How can the Intelligent Enterprise impact the Retail Industry

The digital economy is disruptive. Retailers need strategic priorities that drive transformation. SAP powered by Approyo supports a reimagined set of end-to -end business scenarios to support the strategic priorities of serving the digital consumer of today.

Radical change in the retail industry is occurring at a rapid pace. Changes in technologies, in business models, and in standards and with the ever-evolving customers require constant adaptation. Retail companies must be able to respond to rapidly changing conditions and offer targeted customer engagement at scale. How does a digital core with a true single source of truth help?

Stability and flexibility
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 with tailored real-time views delivering customer and business insights and enables flexibility for innovation to accommodate new business models, new regulations, and business events, such as mergers or acquisitions.

Immediate response
The ability to respond quickly is an essential part of managing a retail 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.

Embedded intelligence
Innovative retailers leverage new technologies to support their digital transformation strategies and respond effectively to both encroaching competitors and new demands of the digitally empowered customer. Improved processing power is making machine learning applicable in more and more retail areas, enabling further optimization and automation of business processes as well as more impactful, personalized, and contextual consumer experiences.

Integrated and connected to the outside world
To take advantage of new opportunities and better meet individual needs, retailers must address end-to -end (E2E) processes across departments and lines of business to deliver on new customer experiences, products, and services. The Internet of Things (IoT) lets them connect to the outside world, driving unprecedented efficiency and optimization as well as new levels of customer connectivity and new retail business models.

Enhance and Extend Next-Generation Processes with Intelligent ERP
Bringing SAP S/4HANA and the SAP Leonardo technologies together as a digital core results in a more flexible and intelligent enterprise. To achieve next-generation business processes, retailers 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, block chain, and IoT. Intelligent ERP is immediate– empowering business users with insights to act in the moment; it is intelligent– going beyond automation to predictive suggestion; and it is integrated– not only between your departments, but for consumers and suppliers alike.

Approyo CEO Chris Carter to speak at the 2019 CloudEXPO

We are excited to announce that Approyo CEO, Chris Carter will be speaking on Wednesday, June 26 at the CloudEXPO in Silicon Valley. Chris's session, The Growth of Cloud Usage in the ERP World, will dive deep into the enterprise cloud computing world.

The Growth of Cloud Usage in the ERP World
GCP, Azure and AWS are dominating the "cloud" world, well now they are attacking the Enterprise with partnerships with SAP. Learn how and why these cloud firms see the enterprise ripe for the attack.

Wednesday, June 26, 4:20pm - 4:55pm
Register: https://sched.co/K6Ut

About the Cloud Expo
Now is the time for a truly global DX event, to bring together the leading minds from the technology world in a conversation about Digital Transformation. DX encompasses the continuing technology revolution, and is addressing society's most important issues throughout the entire $78 trillion 21st-century global economy.

DXWorldEXPO® has organized these issues along 10 tracks, 22 keynotes and general sessions, and a faculty of 222 of the world's top speakers.
DXWorldEXPO® has three major themes on its conference agenda:

Technology - The Revolution Continues
Economy - The 21st Century Emerges
Society - The Big Issues

Global 2000 companies have more than US$40 trillion in annual revenue - more than 50% of the world's entire GDP. The Global 2000 spends a total of US$2.4 trillion annually on enterprise IT. The average Global 2000 company has US$11 billion in annual revenue. The average Global 2000 company spends more than $600 million annually on enterprise IT. Governments throughout the world spend another US$500 billion on IT - much of it dedicated to new Smart City initiatives.

For the past 10 years CloudEXPO® helped drive the migration to modern enterprise IT infrastructures, built upon the foundation of cloud computing. Today's hybrid, multiple cloud IT infrastructures integrate Big Data, analytics, blockchain, the IoT, mobile devices, and the latest in cryptography and enterprise-grade security.

Digital Transformation is the key issue driving the global enterprise IT business. DX is most prominent among Global 2000 enterprises and government institutions.

How can the Intelligent Enterprise impact the Construction Industry

The digital economy is disruptive. Construction companies need strategic priorities that drive transformation. SAP solutions powered by Approyo supports a re-imagined set of end-to-end (E2E) business scenarios to support the strategic priorities of working in a digital environment.

