No industry is exactly the same. Consumer products, manufacturing, energy and natural resources, financial services, and public services – these industries and many more face regulations, customer demand, and digital maturity levels that are uniquely their own. But beyond the surface of those industries categories is a complex web of subindustries with entirely different needs.
Most executives are aware that generic business software creates a foundation that tackles the basics of running a business during constant business change, economic uncertainty, and market volatility. But SAP customers also understand the value of extending their digital strategies with SAP Solution Extensions. They are tailoring processes and codifying reporting and analytics to become more efficient, cost-effective, and compliant in terms of employee and customer expectations.
Below is a snapshot of how SAP Solution Extensions cater to the unique needs of specific industries and subindustries.
Wholesale Distribution: Unleashing the Potential of Negotiations
Negotiating better agreements is critical for wholesale distributors when driving savings, increasing profitability and margins, and fostering customer and supplier relationships. But it’s still an intricate function of various partners, extensive information, and complex calculations.
With a comprehensive solution such as the SAP S/4HANA solution for agreement profitability and negotiation by gicom, distributors can increase control of the negotiation lifecycle, simplify processes, and gain insights into possible enhancements for profitability. Real-time simulation and analysis of the impact of any actively negotiated deal give distributors the visibility to strike an agreement that protects their profitability, lowering the cost of goods sold through a streamlined, closed-loop process.
Fashion Retail: Redefining the Purpose of Brick-and-Mortar Stores
For fashion retailers, the new norm of mask wearing, social distancing, and controlling the number of employees and consumers in one location is particularly challenging, considering their high-touch nature. However, with the right business model, they may create a mobile-responsive, integrated service that delivers a consistent, reliable, and safe digital experience across all devices and channels.
For instance, available on premise or through the cloud, the SAP Omnichannel Point-of-Sale application by GK allows retailers to support an authentically omnichannel consumer experience. The solution extension enables our customers to control their worldwide outlets centrally. With scanners, scales, kiosks, vending machines, and other peripherals and storefronts, fashion retailers can acquire the real-time visibility and transactional capabilities to provide a seamless and personalized shopping experience.
To succeed with this omnichannel retail model, fashion brands deliver a diverse, dynamic array of products that consumers want through SAP Master Data Governance, retail and fashion management extension by Utopia. It replaces spreadsheets and e-mails to deliver a single version of correct and complete master data to all users – leading to lower costs, informed decision-making, and timely response to market change.
Furthermore, no matter how sophisticated the brick-and-mortar model for retail becomes, fashion brands still need to mitigate an ever-present risk: revenue loss. The SAP Loss Prevention application by Fujitsu facilitates an advanced approach to distinguishing potentially fraudulent activities from irregularities, such as business process issues, gaps in employee training, or cases of deception. In return, our customers are eliminating time-consuming and error-prone manual reporting methods and empowering their stakeholders to understand anomalous data better to control and prevent loss on their own.
Agribusiness: Widening Slim Margins with Insight and Efficiency
Agriculture’s economic fragility is a concern across the industry. For years, weather disasters, a trade war, and commodity pricing below production costs have placed tremendous stress across the value chain. And with today’s fluctuating demand across all forms of grocery and food services, agricultural futures are becoming more uncertain.
Although the same stress is felt across the entire industry, virtually every category of farming is governed by distinct regulations and best practices when responding to dynamic market shifts. The needs and requirements of running a dairy farm, for example, are vastly different from those of a grower running an orchard.
SAP understands that reality and offers four unique solution extensions to aid customers as they address issues that are vital to their long-term continuity:
SAP Farm Management application by Vistex: Designed for farm management operations, the application facilitates everything from planning and planting to growing and harvesting. It addresses the daily need for information and visibility among field managers, supervisors, and workers while delivering crucial analytics to senior executives.
SAP Grower Management for Perishables application by Vistex: This integrated solution helps manage complex processes and relationships between buyers and growers of perishable products, such as fruits and vegetables. SAP Grower Management for Perishables establishes a contract setup and a wide array of farming, logistics, and accounting services that assist all players in efficiently and profitably fulfilling commitments.
