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IN THIS ISSUE, SEVERAL EXECUTIVES FROM ASR GROUP SHARE HOW SAP IS HELPING THE COMPANY SIMPLIFY ITS COMPLEX SUPPLY CHAIN AND ENTERPRISE PROCESSES.

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Table of Contents

4 ASR Group: Running Simpler Is Pretty Sweet

6 How to Get Started (and Stay Successful) in the Cloud

8 The Digital Economy Is Not a Choice – It’s an Imperative

10 Disrupt or Be Disrupted in the Digital Economy

12 The CIO-CMO Relationship: Four Steps for Effective Collaboration

14 Three Guiding Principles for B2B Omnichannel Commerce Success

16 Considering SAP HANA? Here’s What You Need to Know

18 Why the CIO Must Own Data Discovery

20 The CIO-CDO Partnership: Collaborating to Drive Critical Growth

22 Simplify Enterprise Resource Management with Business Networks

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In this issue, several executives from ASR Group, one of the largest sugar refiners in the world, share how SAP is helping the company simplify its complex supply chain and enterprise processes.

Dan Kearnan, senior director of marketing for SAP HANA® Cloud Platform at SAP, discusses the best way to get started and stay successful in the cloud. Robert Enslin, president of global customer operations at SAP, talks about how the digital economy has evolved into an imperative for most companies. Si-Mohamed SAÏD, global vice president of product marketing for SAP® S/4HANA and the SAP Fiori® user experience, continues the digital economy discussion with further insights on surviving the disruption that comes with this new economic wave. Bernard Chung, senior director of CEC solution marketing at SAP, shares how C-level executives – namely, CIOs and CMOs – can work together more collaboratively for the common good of their goals as well as the company’s. Then, we take a look at omnichannel commerce with the three guiding principles of success in an article from Wendy Cismoski, senior director of global cloud marketing at SAP. If you’re wondering if SAP HANA is right for your organization, Tom Kurtz, vice president of strategic initiatives for SAP HANA services, created a primer that examines how to leverage the power of this platform. Nic Smith, senior director of analytics at SAP, addresses the hot topic of data ownership and why the CIO should be the one in charge. Madhur Aggarwal, chief operating officer at SAP Digital, explores C-level collaboration as well, this time with the focus on the partnership between CIOs and the emerging chief digital officers (CDOs). And finally, Ceylan Thomson, director of audience marketing and business networks from Ariba, an SAP company, wraps up this issue with insights on how business networks can simplify enterprise resource management.

Welcome to the latest issue Simplify.IT

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Businesses around the world are seeking ways to simplify – and they are using the cloud and solutions from SAP to help them do so.

ASR Group International, the largest vertically integrated cane sugar refiner in the world, is one of these companies. Through its worldwide affiliates, it produces branded and private-label sugars, sweeteners, and syrups. These products are found in the grocery, food service, industrial, and pharmaceutical channels in the Americas, Caribbean, Europe, the Middle East, India, and Asia.

The company procures raw sugar from 40 different countries and has an exten-sive product line that is sold through five different sales channels. Each of these channels has its own supply chain, which leads to a need to simplify.

DIVERSITY LEADS TO COMPLEXITY – AND THE DESIRE FOR SIMPLIFICATION

Don Whittington, vice president and CIO of ASR Group, says that because the company sells through many brands and channels, the company is diverse and that makes it complex. “We have to be five different types of companies, with five different supply chains.” He adds that with the help of SAP, the company “has been able to take a complex enterprise, an even more complex supply chain, and complexity around its information systems and make it simple.”

Doug Romain, vice president of the global supply chain at ASR Group, notes that simplification is providing the company with more standardized processes. This is allowing people to hit the ground running and it also allows the company to get to market faster. “Simplified processes drive consistency,” says Romain. “With any supply chain, the best thing you can have is consistency because you can predict it, you can react to it, and you support it.”

TRANSFORMING BUSINESS WITH REAL-TIME INFORMATION

To reduce the complexity of its enterprise, supply chain, and information systems, ASR Group uses several SAP solutions running in the cloud. These include SAP Business Suite powered by SAP, SAP S/4HANA, the SAP Cloud for Sales solution, and the SAP Sales and Opera-tions Planning application, which is powered by SAP HANA. The company also uses cloud solutions for human resources from SuccessFactors, an SAP company.

According to Brian O’Malley, president and CEO of ASR Group’s U.S. sales and marketing company, Domino Foods, “SAP has certainly been transformative to our business. As our business has become more and more complex, SAP has helped us to simplify that business.” O’Malley adds, “Before SAP Cloud for Sales, there would be no real-time sharing of information. Now, that information is available online for anybody to look at it on an as-needed basis.”

O’Malley also appreciates the aggre-gated information that everyone in the company – from people in its innovation center to it salespeople – can now access in real time. “SAP Cloud for Sales is definitely giving us more insight into the entire portfolio of sales leads we have.”

The benefits of information sharing are also clear to Gregory Smith, the senior vice president and CFO of ASR Group. “SAP Cloud for Sales will enable us to engage in a much quicker manner with our customers to identify and solve their problems in a much more rapid fashion,” says Smith. As a result of this, Smith notes that the organization will be able to carry out the company’s sales mantra, which is to “delight the customer.”

Rob Glickman

Vice President, Cloud and Line-of-Business Marketing, SAP

Twitter: @Robissimo

ASR Group: Running Simpler Is Pretty Sweet

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MAKING BUSINESS MORE EFFICIENT – AND EFFECTIVE

SAP S/4HANA is also helping the company achieve benefits through simplification. “SAP helps us be more efficient because we can eliminate work – not automate it, but eliminate it,” notes Whittington. Additionally, in the finance area, Smith finds that SAP Business Suite powered by SAP HANA allows him to access data in a way he wants to see it, when he wants to see it. “You’re not tied to your office – you will be able to do your work wherever you are in the world,” adds Smith.

Similar benefits from SAP solutions are occurring in ASR Group’s human resources. “Simplified processes are important in human resources,” says Petar Andrich, vice president of human resources at ASR Group. “As we become a larger, global, and more complex company, having employee information through [SuccessFactors] allows us to be able to really focus in on what our employees need,” notes Andrich. Solutions from SuccessFactors are also helping the company retain talent more efficiently. “When you retain your top talent, you are much better at serving the customer,” Andrich says.