$15.5 trillion –that is the projected size of the construction market by 2030, up from $8 trillion today. A recent study expects that 75% of the infrastructure that will exist in 2050 does not exist today, and that the design and expected outcomes will be transformative. This is a huge opportunity for the construction industry; however, projects are getting more complex, and there are many inefficient and wasteful practices. Successful companies grow by increasing market share, self-performing to a greater extent, expanding internationally, and even operating some of the assets they build. How does a digital core with a true single source of truth help?

Responding to rapid changes
To execute on this, engineering, construction, and operations (EC&O) firms not only need to re-engineer their business processes, but they also need to evaluate if they have the right technology platform that can deliver on that vision. This platform requires an IT architecture that provides both stability and long-term reliability for core enterprise processes, and, at the same time, allows for flexibility in areas where change is happening on a constant basis. The digital core provides uninterrupted, real-time transactions and analytics, the ability to work with Big Data, and connectivity to line-of-business (LoB) extensions that enable supporting processes such as sourcing networks. This seamlessly connects project progress and financial controls, aiding transparency and profitability and better enabling partnerships and new models such as integrated project delivery contracts

Addressing innovative opportunities
The construction industry can apply technology and best practices that have been previously proven in the industrial sector. This industrialization of construction enables reliable outcomes and improves margins by increasing productivity, eliminating waste and surprises, and greatly reducing project risk. Existing business models collapse as “construction-ready,” disruptive technologies – such as robotics, enterprise mobility, virtual design and construction, and 3D printing –redefine design and processes. To remain competitive, new contract and service models such as integrated project delivery and public-private partnerships are required. Construction is ready to experience the dramatic productivity gains seen in other industries while vastly compressing the 50-year evolutionary process that took place in manufacturing

Enhance and extend next-generation processes with intelligent ERP
Bringing SAP S/4HANA and SAP Leonardo technologies together as a digital core results 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). Contractors that have big innovation appetites or prefer to be early adopters have already begun this journey.

Read the full post at www.approyo.com 

Key takeaways from the 2019 SAP SAPPHIRE NOW and ASUG Annual Conference with Approyo CEO Chris Carter

Another SAP SAPPHIRE NOW is in the books. As always this year featured lots of news and announcements in the SAP ecosystem. This year, our team hosted an incredible event at the Ice Bar with Worksoft. Over 200 people joined us for a fun night of SAP discussion, drinks and food. In addition, I was able to meet with multiple customers, partners and friends throughout the show. It was great to be able to really talk about the impact of new SAP technology and how the team at Approyo can help. Our team is growing and it really made quite the impact this year.

Here are a few of the key takeaways from my perspective:

Upgrades and Migrations
Everyone coming up to me all week wanted to know one thing. What is the easiest transition to HANA or S/4HANA? In previous years, the question was really "Why should I move to HANA" or "What are the true benefits of moving to HANA?" Now companies from every industry want to understand how they can move to HANA and the easiest path to get there.

The truth is there isn't one answer for all companies. Companies need to work with a partner that really understand the options for moving to HANA or S/4HANA. This can be a major upgrade or full migration. It's not something that companies should take lightly. A failed upgrade or migration can cost your company countless dollars. At the end of the day, you and your team need to understand all the steps and processes that will go into moving to HANA.

SAP Experience Management - X and O Data
The most talked about topic by SAP at the conference was the "new" SAP Experience Management. This is the big new offering from the Qualtrics acquestion last year. Basically SAP wants to the major player in the Experience Management area. They want to help companies truly understand thier data, how people are interacting with their product and services and improve upon the customer experience.

Here is how SAP breaks it down:

"Operational data (O) – like costs, revenues, and sales – show what is happening in your business. But you also need experience data (X) to understand the feelings of the people involved and why things are happening.

SAP Experience Management solutions combine X-data and O-data. By collecting experience data at every meaningful touchpoint, you can analyze and understand experience gaps – and determine what to do about them.

Your company can then automate actions across business functions to drive improvement in customer, employee, product, and brand experiences.

