How can the Intelligent Enterprise Impact Professional Services Companies?

In today’s digital economy, there is immense pressure on professional services firms to do more for less. Firms are facing new price pressures and competitive threats. New entrants into the marketplace have changed the way firms deliver services, forcing them to either adopt new approaches or face stagnant or declining revenue growth and margins. Firms must be able to respond rapidly to these challenges yet still comply with the pressure of new reporting standards. How does a digital core with a true single source of truth help?

Strategic Priorities in a Digital Economy
The digital economy is disruptive. Professional services firms must use market dynamics to create and capture new business opportunities and enable their strategic objective of nonlinear revenue growth.

Outcome-based engagements
The simple “time and materials” business model that proved highly profitable for professional services organizations in the past is being replaced by outcome-based models. Clients are increasingly focused on the business outcome of an engagement, rather than the effort involved, and are negotiating prices and relationships accordingly. The key lever for firms is to adopt a superior bidding process resulting inaccurate proposals that will ensure predictability and repeatability of outcomes and thus minimize delivery risks.

Knowledge as a service
Professional services firms are realizing that they have valuable expertise and content that can benefit their customers beyond the typical face-to-face engagement model. In the past, intellectual property (IP) was available for customers only in formal engagements and was a key point of differentia-tion. However, innovative service firms continue to productize their service lines, create knowledge “vaults,” and monetize their institutional expertise. To keep pace, the quote-to-cash “process infrastructure” must be adapted to the emerging business models and address the full lifecycle of the new delivery models for digital expertise and IP services.

Leverage talent networks
Digitalization of talent has made new business models possible by identifying, classifying, and attracting talent on an as-needed basis outside the boundaries of a firm and effectively integrating talent into one team based on powerful virtual learning and collaboration platforms.

Professional Services Capabilities with the Intelligent Enterprise

• Understand and optimize engagement profitability - Reduce service costs with full, real-time insight and automated accounting, time and expense processes, while recognizing more revenue through integrated project delivery and billing processes.
• Assess staffing levels anytime, anywhere - Onboard critical resources in time for upcoming projects, track resources continuously, and access contact details quickly to support collaboration between teams, organizations, and partners.
• Simplify time entry in the cloud - Streamline time-entry processing to notify employees when their time entries are rejected and allow them to correct their timesheets and resubmit them – anytime, anywhere, and on any device.
• Enforce limits on time and expense billing - Boost your clients’ confidence in your services by staying within the defined limit for time and expense with the addition of an upper cap amount to your sales agreements and service contracts.
• Reimagine bid management - Speed bid creation dramatically and improve project margin, with more effective planning, then move smoothly into project execution with consolidated real-time and historical insights. 
• Streamline quote-to-cash - Create customer contracts with competitive pricing, personalized payment plans, and multiple methods of billing, while simplifying billing through consolidated invoicing across all engagement types. 

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 and business models, 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).

View the full blog post: https://www.approyo.com/single-post/2019/08/08/How-can-the-Intelligent-Enterprise-impact-Professional-Services-Companies

Approyo recognized as a Trailblazing Company to Watch in 2019 by The Enterprise World

The Enterprise World, a business magazine, a platform for all the master business minds to share their stories of success, releases their introductory issues.

The Trailblazing Companies to Watch: 2019, the US edition, features the stories of companies pioneering in their industry and present to people innovative and reliable services.

“We are honored to be part of this great list of companies," said Christopher M. Carter, CEO of Approyo. "We have experienced tremendous growth in the first half of 2019 and we look forward to continuing to grow the rest of the year”

Approyo Profile: https://www.theenterpriseworld.com/approyo-simplifying-digital-transformation-for-sap-solutions/

List of Trailblazing Company to Watch:  https://www.theenterpriseworld.com/trailblazing-companies-to-watch-2019

Approyo has been providing solutions powered by SAP HANA®, such as the latest version of SAP S/4HANA®, in the cloud since 2012. Approyo built an entire platform using the best solutions in the market, helping companies move to SAP HANA quickly and benefit immediately.

About The Enterprise World
The Enterprise World, is a business magazine, a platform for all the master business minds to share their stories of success, the loopholes they encountered to become the overnight stars they are now of the enterprise world.

How can the Intelligent Enterprise impact the Telecommunications industry?

Disruptive change is happening in the telecommunications industry at a rapid pace. 5G, new market entrants, innovations in business models, mergers, and evolving industry standards require constant adaptation. Communications service providers (CSPs) must be able to respond to rapidly changing conditions yet still comply with all standards. How does a digital core with a true single source of truth help?

Strategic Priorities in a Digital Economy
The digital economy is disruptive. Telecommunications companies need strategic priorities that drive transformation. SAP solutions powered by Approyo supports a reimagined set of end-to-end (E2E) business scenarios to support the strategic priorities of working in a digital environment.

• Intelligent operations - New innovations around artificial intelligence, machine learning, blockchain, and more have the potential to drive vast efficiencies around existing business processes and enable new generation processes moving forward.Labor-intensive processes around management of invoices, service tickets, and customer attrition will be among the first processes that leverage new technologies to drive optimization in an intelligent enterprise.
• Profitable customer centricity - With new market entrants and OTT players providing heavy competition, successful telcos are extending the use of new technologies to rethink how they can deliver optimal customer experiences, manage profitability, and offer relevant services.Putting customers first and optimizing margins will become more important to drive overall business growth.Focusing on delivering a superior and personalized customer experience will become even more critical to compete effectively.
• Innovative business models - The emergence of a sensor-based world opens up the space for platform providers to deliver adapted and scalable solutions for connectivity, insight, applications, and processes in the IoT. Providers can offer sensor-friendly vertical services and solutions to enterprise customers or industry ecosystems, and also develop industry-specific stack-and-build competence and partner ecosystems that target strategic industries, both organically or by acquisition.