O’Malley summarizes his experience with SAP with this comment: “We always relied on various legacy systems that were all over the map. SAP gave us a very consistent way to measure our business.”

And Whittington concludes that with SAP, everything from onboarding new employees to handling any customer service issue can run more efficiently.

TO SEE THE FULL ASR GROUP CUSTOMER STORY, VIEW THESE VIDEOS:

ASR Group Runs Simple with SAP HANA & Cloud Solutions

ASR Group: Selling over 7 million tons of sugar annually with SAP Cloud for Sales

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As barriers to adoption continue to fall, companies are increasingly looking to the cloud as a new deploy-ment option to meet their IT needs. In fact, the increasing use of the cloud makes it clear that the companies reluctant to take this step will soon find themselves in the minority.

There are three key benefits that are driving this transition. First, the sub-scription pricing model for cloud-based applications makes it easier to manage budgets while procuring the solutions necessary for a competitive, forward-thinking workforce. Second, with the cloud, businesses have 24x7x365 access to the latest updates, applications, and innovations, which helps them remain more competitive. And finally, the cloud relieves some of the burdens associated with managing on-premise solutions. Consequently, IT departments are empowered to focus on innovation and agility, which they can use to take a lead role in company growth and strategy.

These benefits are universally appli cable, but how to leverage them – in terms of environments and entry points – depends entirely on the needs of an organization.

CLOUD ENVIRONMENTS

Companies can typically employ either a public or a private cloud. A public cloud generally means that your application is maintained and hosted by a third party

and that it is upgraded for the benefit of all customers, not just for one. In a private cloud, however, the vendor hosts applications for individual customers, and applications are optimized and upgraded on a custom basis. This level of control and customization is a better fit for organizations looking to run mission-critical applications in the cloud.

CLOUD ENTRY POINTS

How your organization begins its journey to the cloud will depend on which of the following entry points is most suitable to your business needs.

Software as a Service (SaaS) – SaaS applications are prepackaged business solutions offered in public clouds and are purchased on a subscription basis. When you want to find this kind of appli-cation, focus on finding one that best addresses the line-of-business needs, such as procurement, HR, or supply chain management.

Well-known SaaS solutions, such as those offered by SuccessFactors, an SAP company, or Salesforce.com, tend to be popular with end users. This is because of their ease of use; as SaaS applications, they can be accessed anytime, anywhere, and on any device. They also are quick to access, so people don’t have to endure long wait times for on-premise applications to get up and running.

With these applications, what you see is what you get – and what everyone else gets. This type of off-the-shelf solution offers many benefits but may not be adequate for complex, highly specific, or mission-critical needs.

Platform as a Service (PaaS) – For companies that want to build and run their own cloud applications, or extend the functionality of their on-premise applications to the cloud, PaaS might be the right choice. It provides an application development environment that runs in the cloud, giving companies more flexibility. It also removes significant barriers from the development process, providing the infrastructure and services that allow customers to more easily build and host their own applications.

An energy company, for example, may wish to run analytics on smart meters to gauge usage and create customer profiles. By leveraging PaaS, the company could build a data-driven, customer- facing application that captures and analyzes streaming data from the meters without needing to build and buy the un-derlying software necessary for support.

PaaS can be particularly powerful in a collaborative setting, as some solutions include built-in collaboration tools to help teams through the testing and project management process.

Managed private cloud – Many third-party cloud vendors do more than just provide the platforms and infrastructure for building and hosting cloud applications; they also manage them in a private cloud environment. Customers retain control over customization – for example, installing patches or updates – but turn to a trusted third party to assume the responsibilities of day-to-day maintenance.

Moving to a managed private cloud can provide added resources for overworked IT departments, making it much easier to take advantage of the latest back-end technology.

How to Get Started (and Stay Successful) in the Cloud

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7Simplify.IT

Dan Kearnan

Senior Director, SAP HANA Cloud Marketing, SAP

Twitter: @dkearnan

THE SAP CLOUD PORTFOLIO

Over the last several years, SAP has moved aggressively to provide a robust cloud portfolio to meet the needs of large and small businesses alike, and we now offer:• An extensive range of SaaS solutions,

including ones for procurement from Ariba; for HR from SuccessFactors, an SAP company; and for travel and expense from Concur, also now part of SAP.

• A PaaS solution through the SAP HANA Cloud Platform, which offers a means of building and running applications in the cloud, or extend-ing existing on-premise applications in a scalable cloud environment.

• A trusted, managed cloud environ-ment through the SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud service for mission-critical applications.

Your journey to the cloud will be unique, but SAP is here to help you on whatever path you choose.

SEE AND FOLLOW

See how organizations are making their unique journey to the cloud here at SAP

You can follow Dan on Twitter @dkearnan

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The Digital Economy Is Not a Choice – It’s an ImperativeThe digital economy is quickly becoming a fact of life – and it’s evident everywhere. More than two billion people world-wide are using sophisticated mobile devices. Approximately 90% of the world’s data has been generated in just the last two years. Social networks allow us to exchange ideas and rally support for change with greater ease, speed, and reach. This year alone, companies are investing more than US$1.7 trillion in initiatives and technology supporting the Internet of Things (IoT).

When you consider all of this, it’s no sur-prise that our personal and professional lives are undergoing a massive shift. But when it comes to the business world, the digital economy is not really about shifting – it’s about reinvention.

IT’S HAPPENING, WITH OR WITHOUT YOU

According to a recent Economic Intelligence Unit (EIU) study, nearly 60% of executives believe “failure to adapt to hyperconnectivity is the biggest risk to their organization.” Of those that see the promise of the digital economy, the vast majority (86%) view digital transformation efforts as a positive influence on their organization. And yet, approximately one-third still fear this new era, as they believe the digital economy presents more threats than opportunities.

Whether companies are on board or not, the digital economy is affecting not only individual companies but also world economies and every industry out there, including yours. Take a look at these changes that are already well under way.