Sap wants to know why it's a part of the X and O data solution why is somebody doing something why are they taking me steps why did they back out of this transaction why are they doing this transaction if they can figure out the why that will be a game-changer but right now I'm not exactly sure how it's all going to melt together with the other tools that they have."

This is something that can truly be a game-changing solution for SAP, SAP customers and the entire SAP ecosystem. I'm not sure all the pieces are there yet but the overall vision is something that can help any organization in any business.

Connect with Approyo
We will be sharing out more thoughts and content from SAP SAPPHIRE NOW throughout the next few weeks. In the mean-time, we invite you to follow us on social media and connect with us. Now is the time to move to these new and exciting SAP solutions and our team has the experience to help you. Contact us today...

Approyo named a Global Excellence Award Winner for "Leaders in SAP Technology Consulting 2019 - USA" by Acquisition International

Approyo is proud to announce that is has been named a Global Excellence Award Winner for "Leaders in SAP Technology Consulting 2019 - USA" by Acquisition International.

Acquisition International, or AI, is an international, monthly digital business magazine committed to bringing its readers up to the minute news, comment and analysis. As the voice of modern business, AI is dedicated to delivering vital updates to our corporate readers so that they remain ahead of the curve.

"The Approyo team is honored to receive this award from AI Global!" said Christopher Carter, CEO of Approyo. "This achievement continues to validate our success in the SAP and Cloud marketplace.”

View the article: https://www.acq-intl.com/issues/issue-5-2019/28/

Acquisition International launched in 2010, and has, over the years, evolved into a business title that professionals rely on to bring them the business knowledge, insight and news they need. Each month our magazine is circulated to in-excess of 108,000 professionals, including Top Tier Managers, Investment Professionals, Business Advisers and Service Providers.

ABOUT THE BUSINESS EXCELLENCE AWARDS
Calling all companies, businesses and enterprises! We would like to welcome you all to the AI Business Excellence Awards. Whether you are from a large conglomerate or small independent business, the AI business awards look to honour anyone who has excelled in their sector.

In these times of financial and economic upheaval, the business environment can be more uncertain than ever. From global issues of an increasingly erratic climate, to political instability and data security questions, enterprises are facing challenges, new and old. With AI's programme, AI has provided our winners with the opportunity to be recognised for your perseverance and determination in these difficult times.

Approyo has been providing solutions powered by SAP HANA®, such as the latest version of SAP S/4HANA®, in the cloud for the last four years.  The Wisconsin based company built an entire platform using the best solutions in the market, helping companies move to SAP HANA quickly and benefit immediately.

Top Highlights from the 2019 SAP SAPPHIRE NOW and ASUG Annual Conference

Another SAP SAPPHIRE NOW and ASUG Annual Conference is in the books. 2019 will be remembered for a year of game-changing announcements and the Intelligent Enterprise continuing to grow momentum in the SAP ecosystem. We will have numerous blog posts over the next few weeks that will dive deeper into some of the key announcements and takeaways from our team of experts. For now, here are some of the major news announcements and highlights from the show.

SAP Paves the Path to Create Outcome-Based Intelligent Enterprises with Experience Management (XM)
Just three months after completing its acquisition of Qualtrics, SAP has rolled out 10 new offerings that combine experience data (X-data) with operational data (O-data) to measure and improve the four core experiences of business — customer, employee, product and brand. The rollout of this system sets a new standard in enterprise software

The combination enables organizations to continuously listen to the beliefs, emotions and intentions of customers, employees, suppliers, partners and other stakeholders. These new offerings — four for customer experience (CX), three for employee experience and three in market research — embed X-data directly into an enterprise’s applications, such as its CRM, ERP or HCM systems, to drive continuous action and improvement.

SAP Expands App Portfolio on Both iOS and Mac®
SAP and Apple announced that CORE ML®, Apple’s on-device machine learning technology, will be available for the first time as part of the SAP Cloud Platform SDK for iOS. The next version of the SAP Cloud Platform SDK, available later this month, enables businesses to create custom, intelligent iOS apps powered by SAP Leonardo. Machine learning models will automatically download to iPhone® and iPad® so apps can run offline, and then dynamically update while connected to SAP Cloud Platform.