Respond quickly to market dynamics
A digital core is a critical component of a modern telecommunications company’s IT architecture to ensure stability and long-term reliability for core enterprise processes. It must also provide 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 new over-the-top (OTT) competitors, new revenue driving business models, and continued industry consolidation.

Create efficiencies throughout the business
The ability to respond quickly is an essential part of managing a telecommunications 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 margins can be optimized to drive profitability by understanding where revenue leakage is happening at the per-subscriber level.

Gain visibility to become more profitable
With the commoditization of core communications services, every telecommunications company is looking for opportunities to maximize margins and profitability. Visibility across the business is the critical component to finding areas to mitigate margin loss and optimize profitability. Granular insights at the subscriber, service, and channel levels provide the opportunity to identify problem areas and react quickly to remedy them.

Leverage new innovations for evolving business models
Customers in every industry are demanding innovation and often look to their CSP to deliver services based on these innovations. The opportunity exists for CSPs that can react quickly and that have a digital core in place to deliver these services. With the right capabilities in place, CSPs are in a prime position to be the providers of choice to enable new services such as connected cars, smart transportation, connected health, and more.

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 and business models, 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). Telecommunications companies that have big innovation appetites or prefer to be early adopters have already begun this journey.

How can the Intelligent Enterprise impact the Insurance industry?

Radical change in the insurance industry is occurring at a rapid pace. Changes in technologies, in business models, in standards, and in the makeup of insurance companies themselves require constant adaptation. Insurers must be able to respond to rapidly changing conditions yet still comply with all standards. How does a digital core with a true single source of truth help?

Strategic Priorities in a Digital Economy

• Digital engagement - Customers want to engage with insurers through seamless, interactive experiences across all channels, including self-service portals. Insurers must communicate with people and devices and connect to external data sources to build an engagement model with the real world. The creation of consistent, loyalty-building experiences is essential to meet the expectations of customers in today’s digital world.
• Protection service - Customer expectations are moving in the direction that a potential loss should be prevented before it occurs by means of a protection service. Insurers should deploy hybrid products by bundling insurance coverage across lines of business with non-insurance products and services to offer requested protection services.
• Data-driven influence - Customer data about behavior and points of view needs to be analyzed to enable insurers to deliver innovative products to market quickly while maintaining existing products more efficiently. Insurers need to use the key insights provided by IoT applications and related insurance services to drive not only what products are created and what services are offered but also when and where.

The Need for an Intelligent ERP System

Responding to rapid changes
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 new business models, new regulations, and new business events, such as mergers or acquisitions.

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

Keeping data under control
Every insurance company needs the computing capability for carrying out complex risk assessments 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. They must also manage the enormous amount of data generated by connected networks to develop and deliver leading-edge products and services.

Addressing innovative opportunities
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 powered by Approyo 
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). Insurance companies that have big innovation appetites or prefer to be early adopters have already begun this journey.

Approyo recognized as an SAP Industry Leader in Three Categories of the 2019 ACQ5 Global Awards

Approyo, a leading enterprise SAP HANA Solutions Provider, announced today it has been recognized in three categories of the 2019 ACQ5 Global Awards by ACQ5. This is the second consecutive year that Approyo has been honored by ACQ5.

• US - SCALE-UP COMPANY OF THE YEAR (IT SERVICES), APPROYO
• US - SAP SOLUTION PROVIDER OF THE YEAR, APPROYO
• US - GAMECHANGER OF THE YEAR, CHRIS CARTER, APPROYO

The ACQ5 Global Awards honor the leading deal teams, firms and professionals whose activities set the standard for our markets. This year, companies and individuals, representing every major market in the world, became finalists for the awards.

"It is an honor to be recognized by ACQ5 for the second year in a row," says Christopher M. Carter CEO of Approyo. "Thank you to the folks at ACQ5 and all of our customers, partners and staff. This achievement continues to validate our success in the SAP ecosystem."

“Experts whose intimate knowledge and expertise in the corporate, cultural, financial and legal arenas are redefining our industry,” says Jake Robson, Group Editor of The ACQ5. “The 2019 ACQ5 Global Award winners represent the best of breed in all industry sectors and have earned these honours by standing out in a group of very impressive finalists. We are lucky enough to work with some of the most influential and enterprising private organizations in the world and are proud to share their message with our readers. Relying on reader insight and experience to provide nominations to the panel remains the cornerstone of our program and to identify industry leaders, individuals, teams and organizations that represent the benchmark of achievement and best practice in the business world.”

View Approyo's full profile: https://www.acq5.com/magazines/29_932

About the ACQ5 Global Awards:
ACQ Global Awards’ Objective as Always: To gather quantitative and qualitative information from and about the sector to be able to give a set of “Best of” awards. One of the industry's favorite awards events was right to anticipate another record-breaking number of votes! The total number of nominations received stood at an amazing 97,416 our highest ever.

The poll was not only designed to reflect actual performance in any particular area of expertise, it was also aimed to reflect direct market share based on a number of criteria. Voters were encouraged to base their decisions on addressing professionalism: experience, value for money & responsiveness in order for ACQ to derive a numerical rating from 1 – 5. In that sense, this poll should be considered a reflection of how professionals view any practice, individual or related sector supplier in terms of overall quality of service.

About ACQ5:
Serving the finance sector since 2003, we provide our Global audience of over 168,000 subscribers with the information behind the headlines.

