German software company SAP and partners announce that they will be working side-by-side to help customers rapidly adopt innovations as part of their IT landscape and effectively change their business operations with industry-specific solutions based on SAP’s industry cloud. The SAP cloud strategy aims to deliver innovative, vertical solutions built on technologies in the SAP Cloud Platform portfolio.
According to SAP, the expanded industry cloud solutions portfolio will serve the needs of three new industries:
- retail
- professional services
- industrial machinery and components (IM&C)
Specific challenges that SAP and partners target to address include:
- uncovering unspoken customer needs and creating more relevant, personalised offers through machine learning algorithms
- delivering professional services digitally through subscription platforms for great client and employee experiences
- interacting regularly with customers multiple channels, from Web to direct, and include Internet of Things (IoT) connectivity
SAP’s President for Industries and Customer Advisory, Peter Maier explains:
“The speed at which companies have to operate today calls for technology-enabled agility. Innovative companies successfully strike the balance between optimizing their current business operations and innovating at the ‘vertical edge’ to discover and develop new revenue streams. Our industry cloud portfolio delivers solutions to help drive business transformation profitably and sustainably, enabling our customers to adapt to changing business environments in their industries.”
Leslie Hand, GVP, IDC Retail and Financial Insights also commented on the announcement:
“SAP’s industry cloud provides a way to deliver industry-specific extensions that complement its intelligent enterprise strategy. With a robust ecosystem of partners that can deliver innovative applications with SAP, this endeavor can help customers be successful in growing markets.”
Partnering for SAP Cloud Strategy Success
According to the German company, its partners are a vital component of the SAP cloud strategy that will focus on developing solutions for the core business of SAP customers in the retail, professional services and IM&C industries.
The latest SAP industry cloud offerings built and run on the open SAP Cloud platform endeavor to help companies optimise their end-to-end processes and innovate with new capabilities in the cloud while reducing operating costs, improving productivity, and unlocking new opportunities for growth. The new cloud solutions will utilise intelligent technologies such as artificial intelligence, predictive analytics, blockchain, and machine learning.
As reported by SAP, SAP partners make use of SAP’s industry cloud technologies, open APIs, process and data models, as well as a wealth of cloud native technologies to innovate at the vertical edge and create new and innovative industry-specific cloud solutions that will help accelerate the pace at which customers can address shifting business demands.
One such partner who has been collaborating with SAP on cloud solutions is Accenture. The multinational professional services company has been in partnership with SAP since 2016 in developing industry and line-of-business solutions.
Caspar Borggreve, global lead for the Accenture SAP Business Group said:
“Accenture and SAP have a long, successful history of investing in innovation and co-development to help our clients realize new business capabilities. Sharing our industry and technology expertise, Accenture can help clients drive change by delivering on the promise of the intelligent enterprise powered by SAP.”