Through the partnership with Apple, SAP has rebuilt its most popular mobile apps for SAP SuccessFactors and SAP Concur solutions, along with SAP Asset Manager, to run natively on iOS. These apps are fully integrated with iPhone and iPad, to maximize security, performance and the latest platform innovations from Apple. SAP today announced it will expand its native iOS experience across its broader applications portfolio, starting with SAP Ariba solutions.

Building on the success of its iOS efforts, SAP also announced it will expand its app offerings to the Mac, with new apps that match the power and ease of use of SAP iOS apps. The new native Mac apps will bring the richness of the SAP iOS experience to the desktop world.
Read more about SAP and Apple...

SAP Extends Its Leadership in AI-Powered Intelligent ERP with SAP S/4HANA
SAP announced a series of innovations to SAP S/4HANA to make it easier to add artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics, and to customize apps. This will help companies improve business results, automate business processes and make accurate predictions for better decisions.

With more than 100 out-of-the-box AI and robotic process automation–powered capabilities, the 1905 release of SAP S/4HANA Cloud solidifies its position as the most intelligent ERP on the market today. The new additions, being released in May 2019, cement our goal announced in 2018 to automate 50 percent of manual tasks in the ERP system over the following three years. Examples of new AI capabilities include:

• Intelligent accruals management: Allows closing books faster with automated conversion of purchase order data into posted accruals
• Defect code proposal: Speeds up quality checks and increases data quality simultaneously with automated categorization of defects based on free-text entry
• Financial journal entry with intelligent robotic process automation: Automates the collection, extraction and validation of financial journal data from e-mails, and mass uploads the data into SAP S/4HANA

Read more about this announcement on SAP.com...

Introducing SAP Data Warehouse Cloud
SAP is introducing SAP Data Warehouse Cloud, which brings the power of SAP HANA performance and flexible modeling along with SAP BW/4HANA structured modelling into one enterprise-class cloud data warehouse. With pre-built templates, integration to SAP, hybrid modes with SAP HANA and SAP BW/4HANA, and other data sources, as well as the power of SAP HANA, SAP Data Warehouse Cloud delivers faster results, simple cloud-based end-user analytics, and the flexibility to control costs and pay-for-what-you-use.

One of the capabilities of SAP Data Warehouse Cloud is powerful, integrated analytics-as-a-service with SAP Analytics Cloud.

SAP Analytics Cloud is continuing to build on existing augmented analytics capabilities that infuse artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning into business intelligence and enterprise planning workflows in order to help users go from insight to action in a fraction of the time. The latest innovations push conversational analytics to the next level, with the user’s search and natural-language processing (NLP) experience in SAP Analytics Cloud now expanded to understand and leverage semantics across all of your data.

SAP HANA Cloud Services
SAP HANA Cloud Services will be the gateway to a single source of truth for all data, including transactional and analytical data, as well as structured and unstructured data across on premise and cloud. SAP HANA Cloud Services aim to make data of any size and shape available to people, algorithms, and data-driven applications with online access, providing cloud qualities like low total cost of ownership (TCO), elasticity, serverless principles, high availability, resilience, and autonomous behavior.

With SAP HANA at the core, the new solution will be built on the fastest in-memory computing engine. By making this engine elastic, it will be possible to scale out indefinitely, enabling customers to add more resources as they require — and reduce them when they don’t need them anymore. Building on technologies such as SAP IQ, SAP HANA Cloud Services also will also offer an SQL data lake as a storage layer at minimum cost.

This is just a small sampling of some of the major news and announcements at the 2019 SAP SAPPHIRE NOW and ASUG Annual Conference. Our CEO, Chris Carter and new CTO, Sean Gilmour will provide you with more updates throughout the next few days and week. Plus we will more videos and announcements from the show floor. 

Big Data and Digital Transformation

This article from Approyo CEO Chris Carter originally appeared in the Technology Headlines: https://www.thetechnologyheadlines.com/technology/big_data/Big-Data-and-the-Digital-Transformation/

Over the past two to three years, big data and digital transformation have become all the rage within organizations and IT departments around the world. This has led to a lot of confusion and myths in the marketplace. Let’s dig into some myths around Big Data and The Digital Transformation.