Previously stagnant world economies are blossoming The digital economy is literally changing the world. Take Africa, for instance, and the significant impact of mobile devices and apps. Mobile payment apps are helping people overcome the absence of an established banking system. Doctors and teachers are using text messaging to contact more people with limited communications. And as the use of smartphones becomes more pervasive, better access to the Internet will continue to drive the entire economy.

According to the EIU study, Deloitte predicts that Internet adoption across Africa, Latin America, and south and east Asia has the potential to increase GDP growth by 72% – leading to 140 million new jobs. As a result, average incomes would rise by $600 per head of house-hold, helping hundreds of millions of people leave behind a past of extreme poverty, poor healthcare, and limited education.

The adoption of hyperconnectivity is pressuring your industryIf you think your industry is immune, think again, as almost every industry is being reshaped individually and collectively.

Consider sensors in cars. By installing hundreds of these, automotive companies are collecting information to improve everything from customer service to product design.

Robert Enslin

President, Global Customer Operations, SAP

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This data is also used by insurance providers that leverage it to monitor how well their customers drive, so they can tailor policy pricing and coverage accordingly. Financial institutions also take advantage of this information to determine whether a customer requesting a loan is a risky investment.

This shared data from automobiles is only one example of a microcosm of the endless possibilities of the digital economy.

START REINVENTING NOW

Companies that embrace hyperconnec-tivity to its fullest potential will be the ones that succeed in this new economy. With the power of real-time computing, the decision makers in these companies will gain actionable insights that help create sustainable competitive advantage. And their business users will be able to rapidly sift through every piece of data within their reach – no matter the volume, complexity, or degree of access needed.

To become one of these successful companies, you’ll need to reinvent your company and establish a digital core that binds every piece of information to people, devices, and business networks in real time. This form of reinvention simplifies business collaboration, allowing employees and partners to accelerate business outcomes as soon as decisions are reached. More important, it helps

them access insights anywhere in real time through a personalized, simple user experience that does not require a PhD in data science.

READY TO BEGIN THE JOURNEY?

Some of the world’s leading enterprises have taken the reinvention leap, including many SAP customers. Others are just getting started. If you’re just beginning this journey and are ready to reinvent, you may want to consider SAP Business Suite 4 SAP HANA (SAP S/4HANA), a next-generation business suite.

It’s a powerful solution that provides the digital core that’s essential for companies to build an end-to-end digital business. It can help organizations combine the opportunities of the digital economy with the process simplification and capabilities necessary to achieve digital transformation.

With SAP S/4HANA, reinvention is possible through instant insight coupled with contextual information and personalized experiences. And with scalable, real-time, predictive, and simulation capabilities, companies can unlock the power of data to create the streamlined enterprise that is essen-tial for success.

This is just a glimpse of what the digital economy looks like. It’s time to get on board, whether you are ready or not.

DISCOVER AND FOLLOW

Read more about the Digital Economy Guide

You can follow Rob on Twitter @RobertEnslin

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Disrupt or Be Disrupted in the Digital EconomyThe world is rapidly evolving into a digital economy, and if there was any doubt about that concept, one can just consider these numbers:

• The Ericsson Mobility Report states that by the year 2020, there will be 9.5 billion mobile subscriptions worldwide.

• Gartner predicts that the number of IoT devices will grow to 26 billion units by 2020, re presenting an almost 30-fold increase from 0.9 billion in 2009.

• Data from the Accenture Digital Density Index shows that the increased penetration of digital technologies in economic activity can significantly lift productivity and GDP growth. The report indicates that the impact of this could potentially drive $1.36 trillion in additional output in the world’s top 10 economies in 2020.

The reality is that there is an urgent need for today’s enterprises to drive their digital transformation, especially if they do not want to be disrupted in their industry. In fact, in PWC’s Annual Globe CEO Survey, 86% of the executives interviewed say that a clear vision of how digital technologies can create competitive advantage is key to the success of their investments.

COMPLEXITY IS HINDERING FORWARD MOMENTUM

While the numbers above indicate a rapidly evolving digital world, the reality is that many enterprises around the globe are struggling with how to keep pace with this change. They are unsure how to meet the expectations of savvy, connected customers, and they are continually scrambling to keep up with rapidly changing markets that require fast, immediate reactions.

At the heart of these challenges are systems that fall short – dramatically short, in fact – of meeting the demands of the digital transformation. These systems, which have morphed over the years, are far too complex and costly to support transformation properly – and they are impeding growth. A global survey of more than 300 IT professionals conducted on behalf of CIO Insight in early 2015 suggests that IT managers recognize complexity as a major problem for their organizations. More than half of those surveyed feel that overly complex IT systems make it harder to meet cus-tomer needs, change business processes, and drive innovative business models.

Those that succeed in the digital economy will be organizations that understand the value of technology and the ability to respond, pivot, and drive change at the speed of light. The enterprises that can adapt their technology quickly and reinvent their businesses while keeping complexity at bay will be the ones that take advantage of new opportunities and thrive in this digital economy.

SIMPLIFICATION IS THE KEY

So what’s the answer? From an SAP perspective, it’s to Run Simple. To this end, we are redefining how enterprise software can create value in a digital economy. A key example of this is the recent introduction of SAP S/4HANA.

SAP S/4HANA is a next-generation business suite built on the most advanced in-memory computing, the SAP HANA platform, which incorporates some of the most modern design princi-ples with the SAP Fiori user experience (UX). With SAP S/4HANA, digital enter-prises can drive instant value across lines of business and industries with the ultimate sophistication of simplicity.

Si-Mohamed SAÏD

Global Vice President, SAP S/4HANA and SAP Fiori Product Marketing

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In fact, SAP S/4HANA can deliver massive simplifications (in areas such as customer adoption, data model, user experience, and decision making) along with innovations (such as the Internet of Things, Big Data, and mobile first). This powerful combination can empower companies to reduce complexity and rapidly transform their businesses.

From a business-value perspective, this means that SAP S/4HANA creates unique opportunities to reinvent business models and drive new revenues and profits. With this powerful business suite, enterprises can now easily connect to people, devices, and business networks to deliver new value in any industry.

