Siloed giants or break­through collaborations?

Pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and com­pet­i­tive advan­tage are achieved through tech­no­log­i­cal inno­va­tions. Com­pa­nies’ oper­a­tional envi­ron­ments are con­stant­ly chang­ing to more diverse and net­worked direc­tion. Dif­fer­ent tech­nolo­gies’ ecosys­tems are often close to each oth­er, even over­lap­ping as it is not ratio­nal to keep the data in dif­fer­ent siloes. Inte­gra­tion needs grow con­stant­ly and for exam­ple the core in IoT is that sev­er­al devices and appli­ca­tions com­mu­ni­cate togeth­er. Dif­fer­ent tech­nol­o­gy ecosys­tems and the col­lab­o­ra­tion between their solu­tion providers is the key for the suc­cess of orga­ni­za­tions’ dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion. In prac­tice, this is at an ear­ly stage, but the direc­tion is right.

It is pos­i­tive that ICT is not any­more seen as a closed inter­nal envi­ron­ment but rather vast enti­ty that con­sists of dif­fer­ent inte­grat­ed ecosys­tems. This change is major for IT as it cre­ates promi­nent pos­si­bil­i­ty to work more tight­ly with busi­ness oper­a­tions on the most impor­tant strate­gi­cal pri­or­i­ties and begs to take a role as the lead­ing part­ner in busi­ness transformation.

My back­ground is with two large ecosys­tems, Microsoft and SAP. I see two oppo­site trends hap­pen­ing simul­ta­ne­ous­ly – tech­no­log­i­cal worlds are merg­ing but at the same time spe­cial­ists and part­ners work­ing in dif­fer­ent ecosys­tems are pub­lish­ing blogs and news that are not in line what clients want and need in real­i­ty. Empha­siz­ing only one’s own excel­lence blinds clients for achiev­ing the best solu­tion. I have read plen­ty of releas­es that have poignant com­ments on chal­leng­ing enter­prise resource plan­ning (ERP) projects down­grad­ing com­pet­ing tech­nolo­gies. The real­i­ty is that usu­al­ly the author does not have any expe­ri­ence in the tech­nol­o­gy in ques­tion or its capa­bil­i­ties nor even the referred cases.

That opin­ion­at­ed com­ment­ing is only based on hearsay, old ways of think­ing or out­dat­ed phras­es. The real­i­ty is some­thing else. Here in the North, how many of us knows for exam­ple about SAP Busi­ness ByDe­sign (ByD)? SAP ByD is a cloud-based solu­tion and with its stan­dard­ized process­es it cov­ers wide­ly dif­fer­ent parts of ERP from finance to project man­age­ment and from HR to sales and pro­duc­tion. It is a great choice for medi­um-sized com­pa­nies look­ing for inte­grat­ed end-to-end ERP solu­tion, next gen­er­a­tion mobile user expe­ri­ence as well as agile and rapid project exe­cu­tion. Being cloud-based enables busi­ness users to make adap­ta­tions them­selves and the solu­tion will update reg­u­lar­ly in every three months. Tech­nol­o­gy debt will not grow along the years. The fastest ByD imple­men­ta­tion is done in 28 days. Same goes for SAP new gen­er­a­tion S/4HANA solu­tion where the short­est con­ver­sions are made with­in 3 – 4 months.

Tech­nol­o­gy indus­try will cer­tain­ly be shaped by break­through col­lab­o­ra­tions that cre­ate new ways of work­ing more pro­duc­tive­ly, cost-effi­cient­ly and in mod­ern-way in what comes to tra­di­tion­al plat­forms, appli­ca­tions and tech­nolo­gies. Large tech­nol­o­gy providers can best cre­ate togeth­er the end-user expe­ri­ence that is based on con­stant­ly chang­ing needs and agile deliv­ery meth­ods. It is delight­ing to see how for exam­ple SAP and Microsoft con­tin­u­ous­ly deep­en their coop­er­a­tion. To men­tion one exam­ple, mak­ing it pos­si­ble to run SAP S/4HANA solu­tion on Microsoft Azure cloud. We, at ISLET, are also cur­rent­ly con­vert­ing our SAP ERP sys­tem to SAP S/4HANA on Microsoft Azure. We also pro­vide our clients inno­v­a­tive and cost-effi­cient paths to SAP S/4HANA.

Our clients do not care with what tech­nol­o­gy the devel­op­ment is made. What mat­ters to them is if the solu­tion is right fit for customer’s needs now and, in the future, and what is the life cycle of cho­sen tech­nol­o­gy. This kind of think­ing should also guide us, the tech­nol­o­gy com­pa­nies, who help cus­tomers to speed up their dig­i­tal­iza­tion and have dai­ly dis­cus­sions with var­i­ous orga­ni­za­tions on their needs and wish­es. Our oper­a­tions are strong­ly shaped by our val­ues which under­line the trans­paren­cy and courage to fresh­en mind­sets. The base is the respect and appre­ci­a­tion towards every­one. We val­ue our employ­ees and clients along with our part­ners and nowa­days the dif­fer­ence between part­ner and com­peti­tor is a thin line.

It is time to broad­en our hori­zons, coop­er­ate more and aban­don old ways of think­ing. Today being a pio­neer and pro­fes­sion­al is more about real­iz­ing the poten­tial of dif­fer­ent tech­no­log­i­cal ecosys­tems to our clients rather than empha­siz­ing the jux­ta­po­si­tion based on out­dat­ed assump­tions. Togeth­er, we can do better.

Author Piia Hoff­sten pre­vi­ous­ly held the role of ISLET’s oper­a­tive leader.

If you got inter­est­ed and want to dis­cuss fur­ther, please contact:

Jan­i­na Luoto
CEO, Isletter
janina.​luoto@​isletgroup.​fi
+358 40 574 1266

#tech­nol­o­gy #inno­va­tions #com­pet­i­tivead­van­tage #dig­i­tal­iza­tion #col­lab­o­ra­tion #ERP #SAP #S4HANA #Microsoft #Azure