The first major myth is that every company has a digital transformation or a big data project in place. The truth is, not everyone has a need for digital transformation and even less have a need for big data and analytics. As you look out into the scope of these initiatives, companies are bypassing big data because of the lack of need within their organization. Companies might be utilizing applications and tools that feature some form of big data analytics, but as far as acquiring new tools, specifically for big data analytics, it’s just not happening.

As far as digital transformation projects, small companies with under a million in revenue per year, are already using some sort of tool or software, with features of digital transformation such as QuickBooks or Salesforce. These types of tools, already have the features and functionality, smaller companies need to succeed.

Another myth is that digital transformation is very difficult to implement within an organization. This really is not the case. As mentioned in our first myth, there are a lot of software tools available with various digital transformation and big data applications built into them out of the box. Many of these applications are available through a web browser or smart device, allowing every individual within the organization, the access and ability to transform their day-to-day activities with these software tools. That’s not to say digital transformation and big data initiatives are easy. This is an important fact to make sure your company understands. However, there are tools and applications out there that can make it easier. The hardest part is knowing what you want to analyze and accomplish. This is really where you start a big data analytics and digital transformation project.

Today, there are vast amounts of data everywhere. You can grab data from your website, apps, smartphones, smart devices in your home, your car and thousands of other devices. With all this information available to your company, it is important to figure out what data is the most valuable. That is the key for anyone working on a big data analytics project. Your business needs to know what data is most valuable, in order to make business decisions that will positively impact your company.

Valuable data is key. It can impact your business and bottom line in many ways. However, dirty data can make any digital transformation or big data project wasteful for you and your company. This is where most companies run into problems with big data projects. They get sidetracked by data that doesn’t have a positive impact on their business. When starting a big data and digital transformation project, your company needs to focus on what data is relevant in helping your business succeed.

The final area of big data, that has caused a lot of confusion in the marketplace, is how you are getting that data and using it. As part of a data transformation, you must make sure that you are compliant with the usage of that.

If you cannot be relied upon to do the right thing with your data, someone will step in to make sure that you are or you could have major legal ramifications like we are currently seeing with Facebook and Google. You need to make sure you have a controllable platform within your organization.

Big Data analytics and Digital Transformation will remain an important key to growing your business today and into the future. Your company needs to stay on the forefront of these trends, in order to succeed in the marketplace.

This article from Approyo CEO Chris Carter originally appeared in
the Technology Headlines: https://www.thetechnologyheadlines.com/technology/big_data/Big-Data-and-the-Digital-Transformation/

Big Data and Digital Transformation

This article from Approyo CEO Chris Carter originally appeared in the Technology Headlines: https://www.thetechnologyheadlines.com/technology/big_data/Big-Data-and-the-Digital-Transformation/

Over the past two to three years, big data and digital transformation have become all the rage within organizations and IT departments around the world. This has led to a lot of confusion and myths in the marketplace. Let’s dig into some myths around Big Data and The Digital Transformation.

The first major myth is that every company has a digital transformation or a big data project in place. The truth is, not everyone has a need for digital transformation and even less have a need for big data and analytics. As you look out into the scope of these initiatives, companies are bypassing big data because of the lack of need within their organization. Companies might be utilizing applications and tools that feature some form of big data analytics, but as far as acquiring new tools, specifically for big data analytics, it’s just not happening.

As far as digital transformation projects, small companies with under a million in revenue per year, are already using some sort of tool or software, with features of digital transformation such as QuickBooks or Salesforce. These types of tools, already have the features and functionality, smaller companies need to succeed.

Another myth is that digital transformation is very difficult to implement within an organization. This really is not the case. As mentioned in our first myth, there are a lot of software tools available with various digital transformation and big data applications built into them out of the box. Many of these applications are available through a web browser or smart device, allowing every individual within the organization, the access and ability to transform their day-to-day activities with these software tools. That’s not to say digital transformation and big data initiatives are easy. This is an important fact to make sure your company understands. However, there are tools and applications out there that can make it easier. The hardest part is knowing what you want to analyze and accomplish. This is really where you start a big data analytics and digital transformation project.