In addition, enterprises can dramatically simplify their business processes, driving them in real time and changing them as needed to gain new efficiencies. And finally, business users can now get any insight on any data from anywhere in real time, from planning and execution to prediction and simulation. That means decisions can be made on the fly with a high level of granularity for faster business impact.

SIMPLIFYING BUSINESS FROM THE BOARDROOM DOWN

To see how digital transformation can change businesses, consider executive-level decision making. Business leaders in the digital economy need contextual-ized, real-time information to make decisions instantly and drive change for the future. Today, most of these leaders are challenged by heterogeneous report-ing solutions and meetings dominated by static content.

But that’s all about to change.

Recently, SAP shared its vision for a “Boardroom Redefined,” an innovation project that contextualizes the board-room, places, and devices into a real-time enterprise experience. A harmonized view of company operations using real-time reporting capabilities gives leaders the ability to instantly understand the past, predict the future, and drive more efficient execution.

SAP S/4HANA can empower board- level discussions with instant insight for driving real-time business interactions and fact-based decisions that help companies lead in the digital economy.

That’s how the power of running simple drives the digital transformation.

SEE AND DISCOVER

Boardroom Redefined

Learn more about SAP S/4HANA here

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Make no mistake about it, if you are a C-level executive, you are in your position because you are smart, business savvy, and you excel at what you do.

You may not, however, be great at com-municating with the other CxOs in the company – even when you desperately need each other for your own individual and departmental success.

Take CIOs and CMOs, for instance.

THE CRUX: OPPOSING AND SOMETIMES CONFLICTING GOALS

CIOs are constantly looking high and low for ways to save companies money through operational and business process efficiencies. On the other hand, the job of CMOs is to spend, spend, spend – and to do so quickly based on data-driven decisions that outmaneuver the competition. So it’s understandable that you, as a CMO, might have a desire for the latest technology for such things as real-time social media tracking, Big Data analytics, or customer experience nurturing programs. On the other hand, if you’re a CIO, isn’t it common for your response to be “sorry, it’s not in the budget”?

Screech. Time stands still as you face off and defend your individual C-level posi-tions – and as one of you tries to keep the business running while the other tries to grow the business. Meanwhile, the market is shifting and the competition is winning deals left and right.

COLLABORATION MADE EASY

So what’s the answer? The reality is that both the CIO and CMO faction – and your individual departments – must make a concerted effort to work more collaboratively for the greater good of all.

Here are four easy ways that you, as sometimes opposing forces, can begin to communicate better and form a relationship that works for each of you as well as for the company.

1. Find common, understandable language. Every core function within an enterprise has its own language that is as commonplace as sliced bread – within that department, that is. However, a marketing guru may not know that an API is an application programming interface, while a techie may not know that organic search has nothing to do with healthy foods. So your first task, all you CIO and CMO folks, is to be kind to each other and speak in language that you can both understand.

Keep each other’s goals in mind. Each C-level executive has both indi-vidual and department goals, which at first glance may not be in sync. But once again, let’s be real. You can help each other succeed – and make each other look like superstars – once you take time to understand each other’s in dividual goals. Working together is always more rewarding than being stuck in no-man’s land due to lack of compromise. Want even greater success? If so, then you may even want to include common IT and marketing goals and metrics in your individual and department incentive plans.

2. Meet frequently. This may depend on your industry or business, but most enterprises are changing rapidly as they attempt to keep up with the pace of innovation. Why not team together through regular meetings? They don’t have to be long, drawn-out affairs; but they can be concise and informative, so that each department is continually on the same wavelength and working cohesively together. This is also a great time to collectively brainstorm on common corporate goals.

3. Have expertise exchanges. If a tech-nical person doesn’t fully understand why he or she has to jump through hoops to set up the back end for a special marketing program, frustration may reign. However, if marketing takes the time to explain that this campaign could generate thousands of dollars in revenue for the company within a short window of time, the techie may approach the task differently. It works the other way too. Marketing people sometimes dream up outlandish ideas for complicated systems that could break IT’s budget for the year. How-ever, once the objectives are clear, marketing and IT can work together to come up with a solution that is far more effective and less costly. For instance, on tasks such as mapping a customer’s digital journey from beginning to end, two problem-solving minds will certainly be more effective than individual and sometimes conflicting efforts.

Will these suggestions work? Maybe, maybe not. But hopefully, they will stimulate a greater respect and under-standing between the CIO and CMO and create a collaborative relationship that makes everyone a success.

The CIO-CMO Relationship: Four Steps for Effective Collaboration

Simplify.IT

DISCOVER

Help your line-of-business colleagues turn every customer interaction into valuable engagement to drive business results with: The Customer Journey: A Handbook for Meaningful (and Profitable) Engagement.

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Bernard Chung

Senior Director, CEC Solution Marketing, SAP

Twitter: @marketingissues

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Three Guiding Principles for B2B Omnichannel Commerce SuccessGuess what? Business-to-business (B2B) buyers want the same type of experience that consumers do when they make work-related purchases, But you already knew that, didn’t you?

Yes, that statement really isn’t a surprise. So it’s equally no surprise that a recent Forrester report, “Building the B2B Omni-Channel Commerce Platform of the Future,” reinforced this idea. The report notes that, yes indeed, B2B buyers do want the simplicity and effi-ciency online that consumer sites offer. And it also states that it’s a comprehen-sive omnichannel experience – with the combination of consistently low prices, excellent product service, and broad product selection – that will ensure customer loyalty.

If everyone knows this, then how come everyone is not doing it? The answer is that the channels – and the technology that supports them – in B2B organiza-tions are much more complex than on the consumer side. Consequently, it’s not easy for these organizations to build an effective omnichannel experience – yet they must figure this out or, says Forrester, they will fall behind.

The reality is that more than half of global B2B buyers expect to make 50% of their purchases online within three years. And when they do, they will expect consistent omnichannel experiences that come from 24x7 self-service access and accurate information. They will no longer accept disjointed channel experiences or inaccurate data.

