Approyo CEO Chris Carter Interviewed by techcompanynews.com

Approyo CEO Chris Carter recently say down with the folks at techcompanynews.com to talk about why he started Approyo, the big business benefits of SAP HANA, our new partnership with Bohh Labs and many other topics.

View the full interview at: http://techcompanynews.com/approyo-simplifying-sap-hana-adoption/

Q: What is the story behind Approyo, how did you start?
A: I started Approyo after meeting with a colleague at SAP and discussing SAP HANA. At the time, I was retired, and my colleague and friend at SAP came over to talk to me about this new technology called SAP HANA. After sharing a bottle of scotch and talking about my poor golf game, he convinced me it was worth looking at SAP HANA. At this point, I wanted to learn more, so I went to the SAP offices in Palo Alto and Germany to really get my hands-on HANA and see what it can do. I quickly saw that SAP HANA was truly a game changer. My next step was to become one of the early members of the SAP Startup Focus program. This program was a new initiative at SAP geared toward helping innovative start-ups grow their relationship with SAP and jumpstart their business. This program was instrumental in getting Approyo off the ground and growing in our early days. The rest they say is history… Over the years, we continued to build and grow our services, team and environments around SAP HANA. This focus continues to help us stand out in the SAP ecosystem and help companies and other SAP partners implement SAP HANA solutions.

Q: For the third year in a row, Approyo is on the Inc. 5000 list of America’s
fastest growing private companies. How important is it for you?
A: The ranking is very important at it continues to solidify our strategy and mission to become the leading global SAP Cloud Centric Solution provider. It’s not a question of “if” a company will move to the cloud anymore, it’s a question of “when” and “how”. This shift in thinking has helped us reach many clients who need to move their SAP environments to the cloud. When Approyo started, we really had to educate companies about the cloud. After many years of doing this, we are seeing the reward and we are viewed as a trusted advisor and true business partner.

Q: What are the major business benefits of SAP HANA?
A: 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 act on stale insights, thus a true in-memory data platform should support real-time processing for transactions and analytics for all a company’s data. This is a key differentiator of the SAP HANA platform against other traditional database vendors.

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.

HANA is also a powerful platform that easily integrates third party applications and data from other sources, such as social media and sensor readings, from the rapidly expanding Internet of Things (IoT). In today’s SAP environment, as much as 60% of applications supported by HANA are third party. The HANA platform enables on-the-fly business intelligence by quickly aggregating data from different sources and integrating it with SAP Business Suite, as well as third party tools.

Q: I read something about your partnership with BOHH Labs, how did that start and where do you see the relationship going?
A: The joint solution between Approyo and BOHH Labs is addressing the challenges enterprises face migrating to the Cloud and enables SAP customers to leverage the analytics capabilities of SAP HANA, while gaining a secure method to easily access all enterprise systems to quickly find, search and unlock the value of all their data. As more and more companies make the migration to HANA and the Cloud, they will need to leverage a trusted advisor and that’s where this partnership comes in.

Often companies are hesitant to migrate completely to cloud deployments due to security, performance disruption and accessibility. This includes migrating to the new SAP S/4HANA platform. The BOHH/Approyo partnership is reducing these setbacks.

View the full interview at: http://techcompanynews.com/approyo-simplifying-sap-hana-adoption/

Start your Journey to SAP S/4HANA with Approyo

If you use SAP’s Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software, and you’re not using SAP S/4HANA, you’re on a deadline. By 2025, SAP will no longer support SAP ECC 6, the core component of SAP ERP. SAP S/4 HANA, a cloud based solution, is one way forward for all SAP ERP customers. Approyo can help your business prepare, migrate and support your move to SAP S/4HANA.

Based on the HANA in-memory database, S/4HANA is SAP's digital core. SAP S/4HANA gives companies a digitization-friendly IT environment to enable new ways of doing business -- that is its primary role. Its applications are interconnected in a way that traditional databases did not allow, enabling flexibility and real-time or closer-to-real-time insights.

Why move to SAP S/4HANA - Benefits explained

Innovation
SAP S/4HANA sets the stage for future innovation. Technology is evolving rapidly, which means merely ‘keeping up’ doesn’t cut it anymore. Enterprises have to stay ahead of the curve and make decisions that are future ready. SAP S/4 HANA applications leverage speed, context and data accessibility like never before. It is also driving cloud adoption by businesses, a platform which enables organizations to deliver innovative solutions and widens the capabilities offered by SAP S/4HANA itself.

