Digital transformation with SAP Business One
With SAP Business One at the centre, it’s possible to create an adaptable technology ecosystem that enables your business to truly transform and thrive in the digital economy.
What is digital transformation?
Digital transformation is the process of rethinking how an organisation delivers value by using technology. The purpose of the metamorphosis is new business models and approaches that provide new and more sustainable revenue streams in a digitally-driven economy.
Digital transformation may have become a buzz word, but the premise is sound: it’s essential for modern organisations to evolve by embracing both current technologies and ones that continue to emerge.
Why does your business need to transform?
Increased global competition, the low cost of entry for disruptive startups, and shifting consumer expectations means that maintaining relevance (and growing profits) in today’s market is tough.
Creating the products and services people want, delivering a consistently superior customer experience, and achieving speed to market all necessitate adopting new ways of working made possible by cutting-edge technologies.
Technology alone is not a panacea: organisational capabilities and culture must also transform. But technology does allow for innovation and improvements that can’t be achieved otherwise.
Businesses that leverage digital tools to embrace a more agile, flexible and customer-centric approach will be more successful in dominating their market now and into the future.
As a leading enterprise solution for small to medium businesses, SAP Business One helps organisations to do business differently, enabled by digital technologies.
“Every successful organization has to make the transition from a world defined primarily by repetition to one primarily defined by change. This is the biggest transformation in the structure of how humans work together since the Agricultural Revolution.” Bill Drayton, social entrepreneurship visionary and Chair of Ashoka.
Which technologies empower you to change business models?
People, business and things are becoming more connected. Many aspects of our personal and work lives are now conducted online, in real-time, and via peer-to-peer transactions or digital platforms.
To survive and flourish, you need to become an intelligent, digital business.
Digitising information and processes, improving efficiency, and having an online presence are all important for businesses, but is also just the tip of the iceberg.
Technology’s true potential lies in helping you to continually reimagine what you offer and how you offer it: by shifting the way teams collaborate, developing entirely new products and services, better understanding and addressing customers needs, and delivering more instant and personalised experiences.
The new computing infrastructure that enables businesses to do this includes:
- cloud technologies
- mobile technologies
- big data
These core technologies are enhanced by data and insights derived from technologies including:
- the Internet of Things (IoT),
- advances in AI and machine learning,
- and innovations like blockchain.
It takes time to evaluate, implement and take advantage of technologies: it’s unrealistic to expect whole-of-business transformation to happen in one fell swoop. Starting with a firm digital foundation is an excellent starting point.
A modern, open, and full-featured enterprise solution like SAP Business One creates a digital core for SMEs to operate more intelligently in a digital economy. Building a business ready for digital transformation requires a baseline platform from which you can connect with other, related technologies. Without a modern ERP system at the core of this technology platform your business will be struggling to join the dots. ERP systems go to the heart of a business and the related business functions and benefits because ERP systems touch every aspect of a business:
Finance
Distribution
Manufacturing
Reporting
CRM
Sales
Purchasing
Purchase planning and more
“In Today’s era of volatility, there is no other way but to re-invent. the only sustainable advantage you can have over others is agility, that’s it. Because nothing else is sustainable, everything else you create, somebody else will replicate.” — Jeff Bezos, Founder of Amazon.
How to approach digital transformation successfully?
Any substantial change is difficult: a business-wide revamp that requires leading, collaborating and operating in fundamentally different ways is a significant undertaking.
Principal research scientist with the MIT Initiative on the Digital Economy, George Westerman says that many organisations fall into the trap of focusing on technology adoption instead of how to achieve strategic, transformational results.
“Technology helps you do business differently, but the right strategy is not technology-focused. It incorporates the right technologies for the right jobs,” according to Westerman.
He recommends four things to keep the focus on strategic transformation:
Avoid silo thinking
based on the features of specific technologies, and instead start by considering what the transformer business should look like. For instance, if you enact a ‘mobile strategy’ you may fail to see opportunities that are not enabled by mobile. Westerman argues.
Start with core systems and incremental steps
Don’t overlook the value of having the basics in place: like centralised data and processes made possible by Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software or being able to make data-driven decisions powered by analytics tools.
Don’t ask tech experts to drive transformation alone
This isn’t a job solely for the CIO or IT manager: you need to work with them, not lump them with all of the accountability.
Build your leaders’ capacity
to guide and champion the transformation efforts. Leadership and organisational capabilities are critical to chart the course during the transformation efforts and create business value from technological innovations.
Cultivate agility step by step: start with everyday systems
Research by global consultancy McKinsey found a range of factors came into play when it comes to improving your chances of a digital transformation succeeding — these fall under five categories:
- Having the right, digital-savvy leaders in place.
- Building capabilities for the workforce of the future.
- Empowering people to work in new ways.
- Giving day-to-day tools a digital upgrade.
- Communicating frequently via traditional and digital methods.
In particular, making information more accessible across the organisation more than doubles the likelihood of a successful transformation.
