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/

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.

Approyo Named to ChannelE2E Top 100 Vertical Market MSPs

Approyo has been named to After Nines Inc.’s ChannelE2E Top 100 Vertical Market MSPs list and research (http://www.channelE2E.com/top100) for 2019. The annual list and research identify and honor the top 100 managed services providers (MSPs) in healthcare, government, financial services, manufacturing, legal, not-for-profit and additional vertical markets.

The Top 100 Vertical Market MSPs rankings are based on ChannelE2E’s Q4 2018 and January 2019 readership survey, and ChannelE2E’s vertical market industry coverage. MSPs featured throughout the list and research leverage deep vertical market expertise to drive annual recurring revenues (ARR) in specific market segments.

This year’s research revealed several key MSP market trends. Among the Top 100 Vertical Market MSPs for 2019:

• Honorees generated a combined $699.1 million in vertical market annual recurring revenue (ARR) for 2018, up from $277.3 million in 2017. The surge involved organic growth combined with aggressive merger and acquisition (M&A) activity.
• Honorees are managing nearly one million devices.
• The most successful vertical market MSPs are zeroing in on financial services and healthcare, while manufacturing, legal and not-for-profit vertical activities are accelerating

Approyo was ranked number 23 among the top vertical market MSPs in the Technology industry.

“It is honor to be recognized as a top Managed Service provider by ChannelE2E, says Chris Carter, CEO of Approyo. "This achievement continues to validate our success in the SAP and Cloud marketplace."

“After Nines Inc. congratulates Approyo on this year’s honor,” said Amy Katz, CEO of After Nines Inc. “Through a vertical market focus, top MSPs are generating stronger profit margins and increased customer loyalty, while increasingly attracting acquisition and investor interest from peer MSPs and private equity firms.”

Find the online list and associated report here: http://www.channelE2E.com/top100

Approyo to Showcase Growing SAP HANA and S/4HANA Expertise at the 2019 SAP SAPPHIRE NOW and ASUG Annual Conference

We are pleased to announce our full presence at the 2019 SAPPHIRE NOW and ASUG Annual Conference, the industry’s most important cloud and technology conference for SAP customers. The event takes place May 7th-9th at the Orange County Convention Center in Orlando and is expected to draw more than 20,000 attendees.

As a leader in SAP managed services, migrations and hosting, Approyo will be attending the conference and hosting a networking event for attendees to consult with the company’s technology experts.

Key aspects of Approyo’s presence at this year’s show, include:

• SAPPHIRE NOW and ASUG Annual Conference – The Approyo team, including CEO Chris Carter will be on the show floor talking with experts will be hosting meetings with customers, partners and prospects to discuss SAP Platform as a service, SAP HANA and S/4HANA migrations, digital transformations, and technical managed services. 
• SAP Global Partner Summit – The Approyo team will be on hand for the SAP Global Partner Summit on Monday, May 6. The team will be meeting with partners from around the world, discussing SAP HANA and S/4HANA migrations. 
• Ice Bar Networking Event – Approyo and Worksoft are hosting an exclusive cocktail reception and networking event at Ice Bar Orlando from 8 p.m. to 10 p.m. on Tuesday, May 7th.

“The SAP SAPPHIRE NOW and ASUG Conference is a great opportunity to meet with clients, partners and experts from all over the world to discuss the latest in SAP,” said Chris Carter, CEO at Approyo. “Over the past few years, our company has taken many positive growth steps and we have helped several companies migrate to SAP HANA and S/4HANA in the cloud, we look forward to sharing those experiences.”

Advantages of implementing a Cloud ERP Solution

For most companies, the big question is not if but when they will adopt cloud computing for the bulk of their IT operations, including the enterprise resource planning (ERP) software they use to manage inventory and product manufacturing.

Rapid deployment 
By using cloud computing, your growing business won’t have to purchase, install and maintain server equipment which can be tedious and time-consuming. The cloud provider will take care of all security and maintenance, saving time to allow you to focus on what your company does best.