A NIMBLE RESPONSE TO CHANGE IS REQUIRED

Many B2B companies already have some sort of commerce strategy and technology investment in place – but these strate-gies continually need to shift to stay

ahead of customers’ evolving needs. And this ability to nimbly respond to change is the driving force between winning and losing customers and their loyalty.

So how can B2B organizations deliver a buying experience – amidst constantly changing buyer dynamics – with consis-tency, 24x7 self-service access, and accu-rate information via any device from anywhere and from any channel? And how can they do this while accommodating a wide variety of suppliers, distributors, and stores on a single platform – and at the same time automate sales administration and increase operational efficiency?

It’s a tall order. But it can be done.

THREE PRINCIPLES FOR OMNICHANNEL SUCCESS

When it comes right down to it, there are three guiding principles that B2B organizations can adopt to ensure that they are building the best omnichannel experience for their buyers. And here they are:

1. Simplify and unify – This is a founda-tional, core principle to omnichannel commerce success. To achieve this, B2B organizations must embrace a commerce solution that solves data, process, and touch-point complexity by eliminating data silos. This kind of solution unifies all product-, order- and customer-related data and content on a single, fully integrated platform. It also provides a single source of truth for all customer-facing, front-end channels and touch points, from online and in-store experiences to mobile, print, and social media ones. By implementing this principle, B2B organizations can integrate products, multiple supplier catalogs, inventory, contracts, customer information, content, and orders easily into a single solution. And they will be able to ensure that there is uniform messaging across all channels.

Wendy Cismoski

Senior Director, Global Cloud Marketing, SAP

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2. Engage customers like never before – Organizations that follow this principle excel in B2B omnichannel commerce and deliver a total customer experience by engaging customers across touch points in a relevant, contextual way. These companies provide B2B buyers with the kind of business-to-consumer–caliber user experience – complete with the personalization and easy-to-use functionality that they have come to expect. The platform that drives this kind of experience will allow buyer-centric B2B merchandising as well. This gives B2B organizations the oppor-tunity to take advantage of purchasers’ “triggers,” such as page views, aban-doned shopping carts, and purchase histories. And like never before, these organizations will be able to generate real-time promotional offers, cus-tomized landing pages, and SMS messages that drive new revenue opportunities.

3. Innovate with flexible technology – By engaging in this principle, B2B organizations can gain tremendous agility and flexibility, which will help them drive high degrees of innovation and adapt quickly to changing customer

requirements and emerging touch points. The right technology will also allow B2B organizations to consolidate product content on a single platform and proactively address individual customer product requests. An omnichannel commerce platform can also help organizations in control-ling operations costs and ensuring greater customer satisfaction by consolidating and automating order and fulfillment processing.

WHY NOW?

To stay viable in today’s dynamic B2B buyer-seller environment, companies need to adopt omnichannel commerce strategies and innovative technologies – or they will fall behind. It’s a must-have to be able to simplify and unify customer interactions and transactions across all products, brands, geographies, and communications channels.

An omnichannel commerce strategy that incorporates the principles outlined here can boost sales, improve product margins, and deliver a greater competitive advan-tage. Most important, it can drive higher customer retention – which, in the B2B world, equates to true success.

DISCOVER AND FOLLOW

Learn more here

You can follow Wendy on Twitter @wendycismoski

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Considering SAP HANA? Here’s What You Need to KnowWith the announcement of SAP S/4HANA earlier in 2015, SAP unveiled its latest business solutions that are built on the SAP HANA platform. Now companies have even more options for how they can simplify, accelerate, and innovate their businesses.

When considering how to use the latest in-memory and real-time capabilities of SAP HANA, organizations often wonder how to get started and what first steps to take. Here is a quick primer on how SAP customers typically use this platform to help their businesses Run Simple.

WHAT’S KEEPING YOUR COMPANY FROM SUCCESS?

When thinking about implementing SAP HANA, the first consideration is actually more of a business decision than a technology one. Each organization faces unique challenges in operating its business efficiently, and there are different ways to address each of those with SAP HANA.

As you consider what the best option for your business might be, the following questions may help identify a few of your most challenging business needs: • Are you realizing the business insights you want? Do you have plans to grow the business but want to keep your operations lean? Are you looking to improve the way you deploy your analytics today?

• Do you want to run your day-to-day business processes more efficiently? If you could make processes specific to your industry faster, would that change your business? Would visibility into real-time demand across various markets help you focus on the right products? Or, would access to real-time customer data improve buyer experiences? Would better insights help you deliver better products and services?

• Would new business processes benefit your company? Could you transform your business if you didn’t have technical limitations? Could a new purpose-built application be developed to make this a reality?

Now that you’re closer to identifying the issues that keep you up at night, you can start to look at how SAP HANA can help. Here’s a quick overview of each offering and how each addresses some of the challenges above:

• SAP HANA. When looking for a data mart that will deliver better insights, SAP HANA is the right choice. Whether you want to streamline departmental data or centralize enterprise informa-tion, SAP HANA helps companies process huge volumes of detailed trans-actional and real-time analytic informa-tion from virtually any data source.

• Application accelerators powered by SAP HANA. These accelerators can provide your company with a good introduction to SAP HANA, as they can accelerate existing business processes and extend operational reporting capabilities for databases.

• Analytic applications powered by SAP HANA. Here, SAP HANA can provide you with a content and virtual data model that will help your company gain insights that drive better decisions, performance, and results.

Tom Kurtz

Vice President, Strategic Initiatives, SAP HANA Services

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• SAP Business Warehouse (SAP BW) powered by SAP HANA. This option can provide your company with a complete enterprise data warehouse, so you can have a single version of the truth with decision-ready business intelligence and accelerated data operations.

• Applications powered by SAP HANA. If you want to introduce new business processes, there are more than 100 SAP applications that are currently powered by SAP HANA. Each one of them takes advantage of this plat-form’s capabilities to deliver key benefits such as simpler administra-tion, reduced overhead, and better business intelligence.

• SAP S/4HANA. When you are looking for ways to run business processes more efficiently, this newest offering would be ideal. SAP S/4HANA is a next-generation business suite offered exclusively on the SAP HANA platform. It incorporates some of the most modern design principles, such as the SAP Fiori user experience for mobile devices.

