How SAP Leverages Intelligent Technologies to Power Commerce

Companies across industries have to fundamentally rethink and transform their business models and working processes under the influence of the rapidly maturing digital world.

SAP, a leading software provider in the digital commerce market, takes full advantage of smart innovations such as machine learning, the Internet of Things and blockchain, offering exceptional opportunities to its clients.

In this article, you’ll learn about SAP intelligent technologies and how eCommerce businesses can benefit from such solutions.

Commerce Transformation with SAP

To deliver the best customer experience and quickly adapt to market fluctuations, eCommerce companies should develop their digital infrastructure based on the latest technological trends. SAP provides them with that opportunity.

The most comprehensive platform for B2B and B2C companies, SAP Customer Experience (CX) Suite or SAP C/4HANA, seamlessly combines sales and marketing functionalities with customer service and data analysis. This integration enables businesses to look at their customers from different angles and better understand and anticipate their needs.

C/4HANA capabilities are distributed among five cloud-based solutions:

• SAP Commerce Cloud (ex. Hybris Commerce) — responsible for omnichannel experiences, product and order management, headless commerce.
• SAP Sales Cloud — responsible for sales performance tracking.
• SAP Marketing Cloud — responsible for content personalization and marketing campaigns.
• SAP Service Cloud — responsible for customer support.
• SAP Customer Data Cloud — responsible for customer data protection.

As a true industry leader, SAP is always on top of technology trends and innovations. The provider supplements essential commerce functions with breakthrough intelligent technologies unified in the SAP Leonardo platform. For SAP’s clients, this means gaining a competitive advantage in terms of improved customer experience, increased productivity and real-time visibility of all processes.

SAP Leonardo

The polymath Leonardo da Vinci was talented in a range of disciplines, from painting and engineering to architecture and philosophy. The platform named after this incredible person, SAP Leonardo, likewise masterfully brings together a set of intelligent technologies:

• Big Data
• Artificial intelligence and machine learning
• Internet of Things
• Blockchain
• Analytics

The demand for such a holistic platform is driven by tightly connected intelligent technologies that often need to be used in combination.

SAP Leonardo is an innovation system that aims to cover every aspect of your digital strategy and ensure the seamless creation of intelligent enterprise.

Just as da Vinci invented and implemented fantastic innovative projects during the Renaissance, SAP Leonardo enables businesses to develop advanced solutions to stay on the cutting edge in the modern digital space.

The Leonardo portfolio is based on the SAP Cloud Platform and leverages an agile design thinking methodology. It offers technologies, services, tools and applications that can be divided into three categories:

• Ready-made applications that you can use right away.
• Microservices and APIs that enable you to integrate Leonardo’s capabilities into your existing solutions.
• Accelerators tailored to specific industries. Currently, there are accelerators for retail, manufacturing, consumer products, sports and entertainment.

Moreover, Leonardo can interact with other SAP solutions such as CRM, ERP, SCM, BI, HCM. This allows businesses to leverage all of the platform’s possibilities and create intelligent enterprises with fewer risks.

Big Data

All the components of SAP Leonardo are connected to Big Data technology, meaning that they collect, process and store a massive amount of varied and quickly changing information.

Big Data technology is needed to handle information from thousands of customers and products from online stores.

SAP HANA Data Management Suite is a powerful solution for intelligent data orchestration and management inside and outside your organization, which supports agile and secure business environments. It consists of four components:

• SAP Data Hub
• SAP HANA
• SAP Enterprise Architecture Designer
• SAP Cloud Platform Big Data Services

Using this hybrid end-to-end solution, companies can take advantage of services for data storage, processing, orchestration, and integration on-premises and in the cloud.

AI and ML

A new generation of software is powered by artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) technologies.

The foundation for such solutions is formed by intelligent algorithms that can analyze large volumes of data, understand correlations between business activities, make conclusions and perform repetitive tasks. Their core advantage is that they don’t need explicit programming. They learn by themselves instead.

AI and ML Benefits for eCommerce Businesses

The implementation of machine learning and artificial intelligence solutions into eCommerce processes has a range of obvious advantages.

