CHALLENGES • Develop new, knowledge-based services • Offer outcome-based services • Tap into global talent networks • Collaborate with ecosystem partners on innovative products and services

KEY FEATURES • Broad set of technology services for application development, data management, and user experience

• Ready-made platform, business services, and integrated content packages

• Integrated portals and an Apple iOS software development kit

• Secure support for multiple cloud infrastructures

ADVANTAGES • Up to 75% faster development and provisioning of innovative software solutions

• Instant availability of the latest technologies as cloud services

• Fast, intuitive, secure solution • Integration of new services and applications into existing systems and processes without disruption

• No hardware infrastructure requirements • Quick start with a free trial version

Professional services companies face more pressure than ever before, as the industry is being disrupted along multiple dimensions. The challenge is how to digitally transform with agility and scale – and with minimum risk. With SAP® Cloud Platform, professional services companies can rapidly turn new opportunities into reality. This powerful platform-as-a-service offering delivers proven tools to help bring innovative business ideas to the point of market readiness. There’s no need to waste time and resources building complex system landscapes. With SAP Cloud Platform, you can get started right away. It’s a move that will keep you one step ahead of the competition.

Creating Value for Professional Services in a Digital World with SAP® Cloud Platform

SAP Solution Overview

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In the past, firms have relied on a consistent and simple business model that provided highly skilled professionals to clients, charging them out on a time and materials basis. Firms can no longer depend on engagements of this type when, in many instances, aspects of the service they provide can now be performed more efficiently, digitally, perhaps even virtually, and at a lower cost.

As a result, firms are facing threats of new rivals that bring with them advanced and disruptive business models and pressure of commoditization of their core services. Despite the perception of some firms that their skills and reputation protect them, no industry is immune from digital disruption and the possibility of being challenged by an innovative startup. It is just as applicable to professional services as it is to any other industry, such as media and communications, or those impacted by models from the sharing economy, such as Lawyers On Demand and Zipcar, a car-sharing startup.

Rethinking Business Models

In the new digital ecosystem, the challenge for professional services firms is now how to offer expertise as a service, incorporating new business models to create the greatest possible value for their customers. At the same time, they need to differentiate themselves enough to build and preserve the long-lasting client relationships on which they rely. To achieve this and thrive, successful firms will have to master three significant business model challenges: enable outcome-based engagements, provide affordable lifecycle services (knowledge as a service), and tap into infinite capacity by sourcing work through talentnetworks.

Figure 1 shows the typical strategic imperatives for professional services companies.

Figure 1: Three Significant Ways Firms Will Need to Innovate on Their Business Models

Business models

Outcome-based engagementsas opposed to monetizing the effort involved

Knowledge as a servicedelivery models requiring firms to provide affordable lifecycle services

Talent networkstapping into infinite capacity to source work trough open networks

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To help our customers cope with the challenges of digital disruption and enable them to evolve and innovate business models, SAP has made it its mission to deliver the Intelligent Enterprise. Intelligent enterprises use the latest technology advances to elevate employees to focus on higher-value tasks by eliminating repetitive tasks through automation and intelligent technologies.

As shown in Figure 2, SAP aims to help our customers become intelligent enterprises by delivering three building blocks:

• An intelligent suite of applications to automate day-to-day business processes and better interact with customers, suppliers, and employees

• Intelligent technologies that help use data to detect patterns, predict outcomes, and suggest actions

• A digital platform to facilitate the collection, connection, and orchestration of data as well as the integration and extension of processes within the Intelligent Enterprise

© 2018 SAP SE or an SAP affiliate company. All rights reserved.

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Figure 2: SAP’s Strategy to Deliver the Intelligent Enterprise

Note: This representation is a general visualization of the intelligent enterprise and may include functions not covered in every industry.

© 2018 SAP SE or an SAP affiliate company. All rights reserved.

