As more orga­ni­za­tions look to inno­vate and trans­form their busi­ness process­es, they’ll also look to tech­nol­o­gy that will enable the move. SAP keeps the nee­dle mov­ing toward becom­ing an intel­li­gent enter­prise via prod­ucts, ser­vices, and support. 

ASUG sat down with the authors of ​“SAP Leonar­do: An Intro­duc­tion to the Intel­li­gent Enter­prise” from SAP Press to hear how these tech­nolo­gies can enable a dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion. Amit Sin­ha, leader in SAP sup­ply chain prac­tices at Deloitte Con­sult­ing, and Ganesh Wadawadi­gi, chief demand insight expert for IoT and dig­i­tal sup­ply chain solu­tions at SAP, talked to us about the SAP Leonar­do tool set and how it can be used to exam­ine new busi­ness mod­els to opti­mize man­u­fac­tur­ing, logis­tics, asset man­age­ment, finance, and more. 

Sharon: What is SAP Leonar­do and how can it enable an orga­ni­za­tion to trans­form, mod­ern­ize, and automate? 

Ganesh: SAP Leonar­do is a col­lec­tion of intel­li­gent tech­nolo­gies — machine learn­ing, blockchain, data intel­li­gence, big data, Inter­net of Things (IoT), and ana­lyt­ics — and ser­vices com­bined with indus­try-domain exper­tise to help com­pa­nies inno­vate faster and embark on their dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion journey.

These tech­nolo­gies help form the foun­da­tion of an intel­li­gent enter­prise, enabling com­pa­nies to opti­mize and extend their busi­ness process­es. These tech­nolo­gies can also be used to cre­ate new busi­ness mod­els and rev­enue streams for com­pa­nies so they‘re able to deliv­er prod­ucts and ser­vices to their cus­tomers faster.

One of the things that SAP Leonar­do does is pro­vide inte­gra­tion and scal­a­bil­i­ty, and this is done through microser­vices and open APIs that are pro­vid­ed through the SAP Cloud Plat­form, which forms the foun­da­tion of SAP Leonardo.

It’s impor­tant also to rec­og­nize SAP Leonar­do as a holis­tic, dig­i­tal inno­va­tion sys­tem to achieve the goal of an intel­li­gent enter­prise. The pow­er of SAP Leonar­do is in its flex­i­bil­i­ty to help achieve the dig­i­tal goals and deliv­er the next lev­el of val­ue in every industry.

Sharon: How should an orga­ni­za­tion adopt SAP Leonar­do? Can you walk us through the dif­fer­ent ways that are available? 

Amit: Yes, there are three rec­om­mend­ed ways to adopt SAP Leonar­do. The first is through embed­ded tech­nol­o­gy, and SAP has already invest­ed heav­i­ly in that are­na. For exam­ple, these intel­li­gent tech­nolo­gies are embed­ded in prod­ucts such as SAP S/4HANA, SAP Ari­ba, and SAP Dig­i­tal Sup­ply Net­work, just to name a few. 

The sec­ond way is through Indus­try Inno­va­tion Kits. SAP has been invest­ing heav­i­ly in this area as well. There are cur­rent­ly more than 20 Indus­try Inno­va­tion Kits for more than 12 indus­tries, and these are avail­able for licens­es, man­u­fac­tur­ing, auto­mo­tive, con­sumer prod­ucts, and oth­ers. SAP cre­ates the inno­va­tion kits based on the com­mon areas where tech­nol­o­gy trans­for­ma­tion adds faster val­ue real­iza­tion in proven areas. These are out-of-the-box solu­tions, and you don’t need to cre­ate them from scratch. 

The third part is the open inno­va­tion, which gives the flex­i­bil­i­ty to use SAP Leonar­do in the way that’s suit­ed for a spe­cif­ic orga­ni­za­tion. Process, tools, and tech­nolo­gies of SAP Leonar­do are adopt­ed for the unique require­ments of an organization.

There are mul­ti­ple suc­cess sto­ries for all the men­tioned approach­es. Our book will walk you through the approach­es and the rec­om­mend­ed ways to implement.

Sharon: Let’s talk about Design Think­ing and why an orga­ni­za­tion should adopt this approach. What are the benefits? 

