Let me describe three big examples of innovation developed to make your lives easier: continuous updates that are no longer disruptive to the business; artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning that produce more precise search results; and real-time support at your fingertips that is built into your application.

Continuous Updates That Are No Longer Disruptive

System updates are important as they provide new or improved functionality, enhance stability and security, and enrich the user experience. However, what鈥檚 been a challenge in the past for on-premise software is the downtime, test efforts, and spike in system issues that often followed a bigger release cycle. For cloud solutions, you should 鈥� and already can 鈥� expect ready-to-use, manageable updates with minimum disruption.

With the , our application lifecycle management platform developed on 51风流Business Technology Platform (51风流BTP), we solved that issue by introducing 鈥渄eploy with confidence鈥� as a new way of how we develop this solution. Deploy with confidence works to increase developer productivity and helps ensure high quality while delivering daily system updates. From a technical side, it incorporates many development tools to help automate the daily deliveries of multi-microservice software-as-a-service applications like 51风流Cloud ALM.

All this allows us to provide regular feature updates to 51风流Cloud ALM with daily deployment and enables a robust lifecycle without disruption or downtime. Additionally, as our teams are in continuous exchange with customers using 51风流Cloud ALM, we can quickly bring their feedback into the solution to further improve our software quality. Introducing deploy with confidence as the development method for 51风流Cloud ALM is a great example where we as a team leveraged innovation to increase productivity and quality while at the same time lifting customer experience to a whole new level.

AI and Machine Learning: More Precise Search Results

Continuous updates are one thing. What about using technology to get answers faster? With companies working in a faster-paced digital world, making decisions and finding answers also need to move faster. This is also the case when business processes aren鈥檛 running as expected.

Think about yourself and if you are someone who prefers to find answers on your own and not wait on support to respond. You鈥檒l be happy to know we have various ways to help you find the right answer. When you search in or 鈥�,鈥� you can get an increasingly personalized search experience that considers the topics most relevant for you. As this applies machine learning to improve search relevance and we are continually optimizing our knowledge base for better discoverability, you鈥檙e more likely to get the needed answer instantaneously 鈥� listed as a proposed solution within the first bunch of search results.

When you actually contact 51风流support directly, your request and all of its context, such as system and product information, text input, and soon even attachment data, are evaluated in real time by a highly optimized, AI-powered algorithm to provide you with precise solution recommendations. This Incident Solution Matching algorithm helps to make sure you are shown the best available solutions even before you send a ticket to 51风流or start an Expert Chat session. This helps reduce your effort to solve the problem.

Real-Time Support and Answers at Your Fingertips

It鈥檚 definitely an advantage to tap into modern technology for finding the answers you need. How about the convenience behind it and having answers at your fingertips? One of the things we鈥檝e learned from research and talking with customers is how annoying it can be when you must drop everything you were doing and leave your IT workspace to raise a ticket in a central support portal. This meant you would need to rethink what you were doing when the issue came up and where it happened. Plus, you needed to enter all the contextual information the portal doesn鈥檛 have, such as the system where it happened or the application you were using when running into problems.

We鈥檝e made this obsolete and convenient: is available in many of our cloud solutions and can be used right away, if needed. It鈥檚 a click of a button to ask a question, search for solutions, get tailored recommendations for your problem, or to just report an issue. Built-In Support knows where you were working when the issue came up and what you were doing when you got the error message. Through the usage of AI and machine learning technologies, the tool either already finds possible answers while you are typing in your issue, or it pulls together the necessary information for the support engineer. This is a more personalized support experience tailored to your specific situation. How convenient to not need to post a ticket elsewhere or explain your situation.

And even better, this click can get you connected in a or a scheduled appointment with a support expert. You can more quickly describe and resolve your question or problem 鈥� avoiding the ping-pong back-and-forth happening through a traditional ticket resolution. Talk about a way to free up time and resources to focus on the business.

On top of this, Built-In Support will evolve towards bi-directional communication: if there鈥檚 a brand-new solution to a critical issue in the application you are currently working with, why not get it shared with you right away? And if there is supporting information around a new or changed feature in the app you might have questions about, why not see it published proactively before you run into problems? This is exactly the future-looking direction of Built-In Support. Tailored to every screen of your application, it can proactively provide you answers and solutions and not wait until you run in to a problem and need to report it. Built-In Support is ending the one-way communication. If we know a customer has a problem but isn鈥檛 yet aware of it, we鈥檒l proactively take care of it.

In Summary

All this sounds smart, right? Let me summarize my key messages to you. You鈥檝e learned that 51风流system updates are important as they bring you new functionality, but they don鈥檛 need to be disruptive. Finding answers to your support problems is just as quick as what you know from a regular Web search. And finally, you鈥檒l experience the convenience of having support at your fingertips and getting your support questions and issues quickly worked out without needing to leave the application you are working in.

I hope I got you excited about some of the existing support innovations that will further improve your support experience. And we鈥檙e not stopping there. We鈥檙e already working on more great things.

Andreas Heckmann is executive vice president of Product Engineering and head of Customer Solution Support and Innovation at SAP. Follow him on and .

Industry innovation has been a fascinating topic over the last few years. It鈥檚 impossible to ignore how companies create new offerings and experiences that dramatically shift how an industry 鈥� or in some cases, multiple industries 鈥� operates and how people live. Such groundbreaking changes are usually built with an appreciation of existing data and technologies and through a desire to do things better in terms of product safety, supply chain optimization, and business finances.

I鈥檝e been very fortunate to experience the power of such industry innovation through the Customer Innovation & Maintenance team as part of the Customer Solution Support & Innovation organization at SAP. For years, we have worked with various organizations to navigate existing crises, address emerging challenges, and deliver new opportunities for the world. In this article, I will discuss three of our latest projects.

Saving People鈥檚 Lives by Reducing Counterfeit Drugs

One prime example of our efforts is tackling a global menace that impacts the entire world: counterfeit pharmaceuticals. Many falsified or substandard medicines contain dangerous ingredients, such as heavy metals, highway paint, and rat poison, that worsen people鈥檚 health conditions and create new diseases. As a result, the World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that more than yearly from these snake oil cures.

For years, governments have initiated legislation and regulations to criminalize and control the production and distribution of counterfeit drugs. However, my team discovered that the lack of a rigorous, universal network makes it difficult to curtail the problem often hidden within complex supply chains and sophisticated packaging.

Based on input from 51风流customers in the life sciences industry and working with 51风流industry experts on this international challenge, we developed . The industry network hub enables pharmaceutical firms to share product information for traceability and verification across the supply network and with government regulators. Running on and leveraging 51风流Blockchain Business Services, it is the first public-cloud, industry-specific business network used by more than 45 pharmaceutical firms, over 1,500 trading partners, and 80% of COVID-19 vaccine manufacturers.

But our contribution to the fight against counterfeit drugs is far from over. We are working toward adding aid workers from organizations 鈥� such as the Red Cross and Doctors Without Borders 鈥� to the hub so they can verify critical medicines and vaccines on the fly in low- to middle-income countries. This innovation is accomplished by integrating the hub into the application.

Accelerating the Development of Lifesaving Therapies

Another barrier to delivering large quantities of medical therapies quickly, efficiently, and safely is the structure of the traditional clinical supply chain. During the COVID-19 pandemic, supply chain resilience was highlighted as a critical requirement for providing lifesaving vaccines, prophylactics, and therapies created through industry-wide collaboration and a patient-centric focus.

