Category Archives: SAP
Agile Content Development For Software Adoption: Is Enablement Really A Piece Of Cake?
How easy it is to create good quality, relevant, and engaging content just-in-time? Quick answer – it’s not necessarily a piece of cake, but if you put the right ingredients together and follow a proven recipe, it can turn out to be a tasty, beautifully layered tiramisu.
The ever-changing landscape of the IT world and its digital assets does not provide a lot of time for content creators to ponder what should be produced and how to really address audiences’ needs. New products, disruptive technologies, and cloud releases knock on your door every minute, awaiting corresponding enablement content.
How can we achieve all of it in an environment that, by default, is unstable, unpredictable, and unbelievably fast-paced? Wouldn’t it also be great to cut out some time for innovating, experimenting, and testing new enablement platforms, instructional design techniques, and more?
In this series of articles, we share some ingredients of our recipe for success. Modus operandi to stay in the game of supporting software adoption. Our story stretches between years spent in small content development teams, working mostly on big classroom training and e-learning courses, then growing considerably, and introducing new learning platforms that adapt to the need of bite-size, micro-learning while becoming a part of a huge organization with procedures and constraints.
Whether you’re working in a startup, middle-size company, or a corporate setting, we believe you’ll be able to find useful tips that will match your context.
Agile mindset at the core – What’s in it for me?
Confession: We did not reinvent the wheel. We tried out the same strategies and tactics that were already successful with our organization. We decided to follow an agile mindset as the core principle for whatever we do within our ranks: all levels of decision-making, project management, team setup, prototyping, and more. So far, we have good results, and yes, we can attest – agile works not only for developing software.
Our product development and customer success departments are agile at heart, and we share the same language, vocabulary, and guiding principles. That translates into improved expectation management, understanding stakeholders’ feedback, and our more organized response to the growing pipeline of incoming requests for enablement. It provides us with greater confidence in estimating what we can produce, by when, and in what format.
Shifts in the company’s and products’ strategies also present less of a hurdle. Adapting to changes and pivoting became less frustrating once we had a well-organized framework allowing us to rethink the most important piece of work to deliver, recalculate the resources and timelines, and leave us with a “we got it” feeling at the end of the day.
If you struggle with the increasing number of time-sensitive requests for content, communicating with an intricate net of stakeholders across your organization, losing sight of where the priorities are, or needing to scale-up quickly, consider agile and its frameworks for your organization and team. It can be scrum, kanban, agile project management (based on DSDM), lean, or a combination of them. Give it time, be aware of the learning curve, and, as you become more comfortable with the approach, adapt it for your context and create your own recipe.
To give you some inspiration, let me share a story of what helped us in our transition to agile content development.
A content operations governance model that works
Some of you might already be familiar with the content operations concept as the glue connecting different efforts and allowing everyone to consistently execute their content strategy. Content operations covers many areas: guidelines and processes for content development and publishing, sets of clear roles, quality standards, data and analytics, and more. Its structure can be applied in various domains: content marketing, enablement content, etc.
For us, the agile spice is pronounced most visibly in our guidelines and processes for planning, content production, publishing frameworks, and team setup, so let’s focus on them as our governance model first.
Here are the three most important ingredients of our recipe that have proven to work repeatedly within the last couple of years.
1. Backlog prioritization process
The tiramisu’s ladyfingers layer providing steady, yet flexible construction for choosing priorities; it turns a simple, unorganized mousse into a spongy cake. It also provides a few important things for high-level decisions:
- Transparent place, the backlog for all incoming requests: We use this to capture the overall demand and put it in order of importance. This also translates into immediate communication to our stakeholders on what’s currently being produced, plans for the upcoming months, and the requests that were deprioritized or postponed.
- Set of prioritization criteria: This brings fast decision-making to our high-level planning; a formula that can be used whenever we need to decide what to focus on first. As a team, you need to come up with a clear matrix of all factors that guide you on how to treat incoming requests. Read Jacek Konopelski’s post for further information.
- A quick way to estimate needed effort: Perform a feasibility check for potential projects, understanding that most of the time we work with limited resources and need to choose the next piece of work wisely.
All of this enables us to adapt to strategy shifts and choose the optimal content type (in our case, classroom training, e-learning, video, tutorial, etc.) considering our audience, time, resources, and sense of priority.
In the end, we have a good understanding of what and why we should produce next.
2. Agile project management
The mascarpone layer, cementing decisions from high-level planning and translating them into the project’s setup. It makes everything smooth and seamless, is lightweight, but not just fluff. Agile project management, based on DSDM, gives a framework tailored specifically for the project world, combining best practices from the product, software development, and business project-implementation scenarios: What foundations we should set, how many production sprints we need, what to focus on first to finish our work in time. With a clear project setup answering those questions, we can dive deeper into what should happen when and on a high-level, how it should happen.
Here are a couple of useful things we stole from this framework:
- What’s fixed, what’s not, and the MVP mindset: We learned to distinguish between what is set in stone in a project and what we are comfortable negotiating or letting go. The agreed quality level and timelines (based on estimation and type of content) became fixed values that we don’t like to compromise. We could do a lot with the scope of content though deciding how much we’d like to put into the course agenda, how many videos into a video series, etc. The minimum viable product (MVP), minimum usable subset, or simply our core must-haves taught us to focus on the crucial parts of the scope – what the content asset cannot be released without. We had to tame our inner perfectionist (not easy!) and learn to address nice-to-have items (not essential or high value-generating tasks) only if there is enough time after the MVP is completed. Quicker go-to-market allows us to test new ideas and obtain feedback early on, without spending time polishing content nobody is waiting on.