ACQ5, the English-language magazine news portal is read exclusively by senior executives holding power and authority at major organizations. Our readership are the people who will select and authorize the purchase of your products and services. The magazine is intended for CEO's & CFO's as well as other corporate finance and private equity executives from all corners of the globe.

The SAP Intelligent Enterprise and the Experience Economy

Last year, SAP unveiled its strategy to deliver the Intelligent Enterprise. At the core of our strategy was SAP’s strong belief that every company needs to address three key challenge in today’s economy:

1. Intelligent Suite
An integrated, yet modular suite of line-of-business (LoB) applications that enables SAP customers to share insights across functions to better manage stakeholders and their day-to-day operations.

2. Digital Platforms
Data management and cloud platform technologies to dynamically orchestrate the growing volume of data and business processes across an intelligent enterprise, so that customers can make sense of their data in real-time. The digital platform forms the foundation of all intelligent activities.

3. Intelligent Technology
Tools and technologies that turn intelligence into business outcome such as analytics, machine learning (ML), artificial intelligence (AI), the Internet of Things (IoT), and blockchain. They are delivered through the digital platform, embedded within intelligent suite applications, and applied to processes that integrate both SAP and third-party data and applications.

Enter 2019 - The Experience Company powered by the Intelligent Enterprise
In an era in which data plays a vital role in all decision-making and in every business process, having the ability to manage big X-data and O-data, gaining new levels of business insights, and turning them into impactful actions is an absolute key to customer success. As business data volume grows exponentially, and as enterprises have access to an abundance of new intelligent technologies, customers have countless opportunities to influence experiences and reimagine their business processes through data-driven innovation.

The following outlines two examples for the opportunities in reimagining business processes:

1. Drive a step-change in productivity: a global clothes retailer collects big and diverse data from SAP C/4HANA including X-data from Qualtrics software and from third-party sources such as comments on social media.

This data is streamed into a data lake integrated with SAP HANA and dedicated to a customer behavior analysis project where intelligence is applied by building ML models to predict changes in customers’ buying preferences. The results are streamed in real-time to SAP C/4HANA marketing campaigns, where a new campaign is automatically triggered via SAP Intelligent Robotic Process Automation whenever a change in customer preference is identified, significantly increasing marketing productivity leading to additional revenue.

2. Build new business models: a lighting hardware company uses SAP Leonardo IoT, SAP Analytics and SAP Cloud Platform Integration to deliver a light-as-a-service business model. By connecting the lighting hardware to sensors, and orchestrating and analyzing its data streams, customers can receive a variable bill based on usage instead of paying for lighting upfront. In addition, customers can gain insight into costs and usage with an intelligent solution that is able to predict future costs. This solution helps users to make better informed and confident decisions drives operational efficiency and saves energy.

Technology & Innovation Overview and Outlook
The role of technology and innovation in the evolving Experience Economy has never been more important for the success of our customers. As customers’ and employees’ demand for better experiences increases, enterprises must focus on their businesses and adapt to change, rather than concentrating on technical building blocks. SAP believes that these needs can be addressed with a “business technology platform that provides the required platform services combined with the business semantics, content and context which are key to turn data into meaningful business outcomes. The winners will be intelligent enterprises that utilize this platform to get the most out of their experience and operational data and processes. This is the goal of SAP’s digital platform where the business-centric technologies of SAP HANA, SAP Analytics, and SAP Leonardo power the intelligent suite, enable new data-driven innovation scenarios and together with Qualtrics help SAP customers to turn into Experience Companies.

Therefore, SAP’s vision for the digital platform is to be the business technology platform that provides the required technologies for intelligent enterprises to power the intelligent suite, deliver the next-generation experience management, and offer the necessary technologies standalone to our customers and partners for unlocking new types data-driven innovation.

Read the full blog post on www.approyo.com

Cloud Computing 101 - Hexagonal Clustering

Hexagon clustering is a technique to process geospatial data for identifying and visualizing things such as escape routes that avoid hazards in emergency situations or the optimal paths for utility pipelines that avoid restricted areas.

Developers can use it easily in new applications and combine it with other SQL predicates. Nobody other solution besides SAP HANA offers this capability, and it is laborious to implement it in other relational databases using the basic geospatial functions.

Why supporting Hexagonal clustering is important for SAP HANA customers? It allows to represent curvatures and is ideal for showing path connectivity or movement. It is extremely useful for all spatial data processing in all industries.

Real-World Examples: 

• Rescue management: finding evacuation paths and identifying evacuation zones. For example in case of a wildfire, you need to guide people from A to B, avoiding fire zones
• Trafficability: moving a battalion of tanks from A to B, without crossing risky muddy areas and woods.
• Utility grid planning: finding the right path for a new gas pipe, but you can't go underneath building, need to avoid protected lands and going over costly roads or rails.

Hexagonal clustering is a better way of getting insights from relational spatial data.  It assign geometries within free definable area to the identified hexagonal pattern. Using hexagon grids reduce sampling bias due to edge effects of the grid shape.

How SAP HANA uniquely supports Hexagonal clustering?
SAP HANA is the only database that offers Hexagonal clustering out of the box. 

SAP HANA clusters geocoordinates in a free definable area in an over-spanning grid of clusters in one SQL query. This can be combined with many other SQL features without coding (e.g. count(*), ST_UnionAggr, ST_Centroid, ST_Enveloper, …)) and runs on millions of coordinates in seconds.
Hexagonal clustering leverages SAP HANA spatial and graph capabilities.

