Grow, Go and Run..... with SAP ByDesign

Rohit Madhur
Director - Business ByDesign
SAP India

Can you brief on the solutions and services offerings of SAP Business ByDesign? 

SAP provides customers the choice of application, industry-specific functionality and deployment option. Our product offering strategy is hybrid in nature. The SAP Business ByDesign solution is the most complete and adaptable on-demand business offering, designed specifically for midsized and small companies that want to grow profitably.

SAP Business ByDesign is a fully integrated business management solution that delivers the best of SAP software, on-demand. The solution is designed as a best-fit for companies that want the benefits of large-scale business management applications without the need for a large IT infrastructure. It is an on-demand solution designed to address the unmet needs of companies with 100 - 500 employees, which makes up a $15-billion market. 

The latest version - SAP Business ByDesign 2011 - is based on strong co-innovation with customers and partners. ByD 3.0 includes enhanced functionality for subsidiaries of SAP Business Suite customers in the form of “packaged integration scenarios”. ByD 3.0 also features what SAP calls a “New User Interface Design” for more flexibility in customizing the corporate look of the screens. This is available only in the Mexican and Australian markets.

How can SMEs be benefited in terms of increased ROI?

SAP Business ByDesign helps streamline and optimize every area of the businesses. The solution provides transparency and control over all operations. 

Some of the concerns that ByD addresses are: Enables organizations to be more efficient by automating routine activities and tasks and streamlining business processes, adaptable to meet new business requirements with minimal time, effort and cost; Enables collaboration with people inside and outside your business to maximize co-innovation and productivity as your business expands: Simplifies IT with built-in services and support; Facilitates compliance with shifting regional, national and international regulations; and Integrates and optimizes business processes to cut costs and provide transparency and visibility across the business.

SAP Business ByDesign starter packages are pre-configured systems which enable customers to start quickly with specific capabilities - and expand the usage of the entire integrated suite as their company and needs grow. Customers can deploy starter packages with as few as 10 users and expand their usage as required, thus making it easier for customers to get started quickly.

How was the market response on SAP's affordable, end-to-end solution for small and midsize professional services companies?

SAP believes that cloud computing will provide compelling benefits to customers and will substantially change the way innovative new solutions are being adopted by customers. Our customers must expect to have the ability to configure a solution landscape out of on-premise and on-demand solutions that best fits their needs. As a result, solution landscapes will combine both deployment models, i.e. hybrid solution landscapes will become the norm. 

SAP's approach to cloud computing is based on three pillars - SAP and SAP Ecosystem partners will provide SaaS applications to extend our leadership in business software to the cloud, provide PaaS capabilities to allow our customers and ecosystem to adapt and extend existing solutions and create new solutions leveraging our business processes and content, and harness Virtualization and Cloud Management technologies that will allow our on-premise solutions to run in the cloud. With these strategic pillars, SAP will be able to drive multiple growth opportunities.

Which are the focused market verticals that your solutions cater to?

ByD is an ERP system encompassing applications for compliance, CRM, executive management support, finance, HR, project management, supplier relationship management and supply chain. 

The SAP Business ByDesign-based PaaS enables partners, customers, and SAP itself to develop and run on-demand applications that can stand alone or extend and tightly integrate with SAP's on-demand and on-premise applications.

Throw some light on the Partner engagement programmes.  

Partners are a core component to the success of SAP Business ByDesign. SAP is working closely to enable the partner ecosystem to operate in business environment of a SaaS application. Each of the partners is putting in a team in place to sell and implement the solution as well as drive the relationship with its customers. SAP is providing the enablement training in a multi-level web-enabled training and e-learning-based certifications.  

What kind of challenges do you face while operating in a competitive market?

We do not see any reason for concern from competition. Midsized and small companies are more and more interested in alternative deployment options like on-demand as their unease regarding data security diminishes. SAP's cloud approach differentiates significantly from competition by allowing customers to orchestrate hybrid solution landscapes that best fit their business. We have teamed up with the key ecosystem partners to help customers effectively leverage all types of commercial cloud infrastructure to reduce operating costs and carbon footprint.

S. Mohini Ratna
mohini@varindia.com