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SAP Cloud Platform – our platform-as-a-service (PaaS) offering – is a major part of this digital platform, delivering the required business agility to innovate quickly. It is also the basis for the intelligent technologies delivered by SAP Leonardo technical capabilities. SAP Cloud Platform enables you to integrate technology innovations into existing business processes without disruption, and it streamlines adoption and use by building intuitive applications.

THE TECHNOLOGY TO REALIZE POTENTIALIn the Intelligent Enterprise, technology is now interwoven with business strategies to the point of inseparability. Firms that cannot rapidly adjust to technological advances quickly fall behind.

SAP Cloud Platform helps firms to adapt quickly and with minimal risk. To achieve this, companies have implemented a “bimodal IT” approach, where the latest innovation is well integrated with their core systems but decoupled from a software lifecycle perspective.

In this model of execution, SAP Cloud Platform is the platform for “mode 2” development, providing best-in-class integration capabilities into any running business solution, while offering cutting-edge technologies to innovate quickly.

Rapid innovation is the only way to keep the competition at bay and secure the future of your company.

WITH SAP® CLOUD PLATFORM, EVERYTHING IS POSSIBLE. YOU CAN:• Develop brand-new business

applications in the cloud – as stand-alone solutions or as extensions of existing systems

• Integrate different business divisions or companies on one uniform platform

• Bundle cloud or on-premise applications and improve collab-oration across divisional and company boundaries

• Create top-line revenue growth by innovating and delivering value-added, data-driven services delivered through SAP Cloud Platform

• Improve the bottom line by auto-mating manual, repetitive tasks using machine learning

• Use one of more than 1,500 innovative solutions available on SAP Cloud Platform from more than 950 SAP partners

• Analyze data along the entire value chain in real time – and identify new business potential

50%

75%

Decrease in the cost of application development*

Shorter development time line on average, from 2 months to 2 weeks*

*SAP Business Transformation Study: “Pacific Drilling: Transformingthe Work Experience with SAP Cloud Platform.”

© 2018 SAP SE or an SAP affiliate company. All rights reserved.

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DIGITALIZING THE BUSINESS – FROM INTERNAL OPERATIONS TO NEW REVENUE OPPORTUNITIESWhen digitalizing your business, there are three major ways in which SAP Cloud Platform can be of value for professional services firms.

First, you can use SAP Cloud Platform to enhance and optimize internal operations. This includes automating tasks or adding intelligent capabilities using machine learning technologies, improving client and employee experience with chatbots, or providing real-time insights and predictions based on cross-application data, to name just a few options.

Second, if you are in the business of implementing business applications for your clients and devel-oping custom add-ons and extensions, SAP Cloud Platform can be your platform to help clients innovate by efficiently developing, deploying, and running these enhancements, helping ensure profitable projects and happy clients. Being the foundation for intelligent SAP Leonardo technologies

such as machine learning, the IoT, blockchain, and analytics, SAP Cloud Platform enables profes-sional services companies to build intelligent applications quickly and integrate them into your client’s landscape, whether they run on premise or in the cloud.

Last but not least, SAP Cloud Platform provides the opportunity for completely new business models. By codifying knowledge into intelligent applications and providing them to clients in the form of knowledge as a service, professional services firms are able to create new revenue streams. The growth enabled by these revenue streams is nonlinear as it does not depend on human resources to be delivered.

“We developed a new ticketing tool, a new planning tool, and a new HR tool. Using SAP Cloud Platform, we were able to integrate them – all within one year.”Tim Leys, Solution Leader, delaware International

Figure 3: Examples of SAP Cloud Platform Scenarios for Professional Services

Challenge: Your client is looking for a way to engage more closely with its customers and suppliers.

Solution: You create dedicated portal sites offering collaborative capabilities and self-service in the cloud – securely accessible from anywhere and securely integrated with your client’s back-end systems and business processes.

Help clients innovate Create new revenue streams Optimize internal operations

Challenge: You have similar develop-ment needs in implementation projects for multiple customers.