Simplification
SAP S/4HANA brings about immense simplification to the management and administration of the IT landscape – in fact, simplicity is one of the key features SAP has brought in to its ECC application structure.  SAP S/4HANA enables the centralizing of hardware and network resources, and serves as the digital core for business process simplification, by harnessing the power of its HANA in-memory database. In older systems, enterprises often ran into issues of multiple batch-run dependencies. Elimination of aggregate tables, reduced processing time and the ease with which your systems can respond to transactions and queries, ensure that you are able to spend your efforts on strategic growth efforts.

Increased productivity
SAP S/4HANA streamlines business processes to deliver an expanded range of tangible benefits. Advanced analytics enable business users to access the data they need, instantly enabling transparency and faster reaction to changes in the business environment, while at the same time reducing the manual workload.

IT cost savings
SAP S/4HANA simplifies your IT landscape and optimizes data volumes, removing parallel and overlapping data. See more benefits of SAP S/4HANA

Understand your options
If you run ECC 6.0 or earlier version, you will need to upgrade by the 2025. Don't wait, start planning for your best upgrade path now and schedule a complimentary assessment with our team. We will help you understand all of your options and help you choose the best path forward.

Cloud Computing 101 - Types of Cloud Services

Cloud computing services fall into 4 categories: infrastructure as a service (IaaS), platform as a service (PaaS), software as a service (SaaS) and FaaS (functions as a service). These are sometimes called the cloud computing stack, because they build on top of one another.

Infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS)
IaaS is the most basic category of cloud computing services that allows you rent IT infrastructure (servers or VM’s) from a cloud provider on a pay-as-you-go basis.

Platform as a service (PaaS)
Platform-as-a-service (PaaS) refers to the supply an on-demand environment for developing, testing, delivering and managing software applications. It is designed to quickly create web or mobile apps, without worrying about setting up or managing the underlying infrastructure of servers, storage, network and databases needed for development.

Software as a service (SaaS)
Software-as-a-service (SaaS) is a method for delivering software applications over the Internet as per the demand and on a subscription basis. SaaS helps you host and manage the software application and underlying infrastructure and handle any maintenance (software upgrades and security patching).

FaaS (functions as a service)
FaaS adds another layer of abstraction to PaaS, so that developers are completely insulated from everything in the stack below their code. Instead of handling the hassles of virtual servers, containers, and application runtimes, they upload narrowly functional blocks of code, and set them to be triggered by a certain event. FaaS applications consume no IaaS resources until an event occurs, reducing pay-per-use fees.

Read the full blog post on www.approyo.com 

Cloud Computing 101 – Types of Cloud

Cloud computing helps businesses to be more efficient and save on software and hardware that are important for different operations. The definition of cloud computing varies depending on your source but what is generally agreed is that it involves access of software or hardware that are in the “cloud” i.e. use of software or hardware remotely. If your company is using specialized applications where you did not have to set up server or buy hardware or software to run them, then you are probably using a cloud application.

Companies can use cloud computing to increase their IT functionality or capacity without having to add software, personnel, invest in additional training or set up new infrastructure.

Public Cloud
Public clouds are the most common way of deploying cloud computing. The cloud resources (like servers and storage) are owned and operated by a third-party cloud service provider and delivered over the Internet. Microsoft Azure or the Google Cloud are examples of a public cloud. With a public cloud, all hardware, software, and other supporting infrastructure is owned and managed by the cloud provider. In a public cloud, you share the same hardware, storage, and network devices with other organizations or cloud “tenants.” You access services and manage your account using a web browser. Public cloud deployments are frequently used to provide web-based email, online office applications, storage, and testing and development environments.

Private Cloud
A private cloud consists of computing resources used exclusively by one business or organization. The private cloud can be physically located at your organization’s on-site datacenter, or it can be hosted by a third-party service provider. But in a private cloud, the services and infrastructure are always maintained on a private network and the hardware and software are dedicated solely to your organization. In this way, a private cloud can make it easier for an organization to customize its resources to meet specific IT requirements. Private clouds are often used by government agencies, financial institutions, any other mid- to large-size organizations with business-critical operations seeking enhanced control over their environment.

