Featured White Papers

Value Proposition for IBM DB2 9.7 Cost/Benefit Case for SAP Enterprise Migrations

by IBM (May 1, 2012)

ITG management brief: How to save up to 37% on SAP database costs within the next 3 years This report looks at the achievable cost savings and functional benefits when migrating SAP® database infrastructures to IBM DB2.

Within the next few years, many existing Oracle users will evaluate the option of migrating to Oracle Database 11g (11.2). An alternative is to migrate to IBM DB2. By using IBM DB2 9.7, customers can reduce 3-year database infrastructure costs by an average of 37% for new SAP deployments; and by an average of 27% for SAP database migrations.

IBM DB2 offers other benefits. The new IBM DB2 pureScale architecture enables users to realize mainframe-class scalability and availability in a non-disruptive manner. Close integration with and optimization for SAP Business Suite 7 boosts performance, and minimizes deployment and operational risks. Read more...

Automatic user analysis reduces costs, improves security, and identifies your power users

by IBIS America (April 27, 2012)

Proactively evaluating your SAP® user base with an automatic analysis can save you time, reduce costs, improve security, and identify your power users.

The RBE Plus User & Role Analysis provides a one-of-a-kind comprehensive and complete evaluation of named users and their activity in the system, then delivers detailed results to save you time and money by identifying potential savings on licensing and maintenance costs.

The results of the analysis can be used to support remodeling the authorization concept or improving security and compliance. You can also use the reports to identify training issues, knowledge management risks, and identify power users for upcoming SAP initiatives.

In this white paper, learn how you can:

• Accelerate project preparation with an automated analysis of your users and roles
• Improve security by streamlining authorizations and profiles with a least-privilege approach using the results of the analysis
• Reduce maintenance costs and identify potential savings on licensing with fact-based usage statistics
• Proactively address organizational change management issues by automatically identifying power users, knowledge risk areas and critical usage statistics

Post-Migration Information Governance: Data Quality Best Practices and COE Staffing Options

by BackOffice Associates (April 27, 2012)

After a data migration, the quality of both migrated and newly entered data will suffer unless your organization has a sound data governance strategy in place going forward. If the post-migration environment degrades, it will negatively affect business and IT operations with:

• Rework and rejection of requests due to incomplete/incorrect data
• Time-consuming manual entry
• Lack of data ownership and accountability for correcting errors

Calculating the True Cost of RDBMS Ownership and How Sybase ASE Stacks Up: A Guide for SAP Business Suite Users

by SAP (April 24, 2012)

No one wants to overspend on data management, but that’s just what you may be doing if you lack an understanding of all the costs – apparent and hidden – associated with running your database systems.

In a recent study, IDC found that SAP Sybase Adaptive Server Enterprise (ASE) total costs were 28% less than the total costs of the other relational databases studied.

Read IDC’s paper, “Calculating the True Cost of RDBMS Ownership and How Sybase ASE Stacks Up: A Guide for SAP Business Suite Users” to learn the common mistakes in assessing database costs, and see how:

• SAP Sybase ASE installations are more efficient than other systems
• SAP Sybase ASE requires less storage capacity
• SAP Sybase ASE runs on less server processor power
• SAP Sybase ASE requires fewer IT staff resources overall

Improving Business Processes with Enterprise-Wide Interactive E-Forms

by SAP (April 20, 2012)

An e-Forms strategy incorporating SAP Interactive Forms by Adobe and Arch Forms Lifecycle Manager can automate forms data entry, improve user experiences, and achieve regulatory and corporate requirements. This integrated solution streamlines business processes and automates the complete lifecycle of forms from design to compliance. User interaction with enterprise-wide forms is simplified, allowing users to interact whenever and wherever they want, from any device they choose.

For organizations wanting to reduce reliance on paper forms; simplify how employees, customers and partners interact with their enterprise; decrease errors due to manual input; improve their ability to meet regulatory and corporate requirements; and rapidly develop and deploy forms for interactive applications and mobile devices, this is a must read.

What will you learn in this whitepaper?

You will learn how SAP Interactive Forms enables organizations to:

• Simplify the deployment and management of interactive forms through an enterprise-level runtime environment.
• Enable user interaction anytime, anywhere, and on any device through PDF, HTML, and Adobe Flex environments.
• Build forms-driven business processes that are connected to back-end applications and workflows; streamlined with online and offline access to static and dynamic forms.
• Integrate data from enterprise-wide solutions with standard functions that automatically update SAP applications.
• Create a defensible audit trail through mandated processes that meet regulatory and corporate requirements.

Implementing location analytics into SAP® platform solutions

by Galigeo (April 16, 2012)

The massive amount of data that organizations collect these days is staggering. Transforming this immense volume of data into valuable information is a major challenge.

To gain insight into how well their business processes are performing, enterprises can interrogate their data by asking “who”, “what”, “when”, “how”, “where,” and ultimately — “why?” But traditional business intelligence (BI) typically falls short in analyzing data’s “where” factor.

The implementation of location analytics enhances the capability to transform data, by querying and viewing data through the lens of geographic analysis via an interactive map. By producing a spatial pattern of key business information, location analytics allow your organization to interrogate data with location as the driver of business process analysis.

Read this white paper and learn the concepts, components, and requirements of a location analytics implementation, including:

• BI and GIS data
• GIS platform and Geospatial Web Server
• Interactive Map Viewer Application that connects to the existing BI and GIS systems, respectively

How to Get Ahead of the Competition: Consolidate and Modernize Your B2B and File Transfer Environments

by SEEBURGER, Inc. (April 10, 2012)

Consolidating and modernizing the IT that runs your B2B and file transfer environments – the backbone of your supply chain – can deliver big rewards: cost savings, improved efficiency, and revenue growth.

By applying best practices, many best-run businesses have achieved a competitive edge from consolidating and modernizing their EDI, B2B, and file transfer environments – including their SAP® processes.

Read this white paper and learn how consolidating EDI, B2B, and file transfer environments into one modern platform can cut costs, and learn the 7 key steps to seeing a modernization and consolidation project through to successful completion, enabling you to:

• Reduce operating costs by up to 80 percent
• Increase revenue by increasing your competitive advantage
• Offer more products and services – quicker and at less cost than the competition
• Improve service delivery levels and customer satisfaction

Contextual e-Commerce: The Key to an optimized e-commerce channel

by CoreMedia (March 30, 2012)

In order to achieve a profitable, sustainable competitive advantage, companies are moving beyond engaging with customers on a transaction-by-transaction basis to focus on the quality of their customer interactions.

