We know that SAP has been focused on the behav­ior of mobile devices for many years. The company’s acqui­si­tion of Sybase and inte­gra­tion of its prod­uct base was pri­mar­i­ly a way to improve the mobile IQ with­in the SAP stack.

It’s also no secret that the SAP Leonar­do design-think­ing-led approach ini­tial­ly began its life as an Inter­net of Things (IoT) plat­form aligned to bring the infor­ma­tion streams from devices into SAP’s well-known ana­lyt­ics engines.

So, what could be on the road ahead for SAP’s IoT development?

A Log­i­cal Expan­sion into the IoT World

We also know that SAP set aside an esti­mat­ed $2 bil­lion fund for IoT invest­ment and acqui­si­tions back in 2016. Many would argue that the company’s track record in enter­prise resource plan­ning (ERP) sets it up to be a log­i­cal play­er in the world of IoT solutions. 

Devices, sen­sors, and oth­er con­nect­ed instru­ments are now dis­trib­uted through­out busi­ness­es in a vari­ety of indus­tries. The ​“resources” in a mod­ern ERP sys­tem now include IoT units and IoT-con­nect­ed engi­neer­ing enti­ties. Bring­ing the data from this sec­tor of busi­ness into SAP HANA via SAP Leonar­do has been a long-term goal for the firm since 2010.

Where the Inter­con­nect­ed ​“Things” Are

The ele­ments con­nect­ed with­in the Inter­net of Things are parts, mate­ri­als, and large-scale assets that might nor­mal­ly be classed as units of engi­neer­ing. Basi­cal­ly, every­thing from a wash­er and a nut all the way up to ele­va­tors, min­ing equip­ment, or indus­tri­al turbines.

Pres­i­dent of SAP’s Glob­al IoT & Dig­i­tal Sup­ply Chain Dr. Tan­ja Rueck­ert has spo­ken of what she called ​“blurred indus­try bor­ders” between busi­ness net­works and the com­pa­nies that oper­ate them. She has said that firms must now work to know where their ​“things” are at any point in time so they can per­form remote inspec­tions and run pre­dic­tive ana­lyt­ics, among oth­er functions.

The IoT Holy Grail

Dr. Rueck­ert says that the IoT Holy Grail is the point where orga­ni­za­tions start to build new busi­ness man­age­ment chan­nels based on the infor­ma­tion flow­ing from their IoT. When they do this, it will be pos­si­ble to start cre­at­ing ser­vice-based net­works that are autonomous and intel­li­gent­ly man­aged. That auton­o­my will come from lay­ered-on tech­nolo­gies such as arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence, machine learn­ing, and blockchain, all con­nect­ed through an IoT back­bone cre­at­ing dig­i­tal twins to mod­el the phys­i­cal equipment.

SAP offers SAP Leonar­do IoT Bridge as a route to iden­ti­fy­ing poten­tial threats and busi­ness oppor­tu­ni­ties across a firm by bring­ing IoT data into busi­ness con­text. It helps spot process abnor­mal­i­ties or devi­a­tions and assess­es their oper­a­tional and busi­ness impact through a view of real-time data.

Brew­ing IoT Beverages

As a work­ing exam­ple of these tech­nolo­gies in action, Essen, Ger­many-head­quar­tered Real­Core took on an inter­nal IoT research project to high­light where SAP Cloud Plat­form could fit. Real­Core is a soft­ware provider and con­sult­ing busi­ness that serves clients in the ener­gy, logis­tics, and retail industries.

Real­Core ini­tial­ly chose to use SAP Cloud Plat­form for a fun exper­i­ment: to devel­op an IoT-based fla­vored-bev­er­age machine for its own employ­ees. ​“Here at the office, no one knew the cur­rent fill lev­el of our bev­er­age machine,” said Markus Brasch, head of busi­ness devel­op­ment at Real­Core Group. ​“We nev­er knew if it had enough Coke or water, and that caused some trou­ble for our hard-work­ing developers.” 

The Real­Core team start­ed an IoT research project to cal­cu­late the con­sump­tion lev­el per prod­uct, while inte­grat­ing this infor­ma­tion using SAP Cloud Plat­form. Today, their bev­er­age machine is ful­ly func­tion­al and fea­tures a graph­ic dis­play and bar­code that shows the cur­rent fill lev­el. The team plans to present this exam­ple as a show­case to cus­tomers in the bev­er­age indus­try, includ­ing how you can com­bine it with an auto­mat­ed and inte­grat­ed ERP system.

Get­ting IoT Learn­ings on the Shelf

Real­Core took what it learned from its soda-foun­tain exper­i­ment and used it to cre­ate SAP Cloud Plat­form-based smart elec­tron­ic shelf labels for the retail indus­try. These labels dis­play data from SAP ERP togeth­er with data from exter­nal sources, includ­ing real-time prices and cus­tomer eval­u­a­tions from Ama­zon. ​“This type of offer­ing is key for the retail indus­try,” added Brasch. ​“You can­not hide from online com­peti­tors like Ama­zon. And with cus­tomers being able to check online for the best rat­ings and prices, you need to show that you offer well-rat­ed prod­ucts at a fair price — with direct store avail­abil­i­ty and on-site consulting.”

The IoT road ahead makes it pos­si­ble to improve oper­a­tional effi­cien­cy, work­force pro­duc­tiv­i­ty, and, ulti­mate­ly, cus­tomer expe­ri­ences. New busi­ness mod­els and new rev­enue streams can open up if firms have the vision and start to exper­i­ment with IoT in their oper­a­tions — even in the solu­tions they offer their own customers.

Join us at the SAP-Cen­tric EAM & Sup­ply Chain con­fer­ence to learn how to do more with intel­li­gent technologies.