Kuwait businesses urged to combine vision with tech innovation ...

During his keynote at the high-profile knowledge and networking conference, Sam Alkharrat, Managing Director, SAP MENA, claimed that the business sector in Kuwait is undergoing an encouraging shift towards innovative, value-added business software solutions.

"Companies don't have unlimited funds?they never have," said Alkharrat.

"Today's technologies allow them to take the cost out of non-value add activities and put it back into the value and innovation layer.

Fundamentally, companies need to change the way they run the business and think globally. Whether it's private or public sector, urban or rural, every organization needs a shared vision, the right people to rally around that vision and the advanced technologies so they can innovate."
"IT is no longer on the side-line. IT is the business," added Alkharrat.

"By combining vision with technology, astute business leaders can outperform the competition, create opportunities, and be truly successful in a global economy."

Strong present, strong future

Now in its 40th year, SAP is the world's leading business software company, and recently concluded a successful Q3 2012 as global software revenue increased 17% to ?1,026m (12% at Constant Currencies).

There was also triple digit growth in the key innovation areas of cloud, SAP's in-memory computing flagship offering HANA and mobility.

Kuwait represents SAP's third largest market in the Gulf, with IT market intelligence firm IDC noting the country's 2011 IT spend stood at US $1bn. The company recently inaugurated a new office in Kuwait City.

The Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region is at the heart of SAP's long-term global growth strategy that includes doubling its addressable market, reaching 1 billion people and generating global revenue of ?20bn by 2015.

SAP aims to achieve these goals through a multi-pronged innovation agenda comprising synchronized investments in five interconnected elements: extending a leadership position in Applications, broadening its footprint in Analytics, expanding its reach through Mobile, becoming a profitable leader in the Cloud, and growing the fastest in Technology and Database.

The power of HANA and Customer 360

In particular, excitement is building across MENA, including Kuwait, about the potential of HANA, a ground-breaking platform rooted in-memory computing that transforms business by streamlining applications, analytics, planning, predictive analysis, and sentiment analysis on a single platform to empower businesses in real-time.

SAP HANA customers worldwide include Colgate-Palmolive, Adobe, Bosch and Siemens. Yodobashi, a large Japanese retailer, recently highlighted the technology's transformative potential when it accelerated the calculation of incentives for loyalty customers from three days of data processing, once a month, to two seconds - a performance improvement of over 100,000 times. A further 18 companies have achieved a similar or better performance boost using HANA.

"Ground-breaking innovations like SAP HANA help our customers access and deliver information at unprecedented speeds and empower them with fundamentally new ways to run their businesses better," said Alkharrat.

The SAP 360 Customer solution is the latest innovation to run on HANA. The solution harnesses the power of in-memory computing, cloud, enterprise mobility and collaboration to allow organizations to revolutionize the way they engage with their customers beyond traditional customer relationship management (CRM).

Giving customers comprehensive, 360 degree real-time insight by combining their customer data from transactional systems (CRM/ERP/SCM) with social web data, organizations can personalize each customer engagement through any channel to build loyalty and trust.

Through the real-time execution capabilities of SAP 360 Customer, organizations can execute end-to-end customer processes effectively and efficiently in the cloud, on-premise or on mobile devices

"This is a game-changing solution that will help companies market better, sell better, service better and truly create remarkable experiences for their customers," Alkharrat explained.

"With SAP 360 Customer powered by SAP HANA, companies gain true 360-degree customer insight that is real-time, actionable and available anywhere."

The Power of Small

Alkharrat was also keen to pay tribute to the "power of small" during his keynote, noting that nearly 80% of SAP's customers hail from small and medium enterprise (SME) sector.

"SAP understands the unique needs of small and midsize businesses and entrepreneurs," Alkharrat explained.

"We want to see SMEs in Kuwait that are more agile and able to operate around the clock. We want to see SMEs with enhanced visibility and decision making that can not only lead to better employee productivity, customer engagements and responsiveness, but also help them keep pace with larger companies and gain a competitive edge in their marketplace."

MENA and Kuwait to the fore

SAP is currently in the midst of executing a four-year additional spend plan across MENA.
Highlights include recruiting more than 500 additional employees, opening several new offices and expanding the company's partner ecosystem and the SAP University Alliances program. Additionally, significant increases will be made in the availability of comprehensive, innovative and localized service offerings.

The plans also includes the region's IT-specific Training and Development Center, which will certify more than 2,000 new consultants within the next four years, triple the company's existing consulting capabilities in the region, as well as accelerate and extend the localization and Arabization of SAP solutions.

The first mover initiative is also structured to shape the region's IT future through co-creating and innovating solutions with partners, customers and independent software vendors in fields such as mobility, HANA, cloud, urban management, smart city functionalities, and Islamic banking.

"SAP's investment in Kuwait is hugely welcome, and is set to play a vital part in the country's development and economic diversification," said HE Frank Marcus Mann, German Ambassador to the State of Kuwait, speaking at the recent inauguration of SAP's new office in Kuwait City.

"The German government places the highest importance on the development of IT infrastructure in Germany. IT innovation is worldwide more important than ever before, and I am delighted that a German company shows its commitment to contribute to this development in Kuwait."

Source: http://www.ameinfo.com/kuwait-businesses-urged-combine-vision-tech-320538

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