Tag: Rise with SAP

Despite the rampant economic implications of the COVID-19 pandemic, numerous small and mid-market businesses (SMBs) managed to survive the odds by embracing modern technology. With a cloud-first approach and a partnership-driven ecosystem, several SMBs demonstrated tremendous growth in these extraordinarily challenging times. Americas’ SAP User Group (ASUG) survey observes that most of their mid-market customers expect to grow at a rate of 56% over the next five years. If you’re an ambitious mid-sized business with a large-scale growth plan, it’s time to outgrow your accounting software and adopt a modern ERP platform.
Read more: How Organizations Can Gain a Competitive Edge by Implementing Digital Core ERP

Many small businesses hesitate to invest in intelligent ERPs due to high costs and technical complexities. Platforms like SAP Business ByDesign allow SMBs to oversee their whole business, improve compliance, increase cash flow, and expedite reporting. SAP Business ByDesign is a sophisticated cloud ERP software designed specifically for mid-market users. How does ByD enable your business to build a robust technology foundation and drive growth? Let’s explore this in this blog.

What is SAP Business ByDesign?

SAP Business ByDesign (ByD) is an integrated, on-demand, full-featured, cloud ERP solution that can run your entire business operations on a single platform. ByD is sold and operated as software as a service (SaaS) and is designed specifically for small to mid-sized enterprises as well as subsidiaries of large corporations. SAP Business ByDesign can integrate and manage all your core business processes such as financials, project management, human resources, procurement, customer service, sales, integrated business analytics, and supply chain, among others.
SAP Business ByDesign is built on the standards of service-oriented architecture (SOA). The platform attains integration between business capabilities via message exchanges. Multi-tenancy enabled SAP NetWeaver is the underlying technology stack of ByD. The platform leverages HANA, SAP’s in-memory database.
Read more: SAP HANA – The Game-Changing Technology 

SAP ByD Unifies Core Business Functions

SAP Business ByDesign works as an end-to-end business suite that unifies the following core business functions:

1. Financial Management 

ByD helps assess your company’s financial position in real-time. You can use the software to administer financial and managerial accounting for multiple operating units, currencies, and reporting paradigms. Using ByD, you can analyze your organization’s customer and supplier transaction data to better understand your cash position.

2. Customer Relationship Management

SAP Business ByDesign allows your business to efficiently manage your sales, marketing, and service processes. Personalized customer data enables marketers to run successful campaigns, improve lead generation and qualification, and expedite handover to sales. The software improves your account management by automating key sales functions, from contact interactions to billing. ByD equips your employees with the right tools and insights to deliver exceptional customer service.

3. Human Resources Management

SAP Business ByDesign simplifies employee onboarding processes. Employees and managers can use the software to access all the relevant information. ByD streamlines time, attendance, labor, and compensation management by centralizing data and self-service processes. Employees can self-manage their timesheets, personal data, and procurement processes. The software lets your payroll integrate with third-party payroll providers for faster processing. ByD also helps automate policy-compliant requests and approvals.
Read more: Choosing Between SAP Business One and SAP Business ByDesign

4. Project Management

SAP Business ByDesign helps manage projects of all sizes and complexities through real-time project collaboration and monitoring. If you’re using Microsoft Teams, you can directly access your ByD application from Teams.

5. Procurement

ByD helps maintain a centralized database to store supplier and product data. You can seamlessly manage multiple vendor contracts and negotiate better prices with real-time information. This saves your cost and time.

6. Supply Chain Management

SAP Business ByDesign streamlines customer and supplier collaboration with improved supply-demand matching. This ensures that the product design meets customer expectations and shortens the time to market. The software helps control your material flows and automates relevant processes across manufacturing, warehousing, and logistics operations. All these lead to better procurement planning.

Business Benefits of SAP Business ByDesign

Digital transformation is the prerequisite for an intelligent enterprise. With its ease of use, insightfulness, and openness, SAP Business ByDesign enables SMBs to drive digital transformation efforts successfully.
Read more: RISE with SAP – How Fingent Can Help Explore Business Transformation as a Service (BTaaS) 

Here’s how your business can benefit from SAP ByD:

• Offers built-in analytics to leverage real-time data across all operational areas. This supports intelligent decision-making.
• Anytime, anywhere access via web and mobile helps build an empowered, mobile-connected workforce.
• Scalable technology and quarterly upgrades ensure that your ByD platform is always up-to-date.
• Though designed for small and mid-sized companies, the platform comprises all the features and capabilities utilized by large enterprises.
• A highly configurable business management solution that requires minimal customization.
• One of the most cost-effective ERP solutions that reduces your operational expenses.
• Gain 360-degree visibility of your business, with instant access to reports on enterprise-wide operations.

