Enterprise Apps Unpacked

While ERP cloud migration promises numerous benefits, including cost savings, leading-edge features, broad accessibility and ease of use, it also carries substantial risks. This is especially true of moving the accounting and financial management modules of on-premises ERP to the cloud.

A poorly executed move can break an organization's financial processes and expose sensitive data, raising significant financial and regulatory risks. But establishing internal controls early in the ERP planning process can be an effective safeguard.

In this episode, we explore the kinds of controls that are most effective, who is responsible for them, the...

The affordable connected sensors made possible by the internet of things seem tailor-made for supply chain management. IoT sensors are ideal for collecting and transmitting the data that companies need for numerous supply chain processes, from traceability and procurement to inventory optimization and logistics.

But has IoT lived up to its initial growth spurt and hype of a decade ago? Recent indications are that it is beginning to show clear value and positive ROI at companies that have implemented IoT in their supply chains.

In this episode, we examine trends in IoT in general and...

The evidence that AI can eliminate jobs is piling up. Amazon said recently it would lay off 14,000 corporate workers in an effort to become more nimble. The cuts weren't directly tied to AI, but the CEO previously said the workforce would shrink as Amazon continues to embrace AI. Target and UPS announced similar layoffs.

Meanwhile, software vendors announced reductions that were explicitly caused by AI. For example, Salesforce cut 4,000 customer support positions weeks after its CEO said AI was already doing nearly half the work.

In this episode, we examine AI's impact on jobs from...

There's little doubt that AI is starting to eliminate jobs. Recent headlines confirm it. The trend presents a special risk to the manufacturing sector just as baby boomers retire in droves and more companies seek to build up their workforces and reverse the decades-long preference for cheap overseas labor.

But there are positive aspects to AI's impact on manufacturing jobs. Many workers are learning to use it to do their jobs more effectively and prepare themselves for an AI-centric future. Companies are training AI to do work that might not get done at all amid the labor...

ERP sustainability software mostly focuses on data collection and reporting requirements of environmental, safety and governance (ESG) policies and typically isn't intended to control the business processes that impact the physical environment.

But other digital technology has been used for years to monitor and optimize resource use. Now IoT sensors are increasingly paired with digital twins and AI, and linked with ERP and other enterprise applications, to form a complete digital ecosystem for environmental sustainability.           

In this episode, we explore digital sustainability technologies, their benefits and challenges, and whether more use of the technology will be a net be...

The internet transformed corporate learning from a paper-based, in-person process to one that is largely delivered in digital form, on demand from nearly any device or location.

More recently, generative AI has provided learning and development (L&D) teams with a tireless assistant that can crank out educational content in minutes. Now AI-powered search is sparking another transformation as employees increasingly use it to find quick answers while they work, learning gradually in ways that suit their personal styles.

In this episode, we examine the evidence for the trend, what L&D professionals should do...

Generative and agentic AI are rapidly infiltrating enterprise software. But both are prone to data management issues that can hobble their effectiveness and lead to AI hallucinations and faulty decision-making that carry significant risks for businesses.

In this episode, we examine an innovative approach that aims to solve these data problems by basing AI models on standard, industry-specific business processes and compliance guardrails while using agentic AI to automate data orchestration across enterprise applications.  

Featuring: Geraldine McBride, CEO, MyWave

In today's episode, we'll also cover:

Procurement has become a strategic priority with significant impact on the bottom line. It's a data-intensive process that requires communicating with large numbers of suppliers, products and services – the kind of complex, transaction-heavy workflow that is uniquely suited to being automated with generative and agentic AI.

In this episode, we examine how AI can make procurement more effective and efficient, where it fits in the procurement technology landscape and how it assists – but doesn't replace – humans in the loop.

Featuring: Keith McFarlane, CTO, Globality

In today's episode, we'll also cover:

AI's growing ability to take over human tasks has many people worried about losing their jobs. Some companies are addressing these concerns by educating employees on how to instead use AI as a helper that frees them for more creative work and adds value.

In this episode, we explore ways to encourage AI use without mandating it, the kinds of training that work best and how to develop a curriculum that covers different experience levels and jobs.

Featuring: Joe Depa, global chief innovation officer, EY

In today's episode, we'll also cover:

Digital twins – virtual representations of real-world things – are a hot topic, and they're becoming more capable with the addition of AI and geospatial awareness. In this episode, we explain how AI-enhanced spatial digital twins work, how they're being used today, what it takes to deploy them, and their potential uses.

