The Best-Run Businesses Run SAP

In this article in Forbes Magazine, Maureen Farrell and Sean Stonefield write about the current situation of America’s 27 million small businesses with fewer than 500 employees, how they made it through the recession, and what they expect in the near future. Read the article.

After attending last week’s EuroCloud Congress 2011 in Luxemburg, Phil Wainewright, vice president of EuroCloud, blogged about what he argues is “SAP’s recipe for success in the cloud.” In the short article, he sums up and gives insight into the principles behind SAP’s on-demand strategy presented in a keynote by Rainer Zinow, senior vice president for on-demand strategy at SAP. Read the article

After meeting with SME executives at SAPPHIRE NOW from Orlando in May, Laurie McCabe of the SMB Group at Cornerstone Consulting wrote an article about what she claims “may be SAP’s best kept secret”: SAP Business One. In her article, McCabe describes how small businesses with almost no IT resources can get up and running with the SAP Business One starter packages within just a few weeks, and how the solution can run directly on SAP HANA. Read the article

SAP TV recently visited the Republic of Ghana in West Africa. That’s where SAP is testing new business models that can be expanded for developing economies around the world. In partnership with SAP, Ghanaian farmers use modern technology to help run their businesses. For many, this can mean a secure income. The lessons learned from this project will help SAP roll out similar solutions for other fast growing markets around the world. (more…)

In an interview with Ray Wang, principal analyst and CEO at Constellation Research Group, Peter Lorenz, executive vice president of On Demand at SAP, discusses cloud computing, including why it is changing the world for SAP customers. Read the interview on Forbes.com.

How can collaboration improve sales? That’s the question Rahim Bhatia, SAP StreamWork VP, answered today during a session at SAPPHIRE NOW. Session attendees were looking for a way to help sales teams move from email and voicemail to a more structured and productive way of managing unstructured work and information. (more…)

Heads nodded at a SAPPHIRE NOW breakfast Tuesday morning as SAP executive Jack Miller said SAP StreamWork is closing the gap between the kinds of applications we use in our personal lives and in our business lives. (more…)

If you’ve never seen a live television production in person, SAPPHIRE NOW broadcast studio sessions provide just that opportunity. In this session, we watched the behind-the-scenes preparation and production as two SAP customers talked about how they were innovating with cloud solutions. (more…)

In his theater session today, King Arthur Flour’s Steve Cochran reported that using SAP BusinessObjects BI OnDemand has had some surprise benefits in addition to expected results.

King Arthur Flour is a 210-year-old, employee-owned company with approximately $85 million in revenues and 200 employees. The company selected SAP BusinessObjects BI OnDemand because it was looking for a solution that could be up and running in three to four months, from a software partner that had strong expertise in BI. (more…)

In addition to presentations and discussion panels, this year’s SAPPHIRE NOW in Orlando, Florida, also offers a wide range of different microforums. A microforum provides a platform for up to twelve people to discuss a specific business topic within the SME space whereby a moderator hosts the conversation and encourages debate and networking. Some microforums feature SAP customers or partners. (more…)