CRM professionals focused on their customers, revenue growth, and leveraging the strength of their SAP® CRM investment face challenges of:

• Empowered customers that have higher expectations and more choices available to them
• No longer being able to compete on product features alone
• Online becoming increasingly complex and competitive

• How a unified, contextual approach to online engagement can positively impact the e-commerce experience at critical points in the buying cycle
• How organizations can integrate context into their broader Customer Experience Management (CXM) approach
• How you can effectively create a "self-reinforcing" feedback loop that delivers support at every stage of what Forrester Research describes as the "journey toward user context"

Virtualizing SAP: Customer Testimonials

by EMC (March 30, 2012)

Thinking about virtualizing your SAP® landscape? Hear directly from peers who are already realizing cost benefits and improved manageability with a virtualized SAP environment. View this video to see how customers are using technology from VMware and EMC to seamlessly support their SAP applications for increased performance. Read more...

Learn How SAP® is Mobilizing its Global Workforce

by SAP (March 19, 2012)

Mobile technology is impacting every business, transforming experiences for employees, partners, and customers. With over 40,000 mobile devices in use, SAP is realizing significant business benefits from mobilizing employees worldwide. Its early and aggressive adoption of new technologies and sound mobile strategy are critical to this success. This paper highlights how SAP has enabled a mobile workforce while increasing collaboration among its employees and with its global customers. Read more...

Making Information Governance a Reality for Your Organization: Maximize the Value of Enterprise Information

by SAP (March 9, 2012)

Enterprise information underpins all business operations and decisions, and without good information, opportunities to seize competitive advantage are missed. But managing information is no simple task, especially as it explodes in volume and variety. Best-run organizations view information as a strategic asset and use information governance initiatives to deliver consistent, accurate information across the enterprise.

Read this white paper to discover how information governance initiatives provide a disciplined framework for you to establish the right people, processes, policies, and metrics to oversee enterprise information and add value to your business. You’ll learn:

• The importance of information governance for your organization
• How to build your information governance business case
• Steps to implement your initiatives
• How to support and automate governance of your information

Case study: How SAP itself is realizing significant business benefits from mobilizing employees worldwide

by SAP (March 8, 2012)

Mobile technology is impacting every business, transforming experiences for employees, partners, and customers. With over 40,000 mobile devices in use, including 18,000 iPads, SAP is realizing significant business benefits from mobilizing its employees worldwide. Its early and aggressive adoption of new technologies and sound mobile strategy are critical to this success.

This video demonstrates how SAP has mobilized its workforce, driving growth and revenue by increasing collaboration internally and with its global customers. Gain insight into SAP’s internal mobile priorities with CIO Oliver Bussmann, and explore how sales, IT, operations, and other employees are benefiting from mobile.

What will you learn in this video?

Watch and learn how SAP is transforming business for its 55,000 employees by:

• Adopting a BYOD policy for employees
• Ensuring a secure environment by managing devices with Afaria
• Improving executive insight into daily business operations
• Increasing productivity with innovative mobile apps

Leverage the power of real-time Social Media

by SAP (March 5, 2012)

The customer voice has been democratized. On Facebook, Twitter, and countless other forums, buyers are posting their opinions about products and services. To better serve them, build brands, and protect market positions, organizations today need to know, and understand what’s being said.

The SAP® Social Media Analytics application by NetBase can help – by extracting customer perceptions from terabytes of social media commentary in real time. Now you can better understand what your customers like (and dislike) about your brands, categories, products, and services – while staying tuned to issues and trends.

Read this solution brief to understand how, by implementing SAP Social Media Analytics, you can track new product launches, strengthen marketing campaigns, gather competitive intelligence, manage public relations, and accelerate events and sales cycles.

What will you learn in this whitepaper?

You will learn how SAP Social Media Analytics enables organizations to:

• Monitor brand health more frequently with fewer resources
• Understand more than just positive and negative sentiment with visibility into customer behavior and emotion
• Gauge the social media impact of marketing campaigns and events
• Track awareness of external risks – such as social media awareness of health issues associated with an ingredient you use in a product
• Understand what is being said about competitors
• Measure brand equity

Winning with SAP - Integrated Workflow Solutions

by Winshuttle, Inc. (March 4, 2012)

Agility is the key to survival in today’s marketplace. With swift technological advances and vast fluctuations in economic outlook, companies must continually adapt to new environments and find innovative ways to stay ahead of the competition.

A business developer model provides IT departments with the desired flexibility to meet growing business demands while maintaining core IT integrity. In this paradigm, non-IT business developers are tasked with creating customized software solutions to advance business goals, thereby generating increased productivity and greater efficiency necessary for sustained success.

To maximize the value of this model, companies must empower business developers with user-friendly tools that allow for creation of effective workflow solutions without compromising IT security. While companies utilizing complex data-processing systems like SAP® may face challenges in upgrading system usability, investing in effective solutions— such as those offered by Winshuttle—can enable business developers to build secure, SAP-integrated workflow applications that greatly increase corporate agility, productivity and value.

This report discusses the requirements for successful implementation of the business developer model and the advantages of creating comprehensive, SAP-based workflow solutions using Winshuttle tools. Read more...

Advanced Automation and Optimization of System Copy Procedures for SAP® Systems

by Libelle (February 29, 2012)

Save time and resources by automating the homogeneous system copy procedure when refreshing non-production systems with production data in your SAP® environment.

Read this white paper, “Advanced Automation and Optimization of System Copy Procedures for SAP® Systems,” to learn how automation saves resources by reducing manual tasks. You’ll also learn how to deliver faster and more consistent QA, TEST, and DEV systems to your development teams.

In this resource, you’ll walk through a software solution from Libelle that automates system copy pre-processing, copy, and post-processing steps. Libelle SystemCopy monitors the execution of pre-configured ‘Tasks’ and will refresh single- or dual-stack installations automatically. Optimized System Copy Tasks will perform the complete procedure for you, from pre-processing database exports, to post-processing optimized BDLS execution, to various ABAP, Shell-Script, and SQL in between.

Libelle SystemCopy is deployed right into existing landscapes and ties into existing snapshot tools for the database-copy portion. Alternatively, we provide our own copy tool for DB2, Oracle, MaxDB, or MS SQL databases and Unix/Windows flat files.

Download this white paper to learn how advanced automation and optimization of system copy procedures can:

• Be deployed in existing landscapes and can tie into available snapshot tools or backup/restore procedures.
• Furnish ready-to-go QA or test systems with fresh production data
• Save time and resources by reducing manual tasks
• Deliver faster and more consistent QA, TEST, and DEV systems to your development teams

Extending SAP® for Mobile Workers: Smart Phones, Tablets, and Windows Handhelds

by Synactive (February 21, 2012)

As smart phones, tablets and handhelds gain in popularity, these devices enable their users unprecedented mobility and flexibility when it comes to accessing critical systems from anywhere at anytime. How can an organization ensure it keeps pace and adapts to changes? Today, users need rugged PCs in the field, but at the head office, they want to use Desktop PC's or kiosks. How can redundant development environments be minimized? How can organizations streamline their mobile development lifecycle to adapt to technology changes without having to re-write their mobile application? GET THE ANSWERS. READ THE WHITE PAPER.