Other exciting innovations to SAP HANA core spatial capability include:

• Memory footprint reduction by a factor 2 - To innovate faster and at a lower cost
• Open source support - SAP expanded support for geotools and geoserver: customers can now use free GIS systems instead of commercial GIS systems, expanding to new markets & targeting open source community. This is important and many GIS users prefer open source rather than commercial systems

SAP S/4HANA migration fears are overblown - Approyo CEO Chris Carter interviewed by Tech Target

Approyo CEO Chris Carter was recently interviewed by Jim O'Donnell for Tech Target. Below is an excerpt from the interview, to read the full interview, please visit https://searchsap.techtarget.com/news/252467155/S-4HANA-migration-fears-are-overblown. 

Most SAP customers will eventually have to face the inevitable S/4HANA migration.

SAP has stated it will end support for the legacy SAP ECC platform by 2025. Although migration is a daunting prospect, the fear factor may be overblown, and customers could be missing out on the benefits of going to S/4HANA.

In this Q&A, Chris Carter, founder and CEO of Approyo LLC in Brookfield, Wis., comes at an SAP S/4HANA migration from a more hopeful place: The leap from ECC to S/4HANA may be inevitable, but it's also manageable.

Carter has been around since the SAP R/2 days, SAP's ERP software in the 90s and the predecessor of SAP HANA. Approyo, an SAP partner, provides managed services, hosting, migration and implementation services for more than 300 SAP cloud environments for customers around the world, according to Carter. It has also done just over 100 SAP migrations.

Where are SAP customers in their plans for S/4HANA migration with the 2025 deadline in mind?
Chris Carter: We've been working with SAP hand-in-hand on some of the migrations, but customers are very slow to migrate -- and understandably so. They're fed one line and then there's another real world thing that happens, but it's not as bleak as people think. You've got to work with a lot of Z data codes [non-standard data] and change activities, but there are so many tools that we can use that we can understand what is going on with their current environment in order to move into the new environment. You get a lot of integrators out there trying to get people scared, but it's really not that scary. This is a lot easier than what it was when it was R/2 to R/3, that's for sure.

What's the biggest fear SAP customers have about an S/4HANA migration?
Carter: Cost is No. 1, and change is No. 2. Everybody is worried about change -- is this going to change my job? Is it going to change what we do in FICO with the new [S/4HANA] finance tools? Every new SAP system has changes -- it's been that way since the R/2 days -- so they just have to understand that going in. You have to literally walk them through what those changes are and how they're going to benefit from them. You need strong change management and you've got to be very cognizant of what activities are going to happen.

What are the first things organizations need to do when starting a migration?
Carter: The first thing is always the plan. What is your plan and what's the plan for your SAP system, because they may not go hand in hand. An SAP system typically has had so many changes to it over the years that the individuals who are working on it today, and who may work on it tomorrow, may not know everything that has changed within that environment and what's going to happen starting tomorrow when the new system kicks in.

Read the full interview: https://searchsap.techtarget.com/news/252467155/S-4HANA-migration-fears-are-overblown

How can the Intelligent Enterprise impact Industrial Manufacturers

The digitalization of businesses across all industries is happening rapidly, and there is no turning back. Companies are looking for new ways to deliver value to their customers using digital channels and creating personalized, digitally-enabled products across all sectors, from consumer products to heavy equipment and machinery.

The industrial machinery and components (IM&C) industry is at the heart of this shift, providing the intelligent machines and equipment needed for this transformation, as well as spearheading innovative processes such as connected manufacturing and predictive maintenance and service.

Strategic Priorities in a Digital Economy
In this situation, where the opportunity is huge but at the same time new market entrants are threatening traditional IM&C companies, it is essential to focus on the right strategic priorities to drive digitalization across the business

Customer centricity
Putting the end customer’s point of view at the center of every decision is a key prerequisite for success in the digital age. This does not stop in the sales department but also applies to what products are built and what services are offered.

Serving the “segment of one”
Providing solutions that precisely fit the needs of one single customer has been commonplace in traditional engineer-to-order environments. Now, the ability to capture customer requirements effectively and drive mass customization is the key to giving customers exactly what they want.

Digital smart products
Differentiation and specificity in products stems from digital capabilities and value-added services that are bundled with physical products. Using digital capabilities such as self-awareness of technical health and operational status or business system connectivity helps industrial manufacturers differentiate.

Digital supply chain and smart factory
Digital technology on the shop floor and in the supply chain is not new. What is new is the way production and logistics are intelligently connected to the rest of the business and are able to deal with external impulses such as short-term demand and supply fluctuations or changes in the configuration of a customer order that require different materials, parts, and machining operations.

Servitization and new business models
As traditional products are commoditized, IM&C companies are shifting from selling physical products to providing complete solutions. Generating more than 50% of revenue from services is a common goal for manufacturers who are looking for higher profit margins and increased customer intimacy. The “digital twin for business” is a key requirement, representing the physical product over the entire lifecycle, including changing data points during manufacturing and installation as well as operational performance issues, the financial value created, and costs incurred up until the final phase of decommissioning.

View the full blog post on www.approyo.com 

How can the Intelligent Enterprise impact the hospitality industry?

Hospitality is changing rapidly. With evolving guest expectations and an unrelenting flood of data, hospitality’s digital horizon is disrupting classic distribution and guest stay models. Technology has become so interwoven with business strategies that the two are hardly distinguishable.

Technologies such as mobile devices and the Internet of Things (IoT) are
fundamentally redefining the way customers live, work, and play. Other innovations such as artificial intelligence (AI), blockchain, and in-memory computing are opening up new playing fields and replacing traditional processes. For example, AI and machine learning are modernizing reservations, guest services, and operations. Meanwhile, consumer wearables, smart devices, virtual reality headsets, and online games are becoming points for brand interaction. It’s all happening at a breakneck pace.