Today, there are vast amounts of data everywhere. You can grab data from your website, apps, smartphones, smart devices in your home, your car and thousands of other devices. With all this information available to your company, it is important to figure out what data is the most valuable. That is the key for anyone working on a big data analytics project. Your business needs to know what data is most valuable, in order to make business decisions that will positively impact your company.

Valuable data is key. It can impact your business and bottom line in many ways. However, dirty data can make any digital transformation or big data project wasteful for you and your company. This is where most companies run into problems with big data projects. They get sidetracked by data that doesn’t have a positive impact on their business. When starting a big data and digital transformation project, your company needs to focus on what data is relevant in helping your business succeed.

The final area of big data, that has caused a lot of confusion in the marketplace, is how you are getting that data and using it. As part of a data transformation, you must make sure that you are compliant with the usage of that.

If you cannot be relied upon to do the right thing with your data, someone will step in to make sure that you are or you could have major legal ramifications like we are currently seeing with Facebook and Google. You need to make sure you have a controllable platform within your organization.

Big Data analytics and Digital Transformation will remain an important key to growing your business today and into the future. Your company needs to stay on the forefront of these trends, in order to succeed in the marketplace.

This article from Approyo CEO Chris Carter originally appeared in
the Technology Headlines: https://www.thetechnologyheadlines.com/technology/big_data/Big-Data-and-the-Digital-Transformation/

SAP Announces First Quarter 2019 Results

SAP Announced its first quarter results on www.sap.com. The results continue to show growth for SAP HANA and SAP S/4HANA. This growth mirrors Approyo's growth and accolades throughout 2019 and align with our vision as the premier SAP Platform as a service partner.

Business Performance - Financial Highlights First Quarter 2019
In the first quarter, new cloud bookings were up 32% (26% at constant currencies). Cloud revenue grew 45% year over year to €1.56 billion (IFRS), up 48% (non-IFRS) and 41% (non-IFRS at constant currencies). Software license revenue was up 4% year over year to €650 million (IFRS), up 4% (non-IFRS) and 1% (non-IFRS at constant currencies). New cloud and software order entry was up 17% (13% at constant currencies) year over year in the first quarter. Cloud and software revenue grew 16% year over year to €5.04 billion (IFRS), up 16% (non-IFRS) and 12% (non-IFRS at constant currencies). Total revenue grew 16% year over year to €6.09 billion (IFRS), up 16% (non-IFRS) and 12% (non-IFRS at constant currencies).

SAP’s rapidly expanding cloud business together with solid growth in support revenue continued to drive the share of more predictable revenue, which grew by one percentage point year-over-year to 72% in the first quarter.

As previously indicated, the IFRS operating profit in the first quarter was impacted by recognizing the expected cost of SAP’s 2019 restructuring (€886 million) as well as higher acquisition-related charges and share-based compensation primarily due to the Qualtrics acquisition.

This resulted in an IFRS operating loss of -€136 million (Q1 2018: operating profit of €1,025 million). In contrast, Non-IFRS profit was up 19% at €1,467 million (up 13% at constant currencies). Earnings per share were -€0.10 (IFRS) (Q1 2018: €0.59) and up 24% at €0.90 (non-IFRS). Operating cash flow for the first three months was €2.80 billion, up 9% year-over-year. Free cash flow increased 10% year-over-year to €2.37 billion. At the end of the first quarter, net liquidity was -€6.19 billion. Segment Performance First Quarter 2019

SAP’s three reportable segments “Applications, Technology & Services”, “Business Network” and “Customer and Experience Management” showed the following performance.

Applications, Technology & Services (AT&S)
In the first quarter, segment revenue in AT&S was up 12% to €4.99 billion year-over-year (up 9% at constant currencies).

SAP S/4HANA
SAP S/4HANA is at the core of the Intelligent Enterprise. With S/4HANA, customers automate more and more of their business processes
enabling employees to focus on higher-value tasks. It detects patterns, predicts outcomes and suggests actions empowering companies
across all industries to reinvent their business models for the digital economy.
This quarter, SAP S/4HANA Cloud was named as a Leader in The IDC MarketScape: Worldwide SaaS and Cloud-enabled Operational ERP

Applications 2019 Vendor Assessment. IDC recognizes SAP S/4HANA Cloud as an intelligent ERP that enables various business processes such as idea to design, procure to pay, plan to production, order to cash, offer to project, and core finance.