A well-implemented mobile solution, such as GuiXT:

• Increases employee productivity
• Speeds response time and boosts customer satisfaction
• Allows users to enter and retrieve information while they’re ‘on the move’
• Requires no programming

Automating Fax and Email Orders into SAP® Systems

by Esker, Inc. (February 16, 2012)

In your vision of 100% electronic sales order processing, what will you do about orders that come in via fax or email and end up getting pushed around the office on paper? This new white paper gives an overview of key considerations for implementing a solution to automate fax and email orders (plus EDI, web and other order sources) into your SAP system. Highlighting the advantages of an all-in-one platform approach versus maintaining a complex mix of different applications for imaging, workflow and archiving, this paper outlines how you can eliminate the time, cost and errors of manual order processing while consolidating resources to simplify your SAP landscape. Also included is a summary of how BASF integrated fax and email order automation with its existing IDoc architecture to make every customer an “e-customer.”

Learn about:

• Critical success factors for automation of fax and email order processing
• Must-have capabilities of a fax/email-to-order solution
• Different levels of automation, from simply quitting paper to full data extraction
• How the technology works with SAP applications
• Handling increasing order volume without adding headcount

Industry Insight - A DevOps Approach to Application Release Automation

by BMC (February 15, 2012)

Close collaboration and coordination of application development and operations teams are vital to successfully delivering new application functionality ontime and within budget. Traditionally, however, there has been a wide procedural and cultural gap between these two groups. Application developers are often accused of disparaging operational processes and throwing applications “over the fence” to operations, which then has to move them through the release process maze with little understanding of the applications’ details. The development and operations groups face a common challenge: change. The pace of business and IT change is accelerating. The need for speed is squeezing development timeframes and shrinking maintenance windows — in many cases to zero. To combat this challenge, the two groups need to come together and take a new approach to application release automation — one that bridges the gap between the groups and makes IT more agile in meeting the demands of the enterprise.

Improve profits with real-time pricing and profitability insights

by SAP (February 13, 2012)

SAP® Price and Margin Management by Vendavo helps you understand your pricing power, negotiate more competitively with customers’ procurement departments, reduce discounting, and stop profit leakage from rogue deals. Full integration with SAP CRM and SAP ERP applications lets you capture the profit opportunity from improved pricing - without extra user training or changes to your current pricing processes. The application provides real-time pricing and profitability insights via prepackaged dashboards and analytics. High-performance in-memory technology provides quick access to pricing and profitability data.

View this video to understand how by implementing SAP Price and Margin Management – or the individual subsets for pricing dashboard and analytics, deal pricing analysis, and deal pricing optimization – companies like yours have gained pricing insight and profit improvements.

What will you learn in this video?

You will learn how SAP Price and Margin Management, enables organizations to:

• Improve margins by setting optimal prices and providing guidance for every deal
• Increase revenue and realize significant improvements in profitability across the enterprise
• Collaborate effectively with channel partners on pricing to reduce margin leakage
• Take advantage of market opportunities with timely and effective changes to pricing
• Gain enterprise-wide control of your entire pricing process
• Get the most out of available information by taking a systematic approach to price setting

Re-platforming SAP® on VMware and EMC Storage Produces Superior Results for Callaway Golf Company

by EMC (February 13, 2012)

Learn how Callaway Golf, a major manufacturer of sporting goods, moved to a virtualized production landscape for SAP®, and achieved a 289 percent ROI and more than $1.8 million in capital and operating expense savings in the process.

Working closely with EMC, Callaway chose to deploy VMware for its virtualization project, which enabled the company to deploy fewer servers and still support multiple environments (development, test, and production). Callaway now enjoys easy provisioning of virtual servers; tremendous flexibility along with high availability; snapshots creation; and system image copies (Callaway can copy its SAP landscape within 90 minutes).

Read this white paper to learn how, through smarter virtualized processes and EMC data storage and management solutions, you, like Callaway, can:

• Reduce the number of physical servers and storage, to reduce labor requirements
• Simplify management of your entire SAP environment
• Add tremendous flexibility along with high availability
• Significantly reduce backup windows

The Ultimate Buying Guide: A Guide for Evaluating Source-to-Settle Solutions

by SciQuest (February 8, 2012)

A source-to-settle solution offers organizations an opportunity to transform a manual and labor-intensive procurement process into a best-in-class center of excellence that can deliver significant cost savings and efficiencies. It can also help organizations better meet the financial and operational challenges of a rapidly changing global economy.

This guide highlights the most important factors to consider when evaluating source-to-settle solutions, including:

• Seamless solution suite that addresses all of your challenges across the entire source-to-settle process.
• A supplier network that is free for your suppliers to participate in which increases savings to you.
• Proven implementation process that minimizes risk and maximizes results.
• Consumer-like user experience that maximizes user adoption, contract compliance and savings.

Consolidating AP Workflow Outside the SAP® System

by Esker, Inc. (February 8, 2012)

If your company is looking to gain the efficiencies and savings of automated accounts payable processing, you’ll want to read this white paper. Find out how you can:

• Quickly deploy one easy, web-based AP workflow solution for all users and systems
• Ensure a continuous invoice audit trail
• Simplify shared services setup

Collaborate with Customers and differentiate your business

by SAP (February 6, 2012)

When service organizations and customers collaborate, and negotiate mutually convenient appointment time frames for service, everyone wins. Customers are happy – and this leads to higher customer retention and referrals. The best outcomes occur when both parties find a way to share control during the appointment scheduling process. Each party can consider the other’s limitations and avoid negotiation steps that would force the other to an unreasonable commitment.

Using affordable, high-quality collaboration solutions that have been proven in high-volume service settings at organizations worldwide, all parties can communicate throughout the service lifecycle. Latest collaboration technologies can empower service organizations and customers to communicate and collaborate throughout the entire service lifecycle.

Read this whitepaper to understand how the SAP® Workforce Scheduling and Optimization application by ClickSoftware allows service organizations to collaborate and communicate with their customers at every step of the service lifecycle. At the same time, it enables intelligent decision making across the organization – eliminating guesswork and inefficiency in these processes. Read more...

Integrating Microsoft Excel within Your ERP Environment for Live Reporting and Analysis

by Excel4apps (February 6, 2012)

Organizations go to great lengths to implement enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems and for very good reasons. ERP systems support data centralization and eliminate islands of information caused by software applications that do not communicate. Despite these compelling reasons and the overall benefits of ERP systems in general, many financial users find them rigid and difficult to adapt to certain workflows and business processes.

Download this FREE white paper today to learn how Excel makes for an efficient and effective reporting tool for financial users, particularly when integrated with SAP® directly as opposed to a data warehouse. Read more...

Enterprise Content Management Meets Enterprise Business Processes:

by Open Text Corporation (February 5, 2012)

In this white paper, IDC explores the need for integration between enterprise content management (ECM) and enterprise applications (EA).

Enterprise applications — such as ERP, CRM, SRM, and HCM — only manage a small part of an organization’s business content. These applications don’t capture the growing volume of unstructured content that makes up the majority of enterprise information. Without a strategy for tying all business-relevant content directly to a process, organizations are losing revenue and incurring excessive cost and risk.