To accelerate clinical R&D and time to value, my team worked with Roche, Tenthpin, and more than 25 additional customers and vendors connected to the pharmaceutical sector. Together, we reimagined clinical supply operations and brought to life a digital transformation of the entire life sciences ecosystem by developing the solution.

This next-generation cloud solution enables faster clinical supply cycle times, fewer inventory overages, and better-informed decision-making by providing accurate insights into forecasted demand and clinical site stock levels. It is also a milestone in the industry鈥檚 adoption of the cloud, facilitating end-to-end process operations and visibility to plan, source, manufacture, distribute, and reconcile supplies for clinical R&D. In addition, the solution helps address the blinding and randomization needs of clinical trials during the manufacturing, packaging, labeling, and shipment of clinical supplies to hospitals and clinics.

Meeting Financing Needs to Boost Growth

In addition to counterfeit drugs and the need for resilience, supply chain volatility and turbulence is providing the impetus for innovation. This reality is prompting capital investments including end-to-end due diligence and product tracing services; machines and plant setups that improve environmental impacts; and networks for finding, vetting, and onboarding new suppliers quickly.

Incorporating all these innovations into business operations 鈥� regardless of ecosystem size and geographic reach 鈥� requires money that many companies may not have immediately on hand. But to meet those finance needs, businesses and banks need to connect with each other smoothly, quickly, and securely without introducing more work and complexity to finance and treasury processes.

By delivering the solution, we play a key role in increasing the reliability of relationships between companies and their banks. Built on top of 51风流Business Technology Platform, the solution creates a multi-bank, digital channel between each party鈥檚 enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems to embed Electronic Banking Internet Communication Standard (EBICS) and SWIFT connectivity into the remote data transfer of payment transactions.

In return, treasury operations can be refined and simplified by updating payment status and cash positions in real time across business and bank ERP systems. 51风流Multi-Bank Connectivity can automate manual, error-prone steps associated with the execution and reconciliation of payments, order-to-cash applications, and order entry documents 鈥� helping to increase control, efficiency, and transparency.

Helping the World Run Better 鈥� One Innovation at a Time

The news headlines running across our screens every day prove that industry innovation is far from done. Unfortunately, no person, organization, or business carries the ultimate wisdom to solve every problem single-handedly. But if industry practitioners, business and technology experts, thought leaders, and inspired problem-solvers collaborate toward a common goal, a better future can be possible for everyone.

It is this vision that guides my leadership of Customer Solution Support & Innovation. My team of experts continuously looks for opportunities to do better for our customers, business, and global neighbors. And with the feedback and knowledge shared during every interaction, we look forward to working side by side with our customers and partners to provide the digital capabilities they need to make the world a better place 鈥� today and in the future.

Andreas Heckmann is executive vice president of Product Engineering and head of Customer Solution Support and Innovation at SAP. Follow him on and .

Breakthroughs happen less often than most people are inclined to believe. Instead, I often find that most innovations are incremental in nature. Admittedly, a slow-building approach doesn’t grab the spotlight like more daring alternatives do. Still, it’s no less important 鈥� driving countless small improvements that add up to massive transformations and huge gains down the line.

One prime example of incremental innovation鈥檚 impact is the continuous development of mobile devices. The first handheld cellular phone launched nearly 40 years ago. Since then, each new release introduced different sizes 鈥� some smaller and some larger 鈥� and functionalities such as texting, Internet access, context-driven command, touch screens, tracking and tracing, and many more capabilities now considered standard. In essence, mobile device providers allow themselves to experiment with new ideas while generating revenue that is then reinvested into making the product鈥檚 design and purpose more impactful and game-changing in the near future.

Ideas Are Only the Beginning

Ideas are only the start of an innovation journey, no matter how new, novel, or useful. It takes creativity and domain expertise to bring them to life and evolve them gradually by applying the latest lessons learned and scaling capabilities or user experiences to deliver more meaningful value.

As part of SAP鈥檚 鈥渞einvent鈥� strategy, my team of customer innovation and maintenance experts from within the Customer Solution Support & Innovation organization at 51风流focuses on turning ideas into valuable solutions for critical challenges. Working with various industries, including agriculture and life sciences, allows us to innovate and deliver sustainable solutions that accelerate business success 鈥� from idea inception and proof of concept to implementation and maintenance.

Customer Solution Support & Innovation offers tremendous industry expertise that can enrich our customers’ growth areas, drive continuous innovation, and deliver prototypes faster to support their transformation into intelligent enterprises. And from our experience, innovations best realize their full value when scaled to add value while they are maintained and developed further to help the world run better and improve people’s lives.

Outcomes Are the Heart of Good Innovation

Our contributions in helping to overcome the impacts of the global COVID-19 pandemic were one of those moments where we revealed the true value of incremental innovation. Developing innovations in partnership under unprecedented conditions, we designed and rolled out numerous digital solutions more quickly and securely for millions of people.

A prime example is the . In only two months development time, we innovated a digital gateway with T-Systems that provides a standard for valid vaccine certification across the European Union and currently supports 600 million users. By removing the risk of falsified documentation, the introduction of this digital certificate represents an important step toward normalizing the freedom of movement within the eurozone and, as a result, stimulating the economy.

In addition, our team worked with Deutsche Telekom AG and Germany’s Federal Ministry of Health to develop the Corona-Warn-App to help identify infections quickly and notify people of their potential exposure. The mobile app, available for iOS and Android, was developed in open-source mode, and the program code was continuously visible to the public on the development platform 鈥� all without violating data privacy rights.

While the pandemic marked a significant era of innovation for businesses worldwide, our team has produced innovations important for business security. For instance, our work in detecting and preventing security breaches from cyberattacks plays a vital role in many of our customers’ IT infrastructure. Our experts combine the application 鈥� a leading threat detection software 鈥� with 24/7 managed security services. The application is continuously upgraded to help detect cyberattacks in on-premise and cloud solutions from 51风流as they are happening and analyze the threats quickly enough to neutralize them before severe damage occurs.

More recently, we innovated with climate-focused technology company CHOOOSE to deliver a climate app. As one of the first solution extensions developed with existing capabilities available in and 51风流Concur solutions, helps neutralize carbon emissions through high-quality compensation projects. As a result, our customers can acquire accurate data from their business flights and discover high-impact ways to offset their carbon footprint 鈥� all in one place.

We are also working on a prototype 鈥� 鈥� that marks the first step toward embracing virtual reality for running business. With the sustainability-focused concept, our experts are experimenting with collaboration with targeted data sharing between competing companies and integrating the virtual environment with open ecosystems such as . In addition, a decentralized peer-to-peer network based on 51风流Business Technology Platform is being created without requiring central persistence.

Innovation That Delivers High Impact

Most companies make the mistake of looking too narrowly at the overall context of their innovation initiative. At Customer Solution Support & Innovation, we are constantly evaluating the 51风流solution portfolio to find opportunities to adapt and add functionalities that can increase value in ways that can be quickly applied and scaled to meet our customers’ current and future needs.

Embracing the concept of incremental innovation has empowered us to shape a culture that is full of purpose, ingenuity, and discovery. So instead of dedicating all our resources to years-long projects with uncertain outcomes, 51风流is committed to driving innovation close to our customers’ everyday environmental, social, and governance challenges 鈥� and we will continue to do so in the years to come.