S/4HANA adoption grew to more than 10,900 customers, up 30% year over year. In the first quarter, over 40% of the additional S/4HANA
customers were net new.

View the complete Q1 results at: https://www.sap.com/docs/download/investors/2019/sap-2019-q1-statement.pdf

SAP Announces First Quarter 2019 Results

SAP Announced its first quarter results on www.sap.com. The results continue to show growth for SAP HANA and SAP S/4HANA. This growth mirrors Approyo's growth and accolades throughout 2019 and align with our vision as the premier SAP Platform as a service partner.

Business Performance - Financial Highlights First Quarter 2019
In the first quarter, new cloud bookings were up 32% (26% at constant currencies). Cloud revenue grew 45% year over year to €1.56 billion (IFRS), up 48% (non-IFRS) and 41% (non-IFRS at constant currencies). Software license revenue was up 4% year over year to €650 million (IFRS), up 4% (non-IFRS) and 1% (non-IFRS at constant currencies). New cloud and software order entry was up 17% (13% at constant currencies) year over year in the first quarter. Cloud and software revenue grew 16% year over year to €5.04 billion (IFRS), up 16% (non-IFRS) and 12% (non-IFRS at constant currencies). Total revenue grew 16% year over year to €6.09 billion (IFRS), up 16% (non-IFRS) and 12% (non-IFRS at constant currencies).

SAP’s rapidly expanding cloud business together with solid growth in support revenue continued to drive the share of more predictable revenue, which grew by one percentage point year-over-year to 72% in the first quarter.

As previously indicated, the IFRS operating profit in the first quarter was impacted by recognizing the expected cost of SAP’s 2019 restructuring (€886 million) as well as higher acquisition-related charges and share-based compensation primarily due to the Qualtrics acquisition.

This resulted in an IFRS operating loss of -€136 million (Q1 2018: operating profit of €1,025 million). In contrast, Non-IFRS profit was up 19% at €1,467 million (up 13% at constant currencies). Earnings per share were -€0.10 (IFRS) (Q1 2018: €0.59) and up 24% at €0.90 (non-IFRS). Operating cash flow for the first three months was €2.80 billion, up 9% year-over-year. Free cash flow increased 10% year-over-year to €2.37 billion. At the end of the first quarter, net liquidity was -€6.19 billion. Segment Performance First Quarter 2019

SAP’s three reportable segments “Applications, Technology & Services”, “Business Network” and “Customer and Experience Management” showed the following performance.

Applications, Technology & Services (AT&S)
In the first quarter, segment revenue in AT&S was up 12% to €4.99 billion year-over-year (up 9% at constant currencies).

SAP S/4HANA
SAP S/4HANA is at the core of the Intelligent Enterprise. With S/4HANA, customers automate more and more of their business processes
enabling employees to focus on higher-value tasks. It detects patterns, predicts outcomes and suggests actions empowering companies
across all industries to reinvent their business models for the digital economy.
This quarter, SAP S/4HANA Cloud was named as a Leader in The IDC MarketScape: Worldwide SaaS and Cloud-enabled Operational ERP

Applications 2019 Vendor Assessment. IDC recognizes SAP S/4HANA Cloud as an intelligent ERP that enables various business processes such as idea to design, procure to pay, plan to production, order to cash, offer to project, and core finance.

S/4HANA adoption grew to more than 10,900 customers, up 30% year over year. In the first quarter, over 40% of the additional S/4HANA
customers were net new.

View the complete Q1 results at: https://www.sap.com/docs/download/investors/2019/sap-2019-q1-statement.pdf

What to do at the 2019 SAP SAPPHIRE NOW and ASUG Annual Conference

The 2019 SAP SAPPHIRE NOW and ASUG Annual Conference is coming up in just a week away. You probably already started to fill out your agenda but we wanted to give you an idea about what our team is most looking forward to at SAP SAPPHIRE NOW.