Scale upwards
The speed of cloud scalability means that you can quickly evolve your IT infrastructure to be as powerful and expansive as you need it to be the minute an opportunity for growth presents itself. You can scale up immediately and get to work faster as your business increases its headcount and volume of data. Read more about cloud ERP scalability and flexibility here.

Better Business Intelligence
Cloud technology allows organizations to access data remotely without complex technical configuration or robust IT staffing. Over the past two years, the number of organizations deploying business intelligence (BI) in the cloud has doubled. Cloud BI adoption is especially prevalent among sales and marketing departments as they rely on real-time data to understand and improve the customer journey.

When it comes to data access and data storage, cloud ERP has several advantages over on-premise ERP. Cloud technology is more scalable for storing large amounts of data and can provide access to data gathered by IoT technology.

Speed-to-market
No matter what industry you’re in, the market demands fast service, product and service reliability and transaction predictability; crucial factors that can put your business into a disarray if not handled properly. Moving to the cloud allows you to push products to the market much quicker.

Implement Quickly
Investment of new hardware and slower updating is not needed for cloud-based systems that utilizes the web, because updates are implemented without human-interaction.

Non-Physical Servers
Maintenance of hardware is not essential, simply because there is not physical hardware on-site at all. This is a big plus for operations that have to constantly maintain hardware and can instead further their focus on other areas within the production facility.

Agile workforce
With a cloud-based ERP, your staff will be able to access data and make decisions on the fly wherever they are. Since data is not locked up in individual employees’ machines, you can give teams 24/7 access at home, on a plane or event at a client’s location for a meeting. They will have the power to do more and collaborate.

Read the full blog post on www.approyo.com

Key Benefits of Outsourcing your SAP Basis Support

SAP Basis refers to the administration of SAP system that includes activities like installation and configuration, load balancing, and performance of SAP applications running on Java stack and SAP ABAP. This includes the maintenance of different services related to database, operating system, application and web servers in SAP system landscape and stopping and starting the system.

SAP Basis support is a critical aspect to organizations running SAP Solutions and companies looking to get the most out of these solutions. In-House support teams are most likely severely overburdened and can’t give Basis the attention it deserves. Many companies have faced a large turnover of SAP professionals, requiring them to scramble just to keep SAP running. Or, many organization can't find the expertise needed to manage these solutions. So, they do what they can to keep SAP Basis running — for now.

Key Benefits of outsourcing SAP Basis Support:

• No need to hire, train or retain SAP staff
• Help you stay focused on your core competencies
• Costs reduction with predictable SAP support costs and improved operational efficiencies
• Improved reliability, availability and performance of the SAP infrastructure
• Quality monitoring to boost system availability and capacity

View the full blog post on www.approyo.com

The Intelligent Enterprise powered by SAP HANA

The SAP HANA business data platform is unrivaled, combining a robust database with services for creating innovative applications. It enables real-time business by converging transactions and analytics on one in-memory platform. Running on premise or in the cloud, SAP HANA untangles IT complexity, bringing huge savings in data management and empowering decision-makers everywhere with new insight and predictive power.

Accelerate with Simplicity
An intelligent enterprise requires a business-ready data platform that helps you find the signal in the noise and unleash your data’s potential for better business outcomes. The SAP HANA business data platform provides the next-generation data management foundation for all of the industry-leading SAP® solutions. It also enables development of cutting-edge applications to deliver intelligent solutions for the enterprise quickly.

SAP HANA is one of the first data management platforms to handle both transactions and analytics in-memory on a single data set. It converges a future-proof database with advanced analytical processing and capabilities for application development, data integration, and data quality. Embedded in a robust, state-of-the-art security framework, it supports compliance with the latest security standards and data protection regulations. You gain a single secure environment for all your mission-critical data assets. You can manage large volumes of structured and unstructured data efficiently, leveraging the value of your business data while improving total cost of ownership (TCO).