Andreas Heckmann is executive vice president of Product Engineering and head of Customer Solution Support and Innovation at SAP. Follow him on and .

At first glance, the photograph above seems unremarkable. by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter back in May, the image displays the craters and gullies common to the Red Planet 鈥� similar to those on the Earth鈥檚 moon. Yet what we see is no ordinary stretch of Martian dirt. It鈥檚 the peak of Olympus Mons, the tallest volcano on Mars. In fact, it鈥檚 the highest elevation in our solar system, towering over the surface at more than twice the size of Everest.

But it looks nothing like a mountain. Or a volcano.

Why not?

The answer emerges with perspective.

The image at top represents a narrow, horizontal sliver of a as viewed from a height of 257 kilometers, or 22 times the altitude of a typical commercial aircraft here on Earth. Still, everywhere within the larger field looks just like the smaller one! There鈥檚 no hint of a volcano anywhere in sight. But by increasing altitude even farther, visibility extends outward 鈥� until, eventually, the familiar caldera structure comes into sharp relief. The glimpsed this spring by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter fits inside the red dot shown below:

For scale, Olympus Mons the area of Poland. Because the volcano is so immense, the slope along most of the surface is extremely modest and, in many places, imperceptible.

Aided by cloud-based technologies, many businesses on Earth 鈥� the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter 鈥� possess acute powers of visibility. But how far outward does that visibility extend? Can a business see with precision only inside its own four walls, or can it see beyond them as well? Can it peer into the interconnected operations of its nearest trading partners? What about those of its trading partners鈥� trading partners? And so on?

Visibility, in business-to-business commerce and astronomy alike, requires not only depth but breadth. If the field of view falls under too narrow a lens 鈥� isolated, for example, from vital yet distant trading partners 鈥� then perception, even when detailed, may be narrow rather than holistic. Absent perspective, the highest point in our solar system can easily be mistaken for undifferentiated terrain pockmarked by undistinguished craters.

Whether in supply chain management or aeronautic science, visibility and resilience are mutually reinforcing. By shielding the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter from solar flares, frigid temperatures, and cosmic debris, thermal have extended the spacecraft鈥檚 lifespan from an expected five years to 17 and counting. Meanwhile, the Orbiter鈥檚 ongoing telemetry reporting equips engineers back on Earth with the data they need to design even more resilient spacecrafts in the future. They also learn from setbacks such as when, in 2018, a planet-wide dust storm the 14-year mission of the Mars Opportunity rover to a sudden, silent standstill.

Disruption, of course, wreaks an equal measure of havoc on supply chains and logistics. To instill resilience across increasingly integrated business processes, organizations and their trading partners turn not to the heavens but to the cloud 鈥� where digital applications harness vast repositories of operational data to manage dispersed assets, deepen mutual visibility, foster multi-tier collaboration, mitigate supply chain risk, and extend competitive advantage. When business leaders draw inspiration from planetary exploration in marshaling the full depth and breadth of the data available to them for analysis and decision-making, the visibility and resilience that follow are as limitless as space itself. Though connected commerce, cloud-based networks send growth and innovation rocketing skyward.

Andreas Heckmann is executive vice president of Product Engineering and head of Customer Solution Support & Innovation at SAP.

Top photo: NASA/Jet Propulsion Laboratory Caltech/University of Arizona. Scale: 1 cm = 185 m.

First a runny nose sets in with your source of raw materials, then a sore throat grabs hold of your logistics partner, and pretty soon entire industries grapple with fragmented supply chains, logjammed seaports, and mismatched labor markets. But what if the human respiratory system鈥檚 own natural defenses point the way toward remedying afflicted supply chains? What can the humble sneeze or cough teach us about restoring systemic resilience at a time when an airborne contagion disrupts not only the flow of oxygen but that of global commerce as well?

Some analysts fault the modern supply chain for its length, sometimes crisscrossing oceans from sourcing to processing to manufacturing to shipping. Others say its weakness lies in its complexity. But consider the average pair of lungs, whose airways 2,400 kilometers in total length and whose surface area that of a tennis court. Lungs, after all, a vast network of 480 million air sacs, also called alveoli. Clearly, length and complexity alone, which characterize even the healthiest lungs, fall short of explaining pulmonary dysfunction. Difficulties with breathing, not unlike those with supply chains, tend to arise from external factors. The culprit may be a wayward dust particle. Or it could be the outbreak of war that throws off established patterns of commerce between buyers and suppliers.

Nature鈥檚 response to obstruction is the sneeze or the cough, a remarkably efficient reflex to cleanse respiratory passageways. Hair-like receptors trigger the medulla, located in the brain, to expel the irritant with a forceful thrust of air. After the perfunctory 鈥淏less you!鈥� from courteous passersby, all is well! The body鈥檚 processes for regulating the exchange of carbon dioxide for oxygen return to normal.

In contrast, nature holds little recourse for clogged supply chains. Organizations instead rely on cloud-based . When uncertainty looms over the sourcing of critical materials or volatility undermines the demand for goods and services, businesses turn increasingly to integrated digital platforms to gain visibility into the interconnected operations of trading partners 鈥� spanning procurement, supply chain, logistics, and asset maintenance. Serving as a central nervous system for these and other core business processes, cloud-based networks lend organizations the data-driven insights they need to anticipate backed-up supply chains or logistics pathways 鈥� and to decongest them.

Unfortunately for many businesses, by the time congestion sets in, relief can be hard to come by. They are lacking a fast and effective reflex to the situation. But other firms are well prepared since they adopted the cloud-based solutions necessary to counter disruption, instill resilience, and mitigate risk. Only with the aid of 360-degree visibility both within an organization鈥檚 four walls and beyond them can it collaborate with trading partners, achieve mutually beneficial sustainability objectives, and lay the foundation for new digital ecosystems within which partner relationships thrive and customer value accelerates.

As cloud-based networks yield actionable insights from massive troves of operational data connecting organizations with their trading partners, they increasingly look toward 鈥� not unlike the brain signals responsible for triggering the familiar sneeze or cough. When businesses automate previously manual procurement and supply chain processes, they free up their professionals to redirect their time and talents to more strategic pursuits, such as collaborating with customers, shoring up partner relationships, and fostering joint innovation.

Where are integrated digital business networks headed in the future? Toward systems that can carry out end-to-end operational processes within guidelines set and supervised by humans. These cloud-based solutions are bringing organizations closer to an era of automated decision support, in which digital transformation helps to prevent businesses from coughing, sneezing, or even coming down with the hiccups 鈥� long before contagion can take root.

Through integrated digital networks and the competitive advantage they extend, businesses and their trading partners can, despite the headwinds of ongoing disruption, breathe easier.

Andreas Heckmann is executive vice president of Product Engineering and head of Customer Solution Support & Innovation at SAP.

Consider the by scientists of Sir Ernest Shackleton鈥檚 Endurance, which sank off the Antarctic coast in 1915. Fortunately for the explorer and his crew of 27, all managed to survive. As for the shipwreck, scientists found it remarkably intact amid the frigid depths of Earth鈥檚 southernmost seas. But the photographs capture one significant change with the passage of time: the sunken vessel, like the craggy ocean floor surrounding it, now teems with life. At a depth exceeding 3,000 meters, triple the distance sunlight can underwater, how do ecosystems manage to thrive? And what can businesses, sometimes facing inhospitable conditions of their own above sea level, learn from the enterprising plants and animals whose habitat eludes visibility?

