Busi­ness­es are increas­ing­ly under­go­ing large-scale dig­i­tal ini­tia­tives to emerge beyond all forms of uncer­tain­ty. Some orga­ni­za­tions are sim­ply adapt­ing to chang­ing eco­nom­ics, social con­di­tions, and cus­tomer pref­er­ences, while oth­ers effec­tive­ly alter their DNA to work smarter and dri­ve inno­va­tion to get ahead.

This kind of change does­n’t hap­pen nat­u­ral­ly or overnight. Time and resources must be invest­ed to build the right lan­guage, com­mu­ni­ca­tion chan­nels, process­es, data, and report­ing struc­tures and share them enter­prisewide. And orga­ni­za­tions fur­ther ahead in estab­lish­ing that foun­da­tion are most like­ly inte­grat­ing their operations.

Accord­ing to Oxford Eco­nom­ics, only 25% of sur­veyed exec­u­tives can say that their oper­a­tions are com­plete­ly inte­grat­ed. If you dig a lit­tle deep­er in this research, you’ll find that this minor­i­ty is redesign­ing employ­ee expe­ri­ences and oper­a­tions with trans­paren­cy and improv­ing prof­it margins.

“Inte­gra­tion is not just for house­keep­ing exer­cise of con­nect­ing appli­ca­tions, data, and process­es,” Dr. Michael Amel­ing, head of Intel­li­gent Enter­prise Pro­gram and Cross Archi­tec­ture at SAP, said dur­ing a ses­sion at ASUG Next-Gen­er­a­tion SAP Enter­prise Archi­tect Con­fer­ence. ​“It’s about cre­at­ing an end-to-end, seam­less, and har­mo­nized user expe­ri­ence — and that requires flex­i­bil­i­ty and full cov­er­age across the entire val­ue chain. And this approach to inte­gra­tion sets the foun­da­tion of the Intel­li­gent Enterprise.”

Intel­li­gent Enter­pris­es Are Inte­grat­ed Enterprises

Ris­ing demand for seam­less user expe­ri­ences and har­mo­nized busi­ness process­es from cus­tomers, part­ners, and user com­mu­ni­ties like ASUG has brought the need for inte­gra­tion front and cen­ter. In 2020 alone, SAP deliv­ered near­ly 350 inte­gra­tions, indi­cat­ing growth of more than 160% over the pre­vi­ous year. 

“The key to this growth is open inte­gra­tion. In addi­tion to con­nect­ing APIs as events, we are inte­grat­ing SAP solu­tions with third-par­ty or lega­cy sys­tems in the cloud and on premise,” remarked Amel­ing. ​“We all know that APIs live more often in hybrid envi­ron­ments, and orga­ni­za­tions must con­sid­er that real­i­ty in their dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion plans.”

Inte­gra­tion often begins with sim­ple func­tion­al­i­ties such as sin­gle sign-on, data man­age­ment, and appli­ca­tion con­nec­tiv­i­ty, before matur­ing to take on more com­plex needs such as data pri­va­cy and pro­tec­tion and access autho­riza­tion. Mean­while, deliv­er­ing end-to-end busi­ness process­es is a long-term activ­i­ty that starts with a small num­ber of process­es and con­tin­ues to involve more over time until the entire busi­ness process is covered.

Aram­co Europe is one exam­ple of an SAP cus­tomer that has ben­e­fit­ed from this approach. Sau­di Ara­bi­an Oil Com­pa­ny (Aram­co) deployed SAP S/4HANA Cloud with SAP Ari­ba solu­tions to man­age sup­pli­ers and SAP Suc­cess­Fac­tors solu­tions and SAP Con­cur solu­tions to man­age HR and trav­el expens­es. Pre­built inte­gra­tion flows in SAP Inte­gra­tion Suite con­nect them all smooth­ly with one anoth­er, elim­i­nat­ing many customizations.

With inte­gra­tion as a strate­gic pri­or­i­ty, experts from SAP and Aram­co pro­duced a full-ser­vice intel­li­gent enter­prise with a pow­er­ful yet flex­i­ble frame­work for all ongo­ing oper­a­tions and forth­com­ing inno­va­tions. Dur­ing the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, its employ­ees con­tin­ued to work alone after a short delay, so the entire project took only 12 months of effort.

Among crit­i­cal out­comes is a ful­ly auto­mat­ed quar­ter-end clos­ing and report­ing struc­ture to cap­ture the finan­cial per­for­mance and risk man­age­ment strat­e­gy of the invest­ment port­fo­lio worth $27.8 bil­lion. Process effi­cien­cy has also sig­nif­i­cant­ly increased for deliv­er­ing sup­port ser­vices across Europe, Africa, and Asia. Stake­hold­ers every­where have deep­er insight into oper­a­tions, and the com­pa­ny is well-posi­tioned to pilot new tech­no­log­i­cal and busi­ness innovations.

As Aram­co’s expe­ri­ence demon­strates, focus­ing on opti­miz­ing end-to-end busi­ness process­es can help align the domain mod­el that empow­ers and sup­ports user behav­iors. Pro­vid­ing the work­force with an inte­grat­ed land­scape of a cen­tral core of intel­li­gence and func­tion-spe­cif­ic appli­ca­tions allows employ­ees to access com­pre­hen­sive data, derive insights, and lever­age ana­lyt­ics to make deci­sions confidently. 

A Strate­gic Move to Inte­gra­tion Pays Off

As com­pa­nies embrace the inex­tri­ca­bly dig­i­tal nature of today’s mar­ket­place, new chal­lenges will inevitably arise. But when oper­a­tions, process­es, dig­i­tal invest­ments, data intel­li­gence, and busi­ness rela­tion­ship — inter­nal and exter­nal — are viewed as part of the same net­work, orga­ni­za­tions can get ahead of every risk and disruption.

This is the beau­ty of true inte­gra­tion. Orga­ni­za­tions can cre­ate a har­mo­nized, seam­less user expe­ri­ence across all deci­sion-mak­ing by nur­tur­ing col­lab­o­ra­tive process­es and reap­ing the ben­e­fits of inter­con­nec­tiv­i­ty. Essen­tial­ly, they cre­ate and strength­en the heart of their Intel­li­gent Enterprise.

Dis­cov­er the pow­er of open inte­gra­tion with SAP solu­tions. Watch the on-demand ses­sion, ​“SAP Inte­gra­tion Strat­e­gy and Tech­niques,” from ASUG Next-Gen­er­a­tion SAP Enter­prise Archi­tect Con­fer­ence, fea­tur­ing SAP’s Dr. Michael Amel­ing, head of Intel­li­gent Enter­prise Pro­gram and Cross Archi­tec­ture, and Katrin von Ahsen, prod­uct expert Cross Architecture.