Case Study: Fingent helped a real estate giant reduce manual work, improve TAT, and increase profitability by integrating multiple role-based mobile apps into their SAP ERP system. Download now!

SAP Business ByDesign Mobile Strategy Updates for 2022

The new SAP Business ByDesign mobile strategy 2022 aims to help customers access more preferred features on their smartphones without any complexity. Currently, SAP Business ByDesign supports five mobile apps – SAP Business ByDesign Mobile, SAP Manager Approvals, SAP Time Recording, SAP Project to Go, and SAP Project Cockpit. SAP will now focus on improving the SAP Business ByDesign Mobile App that integrates all these features onto a single platform. Following are the changes to note:

• Starting from August 2022, customers will be able to access all the ByD features using a single app, that is, SAP Business ByDesign Mobile App. No app swapping will be required anymore.
• From 1st May 2022, users will not be able to download and install SAP Project to Go and SAP Project Cockpit apps from the app stores.
• From 1st August 2022, users will not be able to download and install SAP Manager Approvals and SAP Time Recording from the app stores.
• By removing existing installations from your devices and switching to the Business ByDesign mobile app, you can access all these features using a single app. It accelerates your time-to-market and helps you benefit from streamlined business processes.

Experience Seamless Business Transformation with Our SAP Services

As more businesses switch to remote operations, there is an increasing dependency on mobile devices to ensure business continuity. It’s important for small and mid-sized businesses to focus on building a future-driven business model powered by cloud and connected technology. SAP Business ByDesign enables you to accomplish these goals easily. In SAP’s own words, “Business ByDesign connects every function across your company with proven best practices and in-depth analytics.”
Read more: How SAP ERP Software Implementation Benefits Your Business

Fingent top software development company has the expertise to customize and implement SAP Business ByDesign for all sizes of businesses, across verticals such as professional services, manufacturing, real estate, retail, logistics, and so on. Our cloud ERP implementation services help transform your organization into an intelligent enterprise. We are a Silver Partner of SAP with 18+ years of experience in implementing SAP services and solutions. Our goal is to help you adopt the right technology that solves your business challenges without any complications. Contact us to understand how your business can benefit from SAP Business ByDesign.

With proven expertise across 25 industries and an end-to-end suite of intelligent enterprise solutions, SAP has triumphantly cemented its position in the enterprise application software market. According to the World Economic Forum, SAP customers constitute 87% of total global commerce. Right from the R/2 commercial mainframe applications designed in the 1970s to the latest SAP S/4 HANA and its enormous suite of intelligent software products, SAP solutions have enhanced the competency of organizations with deep business insights and improved enterprise collaboration. SAP solutions include both technical and functional modules. While SAP ABAP, SAP Basis, SAP Security, SAP Solution Manager, CRM, etc. are technical modules, components such as Material Management (MM), Production Planning (PP), Financial Accounting and Controlling (FICO), etc. are examples of functional modules. All these modules of SAP closely integrate with each other to provide the best functionalities and solutions for businesses.
Read more: 8 ways SAP ERP software implementation helps your business 

This post analyzes ABAP, one of the core technical modules of SAP, to understand how the platform enables businesses to run better.

What is SAP ABAP?

Advanced Business Application Programming or SAP ABAP is the principal programming language supported on the SAP NetWeaver ABAP server and the applications that run on it. Typical examples of ABAP-based applications include SAP ERP (previously known as R/3) and the present SAP S/4HANA.
SAP ABAP is the oldest and the most popular of SAP’s four key application platforms, together with SAP NetWeaver Java, SAP HANA, and SAP Cloud Platform. ABAP is used by SAP to deploy its applications on the NetWeaver ABAP platform. It’s different from the universal programming languages like Java because all ABAP programs and compiled code reside only in the SAP system. ABAP is renowned as the proprietary fourth-generation programming language (4GL) of SAP, developed to process massive volumes of data in SAP business applications.
ABAP enables businesses to customize their workflows related to material management, production management, supply chain management, financial accounting, and all other modules of SAP. This helps businesses reduce the time-consuming manual processes involved in data processing, particularly when they have more data to process.
Though some of the popular SAP applications such as SuccessFactors, SAP Ariba, SAP Business One etc. run on other programming languages, the role of ABAP is crucial, especially when these applications integrate with ABAP-based applications such as SAP ERP and SAP S/4HANA. As of 2021, there are five million registered ABAP developers worldwide, which indicates the robustness and credibility of the ABAP foundation for a wide range of SAP business applications.
Read more: SAP for Business-Making SAP support available at your hand

How does SAP ABAP accelerate business transformation?

