2014: The SAP ERP Future

It is Sunday morning and I would like to take a small break from my efforts to create a basic FICO Configuration guides. It is fun to make it while learning, but just for a while I wanted to diversify my SAP journey. As most of you are doing, I entered google and search for a SAP event in 2014.  In my quick research I ended into a SAP official page with a video keynote called – The Future of Enterprise Applications presented in Orlando on the SAP summit during 5th to 7th of May, 2014.

When I first checked the video I saw that it is more than 2 hours long and immediately started wondering whether or not I should waste so much of my time on it. As we are flooded with information it is hard to separate the valuable from not so much valuable resources. SAP keynotes are not as exciting as Apple ones and somehow diluted with a lot of information. It is my goal in this blog to provide you with only the most valuable information on which you could spend your valuable time.

Ok, let’s move back to the video. I decided to give the video 10 minutes of my time and then consider whether or not I should continue. Well it turned to be amazing, simplified and a lot more meaningful than any other SAP presentation I’ve watched so far in the first hour and 30 minutes. In the second part, the presentеrs switch and it becomes a bit boring, more technical and with a lot of emphasis on technical advantages, but without the simple explanation on how this will be used by the end-users.

In the first part, which I am excited about, the main presenter is Prof. Hasso Plattner, SAP Founder and Chairman of the SAP Supervisory Board. This is the moment when I started making comparisons between him and one of the greatest drivers for innovations of our latest history – Steeve Jobs. In this first part, you will get very simple explanations of what all SAP emphasis on SAP HANA and SAP Fiori is about.

There is a lot of interesting stuff, but there are few key facts about the future of SAP ERP  part of the SAP Business Suite:

• SAP Fiori will change the way companies are performing their processes. Currently the GUI UI is far from being simplistic and user-friendly. With SAP Fiori this will be accomplished. Even the lowest hierarchy employee will get a dashboard with analytical insights. Something which was unimaginable before;
• Without SAP HANA, you will not be able to drive radical innovation in the current SAP installations;
• While the emphasis is on HANA, the SAP will continue to be backward compatible with current platforms and databases. If you want to take the main benefits of the new and future improvements in SAP, then you have no other chance, but to migrate to SAP HANA;
• With removing the aggregation tables and simplifying the core apps, SAP is removing the boundaries of pre-defined ways the business is performing, controlling and analyzing the business;
• With removed aggregation, new consultant skills will be in demand. They will be more oriented towards business as the system will become even more flexible. This will be relevant for the internal reporting as statutory reporting will stay untouched.

Here is the video that I would like to share with you. The first hour and a half is the valuable part. *The video is not accessible directly through Mobile devices. Use this link instead.