READY FOR THE NEXT STEP?

After thinking about the possibilities, the next step you can take is to dig deeper into how SAP HANA can benefit your organization – and what a project road map might look like.

Oftentimes, customers select a certain use case where they think using SAP HANA as a process transformation engine would be highly beneficial. This helps companies prioritize projects and mesh them into an overall transformation strategy. From there, you can plan and correlate an implementation of SAP HANA with other key initiatives already under way.

It’s also important to consider how your company wants to deploy SAP HANA. For instance, you may want to deploy SAP HANA on premise – or maybe your company is better served by a cloud-based deployment or even a hybrid solution.

IT ALL STARTS – AND ENDS – WITH THE BUSINESS VALUE

The most important thing to remember about your journey with SAP HANA is the business value it can bring to your company. Implementations of SAP HANA can deliver speed, power, and flexibility that address a wide variety of business challenges. The choice of how you make this journey is yours. SEE, DISCOVER, AND

FOLLOW

Unlock the Power of SAP HANA

Learn more about the journey to SAP HANA here

You can follow Tom Kurtz on Twitter @thomasjkurtz

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Why the CIO Must Own Data DiscoveryBig Data brings big expecta-tions. Because with the right solutions, organizations can dive into all that data and gain valuable insights that were previously unimaginable. But who owns Big Data? Within most organizations, IT leadership is expected to empower the business to make sense of the ceaseless flood of data available to them. And according to Nic Smith, Senior Director of Analytics at SAP, it’s not enough to simply provide a connection between reporting tools and databases. IT must deliver true business value with solutions that help the business to become smarter about the way it looks at data and to coax data to reveal its hidden truths.

Of course, business users expect to access these insights with Google-esque speed – which isn’t easy to deliver given the mas-sive data sets people want to analyze. The fact is, Big Data creates huge challenges for CIOs today. But the good news is, there are solutions available today that IT can use to empower nontechnical data consumers to achieve the results they seek at the speeds they demand.

EMPOWERING DATA CONSUMERS

For example, rather than using tradi-tional – and notoriously complex – business intelligence (or reporting) tools, data consumers can use drag-and-drop data discovery tools that satisfy their desire for fast, self-service data analysis. Data discovery is a far less structured approach to data exploration that focuses on discovering hidden patterns and trends, rather than monitoring and reporting.

Data discovery tools simplify the process of getting to big insights. So even non-IT professionals – everyday business people – can unearth deep insights and data anomalies and deliver these results in a highly visual way. These visualizations feed the human brain’s natural preference for images; people can process and under-stand the “big so what” conveyed in a com-plex image in a split-second – far less time than it takes to read a report abstract, let alone an entire report. So they can under-stand more in less time and make the right decision or take the right action faster.

RAPID INDUSTRY ADOPTION

Data discovery is such a strong play in the CIO’s quest to enable the business, because it delights so many levels of stakeholders and customers. Dealers for Daimler Trucks called its SAP Lumira® software deployment “the best tool Daimler Trucks has come out with in the past 15 years.” The National Football League uses visual data to power complex fantasy football player analysis for millions of fans. And the Kolkata Knight Riders of Indian Premiere League cricket have gone one step further, using SAP Lumira not only for fan engagement but also to guide real match strategies and player acquisition.

These examples not only showcase the power of data discovery technologies but also their applicability to just about any kind of business and industry.

TWO STEPS TO DATA DISCOVERY SUCCESS

Like any business intelligence initiative, the success of any data discovery solution rests on two prerequisites:

• It must be simple enough for a wide audience of users to grasp.

• It must maintain standards of data integrity and governance so that insights can be trusted over the long term.

Data discovery elegantly serves the broadest possible audience by putting powerful, intuitive, analytical tools in the hands of every business user – and with

Nic Smith

Senior Director of Analytics at SAP

Businesspeople need trusted, easy-to-use data discovery solutions that empower them to uncover big insights from Big Data – all by themselves.

Time to insight is top of mind for business decision makers. With the right data discovery solutions, this can mean seconds.

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the right solutions, they can achieve this goal incredibly quickly. For example, Honeywell got its “data junkies” up and running in about 30 minutes. And the sooner the better; according to Forrester Research, instant empowerment pro-motes business and information agility and gives front-line employees who understand customer challenges a way to communicate valuable insights and opportunities to the rest of the business.

TAKING OWNERSHIP OF BIG DATA ANALYSIS

Now is the time for CIOs to take owner-ship of the selection, implementation, and management of these kinds of visual data solutions for Big Data discovery. This oversight is critical to establishing end-user trust in the tools they use, the data they are analyzing, and the results they generate.

When CIOs fail to step up, history shows us the consequences. And it’s not pretty. Since the late 1990s and early 2000s, when given the opportunity, lines of busi-ness have run rampant with the adoption of their own siloed analytical tools. The result is a very scary situation: multiple versions of the truth within the organi-zation – and no way to know what’s accurate, complete, and thus capable of generating trustworthy analyses.

Moreover, with the exponential growth of Big Data, most of these BI tools aren’t even relevant. They were simply never designed to analyze the massive data sets we have today. For example, the performance and visualization capabilities can’t meet the expectations of today’s business users. And because these tools don’t support self-service, they keep business users dependent on IT to facilitate data access and analysis.

CIOs first took charge of business intelli-gence platforms in order to address this kind of chaos. To avoid repeating history, CIOs must get out in front of data dis-covery adoption now in order to protect data integrity and ensure that users are acting on valid insights rooted in reality.

GETTING IT RIGHT THE FIRST TIME

When CIOs take a managed, trusted approach to the selection of these technologies and their organizations’ Big Data, businesspeople using data discovery tools can have confidence in the results they generate – and thus make decisions with confidence. Instead of creating reports that grow stale almost instantly, they can create new data mash-ups at will – with the assurance that the data sources behind them will stay fresh and updated. And because data discovery tools promote self-driven exploration, IT will get fewer panic-driven calls demanding a bespoke report by end of day. Who doesn’t want to avoid those fire drills?

