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Do you know how shoe shopping is going digital, driving an expected profit increase of 30%? Do you know how real-time customer insight and personalized interactions can lead to 5% revenue growth or how digital innovations can be used to predict earthquake damage and provide better disaster response?  Digital transformation is leading to rapid changes across industries. New technologies such as IoT, Big Data, and Machine Learning dramatically change the way our customers are doing business.  Here are 5 stories about companies using digital technologies to transform their businesses – and in some cases their industry!

1. Shoe Shopping Using Virtual Reality – and expecting 30% increase in profits.

Aimiqi is a shoe company and has a bold goal – to connect people and processes by using digital R&D machine learning to create a whole new consumer experience and respond to changing market requirements and fashion trends.  Earlier, only 5% of design proposals would reach the production stage, and there was significant overstock and waste.  Using digital innovations including product lifecycle management and virtual reality, the company is now able to collect and analyze customer requirements to design products that truly fit market needs.  Customers can design personalized pairs, select the desired color and the right fit.  Customers can virtually test the product and place the order.  Aimiqi is seeing 25% reduction in design time, 40% reduction in overstock and expects to see a 30% increase in profits.

2. Predicting earthquake damage, reducing human casualty levels

Hakusan Corporation is a leading manufacturing of seismometers based in Japan.  The company wanted to transform smartphones into seismometers to measure building movement during earthquakes.  With more than 6 million people in Asia-Pacific affected by earthquakes last year, the prediction of building damage will help with disaster preparedness and mitigation strategies in earthquake-prone countries in the region.  Using digital innovations, the company is now collecting and analyzing seismic data instantaneously to accurately pinpoint and predict damage to buildings, and share it with first responders and authorities – to provide help where it is needed most.

3. Using 3D printing to get closer to the customer

Jabil manufacturers parts for transportation equipment, industrial machines and medical diagnostic machines.  The company works with 250 of the best known global brands in manufacturing and wanted to improve their competitiveness by being nimble and personal in relating to customers.  The company is using digital innovations – including 3D printing – to create personalize products, closer to where their customers are.  To date, Jabil has qualified and produced 100+ end-use (or functional) 3D printed parts.  This new capability is leading to more innovative product design, new business models and happier customers.

4. Connecting People, Plants and Machines for Sustainable Farming

Stara manufactures agricultural machines and the IoT has revolutionized its business.   When Rogerio Pacheco, the owner of a mid-sized farm in the south of Brazil, decided  to invest in a tractor with infrared sensors from a company called Stara, neighboring  farmers thought he had lost his mind. But in just two years, he was able to recover  his investment.  Today Rogerio is Brazil’s second largest producer of soybeans. “High productivity  and sustainable farming practices are only possible with technology,” he says. “I was  able to increase the yield per acre without having to cut down trees, maintaining the  balance between cropland and forest on my farm.”  The IoT revolutionized their business model.  Previously, they  viewed the machine and the farmer as separate entities. Now they can connect  machines to people and plants.” Stara’s tractors already had sensors, and implemented a digital innovation system to make use of the data collected.   Now Stara can offer data analytic capabilities to farmers so they can gain better  insights and make better decisions.

5. Operating a mine based in financial margins, not tonnage

Roy Hill’s business and operating model is different than most mining companies.  The entire business is designed to deliver 55 million tonnes per year with a margin focus rather than a reliance on tonnage volume as is typical in mining.  The company thinks about mining operations differently to traditional approaches, and the technology strategy is then aligned to achieve the business outcome.  For example, Roy Hill has a ‘Virtual Warehouse” concept is built on the idea that if you adopt a systems thinking mindset starting with an integrated operating model, and then apply disruptive digital technology that has been chosen for its ability to deliver sustainably against the margin focused business model, over lay that with advanced planning and scheduling and a flow approach to inventory that removes the obstacles to the flow from the supplier to the maintainer of the equipment, then this is transformative.

The old ways of doing business are clearly over for companies that want to continue to grow and thrive.  Digital technologies surrounded by innovative thinking is driving new business models and processes and ignite a successful path into the future.  We see organizations across and even between industries working together to design approaches that better balances demand with production, focus on profitability, yield a more efficient operations – and interact in new and exciting ways with customers.

Are you changing your industry using SAP applications and platform technologies? The SAP Innovation Awards 2018 is your opportunity to share your story and be recognized as a digital transformation leader.  New this year is a Digital Disrupter category, for a company that can demonstrate how they use SAP innovative technologies to drive radical change in their industry, generate significant business value and improve their competitive positioning. Finalists for this award will highlight how they disrupted the way business is conducted in their industry. For example; establishing new business models, redefining a critical business process, or enabling strategies that break through existing boundaries.

Why tell your story?

By sharing your story, you can

* Get recognition as a leading digital transformation innovator
* Gain bragging rights for you and your team with a trophy for your office and a badge to share socially
* Earn a FREE pass to SAPPHIRE NOW if selected as one of 23 award winners
* Have your innovation showcased at #SAPPHIRENOW
* Share your expertise in exclusive promotional opportunities at SAPPHIRENOW and beyond
* Select your favorite charity from the list of eligible charities to receive a $2 000 donation in your name

Important dates:

* Now – February 2, 2018: Register your interest.
* Now – March 2, 2018: Entry Submission period.
* March 2-24, 2018: Award team will review all qualified entries and select finalists.
* March 24 – April 11, 2018: Finalists will be reviewed by a panel of judges.
* April 19, 2018: Winners will be announced
* June 5-7 2018: SAPPHIRE NOW in Orlando, Florida

How to get started:

Entering the SAP Innovation Awards is simple: Go to the SAP Innovation Awards website and start at the About page to learn more about award categories and judging criteria. Then, follow the simple steps on the “how to enter” page.