Reimagine the Database
SAP HANA is built on an in-memory columnar store that is optimized for both transactional and analytical workloads, enabling the benefits of multicore processing, modern storage technology, and the single-instruction, multiple-data instruction set. It’s fully compliant with requirements for the atomicity, consistency, isolation, and durability (ACID) standards.

Intuitive modeling tools and preconfigured function libraries let you run complex business logic directly inside the database. That means you avoid latencies from moving data between the database and application server tiers.

Multitenant databases can be managed as one while maintaining their isolation from one another. The data tiering capabilities of SAP HANA, such as extension nodes, allow you to maximize your value by balancing performance and cost of data storage. This enables administrators to control which data is kept in-memory and which is kept in alternative persistent data storage. At the same time, the multistore tables in SAP HANA mean that where and how data is stored is completely transparent to consuming applications.

Act with Live Intelligence
SAP HANA provides next-generation hybrid transactional and analytical processing (HTAP) with the broadest advanced analytics capabilities to help business leaders understand information in context and achieve situational awareness to act in the moment. This includes native high-performance predictive and machine learning algorithms and integration with TensorFlow and R to reveal meaningful patterns in data and build applications that can learn and automate manual business processes. Text analysis and search capabilities help extract real insights from unstructured textual data in many different languages. Administrative boundary content, advanced services such as geocoding, and spatial services available in the cloud help accelerate development of location-aware business applications.

SAP HANA can store and query streaming data from sensors, plant equipment, and Internet of Things devices; time-series data such as price fluctuations and information on machine efficiency; and highly interconnected graph data. It also provides a JSON document store. These powerful capabilities can be leveraged with standard SQL, enabling data to be combined from standard relational databases, spatial and graph data, and data stored in a JSON document. A wealth of new possibilities helps you reimagine business models.


Innovate with Confidence
To achieve business insight in real time, SAP HANA helps you innovate with confidence. You can analyze sensitive data while effectively aligning with compliance requirements with real-time data anonymization. State-of-the-art techniques such as k-anonymity and differential privacy render personal data disconnected from an individual. This empowers business users and data scientists to “know without seeing” and explore new business opportunities for data as a service.

SAP HANA connects with existing applications using open standards and offers a choice of ways to build applications that are Web based or based on microservices. SAP Web IDE for SAP HANA offers a comprehensive lightweight tool set for data modeling and application development. Complex security authorizations can be easily shared between native applications and extensions running on SAP HANA and SAP business applications.

Read the full blog post on www.approyo.com 

Mirror Review Recognizes Approyo as one of The 10 Most Agile SAP Solution Providers To Keep An Eye On In 2019

Mirror Review has listed Approyo among the top SAP solution providers in its latest magazine, “The 10 Most Agile SAP Solution Providers To Keep An Eye On In 2019”

The magazine has recently published its special issue, in which it has featured the most prominent companies that empower their clients with the most advanced SAP solutions and tools for enterprise operations.

Today, SAP is leading the world with industry expertise in providing high grade enterprise solutions. It is the unique characteristic of SAP that enable a strong digital core and an easy-to-use system that supports innovations planned by companies. Tools provided by SAP are helping businesses transform themselves and take themselves towards success, without jeopardizing the daily business operations.

In its published story, Chris Carter, the CEO and Founder of Approyo shares his journey from starting Approyo to leading it to a successful SAP solutions provider company. Currently, in the leadership of Chris, SAP solutions by Approyo help businesses to unlock the full potential of SAP technologies. Mayur Shewale, Assistant Editor of Mirror Review shares, “SAP HANA and SAP Cloud Platform are useful to build intelligent applications and analytics solutions across various industries which greatly assist in streamlining business processes. However, the emergence of challenges like technological differences, integration difficulties is an essential part of their implementation. Such challenges are the prime motive behind the need for quality SAP solutions providers who can integrate SAP with leading systems like CRMs, Supplier, or third-party purchase order systems. Chris and his team at Approyo have recognized these challenges and are helping customers to develop a fully operational SAP HANA solution in the cloud to gratify the needs of their customers.”