- Prototyping: This became easier as well. One example is our microlearning platform. From both the platform and content-creation perspectives, we started the project with a clear MVP in mind. We delivered enough functionalities and content to seize interest and test whether what we proposed brings value. Once successful, we ramped up our platform and content development based on the reception from the audience.
3. Scrum framework for the production process and roles setup
Proven and established in the industry, the scrum framework has been around for quite a while now and brought us a fresh perspective into organizing ourselves on the team level. It was the final, strong jolt of caffeine, the best coffee for keeping our team energized and focused. It instilled in us a habit of inspecting and adapting that affected the way we make day-to-day decisions on how to develop our content in changing circumstances.
A few things we borrowed and continue to use:
- Set of roles: This streamlined our efforts, introducing division of focus and labor, e.g., with nominating product owners deciding what should go into each product enablement portfolio, and scrum masters facilitating daily operations and keeping the team’s attention on priorities. All of this fits nicely into our educational landscape and bridges gaps between the portfolio manager, course architect, and other existing roles. Read Angelina Padarnitsas’ post for further information.
- Building content incrementally: Brick by brick, we plan our actions in a structured way for a two-week time container – a sprint. The regularity of specific activities within that time (sprint planning, daily stand-ups, sprint reviews, etc.) sets a good production rhythm and teaches transparency. All of this helps us retain a high focus on the most important tasks in front of us while feeling safe about completing the big picture, one sprint at a time.
- Learning and taking calculated risks: At the end of each sprint, the project team gets together to review the results of the work. It’s time to hit the pause button and reflect on how the team came together to see what worked or didn’t work for them in the last two weeks and what they’d like to improve. Based on the lessons learned, they could determine what elements to add or remove from the sprint’s scope. Such a decision could be made on the go, without managerial approvals, which in turn increases accountability and ownership over the project deliverables.
Pick me up, cheer me up
The backlog prioritization process, agile project management, scrum team, and production setup are the agile ingredients of our not-so-secret recipe for success. It allows us to create clear and lean formulas for gathering and prioritizing our content demand, plan out projects focused on value-generating tasks, and organize ourselves without stress within production sprints. It gives us a solid foundation for undertaking new projects and prototyping. It encourages us daily to improve ourselves and stay on the lookout for new production technologies, instructional design methods, techniques, and innovation processes. The learning never ends, including in education and enablement departments.
Tiramisu is translated from Italian to English as “pick me up” or “cheer me up,” so feel free to pick up and help yourself to whatever you find useful from our experiences and create your own mouthwatering dish. Buon appetito!
Learn more about the recipe for crafting the new workforce experience. Watch the on-demand webcast.
This article originally appeared on SAP Community.
Rights Data Tips The Streaming War In Favor Of Content Owners
Rights management data – it’s not just about tracking permissions and monitoring revenue anymore. With the right predictive technology, television content owners will soon turn that intelligence into the edge they need to win over subscription viewers.
The streaming wars are heating up. Every market player – from digital giants like Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, and Hulu to new TV studio entrants such as Disney+, Apple TV+, Google Play, and Peacock – is building up libraries of thousands of fresh, high-quality content and cultural favorites. But when it comes to capturing the hearts and minds of their subscribers, they will have to do much more than house thousands of films and TV episodes.
Vast content libraries may mean more choice. Yet finding something good to watch can be like finding a needle in a haystack. Recommendation engines are too simplistic to curate the right content in the new world. Streaming platforms do not detect unusual patterns to detect when a different person uses a family subscription. And perhaps more frustrating is gaining a clear understanding of viewer behavior to provide an appropriate mix of options across genres and interests.
How often do we quit watching a movie after only eight minutes, only for the streaming platform to recommend another one just like it? Let’s face it: streaming providers have an opportunity here to delight customers. The platform needs to intelligently curate content to individual subscribers – intelligently removing options based on drop-off rates and licensing terms and matching material to viewing history and behavior.
Delivering experiences viewers value
For decades, content owners have been tracking where original programs run, how many times they’re watched, whether they’re viewed by a shared household or an individual, and which demographics demand the content. Such a static snapshot only worked well when TV executives controlled a limited portfolio of material from which consumers could choose.
Now, that traditional power structure of the relationship between content owners and viewers has flipped, thanks to the emergence of streaming providers. Access to libraries comprising thousands of options allows viewers to watch anything their hearts desire anytime, anywhere, and on any device – a moment (whether it’s 20 minutes or 20 hours) made just for them.
This pervasive desire for personalized experiences is not going away. From luxury items to commodities, everything consumers purchase can be personalized to meet particular needs and whims. Brick-and-mortar stores are becoming more experiential and curated to suit shoppers’ style needs and past fashion choices. Shoe brands – such as Nike, Adidas, and Vans – allow buyers to create their unique sneakers from laces and upper to lining and sole.
Because personalization in both B2B and B2C interactions is becoming the norm, viewers expect the same from the content they watch. With technologies such as SAP S/4HANA for rights and royalty management by Vistex, media content providers can leverage a next-generation digital core to understand what individual viewers want to watch today, tomorrow, and six months from now.