Hybrid Cloud
Hybrid clouds combine on-premises infrastructure, or private clouds, with public clouds so organizations can reap the advantages of both. In a hybrid cloud, data and applications can move between private and public clouds for greater flexibility and more deployment options. For instance, you can use the public cloud for high-volume, lower-security needs such as web-based email, and the private cloud (or other on-premises infrastructure) for sensitive, business-critical operations like financial reporting. In a hybrid cloud, “cloud bursting” is also an option. This is when an application or resource runs in the private cloud until there is a spike in demand (such as seasonal event like online shopping or tax filing), at which point the organization can “burst through” to the public cloud to tap into additional computing resources.

Community Clouds
Community clouds are a recent variation on the private cloud model that provide a complete cloud solution for specific business communities. Businesses share infrastructure provided by the Cloud Service Provider for software and development tools that are designed to meet community needs. In addition, each business has its own private cloud space that is built to meet the security, privacy and compliance needs that are common in the community.

Community clouds are an attractive option for companies in the health, financial or legal spheres that are subject to strict regulatory compliance. They are also well-suited to managing joint projects that benefit from sharing community-specific software applications or development platforms.

Read the full post on www.approyo.com

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.

Approyo Named Among 10 Fastest Growing SAP Solution Providers of the Year 2018 by The Silicon Review Magazine

Approyo today announced that The Silicon Review Magazine has named it among the ‘10  Fastest Growing SAP Solution Providers of the year 2018.’

Silicon Review highlights Approyo’s competitive edge, attributing it to their method of offering cutting edge SAP HANA and S/4HANA solutions that can be migrated in easy and quick manner.

“The Silicon Review 10 Fastest Growing SAP Solution Providers of the year 2018 program identifies companies which are revolutionizing the decision making process, and Winning a spot on this list indicates the company is one of the most trusted partner of SAP and is known for its simplest yet immaculate solutions for resource planning complexities,” said Sreshtha Banerjee, Editor-in-Chief of The Silicon Review Magazine. The publication has selected Approyo based on its strategic plans, ability to resist uncertainties, and the ability to predict the possible outcomes.

“We are honored to be recognized by The Silicon Review Magazine as the one of the 10 Fastest Growing SAP Solution Providers of the Year 2018,” said Chris Carter, CEO at Approyo.

The magazine spotlights companies that provide leading, effective and groundbreaking technologies. For the full article, please visit Silicon Review.

Approyo achieves significant growth and adds new team members

Approyo, a leading enterprise SAP HANA Solutions Provider headquartered in Milwaukee has seen significant growth in a state that is also seeing substantial development in the technology sector.

The Wisconsin based company has added to its team with three new employees. Alfred Wedding, Tim Reiss and William Sean Beasley join the Approyo team and will be working hand in hand with its customers and partners to manage and support SAP environments.

• Tim Reiss joins the team as Senior Director of SAP. Reiss brings more than 20 years industry of experience to the Approyo team.
• William Beasley, Director of SAP has more than a dozen years of cloud migration and experience working with SAP.
• Alfred Wedding comes to Approyo as an SAP Basis Coordinator with multiple years of experience with supporting SAP. Wedding is a Naval Veteran and resides in Wisconsin.

 “We have a top-notch team and we will continue to grow our organization. We are proud to be based in Wisconsin, where there is an exponential amount of growth in the technology sector,” says Chris Carter, CEO of Approyo.  “It’s an exciting time to be part of the SAP ecosystem and we can’t wait to see continued growth over the next several years.

Approyo was recently ranked #895 in the Inc Magazine 5000 for the third year in a row. It is very rare for companies to achieve this recognition for three years in a row. In addition, Mirror Review has listed Approyo among the top SAP solution providers in its latest magazine, “The 10 Best SAP Solution Providers of 2018.”  The technology company was also named one of “The 10 Best Performing SAP Solution Providers, 2018” by Insights Success.

Approyo is one of many technology companies in Milwaukee that is adding to the economy.

Milwaukee is making significant progress developing as a technology-based employment cluster. A report titled, Milwaukee's Tech Talent Impact, was compiled in June by several key employers in southeastern Wisconsin and identified 76,000 technology workers in 89 distinct occupations, contributing more than $27.6 billion in economic impact.

