For the average consumer, products and services like e-commerce, smartphones, omnipresent internet connections and integrated platforms have long become fix standards. Our world has changed profoundly and so have our expectations.
Firms and businesses on the other hand have also changed but not quite at the same pace – paperless transactions, one click purchasing and most digital agility are yet to be fully implemented in most companies.
More than 80% of spending still takes place offline, most travel booking is done outside of company solutions and companys often struggle to have the right workforce on time.
Many have shifted their IT strategy to pave the way but still struggle with implementation and complexity:
“In the past, organizations focused on a single-instance strategy (or instance reduction) that made the IT management task easier, but fit badly with business needs. The focus has now moved to partial suites, domain suites and multiple point solutions that support business agility, yet still need to be integrated.”
~Gartner Agenda Overview for ERP and Enterprise Suites, Finance and Procurement, 2015
SAP, the 44 year old global leader in business software, has long pondered upon a solution to this complexity and lack of integration. The company has finally come up with the concept of the so-called Business Network Group (BNG) and acquired three companies that kick-started the project from an idea to an actual (platform) product. Ariba, Concur & Fieldglass were acquired over the last four years for a total of about 14.5 billion USD and have since formed the basis of the Business Network Group:
Ariba aims to simplify business commerce for buyers and sellers. They connect them to the world’s largest business network and could be considered the Amazon of the business world. However the total volume of the Ariba Network is more than that of Amazon, EBay and Alibaba combined. And every minute one new company joins the network.
Fieldglass provides platform services in procurement and management of contingent labor, offering the largest network in the industry.
Concur offers business travel booking and travel expense management. The now SAP company has over 20 million users and processes over 50 billion USD a year. It has integrations with Uber, Starbucks and hundreds of services for most efficient and convenient travel management.
The three are already great stand-alone companies but together and with the network and technology of SAP they are a big start to a cloud and platform based network that could fundamentally change b2b-world.
Imagine an Air France’s plane onboard systems detect a problem with a component two hours before landing in London. Sensors send this information AirFrance’s control center which can then check their parts inventory. They discover that no technician in The area has necessary the skills and the part is missing too. Now the CC needs to only connects to the BNG, find and request a technician through Fieldglass, book a car & hotel through Concur and order the part on Ariba. This is a fully integrated workflow, a one stop-shop solution and comes with full cost estimates & compete post-billing.
The future of the platform builds on SAP’s HANA Cloud Platform (HCP) and will attract many more companies, be it through acquisitions or partnerships for ever more platform-based integrations. The BNG is here to stay and grow.
Things have changed, will businesses pick up their pace?