Get started today! Entry submission has already begun. http://bit.ly/2BSGjCs #SAP #SAPCloud #AI

During the course of his life, Leonardo Da Vinci mastered innovation. He is credited with designing the greatest inventions of our time: the modern helicopter, scuba gear, and parachutes among others.

Today, Leonardo is the inspiration behind SAP’s Digital Innovation System – a suite of offerings that includes technologies such as machine learning, blockchain, the Internet of Things (IoT), conversational applications, and more.

SAP hosted its second Leonardo Live event on November 2, 2017 in Chicago bringing together an array of customers and partners. A satellite event was held at the same time at SAP’s Palo Alto campus where customers and partners converged to watch demos and learn more about SAP Leonardo, and digital transformation was on everyone’s agenda.

John McGee, Managing Director of SAP’s West Region, discussed how the concept of Digital Transformation entails utilizing innovative technologies to transform business processes to improve efficiency and productivity. These advancements are enabled by the plethora of data sets that have been collected over the past decades via new technologies like IoT and machine learning.

John believes that digital transformation can improve businesses by allowing them to better engage with customers and even improve supply chains.

Another focus area of the event was design and its significance in the context of innovation. Sam Yen, SAP’s Chief Design Officer and Head of Design Thinking (pictured below), defined innovation as the result of a successful relationship between creativity and design.

Sam discussed how for there to be true innovation in an organization, there must be an environment that fosters and nurtures a creative spirit.

Symbiosis between Machine Learning and Drones Open Up a $3 Billion Market

The Leonardo Live event presented SAP the opportunity to converge with its customers and partners to discuss the exciting road ahead.

The Machine Learning team from the SAP Innovation Center Network (ICN) showcased its innovative offerings, that will ultimately become an integrated part of business solutions, and help to automate the time-consuming, laborious processes that plague many traditional business models.

SAP Leonardo Machine Learning uses image detection and similarity scoring services to find the best possible match by analyzing the characteristics of the images.

(The ICN Machine Learning team. From left to right: Margaret Laffan, Director – Business Development for AI/Machine Learning at SAP, Richa Namballa, Data Scientist and Joanna Li, Full Stack developer)

The use of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) – better known as drones –  have become more prevalent in a number of sectors. For example, camera-mounted drones are currently used to analyze volcanoes, monitor storms, study climate change, survey hurricane damage and even find shipwrecks.

The Dragon Fly team from the ICN is now also looking into a whole new way to utilize drones.

In the rapidly changing supply chain domain, it is essential for businesses to have real-time visibility over their inventory in order to make data-driven decisions.

Shelf inventory and warehouse management is a $3 billion market and businesses rely on inventory visibility to make decisions. It is, however, a time consuming and labor-intensive process that results in massive delays.

Let’s face it, nothing drives a customer into the open arms of a competitor more quickly than an empty shelf or a sold-out product.

The proposal: Equip self-flying drones with machine learning-based computer vision technology.

“Incorporating the vision intelligence into drones will bring the intelligence of location, vision and enterprise knowledge into one solution”, according to Xiwei Zhou, Director of Engineering, SAP Innovation Center Silicon Valley.

The drone flies in-doors, on an autonomous path to scan the shelf, take pictures and instantly stream it to the backend powered by SAP Leonardo Machine Learning foundation to recognize the item, record the placement location, sync with the inventory.

Employees in retail stores will be free from spending their time physically scanning products and replenishing empty shelves. With the press of a button, the drone will scan the store and inform you of which spots need checking. Additionally, this allows clerks to focus on face-to-face interaction with their customers and offer the best possible service.

Similarly, in a warehouse, the drone will keep a record of all the items. No longer will employees have to manually search through every nook and cranny or climb ladders, with a simple search, the drone will lead them right to the product.

Suffice it to say, computer vision enabled drones as a tool to collaborate and analyze data for real and valuable insight could have a widespread impact on the industry.

The Most Promising Blockchain Use Cases

Blockchain is leading the charge among a host of emerging technologies. With the potential to change the way businesses operate, blockchain promises to increase transparency and security, streamline business processes by reducing the importance of intermediaries, and to solve information imbalance.

Under the SAP Leonardo umbrella, blockchain could be the solution to improving processes within the Drugs Supply Chain, Disaster Operations, Secure Bidding and Procurement, and Distributed Manufacturing (3D Printing) as well as Trusted Digital Credentials and Real-Time Payments.

Andreas Fichter represented the blockchain team at Leonardo Live in Palo Alto and talked about the opportunities within the space, and its potential use cases.

“The SAP Cloud Platform Blockchain service is at the forefront of digital transformation.  With this service, we will enable customers to leverage the benefits of distributed ledger technology and provide integration with SAP core products such as S/4 HANA,” he explained.

During the event, partners and customers were given a hands-on look into SAPs “forward-thinking perspective on the technology and hear about its plans for a broader adoption and application of Blockchain.”

As SAPs suite of Leonardo technologies takes flight, the possibilities seem endless. After all, it was Leonardo Da Vinci who once said, “All our knowledge has its origins in perceptions.”

(With inputs from Robert Viens.) http://bit.ly/2kxivQh #SAP #SAPCloud #AI