IntelligentEnterprise

From a technology standpoint, for SAP customers, initial steps are adoption of SAP HANA and S/4. These provide the basic layers of the platform to enable integration of transactional data with IoT data, big data, sentiment data, etc.

You would need Hana to get the most out of today’s SAP technology stack, surely? That’s a sine qua non.

And utilizing the SAP Cloud Platform services to extend the application layer and integrate data across the enterprise is key.

Recent interview with an SAP S/4 Hana customer, Vodafone was told: it's fair to say in the old ECC world, we had this one single instance system, it was very difficult to get the data out of the system and do the appropriate analysis.

According to SAP Insights, “more than half (52%) of respondents report that their number one priority when making operational improvements to their businesses is to modernize their IT systems to improve information flow. In doing so, they’re building the foundation they need to c

In doing so, they’re building the foundation they need to capitalize on the intelligent technologies they expect to deploy.”

Stuart was right on getting started, this is the gateway so to speak to open up the "art of the possible" for how you can give new emerging technology business contextual meaning. Use AI in Financial processes, react to triggers closer to your manufacturing line, or edge etc

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@JZetterblad I agree. 61% of respondents to our survey said that they want to move to SAP S/4HANA because of the opportunities that it offers to optimize processes, and 51% said they were using it as a way to implement standardized end-to-end processes

Other key points to address are current process, data quality, archiving - think about the analogy of moving houses and purging before you move to the new location

We at Dell also see in our discussions with customers a strong interest moving to SAP S/4HANA

From Vodafone again advantage that they now have is the sheer computing power, thanks to Hana, to do more analysis, more prediction. And also to integrate more data sources – eg IoT data. That was more difficult before, and was not real time. Big S/4 Hana customer.

Find more here: https://www.camelot-itlab.com/en/products-solution...

@KurtRoedszus Has it been a slow build?

Agree Lorra, and moving to S/4 also provides an opportunity to modernize the overall Data Strategy and build a common platform for both transactional and analytical data.

When planning for S4/HANA, organizations need to also address SAP NW ERP landscapes that have grown over time organizations running on “siloed” IT. Starting with a consolidation strategy to reduce cost for running classic SAP ERP, AND ready to support SAP

Do you have some real life (customer) examples of organisations that have successfully implemented a data strategy for SAP? What did they do?

With the integrated data platform, companies can then address the correct issues - see a great example from Duke Energy: https://news.sap.com/2019/07/duke-energy-newfound-...

Our joint customer Endress&Hauser recently completed his transformation to S/4HANA - he had a solid project plan and took enough time to execute the project successful

Duke was able to integrate operational data and survey data to priortize business focus

@jfpw55 and Dell's IoT portfolio can open up new ways to bring decisions closer to the edge...

Agreed Jim. There is lots of focus on centralizing systems as organizations move away from older ERP systems, and creating systems that are harmonized and reduce both TCO and IT maintenance costs.

No SAP customer would just have Hana, though? Other databases, Hadoop clusters. And wouldn’t just have SAP Analytics Cloud, would have Qlik or Salesforce Tableau, would have data integration technologies (Informatica) … How does it all fit?

PASàPAS for example decided to use SAP Tools to run most of its activity S/4 Hana, Success Factors, Concur and Solman for our consultant activity and we've easily built SAC reports to build useful dashboards and define our strategy

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@KurtRoedszus indeed - this may seem a simple and logical point but we also advise SAP customers embarking on projects to ensure they get all the relevant players together to help scope the project. Good planning is half the battle!

Endress & Hauser moved from IBM Mainframe / DB2 - SAP Business Suite - to SAP S/4 HANA in steps. First the technology migration to Dell PowerEdge / SUSE / SAP HANA

Key points to succeed with an SAP Data Strategy is to address 1.Consolidation/Integration 2. Simplification (of management and orchestration 3. Cloud enablement to allow for multi cloud models

@stuntrores Was that using Qualtrics?

And in the second step Endres & Hauser changed from SAP Business Suite to S/4HANA - in total they took ~ 2 years for that journey - It's an excellent story - have a look at dell.com

@ErikaNogier https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IWGXzMh_vRk&fe...

Data Pipeline creation is a challenge as you need to pull from diversifed sources with complete governance. Many of our customers have been able to leverage SAP Data Hub to build re-usable workflows to consolidate their Edge data.

@bmmck - beauty of the openness of SAP technology platform. SAP has partnered with MSFT, AWS, GCP and others for data integration. And Database platforms are open to 3rd party analytic tools and data movement tools

@bmmck Agreed Brian. In a survey we have in the field at the moment we're seeing more than 50% of respondents looking outside SAP for their enterprise analytics needs, so any data strategy needs to include solutions from multiple vendors.

Another great customer story is Gerolsteiner - where we build together with our partner Intense an resource management system based on SCP & SAP Business Suite - running on Dell PowerEdge and Dell Storage

Customers do not have to feel they are on the transformation journey alone. SAP and the SAP ecosystem can sit down with you and have a conceptual discussion on how to leverage the latest technologies to help you differentiate and evolve.

@KurtRoedszus Very interesting

@bmmck - yes, the duke example does include qualrics data for the survery information

For our audience today, there are some great case studies here to peruse! It helps to follow some best practices and learn from others in your industry or with the same challenges.

@stuntrores and DellTech cloud offers SAP clients the ability to build a multi cloud strategy while keeping control and orchestration consistent, thanks to our vmware VCF capabilities.

To get more info on that business use case have a look at that link: https://www.dellemc.com/en-ie/collaterals/unauth/c...

Can an organisation go it alone or do they need a technology or implementation partner? What have the majority of these examples done?

As organizations scale the adoption of the SAP HANA for “data driven” applications IT must have a strategy for data management. Key is reducing the amount of data that must be maintained in expensive DRAM. https://infohub.delltechnologies.com/t/dell-emc-so...

'Data Strategy is a journey to get competitive advantage by utilising the data available within & outside the organisation and simplifying the future by adopting the digital path.' Great blog here https://blogs.sap.com/2020/01/10/an-outcome-driven...

@rholland_nh And do they see SAP as primarily strategic or primarily transactional? SAP UK and Ireland User Group Survey 2019 said 8% saw SAP as a trusted advisor. 16% just as transactional supplier.

Anyone implementing an enterprise data strategy also needs to have a DataOps strategy, and there's an interesting articleon that topic from a member of the SAPinsider Community - https://www.sapinsideronline.com/articles/an-intro...

We have our friends from @SAP and @Suse here today. I wanted to share a joint white paper that may be of interest: https://www.dellemc.com/en-gb/collaterals/unauth/w...

@jzetterblad absolutely. The extended value DellTech brings to the table is incredible. While SAP solutions enable compute and processing, the ability to collect, store and process the data from the edge to the core is a critical add from DellTech

SAP has several customer testimonials - and you can search to tailor to your industry etc. https://www.sap.com/about/customer-involvement/cus...

When planning for SAP S/4 HANA- - -- it may be appropriate to look at and archive first strategy. https://www.crowdchat.net/s/362h8

Thank you @ErikaNogier for the great multicloud customer case ;-)

@bmmck It's something we need to dig into further. Many are using SAP solutions for all their needs, but not everyone.

as a SAP Partner with S/4, SF & BI expertise we help our Customer in defining their data strategy from the transactions to the Analysis of it. But once the System is built the users can be quite autonomous. e.g our Controller manages SAC on her own to build dashboards