“We are excited to be part of this great list of companies" said Christopher Carter, CEO of Approyo. "This achievement continues to validate our success in the SAP and Cloud marketplace.”

View the full profile: https://www.mirrorreview.com/approyo-moving-sap-applications-to-the-cloud/

The 10 Best Performing SAP Solution Providers list: https://www.mirrorreview.com/the-10-most-agile-sap-solution-providers-to-keep-an-eye-on-in-2019/

About Mirror Review
Mirror Review is a magazine company that unwinds the untold stories of Enterprises and their Founders, VPs, CEOs, CXOs, etc., while focusing on the unique services offered by them. As this is a platform for technologists and business people, the company keeps its audience informed with all current affairs in the market. The magazine company focuses on technology sectors such as Big Data, Cloud, IoT, Mobility, Networking, Security, Software, and Virtualization, and has issued numerous successful projects.

SAP Announces new SAP Leonardo Internet of Things (IoT) capabilities

SAP unveiled SAP Leonardo Internet of Things (IoT) capabilities, the all-encompassing technology that generates and drives digital transformation for Industrial IoT and Industry 4.0.

In addition, SAP announced the cloud-to-cloud interoperability of SAP Leonardo IoT with Microsoft Azure IoT Hub, providing customers a choice of connectivity and device management. SAP is committed to a strong ecosystem for IoT and understands the value its partners can bring to joint customers. This announcement was made at MWC being held February 25–28 in Barcelona. Below are some of the highlights from the announcement:

SAP is uniquely positioned to bring IoT data together with business processes. SAP Leonardo IoT will help customers increase productivity, redefine their customer experience and grow their revenue streams. It will enable customers to embed IoT into line-of-business (LoB) solutions, enhance business applications with IoT technology and develop new business models based on the new data the IoT solutions generate.

“SAP delivers valuable insight and drives business results by embedding IoT data into business processes,” said Elvira Wallis, senior vice president and global head of IoT at SAP. “With the launch of SAP Leonardo IoT, SAP solidifies its commitment to the IoT, and in particular Industrial IoT. The combination of IoT and our depth and breadth of high-value industry and application expertise helps customers gain greater business value and a stronger competitive advantage.”

SAP Leonardo IoT will allow customers to innovate and enhance business processes using data-driven intelligence and operational context from machines, products, supply chains, consumers and partners. SAP Leonardo IoT will offer three paths to innovation for customers based on their specific business needs, including:

• Combining IoT data with business process data to enable IoT-embedded business applications and accelerate adoption to give customers the ability to innovate quickly from within business applications – including SAP S/4HANA, the SAP C/4HANA suite, SAP SuccessFactors solutions, SAP Ariba solutions and the SAP Digital Supply Chain portfolio.
• Extending existing SAP IoT applications for better business value
• Building new intelligent IoT solutions using SAP Leonardo IoT to create unique and differentiated offerings

Interoperability of SAP Leonardo IoT and Microsoft Azure IoT Hub
The new collaboration plans to offer customers the possibility of using Microsoft Azure IoT Hub as the connectivity and device management layer for IoT telemetry data, which is seamlessly relayed to SAP Leonardo IoT.

In addition, SAP Leonardo IoT Edge aims to give customers the option to extend support for their business processes locally on top of Microsoft Azure IoT Edge runtime. Essential business function (EBF) modules based on SAP Leonardo IoT Edge are also planned to run in containers on Microsoft Azure IoT Edge, reducing customers dependency on latency, bandwidth and connectivity.

Read the full announcement on www.sap.comhttps://news.sap.com/2019/02/mwc-sap-leonardo-iot-shape-intelligent-enterprise/

Approyo CEO Chris Carter featured in Authority Magazine

Approyo CEO Chris Carter was featured as part of an ongoing series with Authority Magazine on February 27. In this interview with Dr. Ely Weinschneider, Chris shares how he manages to be there for his daughters while running a successful company.