Solution: You create a standard cloud application on SAP Cloud Platform that you can sell to multiple customers. You can market and sell your solution to your clients through SAP App Center.

Challenge: You need better fore-casting on service-level agreement (SLA) risks.

Solution: You create an SLA risk analysis tool, combining data from service delivery and contract management systems and applying machine learning and predictive capabilities to detect and prevent potential SLA violations and related penalties.

© 2017 SAP SE or an SAP affiliate company. All rights reserved.

SAP CLOUD PLATFORM IN PRACTICEMany professional services firms have already turned their strategic initiatives into reality using SAP Cloud Platform. The following real-world examples illustrate how innovators in your industry are capitalizing on the opportunities being created by digitalization to grow business profitably.

Efficient Project Planning and ManagementUsing SAP Cloud Platform, delaware International now has one cloud-portal business site for employees that integrates and enables real-time analytics on top of all internal applica-tions, including SAP S/4HANA® and SAP SuccessFactors® solutions. This means that delaware can support, plan, and monitor projects more effectively and efficiently.

Keeping Risks Under ControlLooking for a way to help its clients get a common under-standing of risks across different functions while lowering implementation time, EY built the EY Risk Navigator, a cloud-based risk management service. It combines industry-leading key risk indicator analytics with industry-tested access and process control monitoring for SAP software systems.

Building an App That Puts Truckers Behind the WheelA major agribusiness company, Cargill Inc. needed to enable real-time communication with truckers through an app the truckers would actually enjoy using. SAP partner Mindset used SAP Cloud Platform as the natural bridge from the back-end system, the SAP Transportation Management application, into a quickly developed app that saves time and improves safety.

Disrupting the Personal Hygiene MarketUsing the IoT, SAP Cloud Platform, and other technologies, Hagleitner Hygiene International created its senseMANAGEMENT solution. The solution allows for real-time insight into the battery and filling status of soap, disinfectant, towel, and paper dispensers, and also for predicting usage and maintenance. All of this will help Hagleitner’s customers with increased operational efficiency and health regulation compliance while it helps Hagleitner transform its business model from products to services.

NEXT STEPSSAP® Cloud Platform lets you stay focused on strategic initiatives and realize them quickly. Start planning your path into the future – today:

• Do you want to learn more about the possibilities of SAP Cloud Platform? Take advantage of our free trial account and visit us online.

• Do you already have concrete plans and requirements for your path to digitalization? Work with our experts to evaluate how SAP Cloud Platform can best help you on your journey.

• Are you interested in learning about real-world opportunities that digitalization can bring to your company? Collaborate with our experts to plan how to quickly turn ideas into real business results.

MORE INFORMATIONDo you want to find out how you can use

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© 2018 SAP SE or an SAP affiliate company. All rights reserved.

© 2018 SAP SE or an SAP affi liate company. All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or for any purpose without the express permission of SAP SE or an SAP affi liate company.

The information contained herein may be changed without prior notice. Some software products marketed by SAP SE and its distributors contain proprietary software components of other software vendors. National product specifi cations may vary.

These materials are provided by SAP SE or an SAP affi liate company for informational purposes only, without representation or warranty of any kind, and SAP or its affi liated companies shall not be liable for errors or omissions with respect to the materials. The only warranties for SAP or SAP affi liate company products and services are those that are set forth in the express warranty statements accompanying such products and services, if any. Nothing herein should be construed as constituting an additional warranty.

In particular, SAP SE or its affi liated companies have no obligation to pursue any course of business outlined in this document or any related presentation, or to develop or release any functionality mentioned therein. This document, or any related presentation, and SAP SE’s or its affi liated companies’ strategy and possible future developments, products, and/or platforms, directions, and functionality are all subject to change and may be changed by SAP SE or its affi liated companies at any time for any reason without notice. The information in this document is not a commitment, promise, or legal obligation to deliver any material, code, or functionality. All forward-looking statements are subject to various risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to diff er materially from expectations. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements, and they should not be relied upon in making purchasing decisions.

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