By leveraging predictive analytics and artificial intelligence embedded in the technology, broadcasters and streaming providers can match demographic profiles to relevant content. They can track and analyze behavioral patterns and determine whether a viewer who, for example, finished watching a horror film wants to see a comedy or another scary movie. More importantly, content owners can better manage their content library, removing unprofitable material, maintaining the rights of in-demand items, and adding new offerings that complement viewership trends.
A data-rich foundation for a new era of TV
The highly dynamic plays of the streaming providers are setting the stage for disruptive digital content that meets the needs of rapidly changing consumer viewing behaviors and preferences.
With the right technology generating real-time rights, broadcasters can compete as well – if not better. By knowing how to identify and limit the presence of low-demand items from their content library and exploit those that are in high demand, these players can run a streaming model that delivers a plausible future of substantial differentiation.
Find out how SAP S/4HANA for rights and royalty management by Vistex can help your business avoid the chaos of the streaming wars by creating experiences that wow your viewers every time.
How Focusing On Customer Experience Transforms Jewelry Business
The jewelry business is one of the most conservative industries out there. These companies are proud of their heritage and have always been eager to highlight that they are unique – that while the rest of the world is changing, they do not need to. However, over the last few years, it has been increasingly obvious that things cannot continue in this fashion. Digital technologies are too significant a part of our daily lives for even a very traditional industry to brush them aside.
Jewelry brands are finally realizing that these new technologies allow them to focus on customer experience like never before. So what is happening and how is it changing the industry? Let’s find out.
Personalization
Modern retailer/customer relationships are all about personalization and customization, and the jewelry business is no exception. Customers expect businesses to treat them as individuals with their own tastes and preferences rather than as faceless clientele – both online and offline. This trend can be explored in a variety of ways: from collecting data on individual customers to make offers tailored specifically for their tastes to providing customization services (for example, Tiffany offers on-the-spot engraving services in their stores).
Educating the customer
For the longest time, the attitude of jewelry stores to their customers was purely utilitarian: they perceived them as walking wallets to extract varying sums of money from. While they’ve always treated their clients with the utmost respect, this does not change the fact that their primary goal has been to sell an item immediately and impress the customer enough that they will come back later.
Nowadays, the trend is moving toward giving clients a clear understanding of what they are buying. Instead of randomly offering different pieces in a specific price range, modern jewelers educate their customers so that they better understand what they are dealing with and are better suited to make their own choice. When a client knows something about different types of gemstones, specific jewelry designers, and style trends, they can make their own choices and form longstanding relationships within the industry.
Storytelling
No one can expect that a visitor to a jewelry store or an online storefront will simply look at the offerings and buy something more or less suitable. These days, customers expect their purchases to be surrounded by stories, both related to the brand in general and a particular piece. A brand that is attentive to the customer experience will make sure to satisfy this desire and share each piece’s design origin, how it was made, and where its materials were sourced. Since many aspects of the jewelry industry (e.g., mining) are perceived as exploitative and environmentally unfriendly, it is vital to soothe the customer’s conscience by demonstrating the brand’s adherence to fair-wage policies and environmental stewardship.
Multichannel landscape
Despite the role of digital technologies in our lives, online sales of jewelry still constitute only a small portion of the market, no more than 10%. Customers are still wary of buying expensive and highly visible items without trying them on to see how they look. However, this does not mean that digital channels are unnecessary. People widely use online channels as preliminary sources of information before going to a brick-and-mortar shop to finalize the purchase. By streamlining online experiences and providing comprehensive information about each item, jewelry brands can significantly increase their physical store sales.
Augmented reality
A jewelry store must offer an excellent hands-on experience to beat the competition; however, trying on different pieces may turn out to be time-consuming and even impossible (e.g., if a store does not have a specific model on hand). Augmented reality technology offers a convenient option making it possible to try out dozens (if not hundreds) of pieces quickly, without having to take each one out of a glass case. Shoppers can even try pieces that are not in stock in the store; they can be ordered when the customer finalizes the choice.
Early adopters have the advantage
The jewelry industry can benefit from new technologies in a variety of ways, and brands that are early adopters of these approaches will have a significant advantage over their more conservative competition. It is very likely that new, more flexible players will win a significant portion of the market, especially if they aim for younger consumers who are more fascinated with technology.
Explore The Intelligent Retail Enterprise: Five Ways Forward.
Calling My ERP Friends: Seamless Network Interoperability As The Next Evolution Of B2B Networks
Imagine you meet a new friend who you want to communicate with regularly. That sounds easy, right? But, instead of just selecting her name on your phone and contacting her, your telco provider says you first have to create a “flight plan” – a list of all your new friends sorted by 1) their value (meaning what’s in for you and your friend), and 2) the technical effort it takes to connect. Unfortunately, your new friend is No. 21 on the list. That makes her part of the third wave to be “onboarded.” But, even before the first wave, there has to be a pilot to test the best way(s) to get in touch with your friends. And, once wave three starts, a communication consultant will get in touch with her on your behalf to tell her she will have to contract with your telco provider before the two of you can communicate.
In private life, this scenario sounds crazy. In the world of B2B communication, this is how it often works.
In a B2B scenario, regular communication between trading partners is a key success factor. Sharing forecasts, commitments, production plans, stock-on-hand details, and end-to-end procure-to-pay communication avoids surprises and disruptions and ensures a high level of transparency, agility, and process efficiency.