IDC investigates how organizations can extend enterprise applications with ECM and provide a holistic approach to information management. Read this white paper to learn about:

• The need for vendor-supplied integration of ECM with enterprise applications
• 3 examples of how ECM adds value to SAP® business processes
• Vignettes of customer journeys to integrated ECM/EA

Reverse-engineer your Business Blueprint

by IBIS America (January 31, 2012)

SAP customers are leveraging SAP® Solution Manager functionality to support application lifecycle management, including change tracking, incident management, business process monitoring and implementation tools.

The first step to leveraging this functionality is to build the Business Blueprint structure to document the business scenarios, processes, master data, and organizational structure supporting the business. The Solution Documentation Assistant can be used to reverse-engineer the structure based on usage statistics. Reverse Business Process Documentation (RBPD) content is available to support an automatic, comprehensive analysis of the functional usage of SAP ERP systems.

IBIS offers Supplementary Services to support a more complete blueprint using RBE PlusTM. Using Supplementary Services from IBIS, a customer can accelerate, extend, and improve their Solution Documentation. Learn how to:

• Accelerate customizing the Business Blueprint with an automated inventory of custom developments
• Identify process variants and exception processes for more comprehensive documentation
• Supplement the structure with organizational usage statistics to compare org units and differentiate processes
• Understand the user base, identify power users, knowledge risk areas and critical usage statistics

The Optimal Outsourcing Outcome: Cobra Electronics Focuses On What the Business Does Best

by itelligence (January 24, 2012)

More and more organizations are realizing the benefits of leveraging a combination of SAP® application and technical support services — but finding a managed services partner that can deliver the full spectrum of services and other critical assets can be difficult. Increasingly, and very wisely, IT decision-makers are putting the pressure on managed services partners to demonstrate not only the ability to help meet ROI factors, such as reduced internal training efforts and flexible service cost structures, but also the ability to provide global support and proven business continuity experience and satisfied references.

By expanding its partnership with itelligence to include both application managed services and hosting, Cobra Electronics Corporation has seen a magnified global business impact. Cobra’s operations in Chicago, Hong Kong, and Dublin now rely on itelligence to provide proactive, optimal system performance 24x7 while knowing their team can provide on-call emergency and disaster recovery services if and when necessary.

Download this article and learn how Cobra not only reduced internal training efforts by partnering with itelligence, but also:

• Magnified its global impact
• Implemented a remote, on-demand model for consulting resources
• Saved money by paying for support services only when they are needed

Develop an SAP ERP HCM rollout strategy with a global project assessment

by Symphony Management Consulting (January 12, 2012)

Develop an SAP ERP HCM rollout strategy with a global project assessment
This white paper discusses how understanding your organization’s overall strategic objectives can help you implement a successful global SAP® ERP HCM project, all while standardizing global business processes and accommodating localization concerns. You’ll learn how Symphony Management Consulting’s global project assessment takes legal and regulatory requirements into account, and identifies variances in standard global practices that often contradict the overall goals and objectives of the organization.

Download this white paper and learn:

• Why a global project assessment is key before beginning an implementation
• The 5 steps to a successful global assessment
• How developing a comprehensive strategy can help identify 'quick wins' and bridge the gap between HR and IT

Paper-Free AP with SAP® Solutions: Automated Processing of Vendor Invoices

by Esker, Inc. (December 9, 2011)

Paper creates bottlenecks in so many businesses processes, and Accounts Payable is no exception. Think about the process in your company for a minute. How much time and money is wasted waiting for an invoice to arrive, then walking the document around to be coded, approved, and finally paid?

Read the white paper "Paper-Free AP with SAP® Solutions: Automated Processing of Vendor Invoices” and discover how a touchless invoice processing solution can help to:

• Cut AP costs in half by taking paper out of the invoice entry, approval and filing process
• Prevent late and duplicate payments to preserve cash and maintain good credit
• Maintain AP headcount despite growth — work with less and do more by increasing productivity

Medtronic Shares Its Experiences as an Early SAP HANA Adopter

by Cisco (November 30, 2011)

Medical technology leader Medtronic opted to run its SAP HANA^TM in-memory computing appliance on Cisco's Unified Computing System (UCS) because, out of the four certified vendors the company considered during its early adoption project, UCS was the best strategic fit with Medtronic’s existing infrastructure.

The UCS platform carried with it a host of network integration benefits. Download this article and learn how Medtronic achieved not only a cost savings over the alternatives, but also:

• Quicker problem resolution, as Medtronic IT could confirm basic link connectivity before operating system/device drivers were loaded
• A good fit between the Cisco Integrated Management Controller (CIMC) configuration options for redundant connectivity and Medtronic's data center networking standards

Real-time business: Playing to win in the new global marketplace

by SAP (November 22, 2011)

It's true - now it's possible to do in seconds what used to take weeks1. And not only can you operate faster, but you can also perform dramatically better with powerful insights never readily available in the past. That's real-time business.

According to new Oxford Economics research, companies that have embraced real-time business practices are now reaping measurable rewards - and anticipating even greater gains in the future.

Download "Real-Time Business: Playing to Win in the New Global Marketplace" from Oxford Economics.

Learn:

• How companies are working to achieve average revenue gains of 21% and cost reductions of 19%
• Which industries are ahead of - and behind - the adoption curve
• How nearly all early adopters plan to continue investing and why so many others are following
• What obstacles are standing in the way of real-time operations and what it takes to overcome them

Capitalize On Your Content

by SAP (November 18, 2011)

The growth of digital content has led to fundamental changes in business operations. Application silos and hierarchies once defined information flow and communications. But no longer. As processes and infrastructures evolve, the imperative for long-term ECM strategy is clear.

Solutions for ECM can help organizations like yours realize the potential of digital information by enabling content relevance and ease of consumption for people in roles throughout the enterprise. With ECM solutions, you can:

• Encourage a culture of collaboration
• Foster process agility
• Avoid duplicated efforts and content
• Control the risks and costs of content saturation

• Integrate Enterprise Applications and Enterprise Content Management systems
• Implement a single system view across the enterprise
• Find content in context faster
• Seamless access across all applications

Automating Fax and Email Orders into SAP® Systems

by Esker, Inc. (November 14, 2011)

In your vision of 100% electronic sales order processing, what will you do about orders that come in via fax or email and end up getting pushed around the office on paper? This new white paper gives an overview of key considerations for implementing a solution to automate fax and email orders (plus EDI, web and other order sources) into your SAP system. Highlighting the advantages of an all-in-one platform approach versus maintaining a complex mix of different applications for imaging, workflow and archiving, this paper outlines how you can eliminate the time, cost and errors of manual order processing while consolidating resources to simplify your SAP landscape. Also included is a summary of how BASF integrated fax and email order automation with its existing IDoc architecture to make every customer an "e-customer."