Here is an excerpt from the interview:

"With almost three decades of extraordinary working experience in the SAP industry, Christopher Carter, CEO at Approyo founded the company with the goal of making it easy for customers to embrace SAP HANA. Chris works with businesses around the globe and is known to assist them in their journey to the usage of Big Data in the forms of Hadoop (Cloudera and Hortonwork’s) and SAP HANA. His experience has earned him national recognition by the American SAP Users Group, SAP, Hadoop World, Cloud Expo and more.

Under Chris’s leadership, Approyo has been named to the Inc. 5000 three years in a row (2016–2018) and named one the SAP Solution Provider of the Year in 2018 by ACQ5. In 2018, Chris was awarded the Gamechanger of the year by ACQ5, one of the 10 Most Inspiring Business Leaders by Mirror Review and one of the Rising Entrepreneurs of the Year by The Technology Headlines.

Thank you so much for joining us! Can you tell us your “childhood backstory”?
Absolutely I grew up as the oldest son of 4 boys. I was the first to leave for college. My parents were divorced, and I grew up between my mother and my father’s homes. When I left for college, I wanted to go somewhere warm and as far away from my parents as possible. I joke about that now, but at the time it really seemed fitting because I wanted to leave to become a technologist or baseball player.

Can you share the story about what brought you to this specific point in your career?
What brought me to this point in my life was a lot of life experiences. A ton of trial and error. And many times, not trusting others and doing it myself. It took a long time for me to be able to understand the fact that I could trust others which would help grow myself and my business."

Can you tell us a bit more about what your day to day schedule looks like?
Typically, my day starts at 5 a.m. The first thing I do is listen to the news while I’m getting ready. I try to be out the door by 5:30 a.m. because my local radio station plays The Star-Spangled Banner at that time. I can continue to listen to the local news and any national activities going on once I get to the office. I usually have some good time to myself to get ready for my day, go through my notes that I left for myself from the evening prior, and answer any emails that have come in overnight. From that point, I continue my day with a lot of activities with customers and prospects. I meet with my team in the office and staff across the globe with phone call meetings.

Read the full interview at https://medium.com/authority-magazine/to-be-a-great-parent-you-must-be-able-to-enjoy-life-to-the-fullest-with-those-around-you-and-the-45cb5cbc1b96

About Authority Magazine
Leadership Lessons from Authorities in Business, Film, Sports, and Tech. Authority Mag is devoted primarily to sharing interesting feature interviews of people who are authorities in their industry. We use interviews to draw out stories that are both empowering and actionable.

SAP Positioned as a Leader in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Data Management Solutions for Analytics for Seventh Consecutive Year

SAP announced that it has been positioned by Gartner Inc., the leading provider of research and analysis on the global information technology industry, as a Leader in the Magic Quadrant for Data Management Solutions for Analytics report — where SAP has been positioned as a Leader since 2013.

The evaluation is based on completeness of vision and ability to execute. According to the report, “Gartner defines a data management solution for analytics (DMSA) as a complete software system that supports and manages data in one or many file management systems, most commonly a database or multiple databases.”

“We are convinced that our improvement on the ‘ability to execute’ axis in the Leaders quadrant of Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for Data Management Solutions for Analytics report — as compared to the previous year — reflects the success of our customers and the value they create with SAP HANA. It’s the only data management platform with a multimodel database, advanced analytics, machine learning and AI capabilities,” said Gerrit Kazmaier, senior vice president, SAP Database and Data Management and SAP Analytics.

“Looking ahead over the next year, we are very focused on making enterprises more intelligent through our proven solutions for analytics and our data management portfolios available on premise and in the cloud.”

To qualify for inclusion in this Magic Quadrant, DMSA vendors must have had to support one or more of the following four use cases Gartner identifies that support analytics: traditional data warehouse, real-time data warehouse, context-independent data warehouse and logical data warehouse.

Read the full announcement on SAP.com 

SAP Releases Q4 and 2018 Results

SAP Announces Preliminary Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2018 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.

