Building your Intelligent Enterprise: Tools and Services
(4 minute read)
In our first blog, we explored RISE with SAP to give you a better understanding of what it offers for your business and some things to consider. In this blog, we’ll take a deeper dive into the tools and services you will need to build your Intelligent Enterprise.
What is an Intelligent Enterprise, exactly?
In essence, an Intelligent Enterprise is an integrated business that uses data to feed its intelligence and agility. SAP’s vision is to help customers integrate data and processes, build flexible supply chains, and innovate with industry best practices in order to grow more resilient, more profitable and more sustainable.
It’s all about applying advanced technologies and best practices within agile, integrated business processes. That’s why a key part of SAP’s strategy is integrating end-to-end processes – no matter whether they span SAP, partner or third-party solutions.
The Intelligent Enterprise requires the ability to run critical business processes with applications that enable end-to-end planning and execution to streamline and automate processes such as lead to cash, source to pay, recruit to retire, and product design through operations, manufacturing, and supply chain, to name a few.
How does RISE with SAP help with the Intelligent Enterprise?
As we covered in our first blog, a RISE with SAP subscription not only includes SAP S/4HANA Cloud, but also your choice of hyperscaler infrastructure (Azure, AWS, or GCP). In addition, a RISE with SAP contract includes a range of technical management services that SAP will deliver against an agreed-upon service level agreement (SLA).
Beyond this, RISE with SAP provides your business with a jump-start into SAP’s Intelligent Enterprise vision by including access to the SAP Business Technology Platform (BTP) and the SAP Business Network.
The SAP Business Technology Platform addresses requirements for database and data management, analytics, application development and integration, and intelligent technologies such as robotic process automation (RPA). The RISE with SAP contract includes an initial set of credits for the SAP BTP for easy consumption and adoption.
What is the SAP Business Network?
The SAP Business Network provides access to “futuristic supply chains,” with unified, collaborative and intelligent networks that remove barriers and centralize data. Access to the SAP Business Network will help customers to adopt an Intelligent Enterprise strategy to drive business success using these fundamental building blocks:
- Business process definition and process intelligence
- The Intelligent suite of software solutions
- Industry Cloud, which allows for partner-driven white-space solutions
- The SAP Business Technology Platform to drive integration
- The right infrastructure to support the Intelligent Enterprise
The RISE with SAP contract includes a starter package for the SAP Business Network, which is comprised of the following:
Ariba Network allows your business to collaborate seamlessly with suppliers and strengthen compliance by bringing all spend under management. The Ariba Network also helps your business to manage inventory better, confirm availability of supply, and avoid disruptions by dynamically sharing information between your business and suppliers.
Logistics Business Network is an open logistics network that connects business partners for inter-company collaboration and insights. It is a central entry point to manage logistics transactions, exchange documents with key business partners, and gain transparency across the complete value chain. This allows your business to increase reliability and resilience, and quickly respond to disruptions with streamlined freight collaboration and instant access to a global network of carriers.
Asset Intelligence Network allows your business to collect and track equipment information in a central repository, with real-time condition monitoring and predictive maintenance. You can optimize asset performance by merging asset management and maintenance processes and data, and strengthen manufacturer, operator and service provider collaboration using centralized data and shared performance analytics.
An Intelligent Enterprise is an Integrated Enterprise
As you can see, SAP’s integration approach goes far beyond technical integration of applications. By providing holistic integration of data, technology and business processes, SAP’s Intelligent Enterprise approach is the foundation your business will need to support continuous improvement. It accelerates speed of innovation, lowers the efforts for integration, shortens time to value, reduces the complexity of operations, and allows for real-time insights.
Next: Business Process Redesign for Successful Business Transformation
For the majority of SAP customers, the secret to successful business transformation will be integration of business processes with the ERP environment. In order to build a value-based case for change, you will need to have a full understanding of your processes and be able to identify opportunities for improvement. We’ll cover this topic in more detail in our next blog.