SAP Business Trends

Previous postNext post

SAP Business Suite Powered by SAP HANA Comes

Just-in-Time for John Deere
Posted by Tim Clark in SAP Business Trends on Jan 11, 2013 4:16:08 PM
inShare5

SAP Business Suite powered by SAP HANA is finally here.

This core part of SAPs intellectual renewal means companies of all shapes and sizes have the ability to
run mission critical business processes in real-time, or just-in- time as Vishal Sikka, member of the
SAP Executive Board told attendees during a global launch event held yesterday across Palo Alto,
Frankfurt and New York.
As an attendee of the New York event, I wasnt enamored with technical talk or jabs at Oracle. I was
impressed with the notion that SAP HANA is not for everyone, a thought touched upon by none other
than SAP Co-founder Hasso Plattner.
Plattner wasnt trying to be provocative or use reverse psychology to drum up more business. He was
simply reminding business leaders that there is a mental state of being one must adopt before the
relationship with SAP HANA begins. It means letting go of the old way of doing things, like running
important queries over the weekend or taking several hours to crunch data needed for materials
requirement planning if youre a consumer goods company.

Deere and Company (aka John Deere) is a great example of a

global business that possesses the hunger and desire needed to shed old skin and transform into a
lean and mean just-in-time machine. Derek Dyer, director, global SAP services (pictured, right, with
Rob Enslin, Head of Sales, SAP) at Deere and Company was on hand in New York to explain why his
company is all-in with SAP HANA.
Last year, Deere and Company celebrated its 175th anniversary with a diverse portfolio that is
interrelated. Agriculture and construction are positioned well for growth. Turf and forestry units are
ready to enhance worldwide development.
Some change always comes with opportunity and our company has changed a lot, said Dyer. We
are in a good position to take advantage of opportunities in regions like Brazil, Russia, India and
China.

Dyer said SAP HANA provides his company with the ability to become more productive and profitable
obviously good things to be armed with when entering emerging markets. Dyer said Deere and
Company started its SAP HANA project a year ago and while they are excited about its speed, they are
more excited to execute bold ideas across their business that werent possible before.
Our existing solution was good but not doing everything we hoped, said Dyer. User experience was
not there, reporting wasnt great either. What we needed was real-time data to change this aspect of
our business and SAP HANA gave this to us.
This means Deere and Company can now manage their programs in real-time, the wow factor they
were looking for, according to Dyer who had early success with an SAP ERP on HANA proof-of concept.
We look at this as a way to manage our business in ways like never before, said Dyer. Real time
MRP closing in minutes is big.
In addition, SAP HANAs predictive analytics allows Deere and Company to:
1. Empower IT to deliver innovations to the business and solve problems that were unsolvable.
2. Simplify IT stack to reduce total cost of ownership and deal with huge amounts of data, mobile
connectivity
3. Better serve the business. Real-time means better decisions, crisper insights, and opens
doors for customer self-service.
As we look at SAP ERP on HANA we see a new world to transform the business from being a
manufacturer to becoming a solution based enterprise, said Dyer. For instance, we can take huge
amounts of data from our global equipment sensors, get info on how customers are using that
equipment in real-time and have a solution back to that customer in real-time.