I was just listening to an interview from last week’s SAP’s Sapphire user conference where SAP’s Co-CEO, Bill McDermott reported that SAP’s cloud business grew by 380% in Q1.  He didn’t break it down, but one can reasonably assume that the bulk of this growth occurred in business applications like core ERP, SCM, SFM, HCM solutions.  It got me thinking about where we are with Analytics in the cloud.  A report published last fall by noted BI analyst Howard Dresner tells how adoption of analytics in the cloud is still in the early innings.  This makes sense.  As business applications move to the cloud, more businesses get familiar and comfortable with this new computing model.  Perhaps more importantly, it puts business data—the lifeblood of analytics—out in the cloud making the move to cloud BI a natural next step. 

Headquartered in Salt Lake City, Utah, Packsize is a Bramasol customer that has made an impact on its customers, communities and environment with its innovation through a foundation created using SAP. Packsize is much more than a shipment company; it's a company that innovates and is always thinking about how to run their business better, because their business is the business of their customers.

Bramasol worked with Packsize to ensure supply chain efficiency with an SAP solution that works for their business. As you can see from the pictures below, Packsize builds boxes- but not just any boxes, it builds them to shipment size. To the most demanding measurements based on a cubic algorithm that takes all the information loaded in the SAP system and can precisely pinpoint the size a box needs to be to fit a shipment. This can be one box or many boxes. No need for fillers, packaging and waste that is commonly found every time a shipment is sent.

The impact is huge. Shipping savings, cost of distribution savings, transportation savings- all throughout the value chain from order to shipment to disposal. Customers can price more competitively because they pass savings along in shipping to their customers.

Working with Bramasol to Ignite Possible, Packsize is a great example of how SAP is helping to make the world run better every day. Stop by booth #2518 and meet with the Bramasol team to see how we can make your business run better and ignite possible with you!

In picture:
CEO Hanko Kiessner, Packsize
CFO Bradley Wittwer, Packsize

What does it mean to run your company better? SAP is focused not only on creating software that ensures the highest functionality for your business, but also in emulating the mindset of the "empowered generation": those focused on making the world run better and improve people's lives.

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While reading a recent Aberdeen white paper, The Case for Cloud ERP in Manufacturing: Alleviating Outdated Concerns, I kept thinking to myself how well it fits with SAP’s OnDemand offerings, mainly SAP’s Business ByDesign ERP cloud solution. Although the article focuses on the “Cloud ERP in Manufacturing” aspect, the findings in the article can be applied to all types of Industries, not just manufacturing. As the cloud expands, I believe businesses that do not take advantage of the cloud will start losing any competitive-advantage they have over their competitors. How is this? Let’s look at the following five “Key Benefits of Cloud Solutions that a Manufacturer Must Consider” as outlined in the above-mentioned Aberdeen report and see how SAP’s OnDemand Cloud solutions are a perfect fit:

In Enterprise BI, adoption is everything. You can bring together the most relevant business data and deliver it within a beautiful BI application, but if your users don’t use it, it doesn’t matter.  One way to drive user adoption is to embed analytics directly into front line applications like SCM, CRM, or Customer Care systems.