Shortly after SAPPHIRE NOW in 2018, independent research firm Forrester Research, Inc. has named SAP Digital Business Services a leader in providing services for next-generation SAP products in its recent report, “The Forrester Wave™: Services Providers For Next-Generation SAP Products, Q2 2018.”
As one of four SAP services providers to be named a leader among the 13 included in the report, SAP Digital Business Services is clearly ahead of its mission to help SAP customers maximize value and succeed as intelligent enterprises.
What makes us unique is our forward-thinking approach. True leaders are taking the time to help customers reinvent their business, prepare them for the digital future, rather than focusing on the maintenance of traditional enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems. To move the needle for global and local businesses, SAP Digital Business Services disrupts the way it provides innovative services and next-generation support.
SAP Digital Business Services is ahead of its mission to help customers maximize value and succeed as intelligent enterprises
Making Services Smart
Machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI) are becoming more and more standard in today’s services offerings. And Forrester noted that the experience with SAP Leonardo, and automation are differentiators for SAP services providers – all of which are the key pillars of SAP Digital Business Services.
Technology must be intuitive, and what applies to our private lives also applies to our work lives. SAP is creating a personalized, conversational in-solution support for SAP S/4HANA Cloud users through SAP CoPilot. This built-in, enterprise-specific digital assistant is powered by SAP Leonardo machine learning and AI. Key: It picks up on users’ unique user activity and system preferences, and analyzes these to make tailored, proactive system recommendations with the enterprise’s goals in mind.
SAP Expertise Anytime, Anywhere
Today, companies need to be able to flexibly reach experts for services and support anytime, whenever needed. The vendors of focus included in Forrester’s report are global in scale, spanning all borders and cultures. SAP Digital Business Services offers over 19,000 experts deriving their insight and know-how from working with more than 400,000 customers, 80 percent of the Fortune 500 companies across 25 industries worldwide.
According to Forrester, the proximity of SAP’s experts to the product portfolio enables the delivery of “best-in-class experience with next-generation SAP products like [SAP] S/4HANA and new offerings like [SAP] Leonardo.” And, given the many channels through which customers can reach SAP experts, this best-in-class service is always accessible.
Using tailored roadmaps and transformation plans that fit the needs of individual enterprises, SAP offers a wide range of solution delivery services that ensure the fast and safe adoption of SAP S/4HANA. For customer or partner-led SAP S/4HANA projects, SAP Value Assurance provides predefined packages that cover everything from implementation planning to optimization. Further, SAP Advanced Deployment gives customers access to adoption services for customer-led SAP S/4HANA project scenarios, which are carried out end-to-end by SAP.
Regardless of which SAP services are used to carry out an implementation project, both options are compatible with SAP Model Company services, allowing line-of-business-specific transformation projects for SAP S/4HANA.
For larger scale implementation projects involving next-generation SAP technology, services such as the new version of SAP MaxAttention provide SAP customers with direct access to a customized, on-site support team. Based on unique needs, customers can choose their engagement level and gain access to hands-on SAP guidance from implementation planning to customized application design.
Always One Step Ahead
One of my favorite takeaways from Forrester’s analysis is that businesses must re-imagine themselves in the digital economy and that service providers should help them to do so. A key characteristic of an intelligent enterprise is that it remains one step — the oftentimes critical one step — ahead of the competition and potential obstacles.
But, this agility cannot be sustained by reactive services and support. By closely collaborating with customers and partners and by bringing together system-specific data with machine learning and AI capabilities, SAP Digital Business Services helps customers discover their future needs and support their future success.
Michael Kleinemeier is a member of the Executive Board of SAP SE.