For many years, one-to-one Electronic Data Exchange (EDI) for integrated electronic B2B communication as well as on-premises supplier portals was the state-of-the-art technology. However, technical setup, maintenance, and support costs were fairly high and, depending on the industry, prevented the technology from adding significant value for users.
Figure 1: Traditional, one-to-one connections between companies have reached a level of complexity that is difficult and expensive to handle. As a result, suppliers hesitate to introduce new connections.
In the past 10 years, multiple B2B collaboration networks have evolved. B2B collaboration networks are cloud platforms that offer multiple ways to connect and also support manual or electronic communication with the cloud platform. The key advantage of those networks is the ability to connect just once to communicate with multiple trading partners. Most of those networks have a focus area (either a specific business area, such as procurement or logistics, or a specific industry), and trading partners are fairly distributed across those networks.
Figure 2: Cloud collaboration platforms allow a company to connect once and communicate with all trading partners on the network.
In order to drive value for the companies collaborating via such a network, the number of connected trading partners is the key success criteria. Unfortunately, convincing trading partners to join a new network takes months, if not years, because they have to connect to multiple communication channels, which drives process complexity and costs.
Figure 3: Suppliers still must connect to multiple collaboration platforms (e.g., in case supplier C and D would like to collaborate with company A and B).
Consequently, suppliers and customers are heavily pushing network operators to connect their networks, enabling interoperability between the networks so the trading partners can stay on the network of their choice and still transact with all their customers. As a result, network providers can establish things like value-added network (VAN) tunnels and field maps between the networks so every message can be transmitted and translated easily from one network to another.
This approach shows incredible results in terms of supplier adoption and onboarding time. Furthermore, the rate of electronically integrated processes (driving process efficiency and compliance) is much higher compared to net new onboardings, which often start with web graphical user interface-driven, manual processes.
There are several reasons for success:
- The network of networks (NEON) approach truly fulfills the connect-once promise. Besides some additional potential legal and commercial agreements, the supplier can continue to use its network of choice.
- Companies have almost immediate access to all trading partners connected on the networks and can run robust B2B collaboration processes within a matter of days.
- There’s no need to convince and educate suppliers in regards to how to connect to and maintain a new network.
- Issues can be resolved quickly, as the network providers speak to each other directly.
- There’s no need to build up additional backend integration for orders, forecasts, track and trace, etc., as a supplier’s backend systems (ERP, planning, engineering, etc.) typically would already be well integrated into its network of choice.
The flipside is related to the fact that there’s no standard method of interoperability. These network-to-network connections will always look different in terms of:
- Technical connectivity protocols and formats
- Business rules: Many networks will send out a reminder in case of an overdue order response or an alert in case a goods receipt does not match the original order. Those rules need to be aligned between the networks, so it’s clear who informs who in case of a disruption.
- Electronic invoice compliance: In the event that both networks can create legal electronic invoices, one network would have to step back.
- Support models: Support workflows could be different for a network A and B combination compared to a network C and B combination.
- SLAs (e.g., response times, uptimes, etc.) and security aspects (e.g., support of International Traffic in Arms Regulations, or ITAR, compliance)
- Commercial and legal aspects: For example, some networks charge suppliers, some charge customers, some are transaction-based, some are spend-based.
Last, but not least, while the technical aspects of the NEON approach can be solved quite easily, misalignments in terms of processes are harder to solve. Think about a supplier-managed inventory (SMI) process: It is fairly easy to technically share forecasts and stock levels, but it is more difficult to come to an agreement about process workflows, responsibilities, and liabilities.
Still, what we see in the market is that the benefits of connecting once overlay the potential negative aspects. There are more and more success stories of where a procurement and supply chain collaboration network interoperates with industry networks.
Making it as easy as possible for trading partners to communicate with their customers is the key success criteria to drive value in terms of process efficiency and working capital at minimal IT costs. Interoperability between networks is the next evolutionary step to enable companies to interoperate seamlessly, in just the way you would get in touch with a friend.
The Ariba Network is supporting the approach of network interoperability and established network connections to multiple industry and solution-specific networks so that customers not only have access to more than 4 million suppliers directly connected to the Ariba Network, but also to suppliers connected to other networks.
The Importance Of The Amazon Effect On Customer Centricity In Midsize Companies
Part 1 of the series, “Top Trends Impacting Midsize Businesses in the 2020s”
Customer expectations often come down to one word: instant gratification. Thanks to industry disrupters such as Amazon, consumers have become accustomed to a world where individual needs are met with one-click ordering, faster delivery, and extraordinary customer service.
Satisfying such a demanding environment can be an overwhelming task for a business of any size unless considerable changes are made. According to IDC, one trend that most midsize companies will soon consider is adjusting their business models to become more customer-centric. The analyst’s survey indicated that 55% of respondents will either embrace or begin to adopt experience-centric models by 2024 to deliver outcomes that matter most to their customers.
Customer trust outperforms instant gratification
People usually remain loyal to brands to which they feel connected. But building those relationships can mean very different things to different customers. Some prefer to purchase products instantly and share their thoughts directly on social channels such as Facebook, Instagram, or even Snapchat. Others desire a personalized shopping experience, whether through an e-commerce site or a local brick-and-mortar store.
No matter how “special” the connection, the red thread across all these channels is best summed up with one quality: trust.
For example, customers are focused on how products and services are sourced, produced, and delivered. Offerings that match the values of individual customers meaningfully – without compromise and frustration – are in high demand. And more importantly, people desire brands that openly provide information to prove their credibility, reliability, and sustainability.
