Interactions: Big Picture with SAP and ECM

Companies need powerful technology platforms to manage content and processes across the enterprise. The so-called digital pioneers are using their business platforms to put the old economy on the spot with their new business models.

It is easy to overlook the fact that, in order to digitally transform their organization and implement the underlying business processes, companies need enterprise-wide technology platforms that are essential for managing information and business processes in all areas of the company.

The fact that this is also a concern for the SAP community was demonstrated, for example, at the DSAG annual conference last fall. One of the topics discussed there was how existing ERP landscapes can be transformed so that they can be expanded and combined with non-ERP processes in hybrid cross-company scenarios. Good question!

This is where SAP systems reach their limits. Companies need an overarching platform that can handle not only the classic data-driven processes, but also the unstructured content that accounts for almost 80 percent of the company's business.

This is where SAP and Enterprise Content Management (ECM) need to come together so that they can work in concert.

In the interplay of both systems, resources can be efficiently controlled and planned, information can be managed in the context of processes and projects, and any networks up to complex business ecosystems can be included.

Yin & Yang

Diversity and redundancy in the existing software application landscape are probably the biggest challenges currently facing enterprise IT.

Focusing on just a few software platforms is the most promising way to stay ahead of important innovation fields. SAP is an open ecosystem that executes, manages, and analyzes structured data transactions quickly and efficiently.

But as you yourself know, not all digital challenges and requirements can be solved with SAP alone. For the physical storage, archiving and structuring of documents, for example, an ECM certified by SAP is required. Both systems, SAP and ECM, are like Yin & Yang. One needs the other.

ECM is the central information platform

The platform potential is becoming increasingly important: Information must be used profitably. The more value creation is digitized, the more economic significance scalable and agile ECM platforms gain in companies, via which the information of value creation and business relationships are managed.

ECM is the central information platform within the platform economy. ECM also complements the SAP transaction platform wherever and whenever document-based processes and the documentation of business processes are required.

The latter is almost always the case for compliance reasons, from audit-proof archiving to the EU-DSGVO. The economies of scale of this new platform economy are achieved by the fact that services and solutions are quasi pre-installed on a technological basis and only need to be expanded or adapted for other company and task areas.

This is why this is also referred to as a content services platform. The ECM platform is thus the technological basis that surrounds a construction kit.

In analogy to SAP, a state-of-the-art ECM solution such as Doxis4 offers an open, digital content services platform that allows companies an extraordinary variety of applications and builds a bridge to customers, suppliers and business partners. Such flexibly expandable ECM technology reduces costs and IT efforts and ensures short implementation times.

The big picture in view

All business and task areas from development to sales, from accounting to service can benefit from this ECM platform without having to build parts of it themselves.

Only the area- and task-specific customizing is required, whereby there are a large number of templates for specific industry solutions and use cases that reduce this effort to a minimum.

However, such a blueprint needs a big picture within the framework of the digitization strategy with an ECM. The value proposition to the customer should be at the top of this target picture.

This brings us full circle: the success of Airbnb, Amazon, Uber & Co. is based not least on the fact that they have placed the customer and the value proposition at the center of their big picture.