Amit: Design Think­ing involves look­ing at a solu­tion or process from the eyes of your cus­tomer and design­ing for their needs or expe­ri­ence. For many years, research has proven that the prod­uct suc­cess rate gets high­er if the cus­tomer is part of the devel­op­ment process. It’s not a new con­cept, but what’s dif­fer­ent now is that the process is enabled by technology. 

With SAP Leonar­do, Design Think­ing allows for a cre­ative, col­lab­o­ra­tive, and iter­a­tive prob­lem-solv­ing approach with a human-cen­tered focus. It real­ly sup­ports the idea of crawl, walk, and then run. It allows an orga­ni­za­tion to think out­side of the box and take a more empa­thet­ic and user-cen­tric approach. You start from that per­spec­tive and then walk your way back­ward as to what is it that you need to do, and then the tech­nol­o­gy enables you to run with it. 

Sharon: Let’s talk about the core set of tech­nolo­gies with­in SAP Leonar­do. I know we’ve dis­cussed them briefly, but can you give us an overview of how an orga­ni­za­tion can use these capa­bil­i­ties to cre­ate an intel­li­gent enterprise?

Ganesh: The core set of tech­nolo­gies with­in SAP Leonar­do are machine learn­ing, blockchain, data intel­li­gence, big data, IoT, and ana­lyt­ics. These tech­nolo­gies can be used indi­vid­u­al­ly or in com­bi­na­tion with one anoth­er. For exam­ple, IoT capa­bil­i­ties along with ana­lyt­ics as a com­bi­na­tion, or just machine learn­ing on its own, or a mix of IoT, blockchain, and ana­lyt­ics. The key here is to under­stand that either indi­vid­u­al­ly or in com­bi­na­tion with each oth­er, they can be used as tools for busi­ness process automa­tion and enable bet­ter decision-making.

SAP has also been active­ly tak­ing these tech­nolo­gies and embed­ding them in its solu­tion port­fo­lio such as SAP S/4HANA and SAP Dig­i­tal Sup­ply Chain. 

There are mul­ti­ple use cas­es that span every LoB and every indus­try where these tech­nolo­gies can pro­vide capa­bil­i­ties, such as automat­ing repet­i­tive tasks; pro­vid­ing more action­able insights by iden­ti­fy­ing cer­tain data pat­terns; pro­vid­ing vis­i­bil­i­ty and trans­paren­cy into the sup­ply chain so that the plan­ners and the busi­ness users can make bet­ter, faster, and more informed deci­sions; and much more. 

These are just a few exam­ples. All these capa­bil­i­ties basi­cal­ly help cre­ate a net impact of achiev­ing high­er effi­cien­cy as an orga­ni­za­tion, high­er through­put and increased rev­enues and prof­its while con­tain­ing costs, all of which are essen­tial to become an intel­li­gent enterprise.

In sum­ma­ry, an intel­li­gent enter­prise makes effec­tive use of data assets to achieve the desired out­comes in a faster man­ner and with less risk. This obvi­ous­ly involves empow­er­ing employ­ees with the right infor­ma­tion at the right time, automat­ing process­es where pos­si­ble, antic­i­pat­ing and proac­tive­ly respond­ing to cus­tomer needs, and more impor­tant­ly invent­ing new busi­ness mod­els and new rev­enue streams. We cov­er sev­er­al illus­trat­ed exam­ples of these in chap­ters one and two.

It’s impor­tant to note that these core set of tech­nolo­gies with­in SAP Leonar­do com­bined with the intel­li­gent suite of busi­ness appli­ca­tions such as SAP S/4HANA and the LoB appli­ca­tions like SAP Dig­i­tal Sup­ply Chain, along with the SAP Cloud Plat­form and data man­age­ment, col­lec­tive­ly pro­vide the capa­bil­i­ties need­ed in build­ing an intel­li­gent enter­prise. So, not only can you use these stand-alone tech­nolo­gies, but you also can lever­age them in busi­ness appli­ca­tions to achieve dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion. We cov­er this in detail in part three of the book.

Sharon: Let’s talk about big data and ana­lyt­ics. Can you explain these tech­nolo­gies? How does SAP Leonar­do help to man­age and use them?

