• Proactive decision-making support

Simplified Architecture for lower TCO

• Lean data footprint

• Cloud deployment for higher flexibility
 

Why should you embrace a digital core now?
We are at the dawn of the next big technology change where everything is connected and software is embedded in our lives. This technology change is bringing new opportunities and new threats. Cycle time for innovation is 5–10X faster, and enterprises can no longer compete unless complexity is reduced, business is re-invented, and data becomes the fuel for value creation. With SAP S/4HANA, you can now enable your digital enterprise and drive this value creation. 

Try SAP S/4HANA Today! Contact us for a free consultation today... 

Approyo Named Owler ‘HOT in 2016’ Winner in Palo Alto

Approyo is proud to announce today it was named an Owler HOT in 2016 winner in Palo Alto​.

Recipients were chosen based on several different metrics, including number of followers on Owler, insights collected from our community, social media followers, and blog posts over the past year.

“We’ve sorted through database of millions of contributions from our community and landed on the top trending companies from around the world,” said Jim Fowler, CEO at Owler. “Being Hot In 2016 is an accomplishment to be proud of.”

To see Approyo's company profile on Owler, go to our profile​.

About Owler
Owler is the crowdsourced competitive intelligence platform that business professionals use to outsmart their competition, gain competitive insights, and uncover the latest industry news and alerts. Owler is powered by an active community of 800K business professionals that contribute unique business insights such as competitors, private company revenue, and CEO ratings. From startups all the way to large enterprises (including 96% of the Fortune 500), CEOs, salespeople, marketers, product managers, and all types of business professionals use Owler daily.

Approyo to Sponsor “Transform Your Supply Chain with Digitalisation” event in the United Kingdom

Approyo is proud to announce that it will be sponsoring, “Transform your Supply Chain with Digitalisation” with Rocket Consulting and SAP on November 17 in Vanwell Business Park, Maidenhead. Other sponsors for the event include Descartes and Honeywell.

“Approyo is excited to bring our SAP HANA Solutions to a new audience in the UK” said Christopher Carter, CEO of Approyo. “We have been rapidly expanding across the globe throughout 2016. Rocket Consulting provides an ideal fit for a partnership.”

“We are thrilled to be part of the Transform your Supply Chain with Digitalisation event in the UK” adds Philippe Chaudron, Vice President EMEA of Approyo. “Our SAP HANA services are a great fit for the event and companies in the UK and throughout Europe.”

The objective of the event is to demonstrate how a digital supply chain execution platform brings enterprises up-to-the-minute information and analytics, allowing them to manage processes in real-time and shift from a reactive to a proactive and predictive management approach.

The event will include a presentation from Rocket’s award-winning customer Arla Foods that will illustrate the tangible results of SAP extended warehouse management, yard management and dock appointment scheduling, and interactive supply and demand management. Approyo will be on-hand to demonstrate the value of SAP HANA solutions and showcase how SAP HANA can turn huge quantities of data around in minutes, providing the ability to be much more proactive, predictive and optimize your Supply Chain. Additionally, Rocket will be showcasing a range of real-time insight and data visualization tools and the live application of IoT (Internet of Things).

Free to attend, ‘Transform Your Supply Chain with Digitalization’ is aimed at senior decision-makers, predominantly in the manufacturing and retail sectors. More information and registration is available here.