Learn about:

• Critical success factors for automation of fax and email order processing
• Must-have capabilities of a fax/email-to-order solution
• Different levels of automation, from simply quitting paper to full data extraction
• How the technology works with SAP applications
• Handling increasing order volume without adding headcount

SAP Invoice Management Advisor

by SAP (November 11, 2011)

Let's face it, invoice management can be time consuming, expensive and, well, not a whole lot of fun. Maybe SAP Invoice Management could help. Find out now with our interactive video.

SAP Invoice Management might be able to help you save time, money and a whole lot of stress. Maybe we're a fit and could really help you out. Then again, maybe we're not. Our virtual host can help you find out. She'll ask you a couple multiple choice questions about your current situation, give you some info about the SAP Invoice Management system and won’t put you to sleep in the process. It'll take all of five minutes.

So, turn up your speakers and let's see if SAP Invoice Management is right for you.

What will you learn in this video?

You will learn more about how SAP Invoice Management can:

• Have a dramatic impact on the bottom line
• Shrink average time of process from invoice receipt to payment
• Reduce labor costs and increase productivity / efficiency
• Enable tracking invoices through the entire process / across their company
• Make complying with Federal fraud prevention laws a breeze
• Be modified to fit business processes (easier than the other way around)

Simplifying the Complexities in Mobile SAP Integration

by Pyxis Mobile (November 11, 2011)

Learn how to overcome the challenges of integrating SAP in your enterprise mobility strategy. When you consider the processes that drive competitive advantage for your business – they're often processes that work across multiple back-end systems. Mobilizing those processes with different data APIs, authentication, and security can be incredibly complex to build, manage, and update.

• Learn how to build cross-device mobile apps that integrate data across SAP and other legacy systems with different authentication and security schemes.
• Read a mini-case study discussing why First Solar chose the Pyxis Mobile platform to build cross device mobile apps for their SAP shop.
• Learn how the Pyxis Mobile platform makes it easy to develop cross-device native mobile apps that can easily integrate all your data sources with the enterprise grade features that your business demands.

Governance from the Ground Up: Launching Your Information Governance Initiative

by SAP (November 8, 2011)

The list of initiatives that are data-enabled—indeed, data-intensive—vary from company to company, from industry to industry. The common denominator is an increasing awareness that these and other programs can’t succeed without clean, meaningful, and available information.

Initiatives like these are not only expensive; they’re on executives’ radar for the first time. This visibility is driving a new type of planning in which data is factored in at the outset.

Read this white paper to learn:

• How the data conversation is changing from “What do we need?” to “Where do we start?”
• The most common reasons for information governance failure
• The components of information governance that inform the right strategy and determine where and how to begin the information governance journey

Improve your organization's ECM Decision-Making Processes

by SAP (November 4, 2011)

A majority of organizations today have a strategy to provide their knowledge workers with a single, integrated view of all their information needs. The vision is of a universal content and records management environment, integrated with the business and its processes. In reality though, progress towards this vision is slow. Line-Of-Business, Compliance and IT owners are likely to approach decisions about management of content, document processes and records from different standpoints, and with different pressure points. As organizations move to standardize and streamline core business processes, they increasingly find the need to interconnect unstructured information with those highly structured operations.

Read this whitepaper to understand how different organizations tackle IT-decision making in general and ECM decisions in particular. The whitepaper also highlights the implications and recommendations for LOB, Records & Compliance, and IT managers, and how SAP® Extended Enterprise Content Management application by OpenText can help meet this challenge. Read more...

How Enbridge Gas Distribution compressed its system refresh from 4 weeks to 7 days

by Cisco (November 3, 2011)

Automate SAP System Copy and System Refresh

This white paper discusses how automation can coordinate all SAP® system refresh and copy activities so you can save time, reduce errors, and expedite audits. You’ll learn about Cisco SAP automation software, which ties process flow capabilities to best-practice SAP content and a powerful automation engine.

Download this white paper and learn:

• How to make SAP system refresh and system copy more efficient
• How you will benefit from automating SAP system refresh and system copy
• What it takes to automate SAP system refresh and system copy
• Why it makes sense to automate SAP system refresh and system copy

Top 5 Reasons Why Customers Are Virtualizing Their SAP Landscapes

by EMC (November 1, 2011)

SAP customers that are virtualizing their landscapes want to do so confidently and with improved daily operational efficiency. In this white paper, you will learn how to reduce infrastructure costs and maximize the efficiency of your SAP® application investments.

You'll uncover how to:

• Reduce infrastructure costs
• Maximize performance and efficiency
• Deploy SAP solutions in less time
• Reduce risk
• Scale and protect applications without impact

Content in Context

by SAP (October 28, 2011)

Organizations have made significant investments in enterprise applications (EAs) to automate and optimize their mission-critical business processes. The implementation of enterprise resource planning (ERP), customer relationship management (CRM), supplier relationship management (SRM), and human capital management (HCM) systems has given organizations the control they need over their business processes, and a far more accurate and up to the minute view of their operations.

The growing volume of unstructured information — or "content" — that plays an essential role in virtually all business processes, however, remains under the province of the enterprise content management (ECM) system.

SAP addresses the need to bring these two disparate worlds of information together through a single view or context, linking them together in a way that is natural, efficient and cost effective.

What will you learn in this Whitepaper?

Learn how SAP Extended Enterprise Content Management helps your organization:

• Integrate Enterprise Applications and Enterprise Content Management systems
• Implement a single system view across the enterprise
• Find content in context faster
• Seamless access across all applications

Gabriel India’s cost savings and improved performance in moving to a central ERP system, built on IBM POWER servers and DB2

by IBM (October 20, 2011)

To streamline operations and support growth, Gabriel India Ltd. wanted to move to a single central enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution that would support manufacturing processes as well as finance and distribution. So the company upgraded its existing SAP Business One solution to SAP ERP 6.0, and migrated from HP hardware and Microsoft SQL Server to a complete IBM solution: an IBM DB2 database running on two IBM Power 520 servers and supported by an IBM System Storage DS5020 disk system. For the first time, Gabriel would have a single platform for managing all major corporate processes — from procurement through to distribution.

The result? Production processes at all of Gabriel’s six manufacturing sites are now controlled by a single central system, boosting efficiencies and making better use of resources. The IBM Power servers and DB2 optimize SAP performance to deliver faster response times, as well as providing headroom for expansion in line with the company’s growth plans.

Read this white paper to learn:

• How to work with IBM to control production processes for multiple manufacturing sites within one central system, boosting efficiencies and making better use of resources
• How DB2 Deep Compression can reduce data storage requirements by up to 70% while also boosting database performance
• How you can build the proper infrastructure to support users who are working via mobile devices or at plants in faraway locations
• How a company implemented a new architecture that delivers response times of less than 400 ms for session opening, which is an improvement on the 1,000 ms response times in its previous environment

Monetizing Services in the New Hyper-connected World

by SAP (October 20, 2011)

This paper examines the challenges of monetizing new services in today’s highly competitive economy. In industries as diverse as high tech, financial services, and telecommunications, companies such as yours are rapidly changing their business models and launching new hyper-connected services – via the Internet and wireless networks. The paper concentrates first on identifying the cross industry drivers for changing business models – from product commoditization to more empowered customers – in this new service economy. Second, it explains the business process changes and systems challenges you need to prepare for when launching new service-based business models, such as radically different pricing strategies and larger volumes of transactions.