Supply Chain in a Digital Economy

Digitization of the economy is continuing to accelerate the pace of innovation, shortening the product lifecycle and increasing the demand volatility. At the same time supply chains are becoming global and increasingly complex. To be in a position to create and capture opportunities, companies must develop an environment in which they can manage information and processes simultaneously across the extended supply chain. This evolution of supply chains is more connected, intelligent, responsive, and predictive.It enables companies to drive customer-centric processes and deliver personalized products uniquely built and delivered for the “segment of one.” These demanding customers have to be serviced across a business network of global partners that are increasingly challenged by resource scarcity. This transformation will continue to impact the business processes and systems that are required to remain competitive. It will change how we design, plan, make, ship, and operate our products and assets.

SAP S/4HANA Supply Chain, cloud applications such as SAP Ariba solutions and SAP Integrated Business Planning, and SAP Leonardo support a digital supply chain strategy with a digital value network that acts as an enabler for business transformation. The digital value network starts with a digital core that interconnects all aspects of the value network in real time to drive business outcomes. The digital core not only connects every aspect of internal operations but also enables real-time workforce engagement, supplier collaboration, outcome-based omnichannel consumer experience, and other market dynamics with Internet of Things (IoT) and Big Data scenario.

Predictive Forecasting and Demand Sensing
Short-term demand prediction with demand sensing algorithms. Remote capture and analysis of sensor data from connected devices and feeding to demand management process.

Demand Driven Material Requirement Planning
Dynamic planning of replenishments with DDMRP which is fully integrated into existing MRP concept.Replenishment only for real demand and introduction of  buffers at strategically important points.

Live Inventory Management
Live inventory management enabling unlimited simultaneous material movements and allowing for true transparency on inventory and material flows. Decreased stock buffers due to better transparency and insights.

Warehousing and Transportation on One Platform
Single warehousing platform for all warehousing operations, including optimization, automation, and labor management. Single transportation platform with basic and advanced shipping functionality and real-time embedded analytics.

View the full blog post on www.approyo.com 

Major Business Benefits of Moving to SAP S/4HANA

SAP S/4HANA is proving to be SAP’s most successful ERP system. SAP’s involvement with ERP solutions dates back to 1979 when SAP R/2 was launched. In 1992, SAP R/3 was introduced and we have continued to see improvements as the product has evolved from SAP ERP in 2004 to SAP S/4HANA in 2015. The launch of this 4th generation SAP ERP solution is timely, as it has coincided with new technologies and concepts that are driving global business operations, such as cloud services and mobile computing. SAP S/4HANA will replace the current SAP ERP product suite by the end of 2025

Empowering business to maximize the opportunities of new emerging technologies
New digital business models set demanding technical requirements. SAP S/4HANA is your way to a next generation, digitalized business platform. SAP S/4HANA runs only on SAP HANA, SAP’s flagship in-memory computing database. This means that running an SAP solution such as S/4HANA naturally takes advantage of the speed of transaction processing and reporting native to SAP HANA. S/4HANA allows you to experience better performance as it relates to complex and time driven business activities such as real-time planning, execution, reporting and analytics based on live data, as well as prompt period closing and improved forecasting. It also allows you provide a better service level for customer-centric applications

Access to real-time information to support decision-making
SAP S/4HANA brings you instant insight, as well as real-time access to all relevant data and results, enabling timely business decisions and faster planning and forecasting cycles. For example, real-time transparency allows the CFO to address and resolve possible issues as soon as they arise – not at month-end - leading to faster closing times.

Increased efficiency via automation
SAP S/4HANA’s unique combination of innovation and simplicity drives automated, real time business processes that boost productivity and are less
prone to error.

Innovation
SAP S/4HANA sets the stage for future innovation. Technology is evolving rapidly, which means merely ‘keeping up’ doesn’t cut it anymore. Enterprises have to stay ahead of the curve and make decisions that are future ready. SAP S/4 HANA applications leverage speed, context and data accessibility like never before. It is also driving cloud adoption by businesses, a platform which enables organizations to deliver innovative solutions and widens the capabilities offered by SAP S/4HANA itself.

Increased productivity
SAP S/4HANA streamlines business processes to deliver an expanded range of tangible benefits. Advanced analytics enable business users to access the data they need, instantly enabling transparency and faster reaction to changes in the business environment, while at the same time reducing the manual workload.

IT cost savings
S/4HANA simplifies your IT landscape and optimizes data volumes, removing parallel and overlapping data, to drive a reduction in ongoing operating costs and infrastructure investment.

View the full blog post on www.approyo.com