To run at their best, businesses carry out multiple operational processes simultaneously, maximizing efficiency and minimizing risk across them all. So too the complex networks of flora and fauna undersea. A lack of visibility presents challenges not only for aquatic ecosystems but for commercial ones as well, in the latter instance imperiling critical functions such as procurement and supply chain, logistics, and the maintenance of equipment connected by the Internet of Things (IoT). Business leaders increasingly look to the cloud for digital solutions to enhance visibility across all these functions. But they鈥檙e equally wise to gaze seaward as well for insights on instilling resilience. Disruption, after all, can leave wreckage at the bottom of an income statement just as it can at the bottom of an ocean.

At a time when viral variants, recurrent lockdowns, and geopolitical tensions continue to roil supply chains and labor markets, businesses require 360-degree visibility across the interconnected operations of trading partners and solution providers to maintain continuity, foster collaboration, and keep promises made to customers. Yet many procurement and supply chain professionals possess only fragmentary information about isolated business processes, unable to gain a comprehensive view across the four walls of their organization, let alone those of their buyers and suppliers. Integrated digital platforms, however, lend businesses the expansive view and data-driven insights they need to anticipate rapid shifts in supply and demand and suggest available alternatives for the sourcing of raw materials and indirect goods.

Yet while cloud-based business networks are a contemporary innovation to extend visibility where it runs scarce, they are hardly without precedent. Deep-sea creatures have evolved their own ingenious techniques for sharpening their acuity to procure food. Consider the Pacific barreleye, whose translucent head enables the fish to in total darkness while stalking its next meal. Or the stout blacksmelt, whose oversized eyes from its otherwise modest frame. Or the scallop, whose 200 eyes peer behind mirror-like lenses, focusing in unison to the tiniest trace of light undiscernible to animals further down the food chain.

Back above the surface, businesses lie vulnerable to disruption even when supply chain visibility remains intact. When finished goods pile up in logjammed seaports, for example, manufacturers can offer little solace to customers denied on-time shipments. To ensure prompt delivery via sea, road, rail, or air, businesses require unimpeded visibility across all facets of logistics. They rely on cloud-based networks to track shipments in real time, collaborate with transportation partners, and secure alternatives when unforeseen contingencies thwart the best laid plans.

Here too, lessons emerge from the deep. Spanning distances exceeding anything comparable on land, the ocean organizes logistics through vast networks known collectively as the . Life-sustaining elements, such as carbon, oxygen, nitrogen, and phosphorus, flow from the surface to the ocean floor and back again through intricate cycles of photosynthesis, decomposition, consumption, and sedimentation. The biological pump is also responsible for sending to the bottom of the sea much of the Earth鈥檚 excess carbon dioxide, which, if released, would oversaturate its atmosphere and overheat its surface. Through the resilient, never-ending exchange of resources essential to life both within and beyond its depths, the ocean maintains arguably the most elaborate logistical network ever devised.

Cloud-based business platforms operate on a planet-wide scale with unrivaled efficiency, too. Not only do they facilitate procurement, supply chains, and logistics between businesses and their trading partners, but in recent years they have begun to connect remote assets through the Internet of Things. This cloud-based capability, often called asset intelligence, has revolutionized the maintenance of equipment.

Suppose a utility operates a windmill farm offshore. All of the units require physical upkeep but accessing them can prove costly and dangerous. It can also prove futile if the windmill happens to be in perfect working order. But by linking together far-flung equipment virtually, businesses digital twins 鈥� in lieu of natural eyesight 鈥� to inspect these assets from afar. Such cloud-based asset intelligence networks aid the operations not only of energy companies, but of rural health clinics, security firms, and even soft drink purveyors. Think of all the distributed vending machines requiring replenishment.

But how, devoid of light, do the creepiest, crawliest critters inhabiting the deep sea manage to ascertain their surroundings? How do they gather reliable, actionable intelligence on 鈥渁sset鈥� and threat, friend and foe, near and far? Consider the tripod fish, which elegantly atop narrow, leg-like fins, poised to sense distant vibrations from potential prey. The beaked whale, meanwhile, echolocation, not unlike bats and submarines. By emitting short, high-frequency clicking sounds and waiting for them to bounce back, these mammals develop an acute awareness of their surroundings, often to the peril of less sensitive beasts who become breakfast. The vampire squid, meanwhile, bioluminescent fluid to lure hungry, if unsuspecting, targets. For their part, sharks and stingrays electric currents to map their surroundings and navigate using the Earth鈥檚 magnetic field.

As the Endurance shipwreck-turned-aquarium makes vivid, the abyss of the icy sea imposes formidable obstacles to survival in an environment prone to volatility and unforgiving to the unadaptable. Yet nature has innovated surprisingly durable solutions for illuminating the fundamental biological processes that nourish sprawling ecosystems undersea. The cloud does much the same for networks of businesses engaged in commerce amid drier, if similarly disruptive, conditions. In fact, the cloud and the ocean are beginning to converge on an increasingly sustainable future for all the Earth鈥檚 inhabitants. The visibility made possible by cloud-based networks holds the potential to significantly reduce the volume of plastics cluttering the sea and encumbering the creatures great and small who call it home. As digital technologies give rise to sustainable solutions, resilient ecosystems thrive even in the darkest corners on Earth.

Andreas Heckmann is executive vice president, Product Engineering, and head of Customer Solution Support & Innovation at SAP.
Top image: Falklands Maritime Heritage Trust/National Geographic.

Although an increasingly important part of business transformation, artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning have quickly become catch-all terms for relatively simple analytical scenarios such as process automation and decision support 鈥� which has very little to do with AI or machine learning in the first place. No one would question that this exercise of pulling together hundreds of thousands of interactions and data points within seconds allows companies to gain incredibly impactful outcomes.

Yet, the potential of this technology is much more extensive. Leading a team responsible for designing and operationalizing the best customer support experience, I am fundamentally rethinking how AI and machine learning can be best applied over the next few years. This means combining a real-time support experience with relevant information continuously streaming from every cloud-based solution and each support interaction. We analyze this information to detect potential issues, identify patterns of recurring problems, recommend next steps, and take preventative measures.

Pushing the Boundaries to Redefine Support

Companies now operate in a complex, multifaceted marketplace of colorful expectations, ambiguous disruptions, and various languages. And the Customer Solution Support & Innovation organization at 51风流looks for every opportunity to help organizations unravel their challenges 鈥� both large and small 鈥� by getting the most value from their solution investment.

In today鈥檚 highly digital world, truly understanding business user needs and quickly delivering the right resolution is critical. However, organizations cannot afford to experience an application error, broken integration, or system-wide downtime before contacting a support agent. The customer support experience needs to be more proactive, personalized, and human, which can be delivered through a more mature approach to AI and machine learning.