And more importantly, addressing data privacy requirements and regulations will help your business gain a competitive advantage. Certainly, companies have no choice but to adhere to related regulations, unless they want to suffer from punishing fines and industry restrictions. Yet in the eyes of the customer, brands that consistently and compliantly create consent and protection of customer information will ultimately create long-term brand loyalty
Digitalization shapes a future of customer trust
Earning customer trust is a long, hard-won journey of consistent transparency, meaningful interactions, and reliable outcomes. Still, all it takes is one breach, misuse, or clandestine monetization of that relationship to ruin every connection made – destroying any hope of restoration.
The key to safeguarding midsize businesses from such perilous risks is the adoption of the right tools that can help analyze various types of data from an increasing multitude of information sources in real time. Doing so provides an intelligent core that enables three critical building blocks for customer trust.
1. Destruction of information silos
Democratized access and exchange of data across every single business system allows employees to tap into real-time insights that drive faster and more accurate responses to customer needs. In return, growing companies can improve decision-making and the delivery of outcomes and experiences that keep customers delighted and loyal.
2. Process transparency for all
A critical best practice for delivering outcomes that meet (or possibly exceed) expectations is allowing various organizations to work together. A comprehensive view into their customers’ history – from sales, service, and marketing to finance and the supply chain – allows employees to make decisions that turn isolated interactions into a well-rounded, informed, and meaningful experience.
3. Insights that are real-time, relevant, and actionable
Once data is democratized and processes are transparent, the next step is to acquire the analytics tools needed to turn information into insights that inspire and energize actions that matter most to customers. A predictive analytics model can help decision-makers identify optimal solutions to problem areas faster, support a responsive e-commerce framework, and automate repetitive and rule-based processes. Plus, frontline employees can obtain the forecasts they need to meet customer needs without delay.
The best customer experience is rooted in trust
Now more than ever, customer trust and the customer experience go hand-in-hand. Midsize companies that seize the opportunity to build trust are well-positioned to deliver authentic customer experiences that deliver as promised. And in the end, the brands that customers trust most will reap the ultimate rewards of advocate-like loyalty, market leadership, and revenue growth.
Discover how midsize companies are moving to become more customer-centric businesses. Listen to an excerpt from our webinar “Winning in the 2020s: Six Trends Every Midsize Needs to Know,” with Timo Elliott, Global Innovation Evangelist from SAP and guest speaker Shari Lava, Research Director Small and Medium Business at IDC.
This article originally appeared on Forbes SAP BrandVoice.
The Intelligent Public Sector Organization: Three Ways Forward
Public sector organizations are experiencing tremendous change. While the core mission to protect the community, provide services, and help the economy prosper remains firmly in place, rising constituent expectations for service, convenience, and data protection are putting organizations to the test.
Much is at stake, and failure can cause real harm: unsafe or unhealthy communities, degraded citizen services or lack of services, economic or political irrelevance, and loss of power or reputation.
Keeping pace at a time when constituents expect experiences and interactions modeled on the kind they receive from digital natives is no small task. To continue to fulfill its mission, government must embrace technical, cultural, and organizational change to be more responsive, adaptable, and transparent.
The following strategic priorities for becoming an intelligent enterprise are helping governments to move forward:
Put the citizen at the center
Governments today seek ways to simplify complicated processes and provide more personalized, self-managed services for citizens across all channels. Organizations are employing intelligent technologies with conversational UIs and natural-language processing for better delivery of services. Agencies are becoming service orchestrators and information brokers capable of supporting end-to-end customer journeys across departments.
One result is greater automation that supports the personalization of core services. This frees up employees to focus on the more complex services citizens need. Another result is that organizations are beginning to deliver services proactively without compromising privacy and permission, rather than expecting the citizen to request services.
With two-way authentication, encryption, and blockchain technology, for example, organizations can enable constituents to approve the use of their personal data one time only – thus streamlining their experiences. And by collecting experience data, government agencies can also get a much clearer picture of how citizens engage with them and then make adjustments to more effectively deliver on policy mandates.
Leverage data as an asset
As governments seek to use data to inform decision-making, they must find ways to more effectively share data across their own agencies to develop an integrated picture. By breaking down silos with a consolidated view of data, organizations will be able to share data more freely – and even use it for predictive analytics and simulations. This can improve strategic planning and policy-making.
At the same time, agencies need to prioritize the protection of data – at rest or in transit – from disclosure, modification, or destruction. Key to all of this is a rationalized approach to data management that supports an organization-wide “single source of truth” that integrates inter-organizational and external data.
To this end, organizations are moving toward centralized, easy-to-use data management platforms with intuitive interfaces that simplify access to information and empower stakeholders at all levels to maximize the value of data wherever possible.
Reimagine business processes and models
Government agencies are now moving to redefine their core processes and service delivery models – modernizing legacy systems and laying a digital foundation for data-driven decision-making. Everyday tasks are being automated, enabling employees to focus on the cases that require human engagement.
Some examples include the automation of constituent-facing services (such as social services, call centers, and automobile licensing and registration requests) and internal processes (such as invoice approvals and payment-matching).
Automation, invariably, involves the generation of data – which can then be used by machine learning algorithms to identify patterns. For example, agencies could use such information to optimize tax collection strategies based on individuals’ payment history.