ABAP was developed by SAP to enhance and expand the functionality of SAP systems. Here’s how ABAP is adding value to SAP users across the globe.
1. Aids mission-critical business processes
Since the 1980s, ABAP technology has been serving as the rock-solid foundation of SAP’s application portfolio. Several mission-critical business functions rely on ABAP for its scalability, robustness, and extensibility. ABAP is the underlying technology that steers SAP’s celebrated platforms and flagship suites such as SAP S/4HANA, SAP ERP (R3), and the next-generation data warehouse – SAP BW4/HANA. Thus, ABAP helps monitor and improve strategic business measures.
2. Enables customization of SAP business applications
Due to its availability as an independent platform, ABAP is primarily used to develop cutting-edge, bespoke SAP business applications. Custom ABAP development allows users to configure and tailor SAP modules based on their business requirements. Since the initial days of ABAP, SAP customers and partners have established a tradition of creating custom codes and add-ons that function effectively on the ABAP platform.
3. A holistic development platform
ABAP combines the innovative capabilities of SAP HANA (SAP’s in-memory database), the power and consistency of the ABAP server, and the digital UX potential of SAP Fiori (SAP’s UI technology). All these features make it a holistic development and runtime platform. Continuous developments by SAP make ABAP capable of addressing new business scenarios.
4. Reduces the development cost
ABAP offers a centralized, shared, and integrated development environment that allows multiple developers to work on the same development objects simultaneously. Hence, it’s easy to track the changes to development objects and push them to QA or production environments, without losing version control. The integrated, self-compiling nature of ABAP helps reduce the development cost.
5. Offers excellent development environment and tools
The key highlight of ABAP Platform 2021 (the underlying technology of SAP S/4HANA), is the ABAP Development Tools (ADT) that support the entire development lifecycle in Eclipse IDE. It improves the efficiency of developers and offers enhanced SAP HANA capabilities. ABAP Platform 2021 facilitates the seamless transformation of your existing SAP business suite to SAP S/4HANA (cloud or on-premise) and SAP BTP (Business Technology Platform).
6. Improved focus on user experience
ABAP RESTful Application Programming Model promotes the development of SAP HANA-optimized Web APIs, SAP UI5, and Fiori applications. ABAP development tools support browser-based, device-responsive, and role-based development of application functions. It enables users to switch to different devices and collaborate effortlessly.
Read more: Top 3 UI offerings from SAP: Fiori, Screen Personas, and Lumira

7. Extensible to the cloud
ABAP Platform 2021 has been improvised to create customized extensions in the cloud. The growing number of SAP customers who’re adopting SAP S/4HANA Cloud will benefit from ABAP’s tailored extensibility. The users will get access to more innovative features developed by SAP and can keep their software up-to-date with regular patches and upgrades.
8. Change and transport management
ABAP offers comprehensive change and transport management for the development projects organized in the ABAP Workbench and also helps in customizing those projects. It also facilitates to transport the changes between the SAP systems in your environment.

How can Fingent help your businesses unlock the potential of SAP ABAP? 

ABAP is primarily a developer-friendly language. However, associating with the right SAP partner can help even the non-technical SAP users to master the technology. We’ve helped several businesses in identifying, customizing, implementing, and maintaining ABAP within their SAP systems. As a Silver Partner of SAP, we help customers cut their development efforts and costs, reduce technical complexities, and bridge skill gaps. Our SAP application development practice enables businesses and aces IT professionals to collaborate effectively and deliver cutting-edge enterprise applications across any platform, device, and tech stack in the shortest span.

The pandemic put business challenges on an amplifier and made it look insurmountable. Here we all are though, crossing that barrier and making things work. Some challenges persist though. One area is the acceleration of the remote working scenario. Besides, sectors like manufacturing and Life Science have the challenge of accomplishing more tasks efficiently in less time.

This intimidating scenario drives the need for an intelligent enterprise. That’s exactly what SAP Business Technology Platform (BTP) empowers enterprises in all sectors. But what is SAP BTP?

This article describes what SAP BTP is. It also explains all that you must know about SAP BTP and how you can leverage it to grow your business and remain resilient.

Read more: It’s time to transform your business for the new digital age: Rise with SAP!

What is SAP BTP?

SAP BTP is an open platform as a service. It can integrate SAP and third-party applications and extend application capabilities. It can empower an organization to exploit data to solve its business problems.

SAP BTP can provide in-memory capabilities, core platform services, and unique microservices. It can help develop the exact application needed quickly, easily, and economically. All this without investing in local infrastructure.