So far, this view of the future of customer support experiences has produced leading-edge capabilities, such as:

• Incident Solution Matching based on artificial intelligence programmed to help customers find answers to technical questions faster and receive solution recommendations automatically as part of our machine learning-enabled support process
• Automated language translation of 51风流Notes and 51风流Knowledge Base Articles in , giving customers quick access to machine-translated case notes, chats with 51风流experts, and solution-specific articles at no additional cost
• Cloud-based support assistant to discover solutions faster and create cases with a guided approach within our AI-enabled service that can personalize and expedite the support experience
• Self-healing and predictive cloud software environment聽that continually learns how a customer鈥檚 business system usually functions and responds to any detected irregularities or potential errors to restore or maintain normal operations 鈥� mostly without the customer noticing.

All these features of the customer support experience are brought to life by infusing collective expertise, best practices, and know-how with each customer鈥檚 application performance data and interpreting that information into predictive insights.

For example, a customer with a specific configuration may experience issues when implementing a new solution release, such as unexpected system behavior or a disconnected data source. However, Customer Solution Support & Innovation aims to mitigate that challenge early by recognizing patterns within a real-time stream of interactions and identifying which customers are likely to encounter the same problems, analyzing the underlying root cause. Then, the appropriate customer contact is notified of recommended corrective action or, if the issue can be mitigated within the solution, 51风流implements the update with most customers not even noticing an issue to begin with 鈥� a self-healing experience.

Modernizing the Culture within Customer Support

By maturing its use of AI and machine learning in the customer support experience, 51风流creates a future-oriented culture. Support experts have the tools and knowledge to preempt many customer challenges with two-way interactions. They can recommend optimization practices, prescribe resolutions, and offer on-the-fly guidance to customers in a continuous dialogue.

No matter how large the customer base grows, Customer Solution Support & Innovation has the resources to help ensure a smooth, proactive, and precise support experience with a high first-time resolution rate. Using AI and machine learning throughout the process enables support experts to perform more strategic work, adjusting algorithms, introducing new ones, finding new ways to automate root-cause analysis, and accruing more profound technical expertise.

By setting the foundation for more meaningful work for support experts, 51风流customers benefit from an infrastructure that is increasingly enriched, valuable, and enjoyable for both sides of the overall experience. Interactions are more impactful, the right content is curated and accessed quickly, and, as a result, resolutions are more precise.

Earning Customer Trust with Intelligent Services

For most providers, a genuinely great and embedded experience happens when a customer can send a ticket that accurately describes the problem to the right support expert. But 51风流is turning this process into a more proactive, open dialogue of what the customer needs today to help ensure its technology runs smoothly tomorrow.

Don鈥檛 get me wrong 鈥� it鈥檚 perfectly acceptable to log into a support portal or Web site to create a case and talk to a support expert. However, that experience is not necessarily the best, considering the rising intelligence built in cloud technology. Providers can already understand the context of customers鈥� usage, know their expectations, and see how the solution operates in real time.

Recognizing that opportunity, the entire Customer Solution Support & Innovation team is increasingly implementing support services enabled by AI and machine learning into cloud solutions from SAP. But more importantly, it is continuously reimagining the possibilities of the customer support experience across the entire solution life cycle.

We鈥檙e hiring! .

Andreas Heckmann is executive vice president of Product Engineering and head of Customer Solution Support and Innovation at SAP. Follow him on and .

By 2023, more than half of global GDP will be accounted for by digitally transformed enterprises, according to estimates by . 鈥淭his digital tipping point heralds the emergence of a new enterprise species, the digital-first enterprise,鈥� according to IDC as reported in .

As customers continue to transform, 51风流must continue to transform to meet their needs. This transformation often leads to hybrid solutions, combining cloud and on premise. 51风流customers鈥� solutions will look fundamentally different a few years down the road, and the trend toward cloud is continuously gaining momentum. We must be ready to meet our customers where they need us.

To adapt to the new digital reality and to support our customers on their journey requires adopting a cloud mindset. This is something that we have worked hard to develop in the Customer Solution Support & Innovation organization, which is responsible for supporting all of 51风流customers鈥� solutions end to end.

Developing this mentality has meant nothing less than the wholesale transformation and reinvention of how our team operates. Although developing a cloud mentality means overcoming some significant hurdles, it is more than worth it, as it is this mindset that will determine the future of business. In three key areas 鈥� underlying technology, ways of working, and customer support 鈥� we were able to reap the ultimate rewards of a cloud mindset.

A Cloud Mindset Requires Purpose-Built Solutions

As an example of what this meant in Customer Solution Support & Innovation on the tools side, consider 51风流Solution Manager. 51风流Solution Manager is a typical on-premise product that must be installed on a server and requires its own database; it is a system in and of itself to manage customers鈥� actual 51风流product landscapes. It is no longer logical to have an on-premise system that must be run, operated, configured, and maintained to manage a cloud-based solution. Consequently, the idea of was born.

One of the most difficult decisions we made when creating 51风流Cloud ALM, our application lifecycle management (ALM) solution for customers that use predominantly cloud solutions from SAP, was to develop it from scratch rather than build off previous software. But in order to realize the true potential of a cloud-native solution, something entirely new was needed.

It is always tempting to take a shortcut for immediate gain. A common hurdle when adopting a cloud mindset is resistance to developing new solutions when so many of the old ones are still perfectly serviceable. After all, not everyone is using entirely cloud-based systems, and in the short term, some existing technologies 鈥� which were themselves time-consuming and difficult to develop 鈥� can get the work of today finished.

While this required more up-front work, there are multiple benefits from the resulting cloud-native system. For one, it is extremely easy to deploy. Any customer that has an 51风流cloud product can activate the program practically with the click of a button. It is also easy to scale. A multi-tenant cloud solution should offer the ability to multiply its underlining technical services and have it scale automatically, which is not only powerful today but will be invaluable as our customers continue to move to the cloud.
For a true cloud mindset, you must be willing to put in the work up front to experience continuous innovation and regularly provision new features while effortlessly scaling in the future. Still, the development of cloud-native solutions comes along with a change in the way we work.

This means that individual roles change as well. One example of how a job fundamentally changes with a cloud mindset is the product manager鈥檚 role. Traditionally, they look at big features. In a world where you introduce small, incremental changes every day, as is often true of cloud software, releasing innovation to customers is not a discrete event that happens once and then ends. Instead, product managers must learn to break things down into small features and have different groups working on each small feature. There is no grand release; it is a continuous stream rather than a sudden burst of water.

In a similar vein, programmers must learn to work without dependencies, which are common in traditional software development. In a continuous integration and continuous deployment (CI/CD) cloud environment, every dependency must be continuously resolved, and changes are being released to customers on a daily basis rather than being collected for a single release date.

Another example would be the role of a software quality manager. In a world with daily deployments, the old ways of testing software are completely gone and instead, q-managers become test-automation managers.

A New Way to Work

In addition to specific roles, a cloud mindset requires adopting new ways of working. This can be a major hurdle; it is difficult to change old habits and patterns of behavior. However, it鈥檚 not impossible, and I have been thrilled to discover that, with a few people guiding the way, the vast majority of people on my teams were able to adapt to new ways of working.

The difference between traditional work processes and a cloud mentality of work is somewhat like the difference between a pre-recorded show and live television. The pre-recorded show requires a lot of work that ends once the show is released for the week, when work on the next episode begins. With live TV, everything must happen in real time. There are no second takes, and there is no pause between episodes, just a continuous stream of information. And if something goes wrong, it鈥檚 going wrong in front of a lot of people.

A New Model of Customer Support

Finally, adopting a cloud mindset means developing not only new ways of working internally, but also of working with customers.