Moving forward, agencies could even establish networks of government and non-government stakeholders that use decentralized ledger technologies such as blockchain to power further process simplification. Gathering data from multiple sources and using advanced analytics will enable the government to intelligently deliver the right services to the right people at the right time.
The future is bright
Increasingly, the most successful public agencies will be those that reimagine their end-to-end business processes using the tools and technologies now widely available. These agencies will shift routine tasks from humans to business systems using intelligent automation to serve citizens better than ever before.
Join our virtual event to learn more
Want to find out more about the latest trends and innovations for today’s public sector organizations? Register today to join our flagship 60-minute virtual industry event:
SAP Industries Forum 2020: Public Sector
Experience the Intelligent Enterprise
Thursday, March 26, 2020
8:00 a.m. PDT, 11:00 a.m. EDT, 4:00 p.m. CET
The Intelligent Professional Services Enterprise: Three Ways Forward
Will the largest services firms of the future have no employees? For years, the industry was built on the “leveraged talent” model: teams of highly educated people would grapple with a problem for a client and charge fees based on time and materials. Today, that model is giving way as professional services firms automate basic tasks, develop digital knowledge-based products, and rely more on a network of non-employee workers.
Never before has technological advancement offered more innovation and transformation opportunities for this industry. Intelligent technologies allow firms to grow revenue without increasing headcount. They can also empower employees to provide higher-value services for their clients.
But the question remains: how do organizations in the professional services industry move forward to become intelligent enterprises? The following strategic priorities are critical for making the transition.
Outcome-based engagements
Clients today expect professional services firms to deliver engagements where payment is based on a predefined set of outcomes rather than on the effort expended. Such outcome-based models transfer much of the project risk from the client to the service provider.
To minimize this risk, firms seek to implement frameworks for delivering outcome-based engagements successfully. They are starting early in the engagement process and leveraging capabilities such as intelligent deal-scoring, intelligent bid management, strategic execution, and post-delivery processes.
Critical to success is a smart, regimented bidding process that makes sure proposals are rigorously developed and accurate and use insights from past engagements to ensure that the outcomes can be realistically delivered with the planned effort. Firms are moving toward predictive analytics to monitor progress throughout the engagement to ensure that services are delivered as intended and that margins are realized.
Experience management technology is also playing an important role – enabling firms to quickly get accurate insights on the key drivers of the client experience. Based on data collected, firms can generate insights and implement programs to drive better business outcomes and deliver services more efficiently.
Knowledge as a service
Technology advances are allowing firms to innovate at speed and deliver expert knowledge in a digital package at scale. The goal is to unlock nonlinear growth by driving new revenue streams through innovative digital services that are instantly available, accessible, and affordable on an agile digital platform.
Today, firms are opening up their intellectual property to better monetize their institutional expertise via relevant digital services – such as tax or legal advice dispensed with help from intelligent natural-language processing.
By providing access to digitalized expertise, professional services firms are rewriting the underlying economics for their business. One critical capability moving forward is the need to understand the full lifecycle of the digital service – including the initial cost to develop, ongoing support, and lifetime revenue. For the knowledge-as-a-service model to work, firms also need to adopt a continuous innovation process and a digital cloud platform that contains all the required components. These components comprise a data platform, readily available business services, client feedback mechanisms for the product or solution experience, and intelligent technologies under the umbrella of an innovation system.
Talent networks
Today’s workforce is undergoing a massive cultural shift toward talented young professionals wanting a new work experience as free agents. The result is that traditional resourcing models are being disrupted.
Faced with the need to flexibly scale their workforce according to demand, professional services firms need to tap into talent networks to secure the right skills and resources at the right moment. Digitalization has enabled the emergence of an open talent economy that brings together people and work in a borderless workplace. Talent is readily accessible on a global basis, driven by the gig economy, crowdsourcing, and global platforms and networks.
Professional services firms, accordingly, are starting to use talent networks as an extension of the firm and seamlessly deploy these resources alongside their own employees, allowing them to flexibly scale resource capacity and access scarce skills. But execution depends on enhanced resource-management processes that enable a paradigm shift from “Who do I have with skills available?” to “Who is the optimal person (internally or externally) to deliver the service?”
Integrating talent networks, along with internal resource pools and even applicant profiles, will enable firms to make sophisticated “staff, hire, or contract” decisions that are based on a combination of skills, availability, cost, quality, and strategic criteria. Intelligent onboarding and personalized learning processes, meanwhile, are being used to integrate external talent with the company’s culture and working methodologies, key internal knowledge, and expertise. This is critical to provide clients with a consistent brand experience and level of service.
The future is bright
Ultimately, the basic value proposition of services companies – providing specialized expertise to their clients – will not change. But moving forward, the intelligent enterprise will prosper based not just on what they know but also how they deliver that knowledge.
Remember, too, that professional services companies are instrumental in helping their clients undergo digital transformation. Now is the time for those same firms to transform themselves.
Join our virtual event to learn more
Want to find out more about the latest trends and innovations in today’s global professional services business? Register today to join our flagship 60-minute virtual industry event:
SAP Industries Forum 2020: Professional Services
Experience the Intelligent Enterprise
Thursday, March 26, 2020
9:00 a.m. PDT | 12:00 p.m. EDT | 5:00 p.m. CET
The Intelligent Industrial Manufacturing Enterprise: Five Ways Forward
Gone are the days when the industrial manufacturing value proposition was relatively simple: industrial manufacturers made products and delivered them.