It is a business-oriented technology platform for your SAP and third-party applications. It can unlock value and drive growth for its clients. SAP BTP unifies a plethora of technology stacks.

SAP BTP covers a wide range of functionalities. These range from document management to globalization, to blockchain and ML. Organizations can leverage SAP BTP services to automate business processes, manage decision logic. It also allows them to gain end-to-end process visibility.

But what is SAP BTP made of?

SAP BTP consists of four building blocks:

• Database and data management: This includes SAP HANA and SAP HANA cloud.
• Analytics: Including SAP Data Warehouse Cloud, SAC, and Business Objects BI.
• Application Development and Integration: Includes SAP Integration and Extension suites and SAP Process Orchestration.
• Intelligent Technologies: Including AI, ML, and IoT.

How Is SAP BTP Revolutionizing Business Operations? 

SAP BTP can be used to build and extend SAP applications quickly. Here are the top three scenarios:

1. Integration

Most organizations prefer best-of-breed applications. With the journey to the cloud, the system landscapes are increasingly complex and business processes remain disconnected.

Today, most businesses have processes spanning from on-premise to cloud, and across multiple vendors. Plus, to complicate matters, some organizations continue to support their legacy applications along with various platforms and open-source technologies.  SAP BTP allows seamless integration by simplifying development and quickening deployment.

Read more: Improve business planning with SAP Analytics Cloud!

These complex environments can only be managed with proper integration. While the value of these landscapes is decreasing, the complexity and cost of such integration are increasing.

SAP BTP can help organizations to refine and enhance their business operations along the entire value chain. It can do this by connecting applications, data, and experiences across SAP and beyond.

SAP Integration Suite uses a set of connectors and APIs to securely connect and integrate business processes. This can accelerate an organization’s time to value in a secure, sustainable, repeatable, and cloud-centric capability.

2. Data management

Today, we live in the age of data. But most organizations fail to get value from it. They gather the data and store it in disparate mediums. This only leads to a disrupted flow of information.

Your business success depends on how you analyze your data and what you do with the results. SAP BTP allows you to transform your data into value quickly and efficiently.

Data management is all about creating value from the data. If a business wants to exceed in today’s global economy, it must act on real-time business data. However, both the structured and unstructured data volumes create challenges for organizations.

Instead of accelerating digital transformation, data has become the anchor that is holding businesses in the old way of working. This has led to data swamps putting them in a worse position than they were ten years ago.

SAP BTP solutions are designed to provide flexible and user-first data management. It allows organizations to discover, connect, orchestrate data with internal and external data flows. This enables business leaders to access near real-time data and drive insight and value back into their businesses.

3. Extensibility

Businesses must continue to innovate rapidly if they want to stay relevant. During the pandemic, most businesses had to innovate their business models to adapt to changed circumstances such as local lockdowns and shortage of distribution chains.

As new businesses emerged with their reduced innovation cycles, they posed a serious threat to established businesses. Organizations must thus be empowered to build, extend, and enhance their application landscape so they can stay relevant while rapidly realizing new opportunities.

SAP Extension Suite allows organizations to access prebuilt extensions through an integrated digital marketplace. SAP BTP empowers businesses to speed up integration, find real business value from data, and extend SAP landscapes to innovate.

For example, let’s discuss the SAP Workflow Service. The SAP Workflow Service is part of the SAP BTP portfolio. This service allows businesses to extend their business processes. These extensions allow organizations to adopt business process changes quickly and in a non-disruptive way.

It provides unique monitoring applications that help monitor deployed workflows and their instances. Additionally, it also allows REST APIs to read, create, modify, or cancel workflow and task instances.

Integrating SAP Workflow Management with SAP Conversational AI allows organizations to leverage digital support for their workflows, process cycle times, recommendations. Plus, it allows them to reconcile both structured and unstructured workflows.

This can increase the level of automation enabling businesses to better manage overall complexity, reduce manual effort, and associated errors.

Read more:Top 7 benefits of adopting SAP Intelligent Robotic Process Automation

How can Fingent help leverage SAP BTP being SAP Silver Partner?

As SAP Silver partner, Fingent can apply design thinking and agile methods to develop industry apps on SAP BTP. We can help deliver innovative solutions with speed and agility.

When we combine our expertise at Fingent with SAP BTP, we can leverage disruptive technologies such as AI and predictive analytics and innovate across industries and business functions. This can help our clients extend capabilities, integrate intelligent technologies, generate actionable insights, and amplify results.

We can help our clients gain the flexibility of public or private cloud infrastructure to create an intelligent enterprise experience. Along with SAP BTP, Fingent can help your intelligent enterprise take a big step forward. Give us a call and let’s discuss how best we can help you.