SAP has been talk­ing about the intel­li­gent enter­prise for a while now. And while most orga­ni­za­tions are still search­ing for a way to get there, SAP is look­ing for ways to help. 

The intel­li­gent enter­prise con­sists of three main com­po­nents, which include the intel­li­gent suite, the dig­i­tal plat­form, and intel­li­gent tech­nolo­gies such as arti­fi­cial intel­li­gences, machine learn­ing, Inter­net of Things (IoT), blockchain, and ana­lyt­ics. To build an intel­li­gent enter­prise, SAP cus­tomers will like­ly need to work with the SAP ecosys­tem of part­ners, par­tic­u­lar­ly the Inde­pen­dent Soft­ware Ven­dors (ISV). ISV part­ners can help cre­ate new dig­i­tal appli­ca­tions, mod­ern­ize exist­ing appli­ca­tions, expand prod­ucts-to-ser­vices, con­nect peo­ple and data across dig­i­tal touch points, and extend and inte­grate SAP appli­ca­tions and data. 

ASUG News sat down with Camil­la Dahlen, ISV pro­gram head at SAP, to dis­cuss how the more than 5,000 ISV part­ners and 1,500 part­ner apps can help SAP cus­tomers bet­ter antic­i­pate and respond to cus­tomer needs, auto­mate process­es, and invent new busi­ness mod­els and rev­enue streams.

Sharon: In what ways is the ISV pro­gram ben­e­fi­cial to SAP cus­tomers? How can it help them with their dig­i­tal transformations? 

Camil­la: The ISV pro­gram helps SAP cus­tomers in two dif­fer­ent ways. We know that many cus­tomers, in all types of indus­tries, are trans­form­ing the way they go to mar­ket as well as their busi­ness mod­els. Some of that relates to mak­ing their solu­tions avail­able in the cloud, or just cre­at­ing new solu­tions all togeth­er. Intel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty (IP) is a crit­i­cal part of that. It’s a dif­fer­en­tia­tor for com­pa­nies mov­ing for­ward. The ISV pro­gram makes it eas­i­er for cus­tomers to cap­ture that IP oppor­tu­ni­ty and to mon­e­tize it.

The sec­ond way is that SAP is mak­ing its ISV part­ner solu­tions avail­able to its cus­tomer base, which allows them to quick­ly gain access to inno­va­tions that are trans­for­ma­tive. It allows them to go to mar­ket and lever­age inno­va­tion faster than they would if they were doing it on their own. 

Sharon: What are some of the best inno­va­tions you are see­ing in the ISV com­mu­ni­ty today? 

Camil­la: SAP’s vision is to help the world run bet­ter and improve people’s lives. So, it’s very excit­ing to work with the part­ners we have, and togeth­er help ful­fill SAP’s vision.

One indus­try where there’s a lot of excit­ing inno­va­tion is health care. It is tru­ly both inno­v­a­tive as well as impact­ful on people’s lives. SAP has quite a few part­ners in this space and one that I’m very excit­ed about is Deloitte. They have devel­oped an appli­ca­tion called Con­verge­HEALTH Safe­ty that helps address the shift that’s going on in the life sci­ences indus­try to focus more on out­comes. The plat­form pro­vides access to safe­ty-relat­ed data and deliv­ers insights across the entire phar­ma­covig­i­lance process, which ulti­mate­ly makes devel­op­ments in med­i­cine and care much bet­ter. The safe­ty results are ana­lyzed and used to improve care for patients.

We’re also work­ing with part­ners in the enter­prise space, which would be of val­ue to SAP cus­tomers. Deloitte, again, is devel­op­ing a series of solu­tions on its Reimag­ine Plat­form. The solu­tions are all deliv­ered as a ser­vice and pro­vide real-time insights on areas such as invoice vari­ances, mon­i­tor­ing, his­tor­i­cal analy­sis, the sup­ply chain, and oth­er func­tions that add val­ue to an SAP cus­tomer. We’re also co-inno­vat­ing with Ernst & Young (EY), where they’re cre­at­ing extend­ed port­fo­lio capa­bil­i­ties for some of our solutions.

Sharon: From what I under­stand, much of the ISV offer­ings are indus­try-spe­cif­ic solu­tions — how can cus­tomers in a par­tic­u­lar indus­try best explore what’s out there? 

Camil­la: Although we have indus­try-spe­cif­ic solu­tions, a lot of our ISV appli­ca­tions are hor­i­zon­tal, and they’re based on a par­tic­u­lar buy­ing cen­ter or user with­in the SAP cus­tomer organization. 

