Pho­to Cred­it: SAP

Tech­nol­o­gy pun­dits, indus­try ana­lysts, and enter­prise tech­nol­o­gy providers are fond of shar­ing their visions for how next-gen­er­a­tion busi­ness­es should oper­ate. At the 2018 SAP­PHIRE NOW and ASUG Annu­al Con­fer­ence, SAP intro­duced its own vision, described as the ​“Intel­li­gent Enter­prise.” But what does this term real­ly mean? And what does it mean for SAP customers?

Data-Dri­ven Accel­er­at­ed Outcomes

SAP defines the term like this: ​“Intel­li­gent enter­pris­es effec­tive­ly use their data assets to achieve their desired out­comes faster — and with less risk.” The speed comes from automat­ing com­plex process­es with­in the busi­ness and bring­ing them togeth­er around a unit­ed core of mas­ter data in the cloud.

Orga­ni­za­tions need to buy into cer­tain philoso­phies for this approach to work. SAP iden­ti­fies four key enablers to the intel­li­gent enterprise: 

1. Cus­tomer-cen­tric­i­ty

2. Data that dri­ves differentiation

3. Dig­i­tized processes

4. A cloud-first approach

Busi­ness Process­es + Intel­li­gent Technologies

When you con­sid­er SAP’s Intel­li­gent Enter­prise vision, it func­tions a lit­tle like a for­mu­la. It serves these key busi­ness process­es through its intel­li­gent suite of products:

• Cus­tomer Experience 
• Man­u­fac­tur­ing and the Sup­ply Chain 
• Dig­i­tal Core (ERP)
• Peo­ple Engage­ment (HR)
• Net­work and Spend Man­age­ment (pro­cure­ment)

Then, where busi­ness­es want to apply intel­li­gent tech­nolo­gies like arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence, machine learn­ing, the Inter­net of Things (IoT), and more, they’re able to add those through SAP Leonar­do. Final­ly, busi­ness­es need to go through the process of mak­ing sure their data is not only har­mo­nized but mov­ing much of it to the cloud, so they can man­age it efficiently.

Intel­li­gent Enter­pris­es in Practice

Giv­en SAP’s focus on finan­cial ERP appli­ca­tions, it often cites the exam­ple of invoice and pay­ment match­ing, along with all the relat­ed approvals and sub­sys­tem rat­i­fi­ca­tion pro­ce­dures such as sep­a­ra­tion of duty. We can now almost com­plete­ly auto­mate these pro­ce­dures, while leav­ing a gate­way for human hand-offs when we need to resolve anom­alies. Of course, these anom­aly res­o­lu­tions can also be sig­nif­i­cant­ly auto­mat­ed as needed.

Cus­tomers today can start to use this intel­li­gent soft­ware-sup­port­ed automa­tion to shoul­der repeat­able, defin­able tasks. Embrac­ing this change will allow com­pa­nies to free up employ­ee time and empow­er them to do more mean­ing­ful and strate­gic work.

Deep­er Human-Like Intelligence

As mech­a­nized and back-end as these tech­nolo­gies are, cus­tomers can use SAP prod­ucts to bring a human-like front end to the intel­li­gent automa­tion now being engi­neered into the enter­prise. For exam­ple, we can cre­ate per­son­al­ized and unique cus­tomer expe­ri­ences using AI, chat­bots, and oth­er relat­ed voice technologies.

Com­pa­nies that want to apply these intel­li­gent tech­nolo­gies can turn to SAP for frame­works to make this hap­pen, such as SAP Con­ver­sa­tion­al AI, an end-to-end toolk­it for train­ing, build­ing, and mon­i­tor­ing chat­bots. Accord­ing to SAP, ​“These chat­bots can be inte­grat­ed with SAP and non-SAP sys­tems and are avail­able as pre­con­fig­ured indus­try-spe­cif­ic bots. So far, users have built 60,000 SAP Con­ver­sa­tion­al AI chatbots.”

The Cru­cial Cloud Connection

The cloud is the essen­tial con­nec­tion across the entire intel­li­gent enter­prise. Whether on premis­es, pub­lic, or hybrid, the degree to which the intel­li­gent enter­prise gets smarter is a direct fac­tor of the amount of secured net­work con­nec­tiv­i­ty it engi­neers into the fab­ric of its new com­put­ing stack.

Part of this ​“con­nect­ed­ness fac­tor” will set cus­tomers up to har­ness new inno­va­tions like blockchain. SAP says it has rec­og­nized the part that blockchain plays in cre­at­ing more-intel­li­gent enter­pris­es, so it’s devel­oped SAP Cloud Plat­form Blockchain. This offers blockchain as a ser­vice, deliv­ered at the right pow­er and scope, based on indi­vid­ual cus­tomer needs.

Not sure you ful­ly under­stand blockchain? Here’s what you need to know about blockchain today.

Accord­ing to SAP, ​“About 65 com­pa­nies par­tic­i­pate in the SAP blockchain co-inno­va­tion ini­tia­tive to help cus­tomers use man­u­fac­tur­ing and sup­ply-chain prod­ucts aug­ment­ed by blockchain to enhance trans­paren­cy, safe­ty and col­lab­o­ra­tion in indus­tries such as trans­porta­tion, food, and pharmaceuticals.”

The Intel­li­gent Enter­prise Adop­tion Curve

Ulti­mate­ly, becom­ing an intel­li­gent enter­prise is about adapt­ing and chang­ing so you’re ready for what’s ahead. These types of enter­prise-wide changes require sig­nif­i­cant invest­ments and cul­ture shifts, so SAP acknowl­edges that cus­tomers will adopt these changes in phas­es. And some orga­ni­za­tions will undoubt­ed­ly move faster than oth­ers, act­ing as the ear­ly adopters.

But the nature of these changes can start to cre­ate a vir­tu­ous cycle. As orga­ni­za­tions adopt tech­nolo­gies such as automa­tion con­trols, chat­bots, blockchain, and machine learn­ing (ML) to gath­er more infor­ma­tion, they will get smarter — con­tin­u­ing to speed up the cycle of innovation.

Many cus­tomers will still have a way to go before they become full-on intel­li­gent enter­pris­es. But these tech­nolo­gies exist, and SAP is ready to help cus­tomers start get­ting the most from them now.