DISCOVER AND FOLLOW

To learn more about how data discovery can impact your business, read up on SAP‘s bona fides in this exciting field from top-tier analysts and start experimenting today. I welcome every-body to download SAP Lumira, connect it to an enterprise data source, and start unlocking new insights.

Be sure to connect with me on Twitter, where we can tell stories with data together.

Data visualizations can make hidden patterns in the most complex and massive data sets instantly clear.

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The CIO-CDO Partnership: Collaborating to Drive Critical GrowthConsumer demand for easy, on-demand interactions – both online and offline – is fundamentally changing today’s business landscape. Many credit it to the rise of the social, mobile, and networked world. Regardless of the underlying drivers, savvy companies are taking advantage of this shift toward “anytime, anywhere” eco nomy by making omni-commerce a core part of their strategy. And with this, we have seen the rise of a new C-level executive: the chief digital officer, or CDO. According to Madhur Aggarwal, chief operating officer for SAP Digital, CDOs represent a new breed of leadership that blends technology experience and entrepreneurial acumen to drive growth and innovation.

As Bryan Kirschner, director of the Apigee Institute, told CIO.com: “As mobile tech-nology and data analytics completely reshape the business landscape, building a truly digital DNA is imperative for sur-vival in today’s competitive app economy. Many companies are seeking CDOs to lead this enterprise-wide transformation.” In fact, Gartner estimates that 25% of organizations will have a CDO in place by 2017 – and this number rises to 50% for heavily regulated industries.

What does this mean for existing tech-nology leaders? Who owns the strategy and technology required to drive an effective, end-to-end omnicommerce approach? And should CIOs worry about dividing up boundaries between the CIO and CDO before there’s even a successful

digital business in place – one with a foothold in the company strategy?

These are important questions – and how they are answered will influence how well these executives will collaborate and how much they will actually accomplish.

GOING BEYOND COLLABORATION

We’ve all read about how CIOs and CDOs must collaborate to achieve better results.

Collaboration is critical because while CDOs may be responsible for orches-trating the digital strategy across the company, business initiatives never operate in a vacuum. At a minimum, CIOs are responsible for executing on the tech nology architecture and overall IT requirements of a digital business. But to drive critical growth for the business, these two C-level executives need to go one step further and view themselves as partners.

WHY YOU NEED A CIO-CDO PARTNERSHIP

Partnership takes collaboration one step further by recognizing the unique strengths that each participant brings to the table and building a common vision that focuses on shared goals. Rather than engaging in turf wars, CDOs and CIOs cement their status as essen-tial contributors to customer satisfaction and revenue growth. In today’s constantly evolving digital economy, a symbiotic partnership between CIO and CDO is essential, as neither can succeed without the other.

CDOs champion many initiatives that most businesses have yet to focus on, such as driving incremental revenue from e-commerce and developing new digital offerings designed for today’s consumer. While they must be technically adept, most CDOs are business leaders first; if a CDO’s job description looks too much like the CIO’s, let it be a warning sign that the company needs to reevaluate the purpose of the position.

Madhur Aggarwal

Senior Vice President and COO, SAP Digital

Omnicommerce refers to the various means that a company uses to interact with its customers and carry out transactions.

Whether they are online, mobile, in-store, or on the phone with representatives, customers increasingly demand seamless and personalized interactions with businesses.

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And in contrast, CIOs need to stay current on ever-expanding and evolving technologies to enable the business; examples include remarketing tools like SeeWhy, which targets abandoned shop-ping cart users. In addition, they must be able to build agile technology organiza-tions that can quickly scale up or down as needed to meet business needs. And finally, they need to foster continuous improvement and become comfortable executing in a constantly changing and evolving technology and business environment. Because when it comes to digital, the sand under IT’s feet is constantly shifting, making it impossible to know everything in advance. A CUSTOMER-FIRST MIND-SET

There’s no reason that a CDO’s success should come at a CIO’s expense. Keeping in mind that “a rising tide lifts all boats,” they both need to just stay focused on finding new ways to serve customers – for example, by catching up to (and anticipating) customer expectations and making an omnichannel, end-to-end customer experience a reality. Engaging with people on a one-to-one level has long been a dream of business, and CDOs are at the front lines of delivering this experience.

But for omnichannel strategies to come to fruition, CIOs are also critical. As sug-gested in IDC FutureScape: Worldwide CIO Agenda 2015 Predictions, by 2017 CIOs will own and spend 80% of their time on critical areas, such as “analytics, cyber security, and creating new revenue streams through digital services.” And with the shift, they will need to evolve the key performance indicators (KPIs) for their teams, from delivery schedules to business metrics focused on outcomes. In fact, these KPIs are a natural align-ment point with CDOs, particularly if the business metrics focus on revenue growth and customer satisfaction.

Regulated industries, such as insurance and finance, offer examples of shifting KPIs for digital business, as well as successful partnership. A KPI for a consumer bank may have previously been scope and budget of delivery or cost per transaction, but under pressure to grow, banks have developed new digital offerings, such as online accounts, to drive new revenue. CDOs and CIOs are collaborating using common KPIs, such as assets under management, to make this happen.

YOUR NEXT MOVE

Forward-thinking businesses do more than simply catch up. They are constantly asking “What will customers want tomorrow?” As Wayne Gretzky said, “Go where the puck is going, not where it’s been.” To move forward, CDOs, CIOs and other key executives must be in alignment and acting as partners.

Guided by a growth-oriented, customer-first mind-set, CIOs should welcome the arrival of CDOs. Working in tandem, both will play pivotal roles in leading their organization through the digital revolution.

LET’S CONNECT

Be sure to connect with me on Twitter @aggarwalmadhur, where we can exchange collaboration ideas and best practices.

If a CDO‘s job description looks too much like the CIO‘s, let it be a warning sign that the company needs to reevaluate the purpose of the position.

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Moving to the cloud: It means great opportunities across the enterprise to digitally transform processes and increase efficiency and agility. But how does doing business in the cloud change things for CIOs? For starters, it means:

• Reduced infrastructure requirements • More IT choices made by lines of

business • Increased compatibility and security

needs for various technologies and systems

And while achieving cost savings is certainly not a new goal for CIOs, business networks can help you find new ways to do more with less. Most enterprises have digitized and integrated data and processes within the organiza-tion and with customers – but there are many ways to gain efficiencies by connecting, communicating, and coordinating better with partners.