Network with Experts
The adage “It’s not what you know, but who you know” has never been more important. Successful leaders rely on a strong network of experts, peers, and visionaries to create their success and grow. SAPPHIRE NOW and ASUG Annual Conference presents an unparalleled event to grow your network in just three short days. It’s an opportunity to join a true community of experts, share your story, and gain new knowledge to pave your path forward. To help you, SAP added new networking zones and digital opportunities where you can make new connections and carry conversations forward.

Plus our team will be at the event! Follow us on social media for updates throughout the event.

Great Keynote speakers
We profiled some of our favorite keynote speakers in a different blog post. In addition to those great speakers, SAPPHIRE NOW features many different experts on the show floor and in various other sessions talking about everything SAP. Take some time to check these out.

Visit Approyo the "Coolest"SAP SAPPHIRE NOW Party on Tuesday, May 7
Approyo and Worksoft invite you to join us for an evening of fun, appetizers, drinks and more during the 2019 SAP SAPPHIRE NOW conference.

You're invited to the Ice Bar in Orlando on Tuesday May 7, just a few short blocks away from the convention center.

Explore the show floor
One of our favorite activities is to explore the show floor. Our team doesn't ahve a booth this year but we will spend most of our time during the week on the show floor talking to the exhibitors and checking out some of the latest and greatest technology. Also check out some of our partners on the floor including Worksoft!

See LADY GAGA Live on Thursday, May 9, 2019
No explanation needed for this one! rammy and Golden Globe winner and Academy Award-nominated Lady Gaga is a one-of-a kind artist and performer. She has amassed an outstanding 33 million global album sales and 229 million in song consumption, making her one of the best-selling musicians of all time.

Gaga is also one of the biggest living forces in social media with over 60 million likes on Facebook, over 77 million followers on Twitter and over 31 million followers on Instagram.

Her fifth studio album “Joanne” was released in October 2016 and debuted at #1 on the Billboard Top 200, marking her 4th consecutive #1 album - the first female to do so in the 2010s. In 2015, Gaga starred in the fifth installment of the Ryan Murphy FX drama, “American Horror Story: Hotel.” The role earned her a 2016 Golden Globe award for Best Actress in a Mini-Series or TV Film. Gaga headlined the 2017 Pepsi Zero Sugar Super Bowl LI Half Time show. Her 13-minute solo performance amassed 117.5 million viewers. In September 2017, she released her Chris Moukarbel directed documentary “Lady Gaga: Five Foot Two” via Netflix.

Gaga most recently starred alongside Bradley Cooper in the Warner Brothers remake of the classic film, “A Star is Born,” released October 2018. Her performance so far has led her to a 2019 Golden Globe nomination and Critics’ Choice nomination for Best Actress in a Motion Picture. She won a Golden Globe for Best Original Song for “Shallow,” that she co-wrote and performed for the film, and has also received string of 2019 Grammy nominations including Song of the Year, Record of the Year, Best Pop Duo/Group performance and Best Song Written For Visual Media for “Shallow” as well.

Approyo expands team, adds Sean Gilmour as new CTO

​Approyo, a leading enterprise SAP HANA Solutions Provider headquartered in Milwaukee announces the addition of Sean Gilmour as CTO.

Mr. Gilmour joins Approyo with decades of expertise. Most recently he led the Global Applications and Big Data Practice for Dell EMC.

“I have been working on and around SAP for almost 7 years now, and wanted to take it to the next level,” says Sean Gilmour. “I believe Approyo to be one of the top SAP partners globally. I am thrilled to help them continue to grow and doing what I love, says Gilmour.

Gilmour resides in the San Francisco, CA area and will be working directly with our clients, partners and team to help grow the Approyo footprint in the United States and around the globe.

“I would personally like to welcome Sean to the team,” says Chris Carter, CEO of Approyo. “Having worked with and known him for many years, it is a pleasure to have an executive of his caliber and experience inside the organization as we continue to grow. His experience, knowledge, partnerships, as well as his level of technical expertise, are second to none in our SAP ecosystem, which will mean great growth,” says Carter.