E3 Category: Coverstory 20-11

The world of business and finance is on the move. The SAP community was sent on its way with Covid-19 several years ago without any planning and naturally without any knowledge of a future. When "digital transformation" was not yet a buzzword, the change had already begun: Professor Hasso Plattner was responsible for the start with his revolutionary concept of an in-memory computing database....

For some time now, the term "Intelligent Enterprise" has been brought to the fore by SAP marketing. For companies, this raises questions above all, because it is currently still unclear on the market whether this is a product.

Cloud has developed rapidly in recent years. Figures from the Cloud Monitor, published by Bitkom Research and KPMG, illustrate this: in 2011, the public cloud was not an issue for 87 percent of the companies surveyed. In 2019, only 31 percent still saw it that way.

In recent years, not only has the volume of available data increased rapidly. The number of concepts for handling data and the quantity of suitable technologies have also increased enormously.

The corona pandemic makes it very clear what opportunities digital technologies open up. And it reveals, in part very uncompromisingly, where a hitherto rather moderate pace in digital transformation can lead.

SAP S/4 Hana brings added value. This is also the case for companies in the process industry with a focus on chemicals, pharmaceuticals and life sciences. The added value is particularly striking because of the integrated analysis functions and the evaluation of real-time data.