Now, the industrial manufacturer’s job does not end with delivery. Driven by ever-more-demanding customers and supported by the widespread uptake of the Internet of Things (IoT) and the emerging power of machine learning and artificial intelligence, industrial manufacturers are developing new capabilities to track huge volumes of data generated by thousands of devices and are adjusting their service depending on the circumstances.
The goal is to be more responsive, always-on, and highly adaptable. Industrial manufacturers seek to collaborate more fully with their customers from discovery through design, service, and beyond. Wherever possible, they aim to deliver the kind of experiences and outcomes that customers reward with loyalty and ongoing business.
But how do companies move forward? Successful ones are focusing on the following five strategic priorities:
Be customer-centric
Industrial manufacturers are looking for ways to maintain customer-for-life relationships based on a 360-degree understanding of their customers. The starting point is a holistic view of their customers’ business processes – ending with the knowledge of how those customers use the products in their daily operations.
To get there, industrial manufacturers are moving toward omnichannel models for managing customers’ interactions across channels (Web, direct sales, IoT, and more). The goal is seamless interactions with customers, the ability to quickly see all products bought, and real-time visibility into how products are performing. This will help companies position the customer’s point of view at the center of every decision.
Serve the segment of one
Increasingly, industrial manufacturers will be able to deliver completely customized products, services, and solutions that precisely fit the needs of individual customers based on sophisticated platform, configuration, and mass-customization strategies.
Industrial manufacturers are moving toward this goal by rationalizing existing product options using machine learning to understand what really sells and what doesn’t. In addition, organizations are pulling in customer experience data to better understand requirements – and then using this data to inform requirements in product configurators that let customers define their own products on the fly.
Embrace digital smart products and solutions
Industrial manufacturers are shifting to products with more digital functionality, allowing even more flexible configuration of products. Thus, software-based features are on the rise with connectivity to enable remote access and monitoring.
Industrial manufacturers are extending original (physical) products with digital services that augment and extend product functionality. Combining insights into the end-user experience and the relevance and value of digital capabilities, manufacturers will extend the lifecycle of the product and increase lifetime revenue. With a direct feedback loop from the product back to the manufacturer, product enhancements and future developments will be based on the actual usage and experience of the product, from first interaction to product retirement.
Implement the digital supply chain and smart factory
Supply chains and manufacturing networks are becoming modular and flexible to allow the seamless execution of different manufacturing strategies. Industrial manufacturers, accordingly, are using Industry 4.0 philosophies and new digital technologies to implement “shop-floor-to-top-floor” connectivity for real-time visibility.
Subsequent steps will increase machine-to-machine connectivity and collaboration, allowing autonomous decisions based on sensor data and machine learning algorithms. Industrial manufacturers will combine feedback from connected stakeholders (customers, workers, suppliers) and associated processes to further improve overall manufacturing and supply chain performance. Intelligently connecting manufacturing, logistics, and supply chains enables companies to quickly address short-term demand impulses, supply fluctuations, and changes to customer orders, allowing a truly modular production process. This production flexibility enables industrial manufacturers to produce higher-quality individualized goods at lower costs.
Develop service-based business models
As revenues are increasingly linked to services that are based on and built around smart products, more industrial manufacturers will offer products as a service based on the value delivered to the end customer.
Remote condition monitoring of assets is critical to success with such models – enabling manufacturers to identify and provide additional value-added services. Based on the data collected, organizations can get better insight into how products are used. This enables them to offer pay-for-outcome models where the risk and long-term value of each customer is clearly understood.
The future is bright
Ultimately, the winners in the industrial manufacturing industry will be those companies that successfully transform themselves into fully customer-centric companies. Ahead for the industry is unprecedented change at unprecedented speed – but our industry is positioned to be a driver of progress. Together, we can lead the way.
Join our virtual event to learn more
Want to find out more about the latest trends and innovations in today’s global industrial manufacturing business? Register today to join our flagship 60-minute virtual industry event:
SAP Industries Forum 2020: Industrial Manufacturing
Experience the Intelligent Enterprise
Thursday, March 26, 2020, 8 a.m. PDT, 11 a.m. EDT, 4 p.m. CET
Register Now
Rights And Royalty Management: The Intersection Of Data And Movie Success
From studio consolidation to growing variation of revenue streams, the film entertainment industry is far from the traditional beeline between theatrical releases and revenue. If studios can get a handle on their rights and royalty management practices now, they can take advantage of one of the most transformational opportunities in their recent history.
For an industry used to sure bets reaching blockbuster status, this past decade has turned any movie into a precarious investment. Big-name actors and actresses are no longer a guarantee for box office success – and neither are sequels and remakes of past box-office hits.
But don’t be fooled: The problem is not the scripts, directors, or even the actors. Moviegoers are playing by an entirely different set of rules, where films serve as a revenue-generating platform for merchandise sales, episodic shows, and streaming access long after they leave theaters.
While this new reality is nowhere as straightforward as the early days of cinema, it’s still possible to accurately determine which movie investments will be profitable. The secret? Good data, underpinned by state-of-the-art analytics, such as machine learning and predictive models.
Redefining how movies make money with rights and royalty data
The movie business, for the most part, is built on the idea that today’s “big thing” needs to stay “the big thing” for as long as possible. However, as media channels continue to grow in number, expand in reach, and diversify in access, this line of thinking is no longer relevant. Now, it’s a matter of finding films and timing their release in ways that will maximize their revenue potential outside of the theater-going experience.