• Automated data processing. A vast amount of data is handled accurately and quickly by ML algorithms, thus reducing manual activities and improving efficiency.
• Data-driven recommendations. Intelligent systems can learn from given data and create business recommendations for the improvement of the supply chain or inventory management, or deliver personalized content recommendations for customers.
• Predictive insights. Since AI algorithms handle real-time inputs and immediately analyze them, they can predict further actions and quickly adjust decision-making to the current situation. For instance, the system anticipates customer needs by analyzing their search history and offers the needed product before the customer finds it. This function is definitely beyond human capabilities.
• Chatbots. AI-based bots are becoming an essential part of customer service because they can understand people and solve their issues just as well as human specialists can. The advantage of chatbots is that they work 24/7 and answer instantly, creating a better customer experience.

When integrating human experience with these machine learning and artificial intelligence capabilities, you can significantly improve digital commerce companies’ efficiency to drive better outcomes.

SAP Software for AI and ML

A range of software solutions from SAP can help you integrate artificial intelligence and machine learning capabilities into your business.

SAP Leonardo Machine Learning Foundation — a development platform for the design of ML applications. Data science engineers access functional services for processing all kinds of data, be it text, images, video, or speech. They can create and train their ML models to detect, recognize and classify objects, make predictions and perform other intelligent tasks.

SAP Conversational AI — an advanced platform for chatbot building. Companies can create AI-based conversational agents to meet their business needs and improve customer support. The bot-building platform is easy to use, supports numerous languages, leverages natural language processing (NLP) technology, and sets tools for the building, training and monitoring of human-like chatbots. You can integrate chatbots with other SAP products or third-party solutions.

SAP Intelligent Robotic Process Automation — ML services, APIs, prebuilt bots for the automation of manual tasks, making analysis and predictions.

SAP Cash Application — next-generation intelligent software for the automation of financial operations such as invoice processing.

Internet of Things

Physical items collect valuable information about your business. When you connect such things with intelligent applications, you open up endless opportunities for further development.

IoT is widely used in eCommerce, smart manufacturing, healthcare, automotive and other industries. Beyond this, the concept of the Internet of Everything (IoE) is evolving.

Applying IoT in the eCommerce industry means better logistics, order tracking, automated inventory management, personalized experiences.

The SAP Internet of Things enables companies to integrate their processes with IoT data by using ready-made apps, or to create their own IoT applications. Internet of Things software from SAP includes:

• SAP Leonardo IoT Foundation — a multi-cloud PaaS for management and secure connection of devices to the cloud via a range of IoT protocols.
• SAP IoT Application Enablement — a toolkit for the creation of applications and digital twin models.
• SAP Leonardo IoT Edge — services for real-time data processing on the edge of networks.
• SAP Leonardo IoT Bridge — a command center for the connection of various sources of business and technical information.

The Internet of Things software enables you to create data-driven intelligence from devices, processes and people to innovate enterprises.

Blockchain

SAP intelligent technologies comprise blockchain services and applications to ensure trust among participants and support secure transactions.

Blockchain is the best technology for eCommerce companies to protect personal customer data and ensure the transparency of transactions.

Distributed ledger solutions are widely used in finance, supply chains, the public sector and more because they provide traceability, data privacy and faster processes.

You can join the SAP Blockchain Consortium to communicate with SAP experts and peers and stay aware of industry trends.

Predictive Analytics

SAP Predictive Analytics is a solution for data collection and statistical analysis. It allows you to reveal hidden patterns and relationships in your data and to build predictive models, thus anticipating future events.

A variety of predictive tools, a user-friendly interface and the ability to customize dashboards make data analysis fast and easy. You can work with simple predictive models without the help of specialists, thus accelerating the decision-making process.

eCommerce businesses leverage predictive analytics to better understand customer preferences and needs. With that information, they can offer relevant products and services, significantly boosting sales.

The particular business value of SAP Predictive Analytics is that you can connect this solution with productive databases where operational data is stored. Thus, you can easily create relevant forecasts.

Human and Machine Intelligence

Intelligent technologies are changing the landscape of our lives, offering new ways of working, relaxing and even thinking. However, people remain at the heart of technological ecosystems, bringing their imagination to life with the help of machines.

First-grade SaM Solutions specialists with rich expertise in developing digital commerce solutions for medium and large enterprises are ready to leverage advanced technologies and create unique SAP-based software for your business. Contact us for a consultation.