Today, many customer business processes have turned into something I call real-time processes. They’re always on, highly mission critical, and have an immediate business impact when they’re not available. If customers are using real-time processes, then we need to offer real-time support. For my organization, this means nothing less than being available for our customers in live expert chat. Customers can choose not to send a support ticket but rather speak to our top product experts live 鈥� now! We also offer customers to book live interactions at a time of their choosing.

Another one of my favorite examples is this. In a traditional, on-premise situation, a customer鈥檚 system could receive an individual software change, with a larger change published to all customers afterwards if need be. However, a cloud-first mentality means accepting that changes must be pushed out at regular intervals to all customers. This requires managing expectations: real-time support is invaluable but might look different from what a customer might expect coming from the old system. If a customer wants a noncritical change, the timeline may be different than it once was, while we must be ready to support their critical changes constantly and without delay.
From tools to job functions, a cloud mindset requires a fundamentally different way of working, which, vitally, permeates through the entire organization 鈥� everyone is touched. However, it also means that everyone has the opportunity to contribute to the cloud mindset, and with the proper change management, can create a cohesive group with a shared mission and outlook on the future of the organization.

What doesn鈥檛 change with a cloud mindset, however, is the imperative to constantly delight the customer. The Customer Solution Support & Innovation organization exists to provide customers with the kind of world-class support they expect from SAP, and that hasn鈥檛 changed.

That鈥檚 why I believe we were ultimately successful in adopting a cloud mindset, and it鈥檚 this commitment to our customers that we take into every digital transformation we support.

Andreas Heckmann is executive vice president of Product Engineering and head of Customer Solution Support & Innovation at SAP.

One of the most rewarding aspects of my job is watching people of various skills and experiences work together to positively change the world. bring a level of brilliance, ingenuity, and empathy when creating and delivering the innovations, pace of change, and outcomes that our customers desire.

There is no limit in sight to what our software development teams can produce. However, that fact does not mean that they should not evolve. Businesses now operate in an environment that is quickly shifting away from traditional on-premise software toward more modern cloud-based solutions. And as 51风流customers adopt a cloud mindset from their digital transformations, developers should too.

This realization recently came to life with a breakthrough approach to development. When 51风流customers began strategically migrating their on-premise infrastructures to the cloud, we knew the time was rapidly coming when a cloud-based application lifecycle management (ALM) solution would be needed. Delivering this offering 鈥� now called聽聽鈥� helped optimize customers’ relationships with its existing and new 51风流solutions and its chosen cloud providers and support partners.

Evolving Software Development for True Cloud Transformation

Developing 51风流Cloud ALM was vastly different from our typical on-premise projects.

Traditionally, we implement a solution over months and then make it available for download to customers. But even while our customers are using the solution in a productive environment, the technology is updated and聽 re-released as a new version when a critical mass of improvements are made 鈥� potentially impacting tens of thousands of installations across our customers鈥� and partners鈥� data centers or cloud environments running on 51风流HANA Enterprise Cloud.

With the cloud, 51风流can now stop moving applications to various data centers and offer a holistic service that enables customers to realize the speed, agility, standardization, and consolidated intelligence that the cloud promises.

Our global team of developers had to shift its design and delivery paradigm as quickly as possible to be successful. This meant transforming themselves with the right tools and processes for delivering impactful, cloud-based innovations with a flexible mindset.

Based on the advice and best practices of development executives from innovation leaders such as Netflix and Facebook, we underwent four fundamental cultural shifts.

Transform from On Premise to Cloud

Standard delivery of on-premise software is focused on the general availability of new software, completely updated versions, and service packs. Whether these offerings are released annually or biannually, these deliverables feature a bundle of functionalities designed, coded, tested, and quality assured by a team of 200 people. This model may have been profitable, but bug fixes, broken integrations, and requested modifications are inevitable.

The cloud environment requires a much more purposeful and swift development process. Now, the goal is the daily delivery of new capabilities and updates. 51风流runs smaller, more frequent iterations with a defined road map and a portfolio of relevant innovation practices, analytics tools, and process automation 鈥� from DevOps to testing and delivery.

Evolve Hierarchies to Networks

In most software development teams, the organizational chart features more than 15 roles and various siloed teams focused on a specific offering, solution capability, or user experience element. Most projects require everyone in the group to be involved 鈥� each one with well-defined responsibilities and approval authority.

By flattening the hierarchical structure, we release 聽developers from the pressure of answering to various people with different opinions and experiences. They are now empowered to do what they do best 鈥� engineering. In addition to creating software, developers are taking care of the end-to-end process, including testing, quality assurance, and production.

Accelerate from Static to Dynamic

To help ensure the team stays on track and delivers valuable outcomes for customers consistently, we conduct spot checks throughout the development process. The inclusion of automation into the daily delivery model allows developers to collaboratively structure features by working on small pieces synchronously and integrating their deliverable continuously until all requirements are fulfilled. Ultimately, developers have clear ownership of the feature or version they produce, which is increasing the overall quality and speed of the development process.

Delivering small changes avoids big bang releases and, therefore, improves availability. For example, massive simplification of code lines is now possible due to this single-trunk approach. Going from 20 code lines to just one is a significant time-saver. Fixes can also be done in 60 minutes, including testing and rolling them out to all customers.

From Yearly Planning to Continuous Innovation

Daily delivery of new software functionalities and upgrades removes the risk of difficult-to-resolve surprises that often happen with on-premise software. 51风流customers’ users can submit a note immediately through the software, detailing where a feature may not work as well, a dashboard could be improved, or an interface could be more seamless. SAP鈥檚 development team receives this information in real time, assesses the request, and assigns the appropriate developer to resolve it.

This design-thinking mindset gives 51风流space to listen to customers carefully, understand their needs thoroughly, and deliver on expectations quickly. This methodology prevents the investment of time, money, and resources on features or upgrades that are not used or relevant to customers. By optimizing the balance between nice-to-have capabilities with those that customers must have, 51风流can optimize the value and agility of its cloud solutions.

By offering a minimally viable feature first, customers have a say in how the solution behaves and appears. Then, 51风流iterates development in a steady cadence of small increments until customers鈥� requirements and desires are fully addressed.聽This approach gives them the freedom to try out new features or upgrade and provide feedback for further refinement and adaptation to the solution based on their needs.

Elevating the Purpose of Development

Let’s face it: software providers cannot afford to stick with traditional, on-premise development. Old approaches may be familiar and comfortable, but they do not work in an era where cloud-centric innovations and updates are expected to be delivered continuously, consistently, and quickly. No customer can afford surprises 鈥� such as release delays and quality issues 鈥� and wait for the next release, months later, to have them resolved.

So much has changed for SAP鈥檚 development team over the last year. The initial motivation may have been a native-cloud project, but everything from the way 51风流looks at its projects to the company鈥檚 delivery approach has been forever improved. In fact, the term “developer” does not fully describe what SAP鈥檚 talented team members do. They are engineers creating a better future for every business and person.

Andreas Heckmann is the executive vice president and head of Customer Solution Support and Innovation, 51风流Product Engineering for 51风流SE.

At the same time, the experience of working abroad gave me a taste of what it felt like to be an outsider in some of the countries where I resided. This raised my awareness of the importance of creating a workplace that values inclusivity at its core.

