SAP: Key Trends

Siva Devireddy
Lead, Innovation Center for SAP
Accenture

Sanjeev Vohra
Lead, Technology Capability
Accenture
 When we think of SAP,
what comes to mind
immediately is Enterprise
Resource Planning (ERP).
While SAP continues
to provide applications
for managing financial,
accounting, production
and other enterprise
operations in an integrated
manner, the way in which
SAP applications are
being delivered is helping
enterprises realize greater
productivity, faster time
to market, decrease in
operational cost, expansion
in customer base, and
much more. Thanks to
developments in mobility,
cloud and analytics
technologies, which enable
new business scenarios and
extend the reach of SAP
applications to business
users, SAP offerings are
now being adopted not only
by leading large enterprises
globally, but also by small
and mid-size companies.
These developments are
changing the landscape of
SAP clients.
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SAP Clients of the
Future
It is worth noting that over the
past 30 years, Accenture and
SAP have collaborated across
all industries and developed
solutions for and with clients.
Accenture’s Innovation Centers
for SAP in the United States,
Germany and India bear ample
testimony to their long-term
relationship. The Centers are
innovation and development
hubs, supporting continuous
innovation, industrialization
and thought leadership around
existing and emerging SAP-
based technologies. Our experts
at the Innovation Centers,
which are excellent for learning,
modeling and developing new
SAP technologies, work with
clients to develop client- and
industry-specific solutions. So
what are clients looking for?
It is not unreasonable that
today, SAP customers want
to lower cost through new
technologies, find innovative
ways of sharing information and
data with external customers
and innovators, obtain more
and better data, explore
forms of customer-driven
marketing, invest in better
data-analysis capabilities and
adopt new revenue models.
Therefore, SAP’s next generation
enterprise software focuses
mostly on business needs
and functionalities. These are
also the priority areas of the
Accenture Center for SAP in
India.
Extend and enable
enterprise through
mobile devices
If the current trend is anything
to go by, the Internet will shift
increasingly away from PCs.
In fact, employees of many
companies are already accessing
corporate data from smart
phones, iPad and other mobile
devices, and SAP has been
paying keen attention to that
trend.
Thanks to the recent acquisition
of Sybase Inc. in July 2010,
SAP is now able to offer a
wide range of mobile services
to its customers. Whereas
Sybase Unwired Platform (SUP)
is regarded as the best-of-
breed mobile middleware and
development environment,
Sybase Afaria is well-known
for its device management
capabilities.
To address the specific business
needs of clients in industries
such as oil and gas as well as
utilities and consumer products,
SAP and Accenture are jointly
developing and managing the
deployment of new enterprise
mobility solutions. Accenture
already has an established
Sybase Unwired Platform (SUP)
environment that can be used
to host on-demand mobile
applications.
 Speed, flexibility
and responsiveness
through cloud
While a growing number of
businesses have been using
cloud for relatively less critical
applications, of late though,
we are seeing a steady increase
in the use of cloud services
for critical applications as
well. Another trend gathering
momentum is that, unlike
before when SAP customers
were primarily large enterprises,
a good number of mid-scale
enterprises are now using SAP
cloud services.
SAP ByDesign is a complete
on-demand business offering,
aimed primarily at mid-size
enterprises and provides ERP,
SCM, CRM, HCM and PLM
functionalities. SAP’s overall on-
demand applications strategy
comprises three solutions:
Business Lines Solution—
includes SAP Sales On-Demand
and other on-demand solutions
including Travel and Expenses,
Sourcing and Career On-
Demand
On-Demand Suite—includes SAP
Business ByDesign solution for
medium-enterprises and large
enterprises
People-Centric Solution—
includes BI On-Demand and
StreamWork solutions
Accenture and SAP have
formed a strategic partnership
for developing, marketing and
selling solutions built on SAP
Business ByDesign platform.
Accenture is also creating add-
on solutions for CRM, HCM, and
specifically for the chemicals
industry.
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Since in most cases, enterprise
landscape is a combination of
on-premise and on-demand
applications, Accenture helps
clients to leverage their
investments by integrating
on-premise cloud applications
with the capabilities of on-
demand applications such as
SAP Business ByDesign or Sales
On-Demand. Furthermore, by
providing efficient migration
of a SAP environment to
a managed, private cloud
infrastructure, Accenture gives
clients the benefit of relatively
inexpensive and higher
performing systems.
Quick access to large
volumes of data for
timely decision-
making
If the process to access data is
cumbersome, involving several
storage devices, multiple data
warehouses and transaction
systems, it has a negative effect
on other aspects of business,
especially on decision-making,
and proves very costly to an
enterprise.
What almost all senior IT
executives have on their wish-
list is to provide the business
executives of their company
with real-time operational
information so that they can:
• React faster to events that
impact operations
• Uncover trends and patterns
in data
• Improve planning, forecasting
and other processes that impact
business operations
• Analyze data and predict
possible scenarios
• Obtain accurate information
for reaching quick and timely
decisions
In order to help the IT and
business communities to
achieve the above-mentioned
objectives, SAP has developed
the High-Performance Analytic
Appliance (HANA). SAP HANA
is a complete in-memory
computing technology that
includes an analytical engine,
a computing engine and an in-
memory database. It, therefore,
gives clients the ability to
analyze large volumes of data
in real-time, create flexible
analytics models based on real-
time and historic business data.
SAP HANA also gives customers
and partners the ability to build
advanced applications (e.g.,
planning, simulation).
Accenture has invested
significantly in developing
relevant assets and capabilities
and in designing a sales and
marketing program to support
SAP HANA clients. It has also
created a long-term road map
to leverage the expertise and
technology capabilities of its
Innovation Center network.

Accenture also supports SAP
HANA initiatives through its
Analytics Centers located
throughout the world,
including India. These Centers
focus on the development
of sophisticated techniques
in supply chain analytics to
address key business challenges
facing Accenture’s clients.
They are dedicated to research
and development and to the
delivery and industrialization of
analytics solutions and services.
Enhanced user
experience
Accenture has been
collaborating with SAP in
developing client solutions and
proof of concepts on various
user interface (UI) technologies
because high usability and great
overall user experience (UX) are
important prerequisites not only
for the success of a business
application but also for driving
its adoption among new users.
In recent years, SAP has
invested significantly in
designing rich UIs based on
Microsoft Silverlight, Adobe
Flex and HTML5 technologies
and in improving access to
its applications through the
SAP NetWeaver Gateway. It
has also developed the Duet
Enterprise with Microsoft to
connect SharePoint 2010 and
SAP solutions with the aim
of increasing collaboration
and productivity within an
enterprise.
In the Coming
Years
Recent developments in
mobility, cloud, and analytics
technologies have allowed
SAP to reach out to new
geographies, new industries and
serve a new breed of clients. As
these technologies reach higher
levels of maturity in the coming
years, we are likely to see the
emergence of new business
models for serving the current
and new clients, especially
those in the small and mid-size
category, thereby changing the
landscape of SAP clients even
further.
Career
Opportunities at
Accenture
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About Accenture
Accenture is a global
management consulting,
technology services and
outsourcing company, with
257,000 people serving clients
in more than 120 countries.
Combining unparalleled
experience, comprehensive
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and extensive research on
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companies, Accenture
collaborates with clients to help
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The company generated net
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the fiscal year ended Aug. 31,
2012. Its home page is
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