Featuring: Eric Liu, founder and CEO of TwinMatrix Technologies

In today’s episode, we'll also cover:

References:

What separates successful enterprise technology implementations from costly failures? Here on Enterprise Apps Unpacked, we’ll do a deep dive into strategies that actually deliver results. Every other Monday, veteran IT journalist David Essex interviews corporate leaders, industry experts and vendors—the people who are truly in the know—about important developments in ERP, HR and supply chain systems and the other applications that run the business. For business and IT leaders, these conversations cut through the chatter to help them make smart decisions about how they buy, deploy and use enterprise software.

Episode 1 drops on Augu...

SAP has faced numerous challenges in recent years, but three big ones stand out: moving its on-premises products to the cloud; convincing customers to adopt its current ERP platform, S/4HANA Cloud; and meeting the unprecedented demand for artificial intelligence by developing practical AI applications.

SAP touted significant progress on all three fronts at its annual Sapphire conference, which was held on consecutive weeks this month, first in Orlando and then in Madrid. It repositioned S/4HANA Cloud ERP as a mix-and-match, AI-infused "business suite" – a throwback to the brand name of its previous ERP flagship. It au...

An emerging technology called spatial computing combines virtual reality and augmented reality to enable location-aware digital interaction with the real world. It has big potential, but practical applications have been slow to arrive. A new offering from Dassault Systèmes, a French maker of 3D design software, could begin to change that.

Called 3DLive, the new app, expected in summer 2025, integrates the vendor's 3DEXPERIENCE product development and collaboration platform with the Apple Vision Pro mixed-reality AR/VR headset to create a "virtual" twin of a product -- an immersive, information-rich type of digital twin created in 3DEXPERIENCE...

For two glorious years, generative AI held sway as the AI darling among ERP vendors. But impressive as Gen AI might be, it's mostly limited to generating content and not really capable of the process management and decision making needed to reach the holy grail of AI: Fully autonomous artificial intelligence.

That level of technological innovation is the promise of so-called agentic AI: smart "agents," such as AI-driven chatbots and robotic process automation (RPA), that can perform tasks autonomously, make decisions and learn from experience. In recent months agentic AI has become the new vanguard of AI...

It's been said that the main job of a chief information officer is "keeping the lights on" – making sure an organization's IT systems are up to date, reliable and running smoothly. But CIOs of software vendors sometimes play an additional role as early users of products under development. The approach is often called Customer Zero, "drinking your own champagne" or "eating your own dog food," and advocates say it can improve innovation and quality control in products and services and boost customer satisfaction.

In the podcast, Sumit Johar, CIO of Blackline, a Los Angeles-based maker of cloud-based ac...

A case can be made that for the past decade and a half, SAP has been almost entirely focused on two things: getting customers to adopt its next-generation ERP platform, S/4HANA, and shifting its development efforts from on-premises systems to the cloud – and getting customers to follow.

Now, with the calendar turned to 2025, the December 31, 2027 deadline -- when SAP says it will stop supporting legacy on-premises ECC and R/3 systems, in effect requiring most customers to upgrade to S/4HANA -- looms uncomfortably near. A Gartner survey shows most have yet to make the move.

...

ERP vendors have been eager to ride the generative AI wave, and it has become commonplace for them to assert that machine learning and other types of AI will revolutionize the way people interact with business applications and data. AI is already enabling natural language data queries and commands and starting to take over workflows that cross ERP modules. Chatbots are evolving from simple logic machines to become "smart" agents capable of communicating and making decisions like humans. The user interface will become so automated and abstracted from the underlying applications, proponents say, that users will rarely need to...

ERP increasingly serves as the hub of organizations' environmental sustainability strategies. But so far, it has mostly been used to standardize and automate the collecting and reporting of environmental, social and governance (ESG) data for customers, investors and regulators. There's a growing sense that ERP can be put to greater use if it's more closely integrated with enterprise technology that has a direct impact on sustainability, such as supply chain visibility, logistics and asset management, to effect real change.

This more ambitious vision of IT-driven sustainability calls for digital transformation of business processes and presents daunting development...

Supply chain sustainability is an ambitious strategy for managing the environmental, social and corporate governance impacts of product sourcing, manufacturing and delivery. But the inherent complexity of supply chains makes it difficult to ensure that each component in a product, from raw materials to subassemblies, finished goods, packaging and transportation, meet the environmental and labor regulations of countries and international organizations.  

Companies have long used information technology to manage their supply chains, but most still struggle to achieve adequate visibility into the practices of their suppliers. In recent years, the environmental, social and governance (ESG) movement has b...

Every major ERP vendor has strived to move its on-premises applications to the cloud and entice its customers to follow. Most still struggle to replicate the capabilities of their legacy ERP systems in software as a service (SaaS), and new products built in the cloud from the ground up tend to appeal more to first-time buyers. Cloud migration remains the industry's biggest challenge.