This is where rights and royalty management technology come into play. Solutions, such as an intelligent ERP for rights and royalty management, offer a unique approach to managing intellectual property rights, contracts, royalties information, and copyright use – as well as storing transactional data. And all this insight is available within a digital core providing a single source of real-time truth and turning insights into actions.
For example, if captured correctly, rights and royalty management data can help improve the confidence and speed of making decisions on movies during the greenlight and distribution process. Studio executives can gain the predictive insight they need to make the right decisions and optimize a movie’s profitability.
Setting the right foundation for a new era of growth
For most traditional media companies, technology infrastructure has grown up around siloed business areas. In contrast, new entrants are often architected as digital-first businesses with advanced analytics embedded.
Recently, one of our customers asked me, “How do I make this transformation when I have more than 100 years of legacy to manage?” While this is certainly a valid question, it’s clear that a foundation based on a digital core for managing the business is a key step. Direct-to-consumer (D2C) business models require more focus on the customer experience (CX). Businesses must market and test new offerings within very short time frames, and support a financial background that can react in days — not weeks, months, or even years.
For example, studios using an intelligent ERP for rights and royalty management can maximize the return on their intellectual property, regardless of format or business unit. The digital framework, known as the Intelligent Enterprise, provides digitalized best practices for automating, validating, and facilitating the processes that make the difference between profitability and loss.
More importantly, information from every interaction and transaction is processed immediately to accurately analyze royalties and rights performance through digital capabilities such as:
- Predictive analytics and machine learning: Immediately identify white spaces in content asset licensing and determine how to monetize content assets as soon as possible.
- Enterprise-wide collaborative connectivity: Gain timely and accurate visibility to better manage rights availability and restrictions as well as royalty obligations.
- Real-time Big Data processing and analytics: Calculate potential revenue from each sales category, while considering usage fees, residuals, copyright terms, as well as guild rules and contracted agreements.
Transformations are not meant to be tranquil – and that certainly includes the movie industry. But with the right insights from your intelligent enterprise, including rights and royalties management data, you can rest assured that your studio is building a future of revenue and long-term growth.
Find out how SAP S4/HANA for rights and royalty management by Vistex can help your movie studio create franchises that turn moviegoers into lifelong fans and films into cultural phenomena.
This article originally appeared on Media and Entertainment Services Alliances and is republished with the authors’ permission.
Key Ways To Analyze Your Supply Chain Data
Analyzing supply chain data can give your business valuable insight. You can better plan for capacity, reduce redundancy and risk, and track down costly issues.
Define business priorities
As you plan how to analyze data, it’s important to define business goals and priorities. Where are the critical areas where more information is needed? Who needs it and what are the key performance indicators (KPIs) they want to evaluate? How often do people need to receive updates? Outlining the most important areas for improving processes, controlling costs, and solving problems can help you focus your research efforts.
Map out data sources
It’s important to know how all the data sources flow through your supply chain from conception to delivery. How do the different departments as well as trading partners trace your corporation’s assets? Do all stakeholders use the same terminology and tracking methods? Do some departments or divisions use different databases? Do some areas still need to be digitized to provide the right details? How will your company secure data throughout the process?
Collect comprehensive information
Study all areas of operation, ranging from sourcing, to manufacturing, to delivery, to assess where information can be tracked. Talk to stakeholders to learn more about how their information is being tracked and where failures are occurring or costs are hard to control. Are medical devices, for example, sometimes hard to locate in the hospital? Consider where your corporation can benefit from additional digitized information and geolocation data. If needed, get representatives from different divisions together to assess all the ways information is tracked and how you can build a more robust data model.
Align data where possible
Reference information can be analyzed more efficiently if it is standardized and adheres to global conventions. If departments use different methods for capturing details, reporting is more difficult. There’s also a greater risk of getting an incomplete picture or multiple versions of the truth, such as reports that conflict or overlap with each other. You may want to consult with an industry expert to ensure your processes are optimized for global standards. If your data is not following all standards, it can cause costly delays, rejections, or international regulatory challenges.
Consider Global Location Number implementation. GLN is a global standard for referring to locations and groups within an organization. A location can be a physical place, like a hospital wing, or a digital location, such as an enterprise resource planning (ERP) system. A group can be a legal entity, like a company or subsidiary, or a functional entity, such as a purchasing department.
Explore whether your corporation can benefit from streamlining its operations, such as bulk orders across divisions and departments. Some divisions might be paying more than others for specific supplies, or your corporation might receive a volume discount if you can group your procurement items. Examine costs throughout the year and see if there are seasonal surges and explore adjusting procurement to avoid unexpected changes in cost. Research whether having different tools and supplies is causing additional delays or incurring more costs as a product passes from one division to another.
Build a cohesive picture
Make sure you are collecting actionable data. Consult with managers to verify that the right questions are getting answered. Assess the best ways to report the data, such as performance dashboards, supplier scorecards, and materials-management reports so that decision-makers can respond effectively. Determine any alerts, such as demand surges or quality problems, that are needed and who needs to receive them. Build in time and checkpoints into your process to adjust your data-gathering and reporting as needed.
Supply chain management is a substantive area of expense, and performing an effective analysis can provide a significant return on investment. Whether it’s procuring supplies efficiently or tracking down quality issues, the right data can make your supply chain more efficient and effective.
Learn how to satisfy growing demand with SAP Integrated Business Planning for Supply Chain. Register for the Webinar.