Ganesh: Data is the fuel for growth for every enter­prise today, and when you look at big data it has three char­ac­ter­is­tics — the three V’s as they are called — vol­ume, veloc­i­ty, and vari­ety. Data is being gen­er­at­ed today in huge amounts and at a very rapid rate. This data is being gen­er­at­ed not only with­in the enter­prise, but also in the extend­ed enter­prise. To meet the growth tar­gets of the busi­ness and meet and man­age the cus­tomer expec­ta­tions, com­pa­nies need to col­lab­o­rate seam­less­ly with their busi­ness part­ners and share rel­e­vant data. Last­ly, this data is of dif­fer­ent types. It could be struc­tured data, as pur­chase orders and sales orders and oth­er trans­ac­tions, or unstruc­tured data from sources like IoT sen­sors and social media.

To har­ness all of this, com­pa­nies need to first have a very com­pre­hen­sive data man­age­ment strat­e­gy that will help them move the data, trans­form it, inte­grate it with their busi­ness process­es, as well as have the tools and tech­niques to main­tain the qual­i­ty of the data. You need to make sure the data is of the right qual­i­ty, oth­er­wise it’s of no use.

SAP HANA Data Man­age­ment Suite, which is part of SAP Leonar­do tech­nolo­gies, enables com­pa­nies to man­age their data end-to-end. An orga­ni­za­tion can take raw data, clean it, and bring it into a trust­ed for­mat so that it can be used in busi­ness appli­ca­tions, in ana­lyt­ics, with machine learn­ing, as well as in a range of oth­er use cas­es. It also acts as a devel­op­ment plat­form for appli­ca­tions that need ana­lyt­ics on real-time trans­ac­tions; for data gov­er­nance and anonymiza­tion of data; for mod­el­ing data across LoBs based on busi­ness needs; and for han­dling dif­fer­ent data types and tech­nol­o­gy archi­tec­tures. It pro­vides in-mem­o­ry, mul­ti­mod­el ana­lyt­ics and data-pro­cess­ing capa­bil­i­ties, which are need­ed to be able to man­age the del­uge of data that com­pa­nies face today.

Ana­lyt­ics, on the oth­er hand, is the process of eval­u­at­ing, exam­in­ing, and pro­cess­ing large amounts of data to find pat­terns and cor­re­la­tions, and then derive insights. SAP Leonar­do allows com­pa­nies to auto­mate parts of the ana­lyt­ics process and the result­ing busi­ness deci­sions to achieve dynam­ic insights. It pro­vides var­i­ous ana­lyt­ic capa­bil­i­ties to ana­lyze data that is being gen­er­at­ed from var­i­ous types of sources. These ana­lyt­ics solu­tions help uncov­er issues and oppor­tu­ni­ties in all aspects of the busi­ness such as finance, sales, mar­ket­ing, sup­ply chain, oper­a­tions, IT, work­force man­age­ment, etc. 

As part of SAP Leonar­do, SAP offers SAP Ana­lyt­ics Hub, which is a com­pre­hen­sive port­fo­lio of ana­lyt­ics solu­tion. These ana­lyt­ics capa­bil­i­ties can pro­vide answers to ques­tions like what hap­pened last week, yes­ter­day, in the last month, and why did it hap­pen, while also pre­dict­ing by pro­vid­ing answers to ques­tions about what will hap­pen or what is the best that could hap­pen giv­en the cur­rent situation. 

Ana­lyt­ics play a key role in the dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion of a com­pa­ny and it pro­vides tools for the users to focus on high-val­ue tasks and then proac­tive­ly man­age their busi­ness as con­di­tions change, so that they can make bet­ter and more prof­itable decisions.

Sharon: Can you explain machine learn­ing with­in SAP Leonardo?

Amit: Machine learn­ing is the basis of AI and what enables a dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion. It is the capa­bil­i­ty of infer­ring knowl­edge to a com­put­er pro­gram. Con­sid­er a com­put­er or a pro­gram that teach­es itself that also improves with time. 

There are two types of algo­rithms for machine learn­ing — super­vised learn­ing and unsu­per­vised learn­ing. In super­vised learn­ing, the data is pro­vid­ed with­out labels, where­as in unsu­per­vised learn­ing it is pro­vid­ed with­out labels. SAP Leonar­do pro­vides var­i­ous state-of-the-art machine learn­ing algo­rithms with more than 90 native algo­rithms, as well as exten­sion capa­bil­i­ties through open-source integration. 

