The prob­lem with align­ing tech­nol­o­gy to busi­ness out­comes is ground­ed in an over­abun­dance of ways in which tech­nol­o­gy can impact busi­ness out­comes and tech­nolo­gies avail­able to do so. The prob­lem grows as orga­ni­za­tions imple­ment new and emerg­ing tech­nol­o­gy while simul­ta­ne­ous­ly seek­ing to improve exist­ing busi­ness out­comes and pur­sue new opportunities.

Cus­tomers in the SAP ecosys­tem who want to use the lat­est in arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence, machine learn­ing, IoT, ana­lyt­ics, and oth­er tech­nolo­gies have a daunt­ing task in decid­ing whether they should turn to SAP or the myr­i­ad of ven­dors offer­ing sim­i­lar func­tion­al­i­ty. Even if the task is mere­ly the con­tin­ued devel­op­ment of func­tion­al­i­ty to help dif­fer­en­ti­ate a company’s exist­ing busi­ness prac­tices — as opposed to a new, excit­ing ini­tia­tive — tool and approach choic­es can be challenging. 

The Right Choice?

SAP offers the Busi­ness Tech­nol­o­gy Plat­form (BTP) as a sin­gle source for these numer­ous require­ments. But is BTP the right choice, par­tic­u­lar­ly in a mar­ket where hyper­scalers and oth­er ven­dors (includ­ing SAP part­ners and com­peti­tors) have solu­tions that promise sim­i­lar results?

This is an espe­cial­ly impor­tant dilem­ma right now in the SAP ecosys­tem. The con­cept of off-the-shelf, one-size-fits-all enter­prise soft­ware, exem­pli­fied by SAP’s S/4HANA and its Intel­li­gent Enter­prise ini­tia­tive, runs head­long into the enor­mous vari­ety of indus­tries, micro-ver­ti­cals, geo­gra­phies, and spe­cial­ized busi­ness mod­els that make up the SAP cus­tomer base. Com­pli­cat­ing mat­ters is the cus­tomer base’s nev­er-end­ing quest to dif­fer­en­ti­ate in an increas­ing­ly com­plex glob­al market. 

The SAP approach to solv­ing these prob­lems is to offer the great­est pos­si­ble choice when it comes to its core S/4HANA sys­tem: on-premise, fit-to-stan­dard pub­lic cloud, and a con­fig­urable pri­vate cloud. SAP also comes to the table with indus­try spe­cif­ic func­tion­al­i­ty in its Indus­try Cloud offer­ing as well as a com­pre­hen­sive set of cloud-based solu­tions, such as SAP Suc­cess­Fac­tors, SAP Ari­ba, and Concur. 

Bridg­ing the Gap

While the SAP port­fo­lio is com­pre­hen­sive, the gap between what is need­ed and what can be real­ized from off-the-shelf soft­ware can be sig­nif­i­cant­ly hard to bridge, even as it becomes increas­ing­ly imper­a­tive to do so or lose com­pet­i­tive advan­tage. Cus­tomer-spe­cif­ic require­ments for process improve­ment; data access and gov­er­nance; appli­ca­tion inte­gra­tion; machine intel­li­gence; and ana­lyt­ics, among oth­ers, need to be part of the soft­ware and busi­ness infra­struc­ture as well. Too much is on the line to do otherwise.

For SAP cus­tomers, one of the most impor­tant bridges they should explore is BTP. This com­bi­na­tion of tech­nol­o­gy and ser­vices, run­ning on either SAP Cloud or a hyper­scaler partner’s cloud, is designed to fill in the gaps that inhib­it the ulti­mate real­iza­tion of enter­prise software’s busi­ness val­ue. With that goal in mind, BTP offers the abil­i­ty to man­age com­plex, het­ero­ge­neous data sources; deploy tech­nolo­gies such AI, ML, IoT, and robot­ic process automa­tion (RPA); use advanced ana­lyt­ics to make sense of cus­tomers’ increas­ing­ly dense sea of data; and, per­haps most impor­tant­ly, cre­ate cloud-based exten­sions that sup­port cus­tomer-spe­cif­ic func­tion­al­i­ty, much the way cus­tomiza­tions did in the on-premise past. 

Yes, all that, and more.

The fact that BTP offers this broad range of capa­bil­i­ties makes it an impor­tant resource for SAP cus­tomers, even though the breadth of its func­tion­al­i­ty makes it dif­fi­cult to under­stand its full range of pos­si­bil­i­ties. Dis­cern­ing how to use BTP can be daunt­ing but it’s essen­tial work for enter­pris­es to ensure they get the most out of their invest­ments in SAP soft­ware and services. 

Too Many Tech­nol­o­gy Options? 

Adding to the com­plex­i­ty of under­stand­ing BTP’s poten­tial is the fact that vary­ing degrees of func­tion­al­i­ty pro­vid­ed by the plat­form can nom­i­nal­ly be found else­where. All the major hyper­scalers pro­vide tools that mim­ic key ele­ments of BTP, as do many SAP part­ners. Com­pa­nies that deploy appli­ca­tions that com­pete with SAP also poten­tial­ly have at their dis­pos­al pro­pri­etary toolsets that sup­port many of these capabilities. 

This means there’s anoth­er gap to bridge: the choice over­load gap. Being able to make the best choice of what solu­tion to use for what pur­pose is crit­i­cal for any SAP cus­tomers’ suc­cess. While SAP has over 15,000 cus­tomers that use BTP in one way or anoth­er, many are not using it to full advan­tage, at least not yet.

For some, that’s because BTP basi­cal­ly came pre-installed with­in an SAP S/4HANA imple­men­ta­tion or is run­ning an Indus­try Cloud exten­sion, which means its con­sid­er­able capa­bil­i­ties are hid­den from view. Oth­er cus­tomers are either just begin­ning to roll out S/4HANA and oth­er SAP Intel­li­gent Enter­prise ele­ments and may be at work on the kinds of tech­ni­cal prob­lems that BTP can resolve. And, of course, prospec­tive cus­tomers look­ing at the broad selec­tion of SAP deploy­ment mod­els and hyper­scaler part­ners have their work set out for them to ensure they make the best tech­nol­o­gy plat­form choic­es, for now and the fore­see­able future. 

That’s why the ASUG-SAP Busi­ness Tech­nol­o­gy Plat­form (BTP) Sum­mit https://​www​.asug​.com/​e​v​e​n​t​s​/​a​s​u​g​-​s​a​p​-​b​u​s​i​n​e​s​s​-​t​e​c​h​n​o​l​o​g​y​-​p​l​a​t​f​o​r​m​-​b​t​p​-​s​ummit

arrives at the right time, offer­ing a blend of lead­er­ship views, sub­ject mat­ter exper­tise, and voic­es from cus­tomer expe­ri­ence. BTP is com­plex pre­cise­ly because the oppor­tu­ni­ties it tar­gets are also com­plex, broad, and deep. There are plen­ty of bridges to build, to under­stand, use, and fill lever­age BTP across tech­nol­o­gy gaps and envi­sioned busi­ness outcomes.

Joshua Green­baum is Prin­ci­pal at Enter­prise Appli­ca­tion Consulting.