Hospitality needs to act fast to stay ahead of the disruption curve. For example,
using the power of predictive analytics, hoteliers can now identify high-value guests, uncover profitable items and services to promote, anticipate demand, and manage inventory more effectively.

The Future: Priorities for Hospitality
Faced with a huge opportunity along with new market entrants, today’s hotel companies must focus on the right strategic priorities to drive digitalization across the business. By successfully embracing the opportunities offered by new technologies and addressing the following six strategic priorities, companies can lay the foundation for successful digitalization and stay ahead of the innovation curve.

• Own the Guest Journey with Enhanced Distribution and Shopping Models
• Transform the Guest Experience
• Digitalize the Workforce
• Unlock Business Value Across All Data Sources
• Enable Smart and Connected Hotels and Ships
• Drive Global Growth and Accelerate Brand Strategies with the Cloud 

Reimagine Hospitality
The digital economy offers infinite new opportunities.
In a connected world where every company is becoming a technology company, smarter products and services will refocus commerce on business outcomes and blur industry lines.

Own the Customer Journey

LOYAL CUSTOMERS WILL SHOP DIRECT - A digital and mobile world changes the way customers book travel. Based on changing behaviors, hoteliers are learning from retailers and adopting similar approaches with guests. Hotel companies that don’t adapt to digitalization risk being simply a supplier in the travel chain, leaving others, such as the Internet giants or new players entering this industry, to control the traveler conversation.

TRANSFORM THE SHOPPING EXPERIENCE - Offers have to be personal, contextual, relevant, and seamless, regardless of the touch point or device.
Hoteliers need to know their travelers and capture as much information as is available from internal interactions and social media data. They must use this data to create useful offers at the moment and location where they are most relevant. This retail approach is vital to have direct access to the traveler, expand reach in the guest journey, and increase revenues with ancillary products, partner products, and merchandising. Technological capabilities
enable this process.

BROADEN DISTRIBUTION MODELS - Distribution models are changing as the digital world requires new ways of selling. Powerful new digital players
are entering the travel market. Hoteliers want more control of the products and services they offer, whether they sell directly or indirectly. But mostly they want to own the guest journey and attract more travelers to buy directly from them. The ideal approach is to have a single view of available room inventory, amenities, promotions, descriptions, and rate plans across channels and third
parties while refining inventory to drive higher sales. This allows hotels to up-sell noninventory room items, meeting rooms, activities, and amenities. It’s a bit like supersizing a meal in a more personal way.

Drive Global Growth and accelerate brand strategy 

INCREASE BRAND VALUE - Build brand extensions by combining omnichannel commerce and digital technologies to move into new segment offerings. Configure and deploy new promotions and rate plans rapidly, and push distressed inventory to the direct channel of choice.

Unlock business value across all data sources 

ACCELERATE AND SIMPLIFY PROPERTY ACQUISITIONS -  To achieve a real-time view of data and system interoperability, your company needs a comprehensive platform approach. Cloud-based, standardized solutions enable hotel companies to innovate faster, manage master-data complexity efficiently, adhere to country regulations, and deliver quickly in the global economy. SAP can help you lead your organization’s digital journey and
address the challenges of data proliferation from enterprise data, Big Data, the IoT, and beyond. We can also help you transform all data – the foundation of a digital enterprise – into insight to drive innovation and create business value.

TRANSFORM ASSET MANAGEMENT - The platform approach enables real-time visibility into the condition of assets by measuring, predicting, and alerting when incidents occur. To do so, the platform links asset data to an intelligent asset network that provides performance benchmarking, up-to-date service documentation, and real-time visibility of spare-part replacements. The platform also connects asset data from OEMs, operations, and service providers – creating a collaborative solution for sharing asset information with business partners.

Read the full blog post on www.approyo.com

Approyo CEO Christopher M. Carter accepted into Forbes Technology Council

Christopher M. Carter, CEO of Approyo has been accepted into Forbes Technology Council, an invitation-only community for world-class CIOs, CTOs, and technology executives.

Christopher was vetted and selected by a review committee based on the depth and diversity of his experience. Criteria for acceptance include a track record of successfully impacting business growth metrics, as well as personal and professional achievements and honors.

“We are honored to welcome Christopher M. Carter into the community,” said Scott Gerber, founder of Forbes Councils, the collective that includes Forbes Technology Council. “Our mission with Forbes Councils is to bring together proven leaders from every industry, creating a curated, social capital-driven network that helps every member grow professionally and make an even greater impact on the business world.”

As an accepted member of the Council, Christopher has access to a variety of exclusive opportunities designed to help him reach peak professional influence. He will connect and collaborate with other respected local leaders in a private forum. Christopher will also be invited to work with a professional editorial team to share his expert insights in original business articles on Forbes.com, and to contribute to published Q&A panels alongside other experts.

Finally, Christopher will benefit from exclusive access to vetted business service partners, membership-branded marketing collateral, and the high-touch support of the Forbes Councils member concierge team.

“I am thrilled to be joining this great community of technology leaders,” said Christopher M. Carter, CEO of Approyo. “The Forbes Technology Council gives great insight into the technology trends of today and into the future. I’m excited about my invitation to this community of innovative minds and looking forward to sharing my insights on the SAP ecosystem and the impact SAP can make.”

ABOUT FORBES COUNCILS
Forbes Councils is a collective of invitation-only communities created in partnership with Forbes and the expert community builders who founded Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC). In Forbes Councils, exceptional business owners and leaders come together with the people and resources that can help them thrive.

