A colleague recently asked me, “What is driving change for businesses in the market right now?” From my perspective, it’s a few things: employee expectations, company expectations, stakeholder expectations. The speed of change itself has changed.
Put these forces together, and the question for business leaders becomes, “How do we enable our people to bring their best in a virtual, dispersed workplace that demands collaboration, innovation, and efficiency every day?”
There’s an important follow-on question at the heart of this business challenge. That is: “How do we reach our goals while also offering people opportunities to grow their skills and thrive in their jobs?”
Digital technologies have always been an enabler, but low-code no-code solutions like SAP Build have become an imperative for organizations to keep up with the speed of change while also presenting an opportunity to people to build tech skills.
SAP Build empowers business users to develop their own customized applications and automated processes — without needing to be expert software coders.
The statistics on the potential value are hard to ignore:
- 31% faster completion of projects
- 63% fewer business processes with errors
- 21 hours saved per user per year
- 495% three-year ROI
Concrete examples are always helpful, so here are some ways that I see SAP Build changing the game in helping to solve business challenges, including some of our very own at SAP.
But first, what is SAP Build? SAP Build is a cloud native, user-friendly platform with visual interfaces, simple drag-and-drop tools, and pre-built templates that can help business users jump-start their own IT projects without needing to be coding experts.
SAP Build comes with training and community support to help users get started and keep going. With demand for IT support outpacing the availability of those resources, it’s smart to put business users in the lead with low-code no-code solutions.
Process Automation: Helping Teams Work 15x Faster
One way I see SAP Build empowering our customers’ businesses is through HR process automation. Low-code and no-code platforms allow HR teams to automate time-consuming processes such as onboarding, offboarding, and performance management. This can free up hundreds of hours per year for some staff, giving them the chance to focus on higher-level tasks.
- Example: Standard welcome emails, collecting necessary paperwork, and assigning required training courses. At SAP, we used SAP Build ourselves to automate the creation of 27,000 offer letters per year, working 15 times faster than manual processes.
Data Management: Flagging Operational Risks and Opportunities
Next, with low-code and no-code software, HR teams can manage employee data more efficiently and accurately. Dashboards are easy to create, helping managers, leaders, and teammates across the organization to collaborate over key metrics, gain insights into workforce trends, and make decisions quickly.
- Example: Creating custom reports that track employee turnover rates, time-to-hire, succession data, and employee engagement scores. This data could be used to signal business and operational risk, evaluate performance, identify trends, and spot areas for improvement.
Reduce Burden: Improve Employee Experience at Scale
Low-code and no-code applications can reduce employee time spent on routine manual processes and give them time back for higher level work. Research shows reduced administrative burden can contribute to improved employee experiences.
- Example: Invoice processing. One SAP customer will save up to 160 hours per person per year on fewer administrative tasks. Their low-code no-code invoice processing solution was up and running in just a few days’ time.
- Bonus example! Routine high-volume, manual financial closing At SAP, we’re using SAP Build to transform manual closing activities across 120 subsidiaries and realizing up to four times faster processing of closing tasks.
Many of us have heard the saying “every company is becoming a tech company.” SAP Build puts intuitive tech in business users’ hands, helping to get more done in an expeditious, innovative way in ways that matter most.
We’ll be sharing many more customer stories at SAP Sapphire Orlando. See you there!
Sabine Bendiek is chief people and operating officer and member of the Executive Board of SAP SE.