I not too long ago recorded a stream-of-consciousness video interview on the highest matters that SAP Companions (and prospects!) ought to be taking account of within the coming months and years. Right here’s the recording and a transcript under:

Hiya everybody, my title is Timo Elliott and I’m an Innovation Evangelist for SAP and there are 4 matters that I feel ought to be prime of thoughts for companions world wide.

The primary is the brand new digital alternatives. It’s all excellent news. The entire statistics from IDC and the others present that there’s an enormous marketplace for digital companies.

It’s rising eight instances quicker within the economic system as an entire. 87% of CEOs say that they’re prepared to take a position extra in digital enterprise and companies. And the excellent news there’s additionally that skilled companies are within the forefront. You’re additionally altering your companies to reap the benefits of these new alternatives.

There’s a few areas the place I feel there are alternatives to take a position extra and do issues otherwise. The primary is composability. So analysts like Gartner discuss concerning the composable enterprise, the place we are able to create new end-to-end enterprise workflows in a extra modular, agile, and versatile manner just by placing collectively LEGO bricks, should you like, to create end-to-end workflows and processes.

Applied sciences like SAP BTP permit us to do this extra simply than ever earlier than within the cloud environments, even for purchasers which have on-premise functions.

And the query then turns into, what sort of functions will we construct? Nicely, that is the place applied sciences like Signavio are an ideal match. With SAP Signavio, you need to use Enterprise Course of Insights to see whether or not alternatives for these new composable functions, after which accompany any sort of digital transformation mission. I’ve actually discovered that it’s a unbelievable manner of explaining the advantages, the potential ROI, from digital transformation, which traditionally has been one thing that’s comparatively onerous to do.

And companions are an important a part of composability, as a result of one of many ironies is that prospects shouldn’t must construct something themselves. The entire level is that different folks have already had this drawback, constructed an answer, and you may merely plug and play and put these new Lego bricks into your current course of.

So that is very a lot a part of the transfer to new enterprise fashions, the place as an alternative of simply promoting companies, you possibly can promote IP, you possibly can promote options together with added companies as a part of your online business.

The second huge matter is one that everyone is all in favour of proper now’s AI. There’s an enormous worry of lacking out of the brand new alternatives, and there’s so much to speak about, however applied sciences like chat GPT have been the quickest adopted applied sciences ever, with 1,000,000 customers in simply 5 days.

And these generative AI applied sciences permit new prospects for creativity. It’s nice for issues you can, it will take a very long time to construct, however you possibly can confirm in a short time. To allow them to assist you with coding, for instance. It will take a very long time to code one thing. It seems the chat GPT and Google Copilot and these different applied sciences permit even non-coders to create code, after which you possibly can very simply test whether or not it’s truly actual or not. Or you need to use Midjourney and Dall-E to create pictures. You simply put in some textual content, it creates a picture. You possibly can say, sure, that’s the picture I need or not. They usually’re very a lot iterative.

General, the online result’s that a part of all of our jobs and our organizations, the worth of what they’re doing goes to be a lot lower than it was earlier than. So we now have to be clear about what these areas may be. The excellent news is that there are different areas of our enterprise, maybe 10%, the place we are able to do 100 instances extra through the use of these highly effective applied sciences.

So it’s a second to take an enormous step again, recalibrate, rethink what’s that we’re actually good at that we are able to leverage AI. And certainly one of that will likely be about what it means to be human. One among my favourite quotes in expertise is by Pablo Picasso. And it’s “Computer systems are ineffective. They’ll solely provide you with solutions.”

They’ll’t create questions. You, as a human being, can do this. what’s mistaken. what must be mounted. And you’ve got ideas on easy methods to do it. AI, in the end, will solely be a instrument. It’s a really highly effective instrument that we are able to all use to create extra worth.

And the secret is that AI by itself is ineffective. It takes prime quality information. And many of the highest high quality information in most organizations is of their SAP techniques. So assist get the SAP information into machine studying fashions, after which, on the opposite finish, truly ensure that one thing occurs. An algorithm can’t do something. It needs to be a part of a enterprise course of, and that brings us again to that composability.

The following space is information. There’s an enormous disruption round information. For a very long time, we’ve at all times ripped information out of our core techniques and put it into a knowledge warehouse or a knowledge lake or a knowledge lake home or a knowledge cloud.

More and more now, we are able to deliver the expertise to the information quite than the opposite manner round. For too lengthy, it’s been like ripping a tree out of a forest after which making an attempt to get it to develop in a special setting. It really works, however it’s loads of onerous work. You lose the roots, the metadata, the hierarchies, the real-level safety. After which it’s a must to recreate all of it on this new space.

We’d like to assist our prospects keep away from doing that with applied sciences like DataSphere, the place folks can get extra worth out of their information in SAP by leaving it as a lot as potential the place it’s, however offering companies to different areas as wanted.

Lastly and I feel maybe an important space, is folks energy. Now we have an incredible alternative to speed up innovation by letting enterprise folks do extra of it themselves, of their space of experience, with out IT and expertise being a bottleneck.

It’s the rise of the purple folks. Lot of expertise is now being executed exterior of IT, so that you’ve acquired the blue enterprise professionals and the pink expertise professionals. The purple individuals are what Gartner calls the enterprise technologists within the center which have a mixture of these expertise, they usually’re accountable for as much as 80% of latest innovation within the subsequent couple of years, in accordance with Gartner.

Why? Nicely, it’s thanks to those new no-code and low-code applied sciences and chat GPT and these others, which signifies that the ability customers are actually way more highly effective.

There are risks, although. Not all people is able to be enabled, and there’s the harmful chaos the place folks go off and create their very own end-to-end processes, however with none governance, with out following the safety guidelines, with out compliance akin to GDPR, or constructing issues that merely aren’t scalable, or rebuilding the identical issues at totally different components of the group.

The massive alternative is just not pro-code or low-code, however co-code, the place you need to use the SAP applied sciences to offer the bricks. It could possibly be an idea like headcount, or income, or it could possibly be an motion like open a better hiring place, or ship an bill.

You then’re going to let the enterprise folks manipulate these bricks, join them as much as create these workflows, however you might be assured that they’re doing so in a ruled manner that isn’t going to place the enterprise at peril.

These have been the highest 4 matters and I actually hope sooner or later I can have the chance to clarify extra!