Diversity and inclusion () has long been something that corporations have been striving for across their employee base and leadership teams. It has now become more important than ever for leaders to truly define what D&I means and actively drive toward it, where it becomes part of the fabric of the company rather than an add-on.

It Starts with Communication

The way to understand what diversity is and what it means to an organization is by talking about it. These conversations cannot happen behind closed doors, but rather in an open forum where all members of an organization can exchange their unique thoughts and perspectives. You never know where the next best idea may come from. This is especially important in a global, multi-national corporation that spans geographies and languages.

Effective communication within this realm all starts with understanding and respecting different cultures and perspectives by being conscious of how you communicate. Leaders must be considerate when 聽communicating to help ensure the way they phrase thoughts will not offend people 鈥� whether talking to people of a different gender, race, nationality, or generation.

Communication also goes beyond SAP鈥檚 internal walls and spills out into the way we interact with customers. 51风流is very aware that customers in different countries prefer different methods of communication and is also particular about its communications and choice of words. Within a real-time support environment, the company constantly evolves its practices based on the feedback received from support representatives about the level of support provided to various customers around the world.

Embracing All Perspectives

Talking about D&I may be the first step, but a leader must truly embrace it to affect progress within a team and the larger organization. Once you start to embrace D&I and truly live it, there is no going back. When you are put in circumstances or faced with situations that are clearly lacking diverse thought or input, you may begin to feel uncomfortable. While there is no one way to enact D&I within an organization, leaning into this discomfort to figure out the path forward is where the true answers lie.

First is leading by example. This starts with diversifying a leadership team. Approximately half my team is made up of women. And while I do not believe I am ticking any boxes, I know that this helps set a good example for the rest of the organization.

Beyond gender diversity, it is important to embrace and integrate young talent within a team. Generational differences within teams can lend new perspectives to tacking problems and managing projects. 51风流has built its Technical Core Competence (TCC) team on power couples 鈥� experienced senior architects coupled with less-experienced early talents 鈥� supporting different areas with functional and technical expertise. This unique coupling allows for knowledge transfer, collaboration, and joint accountability across projects and has proven to be very successful. Young talents bring in fresh perspective and skills as well as the willingness to question existing procedures and processes, elevating the team to new levels of performance.

The right mix of people across age, gender, experience level, and culture will ultimately create well performing teams that can achieve much more. A diverse and inclusive team that works together will result in much better decision-making that will stand the test of time and require less change management in the future.

Creating Opportunity for D&I Early

It is important that the D&I scope goes beyond just talking about the numbers or quotas that need to be filled in order to be technically labeled 鈥渄iverse.鈥� Diversity can only be realized at the practical level, with continuous engagement and constant re-evaluation of the processes and initiatives in place that help encourage D&I. This starts at the very beginning with how we define ourselves and our organization to talent looking to enter the job market.

For me, diversity starts at the early talent level. Something as minute as job descriptions can have a long-lasting impact on the overall diversity of a company and its leadership. To afford all employees the opportunity to grow and move up requires making sure they are being given the chance from the very beginning. Hiring the best talent from the get-go, regardless of gender, age, or race, will naturally create a great pool for management positions down the road. It is important to foster this type of environment where the criteria are very clear, and expectations are set around hiring the right blend of diverse talent.

Truly making progress toward D&I within a team and organization requires self-reflection 鈥� taking a look at what has been done, what has been successful and what has not, and making the necessary changes. Diversity and inclusion does not start and stop, and will never be fully achieved; it is something that constantly and consciously needs to be evolved and improved upon.

I encourage you to face a new reality to do things differently, and I hope that this brings about great change and success within your organization.

Andreas Heckmann is the executive vice president of Product Engineering and head of Customer Solution Support and Innovation at SAP.

Work has moved to our homes, our personal lives have been upended, we have stopped shaking hands with people, travel has basically come to a halt, and typical day-to-day activities have largely adapted to stay-at-home orders as well as health and safety precautions put in place across the majority of the world.

Having said that, there has been a myriad of benefits and new realizations that have come out of this unexpected situation; many of which will translate into the next chapters of our professional lives, when we are all back in a more formal corporate space.

Loss of Personal Touch Does Not Mean Losing Touch

Moving to a remote work environment came with the loss of personal touch and face-to-face interaction, but in some ways, this has also forced us to communicate more than ever. Picking up the phone to reach out to individual employees, checking in with teams on items unrelated to work, and holding virtual social gatherings to replace 鈥渨ater cooler talks鈥� 鈥� these are all things that we have integrated into our day-to-day remote activities, which we can carry forth once we return to the office. These thoughtful interactions, whether in person or remote, show our workforce that it is truly cared for and valued.

For those leading global organizations, geographies and time zone differences may have already made it difficult to keep in touch with everyone and prevented teams from cross-country brainstorms. But because of the pandemic, we have been able to overcome this barrier with the various technologies at our fingertips, bringing about greater team collaboration. For team members that usually work remotely, the need for all team members to meet online can feel more inclusive.

Even when taking trips to visit other 51风流offices and teams across the world, rarely did I get the chance to meet everyone. With the increased use of video conferencing, I have had the opportunity to get to know many more employees and learn more about who they are and how they contribute to our success 鈥� a great and unexpected benefit stemmed from our remote work reality.

Lead by Example

There is no better time than now for leaders to step up to the plate and lead by example. Where there is much uncertainty, leaders are looked up to for guidance and security, especially for younger employees who had maybe never faced such adversity. As leaders, we must be role models for our peers and set a healthy example for navigating the challenges of remote work. Part of that includes setting the right tone as it relates to taking personal time off and prioritizing employee well-being.

Working in this remote setting has caused much of our personal lives to blend into our work lives, understandably creating a new type of employee fatigue or burnout. Many of us are experiencing similar issues 鈥� working early mornings all the way into late nights and rarely taking breaks.

As someone who was guilty of doing this, I made sure to diligently carve out time for mandatory breaks throughout the day, and even take longer lunch breaks. I have shared on that already. If your teammates saw you do that, they could feel comfortable doing it themselves.

Simplify Processes

There are many changes we have seen in the remote workplace that have allowed us to simplify and streamline old ways of working and business processes.

Firstly, 51风流has used this opportunity to hunker down and change some of its decision-making processes. Usually, when making big corporate decisions, the company seeks input from the full leadership team, which would have involved physically getting everyone in one room. Nowadays, 51风流has made use of technology to gather the information it needs virtually and come to a decisive decision more swiftly. In fact, this has proven to be more inclusive, as the company has been able to gather thoughts from far and wide before coming to a collective agreement.

51风流has also been able to simplify and streamline much of the administrative tasks that, in hindsight, took much longer than necessary. What seemed to be only possible to do in person, such as onboarding new talent, is now very much possible with all the tools and technologies put in place. These kinds of efficiencies have been a huge benefit of remote work.

Break Old Habits and Create New Ones

While the current situation has turned our world upside down, many of us have still been able to keep our businesses running and our customers satisfied.

In fact, 51风流Support was able to celebrate an all-time high in customer satisfaction. This may have been possible because we had business continuity plans that were in place to activate for situations like this, but it is also because we learned how to break some of our old habits, while forming new ones. 51风流was able to pivot and adapt to help ensure that customer needs were still met, all while delivering on our promise to help businesses run better.