For more information about Forbes Technology Council, visit forbestechcouncil.com. To learn more about Forbes Councils, visit forbescouncils.com.

Approyo > Bacon

You've heard the phrase, "Bacon makes everything better". Approyo takes it one step further, we make your SAP Better!

We make it easy to manage, upgrade and migrate your SAP environments. With the upcoming 2025 deadline, it's more important than ever to understand all your options for your SAP environment. With over 300 managed SAP environments and over 100 migrations and upgrades to SAP S/4HANA, our team is here to support you!

Why is Approyo greater than Bacon?

• Certified SAP Partner
• Enterprise Ready
• Zero Calories
• Scalable and Reliable 
• Global Team of SAP Experts
• Never too crispy 
• Simple Cloud Migrations
• Fast Implementation
• Dependable Support

The Approyo team will be sharing more information and SAP content all summer long. Follow us on Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn to learn more about why Approyo is greater than bacon.

Learn more at: www.approyo.com/Approyo-vs-bacon

Approyo named one of the 10 Most Promising SAP Solution Providers by Insights Success

Approyo is excited to announce it has been named one of the 10 Most Promising SAP Solution Providers 2019 by Insights Success.

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

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

View the full profile: https://www.insightssuccess.com/approyo-offering-simplified-sap-with-innovative-cloud-solutions/

The 10 Best Performing SAP Solution Providers list: https://www.insightssuccess.com/the-10-most-promising-sap-solution-providers-2019-june2019/

About Insights Success
Insights Success is a forum where top leaders and executives talk and share about their experiences, views, and mantra for success which will help the young and dynamic bloodline of professionals to learn, cater and deliver business needs for customers in order to become futuristic market leaders.

Innovative Data Management with SAP HANA

Your business needs intelligent technology that can support all your applications and analytic solutions at speed.

• No matter the workload – advanced analytics, transactions, and increasingly a combination of the two. No matter the type of data – structured, unstructured, at rest or in motion. You want a data platform that processes this data at speed without massive human intervention.  

Your business wants to automate as much as possible routine IT administrative tasks. In a recent survey where participants were asked about the top imperatives for data management, 52% responded they wanted more intelligence to improve productivity.

You also want agile technology that allows you to harness the value of all your data. Data that is increasingly created outside your company four walls – in the cloud, in hybrid distributed environments - with security and governance. In another recent survey 99% of participants cited the agility of a consistent hybrid cloud platform as a priority.

Finally, you should choose efficient technology that allows you to strike the right balance between cost and performance in a simple way, for data at any scale.  In a SAP sponsored research, 59% of survey participants cited that efficiency in term of cost/performance is a top priority for their data management projects.

Why SAP HANA powered by Approyo
It is intelligent. Not only it has new capabilities to help IT accelerate operations, and data scientists shorten ML lifecycles but most fundamentally its unique next-generation hybrid transactional analytical core can provide accurate answers in real-time on live data without tuning. SAP HANA also uniquely processes and analyzes diverse data in context in one system to always provide full situational awareness in real-time.

It is also agile to allows you to securely manage, access and share data across clouds and on-premise, enabling you to innovate faster on the best infrastructure for the job at hand. SAP developed a number of innovations here across the whole spectrum - from new support for software managed Hyperconverged Infrastructure to enhanced anonymization and end-to-end modeling for compliance enforcement to faster innovation with improved developer experience across cloud and on-premise

Finally, SAP HANA is efficient – this is something our customers agree on.  A recent IDC survey found that it is 42% faster to deliver solutions with SAP HANA than with other traditional databases or special-purpose databases. Our all-in-one architecture has also allowed our customers to increase productivity by 5x. In the efficiency area, SAP HANA has many innovations – from being the first major database to be optimized for Intel persistent memory, to new, cost-efficient data tiering options for flexible scale, to new ways of improving data availability as well as optimal utilization of computing and storage resources.

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. Get started today... 

Three principles that define intelligent ERP

In an age when the incumbent status is no defense against the competition, maintaining a sustained advantage requires you to meet customers where they are and provide services that will delight them. A strategy built on Intelligent ERP solutions serves this purpose by enhancing your efficiency, effectiveness, and agility. Intelligent ERP solutions provide business capabilities that will help you surpass current capabilities.

The Intelligent ERP Difference:

• Hands-free UX, digital assistance and instant insights deliver value-adding experiences
• Machine learning, AI and predictive analytics for increased automation and efficiency
• Reinvent and redefine processes with applied best practices built on the latest innovations

3 principles that define intelligent ERP

Digital age user experience
An award-winning user experience across the entire organization including a context-aware, business savvy digital assistant.

Automation
Intelligence and learning capabilities powered by AI, machine learning, NPL, predictive analytics and more, combined with real-time insight to action helps add automation to key functions, signal users when input is required and enable smarter and faster decisions.

Next-generation processes
Rethinking the way business gets done through the smart application of technology and innovation.

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. Get started today... 

How can the Intelligent Enterprise impact Distribution

The digital economy is disruptive. Wholesale distribution companies need strategic priorities that drive transformation into intelligent enterprises. SAP powered by Approyo supports a reimagined set of end-to-end business scenarios that are part of a digital environment.