Read this white paper to learn about:

• Key drivers for change in the new service economy including technological developments, regulations, consumer demand and need for increased customer intimacy, product maturity, and what businesses can do to leverage this momentum
• Impacts and implications of service-based business models and preparing for the inherent challenges
• Steps for removing barriers to service monetization supporting consume-to-cash business processes
• Solutions for how to meet the challenge of launching new-service based business models and how SAP can assist you

React better to demand and supply changes with SAP® Supply Chain Response Management

by SAP (October 14, 2011)

In today's fast paced and competitive market situation many companies are achieving competitive advantage by increasing the responsiveness of their supply chain. This allows them to respond quickly to customer demand changes, to claim increased revenue by granting “upside” requests, and by maintaining customer loyalty by meeting commitments in the face of volatile supply. It also lets them more efficiently use existing material and capacities.

SAP Supply Chain Response Management allows companies to react to demand and supply changes by rapidly re-prioritizing and re-planning demand and supply in a matter of minutes. It also performs “what-if” analyses of demand upsides and supply disruptions. The system is able to propose the best allocation and additional supply based on user defined business rules. The planning speed and the rule based allocation of short materials reduce manual efforts and enables highly efficient business processes. This, results in improved customer service, improved revenues, and reduced inventories.

Download and view this flash demo to understand how companies are reacting better to demand and supply changes by implementing SAP Supply Chain Response Management by ICON-SCM. Read more...

Optimize Accounts Payable with SAP® Invoice Management and SAP Information Interchange

by SAP (October 10, 2011)

Is invoice processing draining your organization’s time and resources? For most companies, invoice processing is a manual effort. It often involves time-consuming historical research, communicating with vendors, processing documentation, requesting information from multiple parties, manual routing, and the labor-intensive process of providing updated reports on the status of unpaid invoices. SAP Invoice Management and SAP Information Interchange are SAP solution extensions that integrate with SAP ERP and help address these challenges by streamlining accounts payable (AP) operations. These applications reduce these inefficiencies and can result in better on-time payment performance; headcount cost reductions, improved vendor relations, and reduced duplicate invoice payments. The applications also optimize and simplify the process of creating, managing, monitoring, and routing purchase orders and invoices for AP personnel and vendors.

Download and view this Aberdeen video to understand how companies are improving their Accounts Payable processes by implementing the SAP Invoice Management by Open Text and SAP Information Interchange by Crossgate. Read more...

Prepare for the Quantum Leap In Real-Time Analytics

by SAP & IBM (October 7, 2011)

Just like the printing press, the combustion engine, the transistor, e-commerce, the smartphone, or other revolutionary inventions, simply describing attributes of the technology itself doesn’t even begin to describe the changes they have enabled.

By shifting analytic operations to computer memory instead of using traditional hard disks, in-memory analytics will make time-to-value accelerate in countless business decisions. It will change the pace of adoption within the enterprise. It will change total cost of ownership for IT. It will create an entirely new path to value that most companies have not experienced before.

Regardless of current capabilities, the smart company needs to get ahead of the in-memory conversation; dive deeply into understanding how it works and what it presents; and craft a purposeful strategy and road map for its in-memory future. Download the latest joint white paper from SAP and IBM Prepare for the Quantum Leap in Real-Time Analytics to learn how in-memory analytics is going to change your enterprise! Learn how to:

• Make smarter decisions faster with real-time analytics
• Create innovative applications to improve planning
• Enhance and accelerate business performance
• Reduce TCO with less hardware, maintenance, and testing

Collaborate with Customers and differentiate your business

by SAP (October 4, 2011)

When service organizations and customers collaborate, and negotiate mutually convenient appointment time frames for service, everyone wins. Customers are happy – and this leads to higher customer retention and referrals. The best outcomes occur when both parties find a way to share control during the appointment scheduling process. Each party can consider the other’s limitations and avoid negotiation steps that would force the other to an unreasonable commitment.

Using affordable, high-quality collaboration solutions that have been proven in high-volume service settings at organizations worldwide, all parties can communicate throughout the service lifecycle. Latest collaboration technologies can empower service organizations and customers to communicate and collaborate throughout the entire service lifecycle.

Read this whitepaper to understand how the SAP® Workforce Scheduling and Optimization application by ClickSoftware allows service organizations to collaborate and communicate with their customers at every step of the service lifecycle. At the same time, it enables intelligent decision making across the organization – eliminating guesswork and inefficiency in these processes. Read more...

Turning Data into Actionable Information and a Competitive Edge

by SAP (October 3, 2011)

Business intelligence competency centers (BICCs) bring BI stakeholders, processes, data, and technology together — improving collaboration between IT and business managers, optimizing data quality, and enabling the proper deployment of BI resources.

This white paper details the components of an effective BICC, which combines best practices in business intelligence, enterprise data management, technical architectural management, and change management. It can turn the volumes of data your organization collects into a competitive edge and help you meet your strategic business goals.

What’s more, a BICC can:

• Increase satisfaction and participation among users of BI solutions by eliminating the time they waste accessing information across multiple systems
• Empower users with easy self-service reporting
• Increase the availability and continuity of business processes
• Help ensure fast and efficient user support

How Hostess Brands eliminated manual org chart processes

by Ingentis (September 27, 2011)

The latest issue of insiderPROFILES includes an exclusive case study outlining how Hostess Brands, the maker of Wonder Bread and Twinkies, streamlined the maintenance of its corporate organizational charts and extended enterprise visibility into its org charts by using Ingentis org.manager.

Follow Hostess on its search for an ERP-friendly org charting tool and learn about the benefits the company is now realizing from org.manager including:

• SAP certification to ease integration with SAP ERP HCM
• Fully automated data transfer from SAP systems
• HR’s ability to update and manipulate org charts directly
• Worldwide access to updated org charts via the company intranet
• Acceptance of all HR infotypes and custom relationships
• Easy data integration from external non-SAP systems
• Extensive search and print capability
• Output of platform-independent HTML for use on any browser or mobile device

Automating Fax and Email Orders into SAP® Solutions to Complete Your E-Vision

by Esker, Inc. (September 26, 2011)

In your vision of 100% electronic sales order processing, what will you do about orders that come in via fax or email and end up getting pushed around the office on paper? This new white paper gives an overview of key considerations for implementing a solution to automate fax and email orders (plus EDI, web and other order sources) into your SAP system. Highlighting the advantages of an all-in-one platform approach versus maintaining a complex mix of different applications for imaging, workflow and archiving, this paper outlines how you can eliminate the time, cost and errors of manual order processing while consolidating resources to simplify your SAP landscape. Also included is a summary of how BASF integrated fax and email order automation with its existing IDoc architecture to make every customer an “e-customer.”