SAP Hits or Exceeds All Raised Outlook Metrics - Targets More Than 3x Cloud Revenue by 2023

• Cloud Subscription and Support Revenue Up 32% (IFRS) and Up 38% (Non-IFRS at Constant Currencies)  in FY 2018 
• Cloud Backlog Increased 30%, Exceeding €10 Billion at Year-End  
• Cloud and Software Revenue Up 5% (IFRS) and Up 10% (Non-IFRS at Constant Currencies) in FY 2018
• Cloud and Software Order Entry Exceeds €10 Billion, Up 14% at Constant Currencies in FY 2018
• Operating Profit Up 17% (IFRS) and Up 10% (Non-IFRS at Constant Currencies) in FY 2018  
• Guiding for Up to 39% Non-IFRS Cloud Subscription and Support Revenue Growth and Up to 10% Non-IFRS Cloud and Software Revenue Growth in 2019 at Constant Currencies  
• Guiding for Up to 11.5% Non-IFRS Operating Profit Growth in 2019 at Constant Currencies – Faster Than  Total Revenue Growth
• Targeting More Than €35 Billion in Total Revenue by 2023 

Full Year 2018 Highlights:
Even after multiple guidance raises during the year SAP met or exceeded all of its 2018 outlook metrics.

For the full year new cloud bookings were €1.81 billion, up 25% (up 28% at constant currencies). Cloud subscriptions and support backlog increased 30%, reaching €10 billion at year-end. Cloud subscriptions and support revenue was €4.99 billion (IFRS) or €5.21 billion (non-IFRS at constant currencies), achieving the full year outlook (€5.15 to €5.25 billion non-IFRS at constant currencies). Software revenue decreased 5 % year over year to €4.65 billion (IFRS), flat year over year (non-IFRS at constant currencies). New cloud and software license order entry exceeded €10 billion and grew by 14% at constant currencies year over year in the full year. Cloud and software revenue was €20.62 billion (IFRS) or €21.58 billion (non-IFRS at constant currencies), exceeding the full year outlook (€21.15 to €21.35 billion non-IFRS at constant currencies). Total revenue was €24.71 billion (IFRS) or €25.96 billion (non-IFRS at constant currencies), exceeding the full year outlook (€25.20 to €25.50 billion 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. The total of non-IFRS cloud subscriptions & support revenue and non-IFRS software support revenue was 65% of non-IFRS total revenue for the full year 2018, up 2 percentage points.

For the full year, operating profit was €5.71 billion (IFRS) or €7.48 billion (non-IFRS at constant currencies), achieving the full year outlook (€7.425 to €7.525 billion non-IFRS at constant currencies). Earnings per share increased 2% to €3.42 (IFRS) and decreased 2% to €4.35 (non-IFRS).

Operating cash flow for the full year was €4.30 billion, a decrease of 15% year over year. Free cash flow decreased 25% year over year to €2.84 billion. At year end, net liquidity was –€2.49 billion.

Fourth Quarter 2018 highlights
In the fourth quarter, new cloud bookings were €736 million, up 25% (23% at constant currencies). Cloud subscriptions and support revenue grew 41% year over year to €1.41 billion (IFRS), up 40% (non-IFRS at constant currencies). Software revenue grew 1% year over year to €2.09 billion (IFRS), up 8% (non-IFRS at constant currencies). New cloud and software license order entry grew 18% at constant currencies year over year. Cloud and software revenue grew 9% year over year to €6.32 billion (IFRS), up 11% (non-IFRS at constant currencies). Total revenue grew 9% year over year to €7.43 billion (IFRS), up 13% (non-IFRS at constant currencies).

In the fourth quarter operating profit increased by 22% year over year to €2.40 billion (IFRS), up 8% (non-IFRS at constant currencies). Earnings per share decreased 8% to €1.41 (IFRS) and decreased 15% to €1.51 (non-IFRS).

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.

S/4HANA adoption grew to approximately 10,500 customers, up 33% year over year. In the fourth quarter, more than 40% of the additional S/4HANA customers were net new.