• Using value-added services to create new revenue sources - For years, most distributors have been providing value-added services, many of which have been free of charge. Leading distributors will take these value-added services to the next level and use them to significantly increase revenue and bottom-line profitability. Distributors should consider providing customers with a menu of options such as light manufacturing, sensor-based services, training and consulting services, or lending services.
• Becoming a real-time distributor - Companies everywhere face volatile customer demand and heightened service expectations. Innovative technologies can help resolve these issues by providing vital business information across the network, improving real-time analysis, and enabling better collaboration across departments and trading partners – thus transforming the supply chain into a responsive network.
• Building lasting customer relationships - Build trusted relationships with customers by empowering sales teams and personalizing buyer engagements. Provide a vast variety of ordering channels from call centers, Web sites, text messages, and in-person interaction to deliver the exact products and services customers need when they need them. The customer experience today constitutes a lifecycle, not just an interaction restricted to the front end of the enterprise.

Leading wholesale distributors are transitioning into information-centric companies that utilize new business models to gain competitive advantage and deliver premium, consistent customer service. Digital transformation fosters operational excellence, specifically across order management and inventory management processes, providing wholesale distributors with real-time information and the ability to drive immediate impact with intelligent ERP.

Responding to rapid changes
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 such as new business models, new regulations, and business events, such as mergers or acquisitions.

Simulation and analytics
The ability to respond quickly is an essential part of managing a wholesale distribution 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 details they need to understand trends, opportunities, and risks, and quickly carry out what-if analysis using predictive algorithms.

Keeping data under control
Every wholesale distribution 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, salespeople can see customer history for credit risk and stock information, and accurate delivery schedules can be provided.

Addressing innovative opportunities
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.

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 and respond to rapid changes, 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). Wholesale distributors focused on innovation or who prefer to be early adopters have already begun this journey.

Third-party Maintenance Companies are Killing Your Future ERP Innovation

If you are a company with an ERP solution in-place, you are looking at a very bright future. A future where the newest, latest and greatest technologies are coming at you. Your ERP solutions providers are there to support you in your company's growth. These ERP vendors are building software specifically designed to help your company in this new digital age. The old legacy technology is just outdated, and it needs to be refreshed, just like our phones, our bodies, and our minds.

Unfortunately, there are third-party maintenance companies who are taking organizations down a road that will eventually kill innovation within that organization. These so-called “third-party maintenance companies” are telling you and other organizations like you, that status quo is “good enough”. That is not what true innovative technology and business partners should be doing. “Good enough” is socialism. If you want to be a socialist company with zero updates or innovation for the next 15 years, then you're going to be in trouble.

I deal with these horrible “third-party maintenance companies” every day. I listen to their stories on how they help an organization stay on an old antiquated and outdated SAP system. They tell the companies that they will maintain old systems day in and day out for organizations at 90% savings.

Unfortunately, that 90% of savings is a lie a flat out lie.  No third-party maintenance company can provide these kinds of services legally and ethically. I know who these companies are, their executives and their sales team. And they are slick as snake oil. If you really want your company to grow and you think that your firm is cutting-edge, then you need to stay away from these organizations.

Let me give you an example. I personally know of a third-party maintenance company that took over the support for a company running SAP ECC 6. This company is actively looking to grow and innovate its technology footprint. Unfortunately, because they are under contract with the third partner maintenance company that forces them to continue to use outdated technology. The third-party maintenance company lied to the organization. They will not be able to succeed while they are stuck using old ERP solutions. They will have to continue to rely on the third-party maintenance company to try to create custom code to connect everything while paying more costs and losing out by not having access to new innovative technology.

If they would have stayed on a simple upgrade plan from SAP (yes there's a cost to that), instead of believing this third-party maintenance company, they would be able to upgrade their SAP environments around the globe right now. SAP and other software providers have development teams around the globe, upgrading and updating the software every day of the year. To be so naive to think that a software application like SAP, Microsoft or Oracle should not get a license revenue maintenance because of the updates and upgrades that they are providing to an organization is asinine.

Don’t allow your company to fall further and further behind but signing a long term (up to 15 years) contract with a third-party maintenance company. While there will always be a cost to a licensing and maintenance agreement, staying with old legacy technology will cost more at the end of the day.

Don’t let that slick snake oil salesmen sell you.

About the Author - Chris Carter, CEO of Approyo
With almost three decades of extraordinary working experience in the SAP industry, Christopher Carter, CEO at Approyo founded Approyo 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.

Intelligent Finance with SAP S/4HANA 1809

SAP S/4HANA is the digital core – the nerve center – of your entire business. It consolidates internal and external elements into a single, living structure that goes beyond traditional ERP. In other words, it connects all of your processes, provides you with live information and insights, and seamlessly integrates your enterprise with the digital world at large.

Finance on SAP S/4HANA is a set of comprehensive solutions designed to help the office of the CFO meet the demands of a digital economy. It is part of the market-leading, best-in-class finance solution portfolio from SAP, built on a modern digital core that harnesses the benefits of the SAP HANA platform.

Increasing efficiency in operational finance with next generation automation scenarios
With the SAP S/4HANA 1809 release SAP has added multiple new highly automated scenarios lifting the level of automation to the next level:

• The goods and invoice receipt reconciliation process, not only all relevant information is brought together in just one screen, but by integrating our digital assistant into the process, users experience a much more fluent collaboration. All aimed at quicker and more efficient reconciled items. On top of that, we planned for October complementing machine learning capabilities to add pro-active recommendations to resolve specific issues.

• As part of the evolution towards a continuous close, the introduction of a new highly automated process supports us in making the accrual management process not only more efficient but more accurate as well.

With SAP S/4HANA 1809 release, further enhancements are added to enable a more complete real-time margin analysis, including predictions through:

SAP further improved our real-time margin analysis with integrating profitability information in the universal journal

The introduction of predictive accounting, which unlike mathematics-based predictions make use of the already available document flow to predict financial results of the future

To cope with a changing organizational view, responding to the need for better insights not only for entity but also at the business unit or group level in a more automated way, new key components are being introduced:

• 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. Get started today... 