Learn about:

• Critical success factors for automation of fax and email order processing
• Must-have capabilities of a fax/email-to-order solution
• Different levels of automation, from simply quitting paper to full data extraction
• How the technology works with SAP applications
• Handling increasing order volume without adding headcount

Voice Enabling your SAP Warehouse: Building the Business Case for Voice Technology

by Vocollect (September 19, 2011)

Voice technology has great appeal for users of SAP ® who want to extend their logistics and fulfillment processes. It offers the promise of hands-free, eyes-free wireless access to the information needed to drive key warehouse processes and has become an important ingredient in the success of a company’s IT strategy.

Before Voice, no other technology had a greater impact on the evolution of warehouse management systems (WMSs) than the wireless local area network (LAN), and mobile or Radio Frequency (RF) terminal. While they are popular with many organizations, RF terminals and barcode scanning do have some drawbacks. They require operators to use their hands to scan and key data. They also require operators to read instructions on terminal displays. For many operations, these activities disrupt the normal flow of warehousing and limit the benefits provided by the technology.

Despite these drawbacks, LANs and RF have provided the opportunity for many distribution operations to substantially increase accuracy, productivity, visibility, and control of core warehousing functions. In many ways, the integration of RF communications and barcode scanning into WMS solutions in the 1990s put information and data collection into the hands of warehouse floor personnel.

Like traditional RF-based barcode scanning terminals, Voice solutions center on a small, wireless mobile computing device that warehouse associates typically wear on a belt. The difference is that Voice delivers application instructions verbally through a headset and captures worker responses through a microphone – with no stopping to look at a screen, key in a quantity, or scan a barcode. Read more...

Why Every CIO Should Consider Third Party Maintenance

by Rimini Street (September 13, 2011)

CIOs and IT face many challenges to deliver innovation, reduce costs of operations, and integrate systems that deliver business value.

A new research report from Constellation Research details how you can address these challenges with a proven and effective applications strategy - Third Party Maintenance. This report, ‘Why Every CIO Should Consider Third Party Maintenance’, offered to you compliments of Rimini Street, explains how to reduce the total costs of maintenance for your ERP applications. Included survey results show how and why IT leaders are turning to third party maintenance as a part of their overall application release strategy, both in the short and long term. Read more...

Advanced PPM: Optimizing the ROI of Innovation Projects and Portfolios

by SmartOrg (September 1, 2011)

Standard best practices and Project/Portfolio Management (PPM) tools are not enough to drive optimal value from product portfolios. This paper describes four primary, integrated processes that enable Advanced PPM:

• Select and Maximize Product Portfolio
• Resource and Enable Pipeline
• Execute and Manage Projects
• Determine and Monitor Product Value

Turbocharge Business Analytics with Sybase® and SAP® BusinessObjects™

by Sybase (August 31, 2011)

There is a growing divide in the world of Business Intelligence: IT departments want a standard platform for control and manageability, while users want ease of use and flexibility.

Learn how you can get the best of both worlds—powerful analytics without limits.

• Relieve the congestion created by traditional data management systems and data warehouses
• Integrate information more quickly for timelier analytics
• Reduce overdependence on IT for ad hoc analysis and interactive visualization
• Give all users fast, dependable analytics performance with dynamic workload optimization

100% Electronic AR Invoicing with SAP® Solutions: Realistic Steps to Quit Paper

by Esker, Inc. (August 29, 2011)

Is Real Electronic Invoicing Possible?

Do you think you're sending as many invoices electronically as you can? Think again.

Sure, you might be emailing invoices to some customers and automating others via EDI. But that's only part of the picture. There are always exceptions - different invoice formats work better for different customers. In fact, 95% of all invoices today are still delivered by postal mail.

So, is real electronic invoicing even possible? Absolutely.

Read the white paper, "100% Electronic AR Invoicing with SAP® Solutions," and see how you can fully automate your entire invoicing process - and still allow customers to receive invoices in whatever formats they want. Even mail.

Download the white paper today!

Read more...

The Integrated Information Management Infrastructure: The Business Value of the Best-of-Suite Approach

by SAP (August 19, 2011)

Trustworthy data: employees need it, customers demand it, and business performance depends on it. But how do you deliver it if you’re relying on an integration-intensive patchwork of disparate tools? Download “The Integrated Information Management Infrastructure: The Business Value of the Best-of-Suite Approach” to learn how a standardized approach to information management can:

• Deliver trusted, accurate information from a single platform
• Enable information governance with an information stewardship solution for both business and IT users
• Address the substantial costs required to maintain a complex information management infrastructure consisting of disparate and redundant tools
• Drive process standardization by delivering shared data services with one foundation for all SAP and non-SAP data
• Create an integrated IT environment that fosters agility and innovation

From Text to Business Insight: All About Enterprise Text Analytics

by SAP (August 19, 2011)

Now more than ever, customers are voicing their opinions - from social media sites, to survey responses, to content center notes. Text data processing automates the capture of this information from and about customers, prospects, products, companies, and competitors. Download “From Text to Business Insight: All About Enterprise Text Analytics” to learn how you can get to know your customers and business like never before, helping you drive operational and strategic decision making. This white paper:

• Defines text analytics and its growing potential for your enterprise
• Describes how text analytics should be used as a larger analytics solution
• Discusses what differentiates one enterprise solution from another
• Outlines things to look for in your solution, from performance, to scalability, to security

Sales & Operations Planning – Where is the “I” for Inventory

by SmartOps Corporation (August 16, 2011)

Traditional S&OP processes have struggled to live up to their hype, and companies who have implemented S&OP processes continue to struggle aligning all aspects of their supply chain. The question often asked is ’Where is the “I” for Inventory in this critical business process?’ For most organizations the dollars tied up in inventory are significantand the costs associated with holding inventory are large.

Download this paper to learn how one unique inventory optimization solution delivers the required inventory planning capabilities to deliver a best in class S&OP process.
Read more...

Case study: How HP uses SAP HANA to exploit data faster

by HP (August 11, 2011)

SAP HANA™ appliance software, built on the HP Converged Infrastructure platform, unleashes the power of real-time data for business decisions. Learn how HP, the world’s largest technology company, takes advantage of this in-memory computing technology in-house, processing massive quantities of real-time data in the server’s main memory to provide immediate results from analysis and transactions.

Watch this video to learn how your organization can take advantage of this in-memory technology, and see how HP benefited from:

• 300X faster speed of reporting
• Lower TCO
• 10X data reduction of IT footprint

Learn how Allergan used BPC to reduce its monthly close cycle time by 35%

by Column5 (July 19, 2011)

The latest issue of insiderPROFILES features the story of Allergan, a healthcare products maker that replaced its legacy consolidation and reporting system with SAP BusinessObjects Planning and Consolidation. This profile gives a behind-the-scenes look at the implementation, as well as the specific benefits Allergan is enjoying as a result—from a speedier close process to more self-sufficient users.