Business Outlook 2019 
Reflecting SAP’s strong cloud and overall business momentum as well as the Qualtrics acquisition with a January 23rd, 2019 closing date, the Company is providing the following 2019 outlook:

• Non-IFRS cloud subscriptions and support revenue is expected to be in a range of €6.7 − €7.0 billion at constant currencies (2018: €5.03 billion), up 33% – 39% at constant currencies.  
• Non-IFRS cloud and software revenue is expected to be in a range of €22.4 – €22.7 billion at constant currencies (2018: €20.66 billion), up 8.5% – 10% at constant currencies.  
• Non-IFRS operating profit is expected to be in a range of €7.7 – €8.0 billion at constant currencies (2018: €7.16 billion), up 7.5% – 11.5% at constant currencies.  
• In addition, SAP expects total revenues to increase strongly, at a rate slightly lower than operating profit.
• The comparative numbers for 2018 do not include Qualtrics. Callidus revenue and profits are included in the comparative numbers from the April 5th, 2018 acquisition close date. 
• While SAP’s full-year 2019 business outlook is at constant currencies, actual currency reported figures are expected to be impacted by currency exchange rate fluctuations as the Company progresses through the year. 

Read the full results: https://www.sap.com/docs/download/investors/2018/sap-2018-q4-statement.pdf

Innovations and Intelligence in the new SAP S/4HANA 1809

SAP S/4HANA is an intelligent ERP solution that enables companies to capture every opportunity in today’s digital world, SAP S/4HANA removes common obstacles associated with legacy ERP applications, such as batch latency, complex landscapes, and manually-driven processes. The latest release, SAP S/4HANA 1809 provides new innovations in a number of key industries.

In the area of Procurement, we’re delivering s number of Machine Learning capabilities with SAP S/4HANA 1809, for example:

• Increased invoice automation and efficient invoice monitoring for exception handling
• Reduction of free-text items by automatically proposing the creation of a new catalog item
• Proposal of material group for free-text items in purchase requisitions
• Provision of options for materials without source of supply

Quotation Conversion Rates is an innovation in Sales and Distribution which truly delivers on the promise of an intelligent ERP. As an internal sales representative or a sales manager, you can use Quotation Conversion Rates to track to what extent your quotations are being converted into sales orders before expiring. By leveraging machine learning capabilities, you can gain predictive insights into quotation conversion by comparing actual and predicted results. The Quotation Conversion Probability (also known as Order Probability) is the probability that a quotation item will be converted into a sales order item. The probability, expressed as a percentage, and net value of the quotation is used in order to calculate a total expected order value.

In Manufacturing we’re introducing Demand-driven replenishment. With the demand-driven buffer level management, you can plan and manage supply chains much more efficiently. Providing decoupling points with strategic stock positions, manufacturers can avoid the so-called “Bull-Whip-Effect”, where the variations in demand increases as you move further up the supply chain from customer to supplier.

Moreover, in inventory management, we included intelligence by leveraging predictive analytics and machine learning for decision support.

Finance as well has quite a few intelligent innovations in store for you, for example predictive accounting. When a sales order is confirmed in the system, this is not recorded in accounting until goods have been delivered and the invoice has been sent. With the predictive accounting functionality, based on the sales order, a predictive goods issue and a predictive invoice is registered.

• Group reporting – The need to deliver accurate, up-to-date financial information continuously in a company’s consolidation process is not limited to the level of an individual entity. Therefore, SAP has introduced the SAP S/4HANA Finance for Group Reporting solution which provides direct access to the underlying transactions and detail across the entire enterprise so that a company can confidently and efficiently consolidate their financial and managerial results required in their closing cycles. It enables organizations to extend this evolution towards a continuous financial close on group level. It provides unprecedented transparency by delivering a complete flow of collection, processing, analysis and publication of the information.
• Embedded analytics – Most finance professionals will agree that it is often cumbersome to get interesting information out of their ERP system. Additional capabilities have been added to support business users in getting insights more flexibly and efficiently, so they can concentrate on acting on the information, rather than investing time in number crunching.
• Tax service – Global tax regulations get more diverse, complicated and change more often than ever before. Keeping up with the pace of change, typically in multiple systems, is a challenge. SAP’s response is a central tax determination engine with rules and rates maintained by SAP or its partners. With the SAP S/4HANA 1809 release, emphasis has been placed on enabling self-service tax management, facilitating an organizations chosen approach to reduce the risks and costs of inaccurate calculations and liability from non-compliance.