How can the Intelligent Enterprise impact the Manufacturing Industry

The market is experiencing a disruptive shift in customer demand for new, extensive, smart, and personalized products. Sellers are constantly reducing buffer inventory with obsolescence risk in mind. Manufacturers are competing to meet this challenge and provide individualized products in similar lead times and cost as off-the shelf products. This creates tremendous complexity for the manufacturing operations team, yet at the same time, companies are looking for growth and profitability while maintaining high quality and sustainability.

To meet these demands, manufacturing is being used as a strategic pillar, becoming more collaborative, localized, automated, integrated, and highly adaptive. Companies are adopting digital manufacturing strategies and solutions to seamlessly connect relevant business stakeholders, information and operational processes in real time. Digital manufacturing simultaneously improves responsiveness and efficiency which drives growth, while decreasing cycle time and cost. Leveraging technologies like 3D printing, cloud, machine learning, and the Internet of Things (IoT) is increasing agility and extending the manufacturing network. Digital manufacturing has become a strategic differentiator.

SAP solutions powered by Approyo enable companies to integrate and embed intelligence in manufacturing processes facilitating Industry 4.0 principles with one source of live information. They provide an optimal coordination of planning and execution processes, covering all aspects of the manufacturing cycle from planning to shop floor and beyond.

Reduce manufacturing cost by increasing output and gaining real-time visibility into quality and costs
Increase plant output with improved planning and visibility into equipment utilization while also reducing the inventory held for manufacturing. Have a real-time and drillable view of the performance metrics of all the production facilities globally. This enables identifying and implementing global manufacturing best practices.

Reduce revenue loss due to plant fulfillment issues by agile planning and production orchestration
Gain the ability to respond to demand and confirmed order changes. Live inventory data and drastically reduced material requirements planning (MRP) processing time improve transparency and responsiveness. The planning system simplifies constraint based capacity planning by bringing together material and capacity constraints. Improve production tracking, labor shortage, first pass yield, and equipment availability to ensure on-time delivery.

Increase revenue growth by mass manufacturing of individualized products and 3D printing
Produce personalized products ordered by customers with minimal human intervention. Product genealogy for every unit is maintained in the system for service and compliance needs. Collaboration with Origin Equipment Manufacturer (OEM) and contract service providers enables fulfilment of custom orders faster, while reducing inventory levels, time to market, and
waste.

Reduce scrap and rework cost by empowering the workforce to take informed decisions
Gain immediate insights on planning, execution, quality, with analysis at the finest level of granularity available on mobile devices. Supervisors can analyze and take immediate actions on their mobile devices.

Protect people and the environment and reduce manufacturing downtime by proactively managing operational risk
Provide critical safety information to all employees – top floor to shop floor – to create an effective safety culture. Establish a holistic approach to embed safety and operational risk management into all of your operations.

Reduce manufacturing-related IT cost by using an integrated set of solutions
With SAP S/4HANA as the digital core, integrate seamlessly with the manufacturing execution suite and manufacturing network solutions (digital manufacturing insights, distributed manufacturing). This reduces the cost to develop and maintain digital manufacturing capabilities.

Read the full blog post on www.approyo.com 

Digital Supply Chain - New innovations with SAP S/4HANA

Supply chains are now a competitive differentiator based on their speed, agility, and insight. Customers’ unique needs must be met with personalized products, new business models, greater intimacy through Internet of Things insights and deeper real-time prediction and intelligence across the enterprise.

Intelligent enterprises across all industries are focused on business outcomes and innovation by leveraging an intelligent suite of applications, intelligent technologies, and digital platforms. Discover how SAP S/4HANA and other supply chain solutions from SAP can help your business turn digital innovation into a competitive advantage.

Prediction of stock-in-transit arrival
The ability for warehouse managers to predict the arrival date of a shipment and manage delivery delays. Prebuilt set of KPIs supports robust analytics for the business scenarios. Early and efficient visibility for stock transport orders that leads to reliable processes for planning and scheduling of goods in transit.

Real-time Inventory
Live inventory management that enables unlimited simultaneous material movements and true transparency on inventory and material flows. Decreased stock buffers due to better transparency and insights.

Advanced ATP
Intelligent, real-time product availability check for sales, planned, and production orders. Includes scalable available-to-promise (ATP) for managing large transaction volumes and flexible allocation management capabilities. Provides back-order processing with intuitive priority classification and interactive exception handling.

Improve production planning
Coordinate manufacturing operations across your organization including material requirements, logistics, and receipts for proper material handling, work in process, and inventory. You can also make plan adjustments based on real-time information from the enterprise, suppliers, and the plant floor.

Accelerate manufacturing workflows
Plan and schedule maintenance tasks synchronizing labor, material, equipment and schedules. Execute planned and unplanned maintenance to ensure optimal operations including improved safety and environmental impact.

Single platform for warehouse management
Reduced TCO by landscape simplification through native warehouse management with SAP S/4HANA; a single warehousing platform for all warehousing operations, including optimization, automation, and labor management.

Single platform for transportation management
Reduced TCO by landscape simplification through native Transportation Management with SAP S/4HANA; a single platform for transportation management with basic and advanced shipping functionality and real-time embedded analytics.

Demand-Driven MRP (DDMRP)
Dynamic planning of replenishments with demand-driven MRP (DDMRP) that is fully integrated into existing MRP concept. Replenishment only for real demand and introduction of buffers at strategically important points.