We have pro­vid­ed detailed knowl­edge about machine learn­ing, dif­fer­ent mod­els, and its appli­ca­tions in our book.

Sharon: Let’s talk about blockchain. What is it and how can it be used? What is SAP’s approach to blockchain technology? 

Ganesh: Blockchain is one of the core intel­li­gent tech­nolo­gies in the SAP Leonar­do port­fo­lio. It’s a dis­trib­uted ledger where the data is stored in what are called blocks that are cryp­to­graph­i­cal­ly linked and immutable. Once the data is writ­ten, it can­not be changed. 

This decen­tral­ized nature helps cre­ate trust and trans­paren­cy among busi­ness part­ners. This trans­paren­cy and auditabil­i­ty can help opti­mize process­es when mul­ti­ple par­ties are involved in busi­ness trans­ac­tions or when you’re track­ing assets that are going through a val­ue chain. In addi­tion to that, blockchain can help min­i­mize risk in fraud in inter-com­pa­ny busi­ness processes.

There are many appli­ca­tions of blockchain, par­tic­u­lar­ly in the areas of finance and sup­ply chain. Using SAP Cloud Plat­form, SAP pro­vides blockchain ser­vices and cur­rent­ly sup­ports three dif­fer­ent blockchain pro­to­cols — Hyper­ledger Fab­ric, Mul­ti­Chain, and Quo­rum. These blockchain ser­vices pro­vide net­work exten­sion, foun­da­tion­al ser­vices, appli­ca­tion inte­gra­tion ser­vices, blockchain ser­vices, and SAP HANA blockchain ser­vices. Cur­rent­ly, SAP also has blockchain-enabled solu­tions for sal­able returns ver­i­fi­ca­tion for the phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal indus­try as well as mate­r­i­al trace­abil­i­ty for the food industry. 

Sharon: What is IoT tech­nol­o­gy and how does it fit into SAP Leonardo? 

Amit: IoT are phys­i­cal devices that con­nect over the inter­net to process and trans­mit the infor­ma­tion. There are cur­rent­ly more than 20 bil­lion IoT devices con­nect­ed to the inter­net. Infor­ma­tion is flow­ing with­out any human involvement. 

SAP Leonar­do pro­vides IoT appli­ca­tions, a foun­da­tion of busi­ness and tech­ni­cal ser­vices to enable IoT in SAP land­scapes. It enables secure edge pro­cess­ing for IoT applications. 

Sharon: What is the biggest mis­con­cep­tion about SAP Leonar­do, and what would you like read­ers to know about the service? 

Ganesh: The biggest mis­con­cep­tion is that SAP Leonar­do is a prod­uct. It’s not. It is a set of tech­nolo­gies and ser­vices that help enable an intel­li­gent enterprise. 

Sharon: Can you sum­ma­rize the book in a few sentences? 

Ganesh: The objec­tive of this book is to help busi­ness lead­ers and tech­nol­o­gy prac­ti­tion­ers who are look­ing to inno­vate and bring about dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion in their busi­ness. It is a guide for the var­i­ous intel­li­gent tech­nolo­gies in SAP Leonar­do that can help cre­ate an intel­li­gent enter­prise. Most impor­tant­ly, it includes a lot of illus­tra­tive exam­ples across var­i­ous LoBs as well as indus­tries, so hope­ful­ly the read­ers will find exam­ples that are close to what their role is in their organizations.

Amit: The book demys­ti­fies SAP Leonar­do. It dives deep into how to use the var­i­ous intel­li­gent tech­nolo­gies. It is a one-stop solu­tion to meet or to design your goals for the intel­li­gent enter­prise by using not only SAP Leonar­do, but also SAP tech­nolo­gies and a com­bi­na­tion of SAP Leonardo.

You can read the full details in the ​“SAP Leonar­do: An Intro­duc­tion to the Intel­li­gent Enter­prise” book from SAP Press. Reg­is­ter for the ASUG­FOR­WARD Vir­tu­al Expe­ri­ence tak­ing place June 22 – 25, 2020 to learn, exchange ideas, and gain prac­ti­cal infor­ma­tion you can put into prac­tice immediately.