Join Steve Lucas, president of platform solutions at SAP, and Boyd Davis, vice president and general manager of the Datacenter Software Division at Intel, at this exclusive event for senior executives pursuing a Big Data strategy.

Did everyone see the recent announcement that came out from SAP at the end of July on bolstering their cloud portfolio vision? (see announcement below).  It is becoming extremely apparent that SAP is focusing and investing heavily on its cloud offerings. What I am most excited about regarding this announcement are three things:

I found the Aberdeen Research article on Travel and Entertainment (T&E) Expense Visibility very intriguing to say the least. On one hand, businesses today are searching for new frontiers where they can drive out costs in their operations. When the recession hit a few years ago, businesses immediately focused on driving efficiencies in their value chains which permeated its way into how they sold to their clients/customers, how they manufactured their products / offerings (with many outsourcing their manufacturing operations), and how they managed inventory to not tie up so much cash in inventory on-hand while also increasing fill rates.
 
As businesses now recover from the downturn, you are seeing them invest wisely (and cautiously) into areas that will create growth, but at the same time they have not lost that lust to manage costs. As a result they are looking into unchartered waters for cost containment and Travel and Entertainment Expenses are on the short list.
 
It makes complete sense that visibility would be one of the top challenges in the T&E domain. I would go a step further however and state that I think businesses really want to understand where their T&E dollars are going and more importantly, are they getting a real return in the dollars they spend. 

Last week I attended the SAP Manufacturing Industry Customer Value Network Forum in Chicago. It was an outstanding event attended by over 400 people including SAP Manufacturing Experts, Partners, and over 100 customers. I was blown away by the depth, breadth and variety of companies, as well as solutions and people who attended. SAP showed is expertise and leadership in the area of manufacturing with solutions such as Supply Chain Management, Asset Management and Environmental, Health and Safety. Three major themes came out of the conference: 

On June 25 - 26, 2013, SAP will host a large, national Customer Value Network (CVN) event focused on manufacturing, with Bramasol as a sponsor. Join the manufacturing industry's thought leadership community for this educational forum. Network and learn about the transformational opportunities in manufacturing today and what is working and successful for other companies in managing their business, growth and profitability on industry best practices and technology solutions.

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.