“Going forward, a key indicator of business success will be how products and services are delivered, and how the financial supply chain is managed,” says Marcell Vollmer, CIO of Ariba, in a recent SAPinsider article. MAKING A STRATEGIC CONTRIBUTION

For the CIO, the cloud offers a chance to make a significant strategic impact – as chief integrator. Because a technical voice and perspective are crucial when choosing new technology, CIOs are uniquely positioned and qualified to lend the right guidance.

“The CIO . . . should be the driving strategic force behind any technology adoption,” says Ingrid-Helen Arnold, chief information officer and chief process officer at SAP in a recent article. The CIO’s “mandate in a cloud-connected world is to find a way to integrate employees, buyers, data, suppliers, assets, business processes,” and so on.

NETWORKED RESOURCE MANAGEMENT

Business networks – such as the Ariba® Network – can help you manage your organization’s resources, communicate and collaborate with partners, and find and seize new opportunities. What’s more, you can tap into the potential of Big Data to gain valuable insights about products and markets, consumer behavior, and suppliers.

“A networked resource management approach . . . reaches beyond the four walls of a company to allow effective and simple use of all its enterprise resources, dramatically increasing the speed and quality of innovation,” says Arnold. This “can mean the difference between market leadership and going bust.”

MANAGING RESOURCES ON A SINGLE PLATFORM

With a network strategy in place, business units can each manage their resources using a single unified platform. Here’s how networked resource management can help across the organization:

• Purchasing – Access market and consumer data, enable electronic purchasing, improve spend manage-ment, and drive strategic business goals

• Sales and marketing – Improve process visibility, automate activities, and increase customer satisfaction

• Finance – Increase cash flow trans-parency and control and enable dynamic discounting

• Supply chain – Connect buyers and sellers, improve efficiency, reduce costs, and boost customer retention

• Human resources – Get a more complete understanding of current and potential employees and skill sets

“Business networks . . . enable a resource management approach that extends the return on investment (ROI) and flexibility of past system investments, allowing trading partners and online communities to access financial, purchasing, and other systems. With these capabilities, the company gains more value without the pain of change management or new implementations,” says Alex Saric, vice president of business networks marketing at SAP, in a recent SAPinsider article.

CUTTING COSTS AND OPTIMIZING RESOURCE USE

Business networks can bring the con-venience and functionality of personal networks like Facebook or Amazon to the business environment. Business networks connect buyers, suppliers, and partners through a cloud-based platform that integrates with enterprise systems and enables a network approach to resource management – with a reach that extends beyond the organization’s boundaries.

“With the Ariba Network, you can [enable] a very lean process that provides tangible benefits,” says Vollmer. You can “reduce operating costs by 60%, drive 50% to 75% faster transaction cycles and 20% faster payment cycles, improve order accuracy by 60%, increase revenue by 20% with new customers, and achieve 30% greater wallet share with existing customers.”

Simplify Enterprise Resource Management with Business Networks

Simplify.IT

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Ceylan Thomson

Director, Audience Marketing, Business Networks

Ariba, an SAP Company

ENABLING BUSINESS-TO-BUSINESS PAYMENT PROCESSING

Business users are coming to expect the same kind of tools that consumers take for granted – such as for reliable and secure electronic payment. But there’s more to B2B payments than consumer payments, with complications such as extended payment deadlines, multiple invoices per payment, and invoice adjustments.

Business networks and solutions such as AribaPay, a secure B2B payment product based on the Ariba Network, can enable “simple, secure, and certain B2B payment processes in which you can be confident,” says Drew Hofler, director of solutions marketing for cloud and network solutions at SAP, in a recent SAPinsider article. “AribaPay relieves organizations of administrative hassles and the handling of sensitive information while providing all the information and visibility needed to be sure your suppliers have what they need to easily reconcile those payments.”

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SAP and other SAP products and services mentioned herein as well as their respective logos are trademarks or registered trademarks of SAP SE (or an SAP affiliate company) in Germany and other countries. Please see http://www.sap.com/corporate-en/legal/copyright/index.epx#trademark for additional trademark information and notices. Some software products marketed by SAP SE and its distributors contain proprietary software components of other software vendors.

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In particular, SAP SE or its affiliated companies have no obligation to pursue any course of business outlined in this document or any related presentation, or to develop or release any functionality mentioned therein. This document, or any related presentation, and SAP SE’s or its affiliated companies’ strategy and possible future developments, products, and/or platform directions and functionality are all subject to change and may be changed by SAP SE or its affiliated companies at any time for any reason without notice. The information in this document is not a commitment, promise, or legal obligation to deliver any material, code, or functionality. All forward-looking statements are subject to various risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from expectations. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements, which speak only as of their dates, and they should not be relied upon in making purchasing decisions.

TO FIND OUT MORE ABOUT HOW SAP SOLUTIONS CAN HELP YOU TO SIMPLIFY YOUR IT SO YOUR COMPANY CAN BE MORE AGILE, PLEASE VISIT OUR WEB PAGE TO EXPLORE CUSTOMER STORIES AND THOUGHT LEADERSHIP.

INNOVATE: MAKE YOUR WORLD SIMPLEWith in-memory infrastructure-as-a-service and platform-as-a-service cloud solutions from SAP, you can make your world simple by solving today’s infrastructure problems while innovating for tomorrow.

Visit http://go.sap.com/solution/cloud.html.

REIMAGINESAP S/4HANA, the next-generation business suite, is designed to help you Run Simple in the digital economy.

Visit http://discover.sap.com/s4hana.

MODERNIZE, HANA IS THE ANSWERWhat is SAP HANA? No matter your question, the answer is SAP HANA – a powerful in-memory platform built to deliver unprecedented insight.

Learn more at http://discover.sap.com/hana.

ACCELERATE INSIGHTWith analytics solutions from SAP, you have the power to harness the full value of your data for competitive advantages such as informed decisions, timely action, and game-changing innovation.

Learn more at http://discover.sap.com/accelerate-insight.