Other important contributors to success include providing self-serve technologies, modifying standard operating procedures to include new technologies, and more data-based decision-making and use of interactive tools.
A robust enterprise solution that sits at the heart of day-to-day workflows is essential because it:
- Centralises and unlocks data previously hoarded within departmental silos.
- Automates and eliminates manual tasks that waste your team’s time and talent.
- Simplifies, standardises and speeds up complex processes.
- Allows for high-level visibility and consolidation of data that helps leaders understand and manage performance, cash flow and growth opportunities.
An ecosystem approach is easier with SAP Business One
A key benefit of choosing SAP Business One is its ongoing evolution to a highly configurable and extensible business process platform capable of being delivered through the cloud as a service.
SAP uses open and cutting-edge technologies that allow businesses to create a more customized and powerful ecosystem of software on top of a secure and comprehensive ERP solution.
For instance:
- Businesses can benefit from improved data processing speed, forecasting prowess and analytical reporting by implementing SAP Business One version for SAP HANA — a powerful in-memory database.
- SAP’s infrastructure makes it possible to create scenarios, custom mobile apps via APIs, and connect devices by using the Integration Framework for SAP Business One and Service Layer Technology
SAP’s own product portfolio and add-ons from hundreds of independent software partners can extend and refine the functionality on offer.
With a tailored suite of technologies built on a solid digital foundation, your business can embrace improvements including:
- Frictionless and positive customer experience through integrated e-commerce, Customer Relationship Management, and mobile sales management.
- Better warehouse and logistics management through EDI, a wireless warehouse, more precise purchasing, and shipping container optimisation.
- Streamlined financial management through Accounts Payable automation, and expense management automation.
Here’s how SAP Business One helps businesses embrace enablers of change
Cloud and mobile:
- SAP Business One is a flexible, cloud-based solution that your business can access in the public or private cloud via a convenient subscription payment model.
- The solution’s web-based interface can be accessed online anytime from a variety of devices, plus there are several native apps that use data from SAP Business One to deliver specific mobile-first functionality for handling sales and service activity on-the-go.
Analytics:
- SAP Business One version for SAP HANA includes dashboards, interactive analysis and a semantic layer for quick and easy reporting in real time.
- Integration with Business Intelligence tools and resources provides cloud-based access to data visualisations and analytics.
- In-depth reporting and analytics is possible through tools including MS Power BI (with native connectors to SAP HANA), MS Excel and SAP Business One HANA Analytics (a powerful, built in analytics tool set driven by SAP HANA technology).
SAP Business One on SAP HANA enables you to bring unstructured Big Data into one view for analysis, including:
- Cash Flow Forecasting: Graphical display of your cash flow, including the ability to manage cash flow forecasting and cash flow timeline estimates in real-time. Quickly configure the dashboard reporting to your requirements based on standard configuration settings. The business benefit – instant access to a clear and up to date view of your cash flow and cash flow forecast.
- Advanced Available-to-Promise: Get transparency about your inventory dynamically, in real-time to minimise costs and improve customer service. When a customer calls your customer service team they can get answers about inventory availability at the click of a button. What stock is available? What stock is being shipped? When is new stock arriving? All of these questions and more can be answered with the SAP Business One HANA available to promise apps.
- Enterprise Search: Locate your business information via freestyle search, and drill down to the documents and sources based on multiple search criteria. The business benefit – instant access to information to keep your team and your customers up to date.
- Predictive Analysis: Use Forecasting strategies within your Dashboards to predict future and seasonal trends based on your historical data. These forecasts can be used to assist with purchase planning through the Material Requirements Planning (MRP) module. The end result – making sure you hold the right inventory levels to provide great customer service whilst ensuring you don’t tie up cash in “over-stocking”.
While machine learning is still maturing: business leaders should engage now with trusted providers like SAP that are developing solutions that free up information and evaluate data to enable machine-fuelled insights and automation.
Already within SAP Business One version for SAP HANA you can access insights such as sales recommendations based on customers’ purchase history, and built-in statistical forecast algorithms to analyse inventory levels and optimise your demand.
Similarly, adopting SAP Business One gives your organisation a firmer footing from which to explore the Internet of Things (IoT) or other emerging tech like blockchain.
The solution provides a clear and accurate view of your data, tools for predictive analysis, and cloud-based accessibility. With those building blocks in place, it becomes simpler to adopt associated technologies required to establish a network of objects, sensors and APIs connected online — or share and leverage reliable data using blockchain technologies.
Create a strong digital core with SAP Business One
Deploying SAP Business One in the cloud, in combination with intelligent, integrated solutions provides your business with new capabilities immediately and kick-starts the process of genuine change and greater adaptability.
SAP Business One is the ideal jumping-off point for businesses ready to grow. The solution will support your business to make the transition to a more digitally-enabled business capable of cross-functional teamwork, leveraging data, fostering innovation and embracing emerging technologies as they arise.
Talk to Leverage Technologies today about getting started with SAP Business One: our experienced and friendly team has helped hundreds of Australian businesses to approach their digital transformation with confidence.