SAP Dairy Management application by msg for SAP S/4HANA: The application streamlines and optimizes processes, from raw milk reception to processing finished products. Dairy farmers can use the technology to streamline operations, turn real-time data into revealing insights, and improve performance and competitiveness.
SAP Meat and Fish Management application by msg: With data-driven technology embedded, this application enables meat, poultry, or fish businesses to simplify the storage, processing, and flow of information and insight across the organization. The entire meat or fish value chain can oversee food-processing functions in ways that help ensure quality products are delivered to store shelves to meet the needs of every consumer that wants them.
Capital-Intensive Industries: Creating Lasting Value for Customers and the World
Capital-intensive industry segments – such as utilities, oil and gas, manufacturing, mill products, mining, transportation, chemicals, engineering, and construction – are taking on a new life of their own as they help create livable homes, towns, and cities running on sustainable energy. Delivering on this promise requires intelligent solutions for energy generation; storage, water, and waste management; and energy grids efficient enough to keep up with fluctuating demand and inspire consumers to generate their own power.
SAP customers are realizing this goal by tapping into accurate, up-to-the-minute transactional data to manage complex assets, maximize uptime, and improve responsiveness to changing circumstances. The SAP Master Data Governance application, enterprise asset management extension by Utopia unifies and streamlines data governance to improve maintenance planning, reduce asset downtime, increase productivity and profits, and support compliance and safety. A smooth exchange of trusted master data is also facilitated with business partners through mobile apps and devices, across cloud and on-premise applications and services.
To keep consumers engaged in this vision of a more sustainable world, utilities are no longer merely providing an online presence with basic account functions and a call center. They are interacting with consumers on the Web and through mobile apps by using the SAP Self-Service Accelerator for Utilities by SEW. The tool provides a user-friendly engagement platform with self-service capabilities that serve as a starting template for intuitive, multichannel experiences.
Meanwhile, from an operational perspective, connecting asset lifecycle management with digital technology fosters enterprise collaboration and data-driven decision-making. Controlling engineering information, work processes, and risk allows firms to improve efficiency and time to production for their capital projects and operations.
A solution extension add-on for the SAP Extended Enterprise Content Management (SAP Extended ECM) application by OpenText opens the door to a more intelligent approach to capital projects and operations. The add-on integrates structured engineering data with unstructured information, including computer-aided design drawings, models, technical specifications, user manuals, maintenance records, and service contracts. Plus, it gives businesses the control they need to handle engineering documents, work processes, and risk across the distributed enterprise, which enhances decision-making and agility while reducing costs.
The solution extension add-on for SAP Extended ECM also supports role-specific workspaces to increase operational efficiency with aggregated content, data, people, and tasks related to a common business function, project, or use case. Content is seamlessly available to employees who need it, when they need it and governed automatically and transparently according to current policies.
Media and Entertainment: Unifying Rights and Royalties with Intelligence and Clarity
The use of disconnected spreadsheets, generic applications, and bolt-on technologies can create a dangerous landscape when competing against massive global players and emerging competitors – most of whom are offering content. Content distributors need a single point of truth to control their rights and royalties while gaining the trust of their consumers and network of creators, licensors, and publishers.
Consider the occasion when distributors negotiate their right to exploit new content. A core of rights and royalty intelligence and clarity, supported by SAP S/4HANA for rights and royalty management by Vistex, enables distributors to prove their financial viability, platform strength, and audience growth. The solution extension consolidates multiple sources of truth to just one enterprise system to create legal-approved contracts, acquire rights, move content to production, and trigger royalty payments based on a schedule.
Impactful Digital Transformation Is Within Reach for Your Business
This series has covered how SAP Solution Extensions can help companies address unique needs across functional areas and distinct industry requirements. SAP customers embrace our portfolio of solution extensions to simplify IT complexities while reducing their risk, accelerating business change, and futureproofing their digital investments.