Companies across all industries are in a continuous search for true value that will evolve their business, capture a new competitive edge, and extend their customer reach. SAP is also advancing its service delivery approach, helping customers unlock the full potential of their cloud investment.
While there are shelves of books written about boldness, nothing beats seeing it unfold in real life. It is inspiring when companies express their purpose and vision for tomorrow and then drive real change and achieve differentiated success.
Some 15 years since my first cloud implementation project, I have been privileged to have a front-row seat to such boldness in action. Yet, what really excites me is how the right technology, business services, and expertise enable organizations to double down on their cloud aspirations and expand the impact of their digital transformation to near-limitless potential.
The Services team at SAP has helped many companies smash their internal targets for operational speed and agility by migrating their legacy data and systems to a cloud-based intelligent enterprise resource planning (ERP). Other organizations enjoy newfound prognostication skills through predictive insights and extended visibility, as they identify new opportunities and mitigate risks early. And now, the rising adoption of the latest intelligent technologies – such as artificial intelligence (AI), the Internet of Things (IoT), and machine learning – delivers a level of social responsibility and environmental accountability that everyone desires.
But it is not vision and the latest tools that ultimately drive real change. Instead, the secret lies in how our customers amplify their transformation ambition with the right skills, expert guidance, and digital capabilities.
From Cloud Ambition to True Transformation
Companies may not be able to buy digitalization, but they can certainly simplify their way toward it. This mindset is helping SAP customers such as BITZER take full advantage of SAP services to combine SAP software, business know-how, and customer-focused innovation to create instant value for its customers.
Each of our customers have, without question, unique innovation experiences that are helping them transform their business as well as our global economy, communities, and planet. But they also inspire SAP to continue investing in our delivery methodologies, automation capabilities, design-thinking approaches, experts’ skills, and a library of learning content and support templates to help our customers achieve even more.
We understand how the right tools and wisdom applied at the right moment in a digital transformation initiative can become a source of energy – not a spark, but the fuel – that produces expected outcomes quickly. When critiquing our own service offerings, we pressure-test them against two dimensions: how businesses win and how the people within them win. This combined view into organizational goals and human expectations enables us to re-engineer existing services and innovate new ones to help our customers to architect the right cloud-based solution for the challenge at hand.
For example, the opportunity to increase market value motivates business leaders to move to the cloud; however, employees rarely feel the same. When using our services, customers can work with our experts to identify relevant use cases and quantify their potential value in support people across all roles and backgrounds. Then leaders can communicate this information to employees, helping them immediately recognize how the technology can help them better contribute to strategic growth and drive higher market value.
When Customer Success Is the Priority
By shifting our mindset from implementation success to our customer’s business success, the Services organization at SAP is well positioned to fully observe business challenges and demand and use those insights to shape service offerings.
Take, for example, large independent automotive distributor Inchcape. To run agile and efficient processes while providing customers with the smooth, omnichannel purchasing experiences they expect, the company wanted to take advantage of the latest intelligent innovations in operations management. However, it also wanted to avoid the high investment in time and specialist IT resources that an on-premise deployment would require.
To address this dilemma, Inchcape chose the Services team at SAP and the RISE with SAP offering to tailor its implementation of SAP S/4HANA Cloud, private edition, to its existing and future business needs. Our services experts assessed Inchcape’s business requirements and, based on their findings, provided deployment guidance and implementation support.
Through a simplified engagement model, Inchcape’s IT personnel had more time to focus on strategic while still accelerating the company’s journey to becoming an intelligent enterprise. In return, the Inchcape now has the foundation it needs to build future growth while quickly scaling and adapting to new business models and market requirements.
Where Customers Needs Are Always Our Focus
Like an on-premise software implementation, there are many ways to implement cloud solutions and expand the technology over time. Some approaches are more effective than others in theory. But at SAP, we are always ready to embrace new perspectives, best practices, methodologies, and technical capabilities to help our customers capture bold value that meet their needs and ultimate vision.
To learn more about the Services organization at SAP, check out our offerings and the latest experiences of our customers.
Holger Silberberger is chief operating officer of Services at SAP.