Start your path to the Intelligent Enterprise with Approyo
Approyo provides full SAP service technology with extensive capabilities in consulting, solutions architecture, hosting and managed services, in order to develop the right solution for our customers. Check out our new Whitepaper, What's new in SAP S/4HANA 1809 and get started today...

Approyo and CEO Chris Carter Featured in BizTimes Milwaukee

Approyo is proud to share that we have been featured in the BizTimes Milwaukee magazine and website. The article written by Molly Dill, focuses on our CEO Chris Carter and our recent growth in the SAP ecosystem and Southeast Wisconsin over the past few years. Below is the article:
​​
Approyo LLC founder Chris Carter learned a lot from the failure of his first SAP software company, CCI, in 2012.

After CCI lost a major contract, Carter had to put the Milwaukee-based business into bankruptcy and endure significant strain on his relationships with family and friends, some of whom had worked for the company.

“I learned several things. First of all, don’t put all your eggs in one basket,” Carter said. “Second thing I learned is I never want to go through that again… so I work 10 times harder, 20 times harder every day. The third thing I learned is you’ve got to always be selling.”

In 2013, Carter took those lessons and applied them to the formation of Approyo. And it seems to be working. Approyo recently moved from a 900-square-foot office in Muskego to a 7,800-square-foot space in Brookfield and was named to the 2018 Inc. 5000 list with three-year growth of 557 percent.

“Being named as one of the fastest-growing companies in the United States is a great honor. I’m proud of my team,” he said.

Like CCI did, Approyo consults with companies on implementing and hosting enterprise resource planning software from German company SAP. ERP software is used to manage and automate business operations and customer relations.

But unlike CCI, Approyo has spread its client base among 27 companies in various industries across the globe, including French IT services giant Atos. It specializes in a specific type of SAP system called HANA, which is poised for growth as SAP has asked its customers to upgrade by 2025 or face maintenance fee increases.

“Companies like Briggs & Stratton, Miller Brewing Co., Boeing and others, they literally use (SAP HANA) to run their entire business,” Carter said.

In 2018, Approyo’s revenue topped $5 million, and its last three years have been profitable, Carter said. It had grown to 73 employees this year, but recently eliminated its workforce in India to focus on new hires in the U.S. Approyo now has 31 employees, 11 whom work out of the new Brookfield headquarters.

“I don’t take any profits out of the company; I put it straight back into the company to grow it,” Carter said.

His next growth initiative: finding two to three companies to acquire.
“You can’t just be a small player any longer. You need to think bigger, you need to think aggressive, you need to think forward and not just day-to-day,” Carter said.

Five years down the road, he plans to sell the bigger, better version of Approyo.

View the original article:
https://www.biztimes.com/2019/ideas/entrepreneurship/approyo-moves-to-much-larger-hq-earns-inc-5000-spot/

About BizTimes Media
In print, online and in person, BizTimes Media provides up-to-the-minute business news, thoughtful analysis and valuable strategic insights to southeastern Wisconsin business leaders.

Our award-winning print magazine, BizTimes Milwaukee, includes industry trend analysis, strategic advice and one-on-one interviews with Milwaukee’s top executives, achievers and up-and-comers.

BizTimes.com is the place to find the latest business news in southeastern Wisconsin. Convenient and timely daily and weekly e-newsletters are delivered to your inbox to ensure that you’re always up to date.

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Photo Credit: Jake Hill Photography