No one knows when we will go back to the 鈥渙ld normal.鈥� In fact, I believe the old way of work and life will no longer exist. Once we head back into the office and start to get on with our usual day-to-day activities, my hope is that we will start to implement new ways of working and interacting with our peers. We will live and work in a new 鈥渘ew normal鈥� that I believe we have always been working toward.

Andreas Heckmann is the executive vice president of Product Engineering and head of Customer Solution Support and Innovation at SAP.

Whether they adopt one central IT solution or have a portfolio of IT solutions working in the background to run their business processes, these companies need a framework to help manage the life cycle of applications from beginning to end in order to maximize business value.

鈥淎pplication lifecycle management and business value?鈥� I can imagine the raised eyebrows. And yes, I insist it does. Holistic application lifecycle management (ALM) can substantially increase a company鈥檚 agility to apply business-driven changes, increase the rigidity of core business processes, allow for faster issue resolution, and so on.

Companies managing for today and planning for the future must therefore employ an effective ALM strategy to help ensure successful system implementation across applications, whereby they are equipped with the appropriate tools for their individual circumstances.

Complete ALM Portfolio to Support All Landscapes

Recognizing that all customers are on unique transformation journeys and run their businesses differently, 51风流offers a range of ALM solutions to help govern, develop, and operate software applications no matter what a customer鈥檚 landscape looks like.

Whether customers remain on premise, are shifting to the cloud, or operate in a hybrid scenario, 51风流is committed to helping them track and manage their environments through a portfolio that includes , , and . Knowing how important ALM is to customers, 51风流has included both 51风流Solution Manager and 51风流Cloud ALM in 聽customer maintenance agreements.

Supporting On-Premise-Centric Customers with a Swiss Army Knife

While 51风流Cloud ALM supports cloud-centric customers that are fully embracing the move to cloud, customers that currently have an on-premise-centric solution, or largely focus on premise but deploy some cloud solutions, are fully supported by 51风流Solution Manager. This ALM solution provides a 鈥淪wiss army knife鈥� of options to customers that require flexibility and the ability to tailor to their individual needs.

51风流Solution Manager 鈥� started decades ago to fulfill the requirements that were brought about by customers 鈥� is a comprehensive ALM tool built on proven 51风流technology and designed for 51风流Business Suite. Providing end-to-end coverage and a vibrant partner ecosystem, 51风流Solution Manager consequently supports 51风流S/4HANA, 51风流cloud applications, and 51风流Cloud Platform.

With more than 15,000 active customers across all regions, 51风流Solution Manager allows them to operate their 51风流solutions, document, implement, test, deploy, and monitor business processes running across multiple systems, and manage changes and releases. Many customers use 51风流Solution Manager to take advantage of the range of options available, flexible engines that can be tailored to their needs, generic content and methodologies, and managing their technologies, including larger customers with more complex environments and multi-track landscapes.

Empowering Customers for the Intelligent Enterprise

As an integrated application management platform, 51风流Solution Manager empowers customers to build toward the future intelligent enterprise while supporting business innovation, business continuity, and efficient operations.

51风流Solution Manager has been increasingly used to aid in the transition to the intelligent enterprise resource planning (ERP) system 51风流S/4HANA, integrating technical functionality with relevant content to provide customers with best practices on how to use it.

, was looking to prepare for its move to 51风流S/4HANA and leaned on 51风流Enterprise Support services to provide insights into how 51风流Solution Manager could help manage the conversion. With this support, they were able to streamline business processes, discover improvement options, develop strategies to reduce system errors, and minimize risk 鈥� helping create a strategic plan for the journey to becoming an intelligent enterprise.

Enhancing to Meet Customers鈥� Evolving Landscapes

While 51风流Solution Manager is one of the company鈥檚 mature solutions, 51风流is continuously leaning into customer feedback to further develop and improve the solution in order help ensure it continues to meet evolving needs. 51风流makes regular enhancements based on customer feedback.

As we continue to enhance 51风流Solution Manager to support new 51风流products and technologies, we want to make sure that customers are not only able to manage their businesses today but can also plan for what lies ahead of them.

Andreas Heckmann is the executive vice president of Product Engineering and head of Customer Solution Support & Innovation at SAP.

This kind of flexible mindset needs to be a part of a larger culture of fast and adaptable innovation across an entire corporation to help move a business toward an intelligent future. As 51风流helps customers along their journeys, fast-paced innovation within the cloud 鈥� driven by a dynamic, cloud-centric mindset 鈥� plays a crucial role.

Embracing the Cloud

One aspect of shifting from an on-premise world to a cloud environment is truly embracing the cloud. Adopting the Intelligent Enterprise in the cloud is no longer a fit-gap approach, which primarily focuses on providing individualized functionality. Rather, it is a much more fit-to-standard culture where the benefits of standardized functionalities can be leveraged with adequate functional coverage, faster implementation, and extensibility.

Customers also benefit from continuous innovation through regular updates managed by 51风流and additional offerings through the 51风流API Business Hub consuming partner extensions and own developments.

Managing the integration between the different components of the Intelligent Enterprise remains key for customer success.

Offering 51风流Cloud ALM to Meet Customer Needs

To support customers鈥� cloud strategies as well as cloud-centric mindsets, 51风流offers 51风流Cloud ALM, a cloud-native solution for implementing and managing customers鈥� intelligent hybrid and multi-cloud suite environments. This solution, part of the comprehensive application lifecycle management (ALM) product portfolio from SAP, was particularly created to meet the needs of cloud customers while also helping customers transition from on premise to the cloud in a private cloud or infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) setup.

Customers benefit from an out-of-the-box, native cloud solution that helps them speed up team onboardings for their projects. It is designed to act as the central entry point to operate the 51风流cloud landscape with guided implementation and highly automated cloud operations.

A key question customers have is how they can master managing their intelligent enterprise and diverse software landscape in a hybrid and multi-cloud environment.

The of an application lifecycle management solution like not only help customers master their software landscape, but also achieve a fast return-on-investment (ROI) and manage the best use of all their applications. This becomes even more helpful when the provider takes over system operations, but customers still must implement and configure the processes as well as monitor integration, processes, and users.

Customer expectations on managing such an environment with a powerful ALM solution are instant access from anywhere, unlimited scalability, lower IT maintenance cost, and maximum efficiency.

As 51风流continues to expand and innovate these capabilities within , cultivating a cloud-centric mindset is critical for users to thrive in the dynamic and constantly evolving cloud environment.

Rethinking solutions with a cloud-first perspective will be advantageous in identifying and tackling new challenges in the future while creating long-term time and cost efficiencies with the support of 51风流Cloud ALM. Businesses ultimately can be better positioned to meet the demands and opportunities of the future and are enabled to better manage their digital transformation.

51风流Cloud ALM also supports intelligent operations with end-to-end transparency on integration, applications, and business processes. This helps both the customer and 51风流to fully explore the advantages of a cloud-centric approach and manage the ROI of the customers鈥� applications in an efficient and effective way.

Over time, 51风流plans to cover the entire life cycle of overall intelligent hybrid and multi-cloud suite settings with 51风流Cloud ALM.

To keep up with the latest releases and enhancements of 51风流Cloud ALM, join the upcoming . And explore the latest updates on 51风流Support Portal, where easy-to-consume videos, blogs, and replays of online sessions are available.

Andreas Heckmann is the executive vice president of Product Engineering and head of Customer Solution Support and Innovation at SAP.