SAP describes intel­li­gence as what sets us apart as humans. Yet it’s dig­i­tal brain­pow­er that SAP is cham­pi­oning as the key to build­ing what it calls the intel­li­gent enter­prise. It has adopt­ed this term to encour­age enter­prise cus­tomers to think about where they can use automa­tion con­trols inside their oper­a­tions to cre­ate dig­i­tal­ly dri­ven workflows. 

These automa­tion con­trols are soft­ware com­po­nents designed to run defin­able and repeat­able busi­ness tasks. The goal is to help much of a busi­ness run these core func­tions more effi­cient­ly all while deliv­er­ing the vis­i­bil­i­ty, focus, and agili­ty need­ed to remain com­pet­i­tive in this new age of disruption.

The Office-Link­ing SAP Architecture

When func­tions, process­es, and work­flows hap­pen auto­mat­i­cal­ly, that makes the busi­ness smarter because employ­ees are freed up to focus on high­er-lev­el activ­i­ties that can help their orga­ni­za­tions inno­vate or break into new markets. 

Essen­tial­ly then, we can think of the SAP intel­li­gent enter­prise a cloud-based set of tech­nol­o­gy tools. These are designed to work togeth­er to inte­grate tra­di­tion­al back-office ERP sys­tems with front-office solu­tions that pre­pare busi­ness­es to bring in lead­ing tech­nolo­gies such as arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence (AI) or machine learn­ing (ML).

Run­ning the Intel­li­gent Enter­prise

What does this mean in prac­tice and how does an intel­li­gent busi­ness run? One anal­o­gy to con­sid­er is how auto man­u­fac­tur­ers are mov­ing from build­ing tra­di­tion­al cars to elec­tric cars to autonomous vehi­cles. There are many process­es that tra­di­tion­al car man­u­fac­tur­ers would have to stop doing or trans­form in order to have the resources to devote to cre­ate a more inno­v­a­tive product. 

SAP points to tasks such as invoice and pay­ment match­ing as per­fect can­di­dates for intel­li­gent automa­tion. We can also con­sid­er work­place func­tions involv­ing stock order­ing, employ­ee vaca­tion requests, or admin­is­tra­tive func­tions involv­ing office main­te­nance. These are all areas we can auto­mate now. 

SAP Intel­li­gent Cus­tomer Examples

SAP first intro­duced the intel­li­gent enter­prise in 2018 on the keynote stage at SAP­PHIRE NOW. It has show­cased a num­ber of cus­tomers includ­ing Cost­co and Adi­das, which are both already on their jour­ney to becom­ing more intelligent.

But these are big com­pa­nies with mas­sive strate­gic plan­ning depart­ments and huge process frame­works. We know that not every ASUG mem­ber can con­sid­er itself a Cost­co or an Adi­das, so there is a ques­tion of whether there is a cul­tur­al readi­ness for this approach to enter­prise intel­li­gence. Small­er com­pa­nies can ben­e­fit from this approach, though they may not have the resources they need to take it on as a total transformation.

Intel­li­gence as a Mindset

It is pos­si­ble to break down the com­po­nents of SAP’s intel­li­gent enter­prise and to imple­ment what your com­pa­ny needs the most. Accord­ing to SAP, these com­po­nents include cus­tomer expe­ri­ence, man­u­fac­tur­ing and the sup­ply chain, the dig­i­tal core (ERP), peo­ple engage­ment (HR), and net­work and spend man­age­ment. SAP under­stands that it may not make sense for your busi­ness to pur­chase only their sys­tems to man­age these func­tions. The idea is that you can put the pieces togeth­er in the right way, based on your organization’s needs and matu­ri­ty model.

But the one thing that is essen­tial is that you rethink your process­es. One big rea­son why dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tions fail is when com­pa­nies sim­ply repli­cate their exist­ing process­es in dig­i­tal form, even though they may no longer make sense. Franck Cohen, SAP pres­i­dent of dig­i­tal core and indus­try solu­tions has said that if the intel­li­gent enter­prise is going to be effec­tive, com­pa­nies must evolve their ways of thinking.

Heads in the Clouds

That chang­ing mind­set issue came up for close SAP watch­er Jon Reed who works as an ana­lyst and jour­nal­ist for Dig­i­nom­i­ca. Reed has talked about SAP’s move away from SAP HANA and SAP Leonar­do and sug­gest­ed that the intel­li­gent enter­prise is less of a prod­uct play and more of a push toward the SAP Cloud Plat­form.

“It’s a lit­tle bit tricky because SAP doesn’t own that [intel­li­gent enter­prise] term and it’s not self-evi­dent to cus­tomers what the intel­li­gent enter­prise means,” Reed said. ​“It’s also not a new term, and SAP’s not the only ven­dor that’s push­ing this strat­e­gy. Hav­ing said that, it’s refresh­ing that the dis­cus­sion isn’t prod­uct cen­tric — as long as cus­tomers under­stand that.”

Sim­pli­fy­ing the Swelling Stack?

Some may won­der what’s behind this ini­tia­tive. With so many ele­ments now pop­u­lat­ing the total SAP stack, could this be a way for cus­tomers to think about the big­ger pic­ture of where they are try­ing to get to oper­a­tional­ly, com­mer­cial­ly, and technologically? 

Yet it’s a long list of items on the intel­li­gent enter­prise menu: SAP S/4HANA for ERP, SAP Suc­cess­Fac­tors for human cap­i­tal man­age­ment, SAP C/4HANA for cus­tomer expe­ri­ence man­age­ment, SAP Ari­ba for pro­cure­ment, SAP Con­cur for trav­el and expense man­age­ment, and then SAP Field­glass for work­force man­age­ment. That’s a big meal to swal­low in one mouth­ful for some, espe­cial­ly if they’re also look­ing to use SAP Fiori for user inter­face management.

Your Busi­ness IQ

For all these efforts then, will the idea of intel­li­gent enter­prise enthuse or alien­ate most ASUG mem­bers and SAP cus­tomers? Many orga­ni­za­tions are intel­li­gent enough to have built a busi­ness in the first place. Why should they have to re-engi­neer them­selves to SAP’s ver­sion of smartness?

The answer is that orga­ni­za­tions don’t have to re-engi­neer, re-archi­tect, or (in some cas­es) replat­form to what SAP is show­cas­ing. But they do have to accept the fact that no mat­ter how suc­cess­ful they are today, there are always process­es to improve or rein­vent. You don’t have to call it dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion or by any oth­er name to ben­e­fit from it.

Busi­ness is get­ting smarter through intel­li­gence in many forms — that comes through bet­ter use of real-time data, ana­lyt­ics, machine learn­ing, and automa­tion — and the truth is, you’d have to be a lit­tle unwise to ignore that.