The best place to just get an overview of what we have for an SAP cus­tomer is the SAP App Cen­ter. SAP con­tin­ues to invest even more into its App Cen­ter so that it becomes more and more user friendly.

Sharon: There was a big push a cou­ple years ago for ISVs to devel­op for SAP Cloud Plat­form. Is that still the case? What do cus­tomers need to know about that? 

Camil­la: SAP Cloud Plat­form (SCP) con­tin­ues to be the core of SAP’s tech­nol­o­gy strat­e­gy and the tech­nol­o­gy of choice for any com­pa­ny that’s look­ing to build an SAP-cen­tric use case. SCP in par­tic­u­lar makes it very easy to inte­grate into oth­er SAP appli­ca­tions and pro­vide seam­less inte­gra­tion between dif­fer­ent products.

We’ve seen a broad uptake by our part­ners over the last few years in extend­ing a lot of SAP capa­bil­i­ties. I gave you a few exam­ples ear­li­er with EY and Deloitte, and they’re doing this native­ly in SAP. So, that’s absolute­ly still part of our strategy.

Ulti­mate­ly, it means our cus­tomers have access to an increased port­fo­lio of pre-inte­grat­ed solutions. 

Sharon: How is SAP help­ing to sim­pli­fy the SAP part­ner land­scape for cus­tomers so they can find the right solu­tion with the right support? 

Camil­la: SAP rec­og­nizes there are a lot of dif­fer­ent pro­grams and we’re work­ing to sim­pli­fy where we can. From an ISV solu­tion per­spec­tive, I’m going to go back to the SAP App Cen­ter as the start­ing off point for all our cus­tomers. It’s the one place to find all appli­ca­tions that add val­ue to an SAP land­scape in what­ev­er indus­try that cus­tomer hap­pens to be in. 

Sharon: Inte­gra­tion is top of mind for ASUG mem­bers — it’s still a big chal­lenge for many of them. How does SAP approach this top­ic with ISVs? 

Camil­la: Inte­gra­tion is a key top­ic for SAP cus­tomers, for SAP and our part­ners as well. One way we’re address­ing this is by work­ing with our ISV part­ners as well as our own devel­op­ment teams to share the same require­ments in terms of tools and process­es. ISV part­ners play a spe­cial role in this area because they can also pro­vide strong capa­bil­i­ties with­in inte­gra­tion that can help address some of the prob­lems cus­tomers are facing. 

Addi­tion­al­ly, the pre-inte­grat­ed solu­tions that ISV part­ners pro­vide help reduce the over­all inte­gra­tion TCO for our cus­tomers that are look­ing to expand some fea­tures using ISV development.

Inte­gra­tion is some­thing that SAP is going to con­tin­ue to work on and focus on to deliv­er an inte­grat­ed intel­li­gence suite. Our part­ners and our IP part­ners will com­pli­ment that, but that’s still SAP’s ownership.

Sharon: What is SAP doing around cer­ti­fi­ca­tions with ISVs? Who can our mem­bers trust to get these jobs done? 

Camil­la: SAP has a cer­ti­fi­ca­tion pro­gram in place. It’s where ISV part­ners and SAP joint­ly test inte­gra­tions before a solu­tion is deployed in a cus­tomer environment. 

Now that SAP is launch­ing more and more part­ner­ships and appli­ca­tions, the top­ic of cer­ti­fi­ca­tion has become even more impor­tant. SAP wants to make sure that cus­tomers can trust the prod­uct and ser­vice they’re receiving. 

Sharon: What is the mes­sage SAP would like its cus­tomers to hear from the ISV side? 

Camil­la: There are two things. First, SAP can help you mon­e­tize your IP. This might be fea­tures that had been devel­oped around the SAP land­scape that could be of val­ue and ben­e­fit to oth­er cus­tomers. Or, it could be IP that has absolute­ly noth­ing to do with an SAP land­scape, but it’s some­thing that you as the cus­tomer have devel­oped and want to take to mar­ket with the help of SAP. 

The oth­er thing is that SAP wants to make sure that you know about all the inno­va­tions that exist on the SAP App Cen­ter as well as the ones that are planned. Famil­iar­ize your­selves with what it looks like and what’s avail­able and be on the look­out for excit­ing new announce­ments around appli­ca­tions in 2020.

Reg­is­ter for ASUG on-demand web­cast, ​“Smart DevOps for SAP Appli­ca­tions.”