Allergan selected Column5 to help the business implement the SAP BusinessObjects Planning and Consolidation solution. Thanks to Column5, Allergan was able to:

• Reduce financial close cycle times by 35%
• Reduce data load times from 1–2 hours to under 15 minutes
• Improve analysis with more detailed and transparent data
• Decentralize its reporting process from 1 report writer to hundreds

SAP In-Memory Computing Technology: Changing the Way Business Intelligence Is Managed

by SAP (July 11, 2011)

Learn in the latest thought leadership paper from SAP how SAP In-memory computing is putting the "r" back in "real-time" computing by bringing together online transaction processing (OLTP) applications and online analytical processing (OLAP) applications at a lower total cost. See how combining the advances in hardware technology with SAP In-Memory Computing empowers the entire business - from shop floor to boardroom - by giving real-time business processes instantaneous access to data. Get an in-depth look at how this technology will impact your business and discover how the combination of these two technologies can eliminate today’s information lag for your business. Read more...

Is Your SAP System Secure During Emergency Access?

by Security Weaver (July 7, 2011)

Traditional methods of granting Emergency Access to SAP® are can be problematic & increases security risks along with Operating Costs. The manner in which emergency access to the SAP® system is granted can lead to subsequent compliance problems, especially if the authorization is performed without appropriate controls.

Some of your challenges associated with traditional methods:

• Cumbersome approval processes.
• Needs live administration & monitoring.
• Lack of automated reporting & tracking.
• Inaccurate or incomplete Documentation.

• Enforcement of good documentation practices & complete SAP® integration.
• Automatic role assignments.
• Executed transaction and changed document tracking.
• Lower operating costs!

Beyond SFTP: Five Ways Secure Managed File Transfer Can Improve Your Business

by SEEBURGER, Inc. (June 29, 2011)

Companies have invested in middleware such as SAP NetWeaver® XI/PI to connect their business processes. But often the payload behind those processes – the data – is inadequately or inefficiently protected.

Secure Managed File Transfer (MFT) closes the gap by securing the end-to-end management of data transfers – from provisioning through transmission, ensuring guaranteed delivery – across your business and between trading partners. It can turn a problem – risk – into an opportunity.

In this white paper, you’ll learn how secure MFT:

• Replaces or strengthens insecure, inefficient methods such as email or ftp servers
• Simplifies, strengthens and demonstrates compliance with customer, partner and regulatory mandates
• Consolidates and automates secure transfer of expanding file volumes, from larger files (which often exceed email-attachment limits) to large numbers of small files that must be scheduled for regular distribution among many end points
• Helps reduce operating costs, prevent business disruption, and improve business flexibility
• Can provide competitive leverage and even new business opportunity

The Value of Application Development Services- Blending Innovation with Standardization

by SAP (June 27, 2011)

Many organizations are struggling with the need to rapidly respond to changing business requirements while adapting their application portfolios to meet the business growth agenda. Developing and embedding automated and unique IT solutions into the business fabric can help departments scale, improve consistency and quality in customer delivery while offering more compelling end user experiences. This is an iView focused on the value of leveraging Application Development Services to accelerate the launch of innovate business solutions to market and alleviate the challenges of how organizations keep up with the rapid pace of business change - including custom solutions or pre-built and productized solutions.

• Application development services can transform highly specialized and manual operations into highly automated business models
• Web and mobile application development services help companies personalize and create compelling end user experiences, while enhancing transaction and navigation performance
• Pre-built and productized solutions provide pre-tested, proven software solutions to accelerate time to market and lower TCO in design, development, and implementation by leveraging off-the-shelf solutions

SAP's New Transportation Management Solution and What it Means for SAP's Customers

by GOPA IT Consultants Inc. (June 23, 2011)

This White Paper reviews SAP’s strategic direction with its applications in Transportation Management. The authors discuss how SAP has approached Transportation Management. As part of its ERP and Business Suite Applications Portfolio and its evolution to date, leading to the new TM solution. SAP’s latest version SAP TM 8.0 is now released as ‘generally available’ to all customers. SAP TM 8.0 is a focal point of discussion along with a possible course of action for customers. The White Paper also intends to shine light on where customers can expect the solution to provide the most ‘miles’ for their investment.

What you will Learn:

• Learn how SAP solutions in the transportation management space have evolved into the latest SAP TM 8.0 Solution
• Understand what role SAP TM plays in the SAP Business Suite of applications
• Discover what options customers and prospects have when evaluating SAP TM

Business Answers at Your Fingertips: The Real-Time Value of BI

by SAP (June 22, 2011)

Today's business decision maker is challenged by a multi-dimensional and continually evolving competitive environment. In one dimension, the acceleration of information flow has created an environment that handsomely rewards timely generation of business insight. In another dimension, the volume and complexity of that information is expanding at an alarming rate—40 percent per year according to prior Aberdeen Group research. This growth in volume is then compounded by an average of 15 unique data sources that feed into business intelligence (BI) and analytical systems. Today's top-performing organizations have developed a strategy to manage the growth in data volume and complexity while at the same time exploiting that data to create quicker business insight.

In this white paper, Aberdeen Group’s Mike Lock discusses how best-in-class companies are delivering broader access to information in a shorter time frame to facilitate substantial improvement in key business performance metrics. You will learn:

• The top business pressures driving the need for real-time analytical visibility
• Best practices for alignment of organizational resources
• How top performers manage growth in data volume and complexity
• A road map of recommended actions to generate faster business answers and drive higher performance as a result

The Real-World Benefits of SAP Safeguarding Services

by SAP (June 10, 2011)

Improving performance means keeping up with the latest infrastructure and hardware. But all too often, implementing, upgrading and then operating your systems can lead to costly interruptions. To help, SAP Safeguarding provide the expertise and tools you need to stabilize, optimize, and maintain your IT landscape—while minimizing the impact on your business.

Download our whitepaper, “The Real-World Benefits of SAP Safeguarding Services” to learn how your business can:

• Avoid costly and unnecessary downtime
• Reduce the time needed for system maintenance
• Eliminate performance bottlenecks and shorten response times
• Increase the productivity of end users
• Optimize the use of existing resources to minimize future hardware purchases
• Implement best practices and standards

Enabling Operational BI with SAP Data: Satisfying the need for speed using real-time data replication

by Attunity (May 19, 2011)

People want answers. Successful businesses understand this, which is why they support the information needs of their workers. Most businesses take one of two approaches to deliver BI capabilities with SAP data: Use SAP BW or build a custom enterprise data warehouse (EDW). Read this informative new white paper to learn how Attunity’s fast, cost-effective solution can complement these approaches.

Learn how to:

• Reduce the direct reporting load on SAP source systems
• Augment traditional reporting with real-time data to quickly meet end user needs
• Simplify the production of reports and analytical apps
• Exchange real-time data with other operational source systems
• Provide an alternative technique for updating parts of a warehouse
• Relieve burdens on DBAs, SAP experts and other data management professionals
• Lower TCO if used to replace traditional applications

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