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Uncertain times usually bring a level of fear, permeating deeply down into the core of the business and spreading across the outer edges of the customer experience.

But it doesn’t have to be this way. Just imagine: what opportunities are you missing now by not allowing your company to follow its true direction?

With preparedness and precision, many organizations embrace today’s chaos by innovating new products and services, opening a new sales channel, creating new customer experiences, or rethinking their business models. They are not only finding new strategies to survive a challenging economy, but also emerging more resilient and ready when better times come.

However, such an edge can prove to be difficult to achieve for more than half of companies. According to IDC market spotlight, “Digital Transformation in Times of Change: What Intelligent Enterprises Need from Their ERP Systems,” only 48.3% of surveyed executives believe they can drive new levels of efficiency and effectiveness and enable transformational business models.

Emerge stronger with a model of intelligence

For all the effort devoted to improving organizational processes and front-office operations, companies that embrace intelligent technology to improve productivity, cost efficiencies, and process cycle times are the ones with the most significant advantage. IDC states that digitally transformed enterprises have 8x more revenue and 2x more profitability, while small and midsize businesses are more likely to report double-digit growth and higher profitability.

How do these intelligent enterprises get through the long tunnel of uncertainty and emerge stronger? IDC research indicates 10 critical characteristics enabled by their core digital foundation, an intelligent ERP:

  • Modern: Take advantage of on-demand access to agile, configurable, quick-to-implement, and scalable technology to help your employees work anywhere and anytime.
  • Connected: Unify end-to-end processes with accurate data to gain transparency and make your business more resilient. By coupling ERP data with other enterprise applications, you can create strategies that are more effective and make a significant impact across the company.
  • Agile: Gain visibility into what’s happening throughout your organization by providing in-depth insight into different lines of business. Leveraging simple, interactive, and intuitive technology enables mobile workflows that add flexibility to your employees’ lives.
  • Compliant: Follow corporate and statutory policies to the letter with solutions that are updated regularly, helping you stay in front of evolving requirements in every area of business, including manufacturing, production, and the supply chain.
  • Capable: Unlock value everywhere by focusing on industry-specific requirements with proven best practices, enabling new business models as your marketplace evolves.
  • Cognitive: Turn analytics into insights and bring value in real time by analyzing substantial amounts of data using machine learning, deep learning, and robotic process automation. The result: clearer overviews and added value.
  • Collaborative: Empower your workforce with a single source of real-time information to make strategic and operational decisions faster – fostering a collaborative culture of seamless insight sharing and intelligent, forward-thinking analysis.
  • Innovative: Optimize the impact of core business processes by combining the benefits of the cloud with your corporate data sets, leading to new insights and quicker breakthroughs.
  • Scalable: Move through the ebb and flow of uncertainty by scaling capabilities with technology priced through a subscription-based pricing model.
  • Real-time: Run like the rest of the world – fast, forward-moving, and progressing – by making decisions based on your current performance and through a lens of predictive analytics.
    Throughout this blog series, we will examine each of these characteristics of an intelligent enterprise and how an intelligent ERP can bring them to life.

In the meantime, explore today’s business challenges and the best way to move with resilience and intelligence in the IDC market spotlight, “Digital Transformation in Times of Change: What Intelligent Enterprises Need from Their ERP Systems,” sponsored by SAP.