Oracle, which in most assessments ranks second to SAP in global ERP market share, appears to be winning the fight for SaaS ERP leadership among vendors with long histories in on-premises ERP. Its Fusion...

Warehouses have long been the center of some of the most sophisticated information technology. RFID tags and readers, warehouse control systems, automated conveyors, voice picking and mobile devices are all commonly used to move goods and manage inventory with greater efficiency and precision.

Nowadays, the emphasis is on adding more autonomous technology that takes over some of the drudgery and risk from warehouse workers. Robots and artificial intelligence play an increasingly important role in warehouse operations.   

One company on the leading edge is London-based Dexory, which makes what it calls a warehouse intelligence platform that co...

Artificial intelligence and digital twins are probably the two most hyped information technologies of the 2020s. Yet both are already delivering practical benefits in fields ranging from industrial design and manufacturing to customer service and healthcare.

They are especially powerful when used together, with each helping to improve the other. Digital twins – virtual representations of real-world entities or processes – can supply the structured and comprehensive data AI needs for machine learning while AI adds analytical and predictive capabilities and automation that make digital twins more effective.

Technology vendors and researchers have been exploring ways AI-enabled digi...

Ever since generative AI's debut in late 2022, ERP vendors have raced to embed its human-like communication, research and analytical capabilities into their software. Besides responding to customer demand for AI, they're keen to use the technology to make their complex systems easier to use and more responsive.

At its annual Sapphire 2024 conference in Orlando, Florida, the biggest ERP vendor, SAP, made generative AI the focus of almost every major product announcement, stage presentation and demo. It also announced AI partnerships with Nvidia, Microsoft and Google and significant enhancements to its Rise with SAP program, which is designed...

As the largest ERP vendor, SAP makes the software that runs much of the world's business. And whenever SAP makes a major change in its product portfolio, its customers often must scramble to adapt.

No change in the past two decades has had more impact than SAP's decision to replace its popular ERP Central Component (ECC) software and related Business Suite applications with S/4HANA, a new generation of ERP that only runs on SAP's HANA in-memory database. SAP is also pushing customers to change deployment models by moving off Business Suite and the first incarnation of...

E-learning technologies, such as online courses, instructional videos and augmented reality apps, are in hot demand at corporations. Much of that demand is driven by the sheer number and complexity of the software applications employees must learn to use.

It's a massive training and onboarding challenge, one that many organizations are addressing with a digital adoption platform (DAP), a layer of software that works inside applications to guide users through their daily tasks.

The market for DAPs is growing, according to research firms Gartner and IDC. Companies are using DAPs to streamline employee onboarding, speed...

For years, artificial intelligence has helped to improve customer service by making automated chatbots more intelligent and enabling voice-controlled phone menus. But now the human-like communication abilities of generative AI tools such as ChatGPT are helping contact-center agents find quick answers for customers. And despite AI's reputation as a soulless automaton, the newest generation of AI could instead help humanize customer service by letting agents spend less time searching for information so they can be more attentive to the feelings and needs of customers.

In this podcast, Brian McKenna, senior analyst of business applications at TechTarget's Enterprise...

Organizations are quickly realizing that AI -- especially generative AI with its human-like creative and analytical capabilities -- raises legal, ethical and managerial issues that must be addressed before it can be deployed responsibly. Workers also need extensive training in developing and using generative AI chatbots, text generation and other applications to ensure the technology supports and amplifies human talent and potential instead of eliminating jobs.

In this podcast, Balakrishna D.R. (who goes by Bali), executive vice president and head of AI and automation at Infosys, a global IT services and consulting firm, shares his extensive...

In most discussions about digital transformation, cloud ERP usually plays a critical role. ERP is the digital nervous system and data repository of a business, deeply embedded in the processes likely to be impacted by a digital transformation project. And cloud ERP is now the preferred – sometimes the only – option for adding the other technologies needed to truly transform the business, such as AI, analytics, e-commerce, team collaboration and CRM.

But does that mean digital transformation always requires taking on the substantial challenges of moving to a new, cloud-based ERP system for companies that have on-premises ERP?

Hybrid ERP combines on-premises ERP for common business processes like accounting and HR, with cloud applications – typically software as a service (SaaS) – for more specialized functions, such as customer experience or field-service management -- or even a second ERP for a new subsidiary.

Why deploy hybrid ERP, and what type of enterprise architecture do you need?

In this podcast, Iain Saunderson, chief technology officer of Spinnaker Support, explains the practical issues of hybrid ERP.

Saunderson has over 30 years of experience implementing complex technologies across a wide variety of commercial and government vert...

Intelligent Voice CTO Nigel Cannings explains how AI-based speech-to-text technology can catch criminals, protect privacy and ensure regulatory compliance.

TechTarget editors analyze recent major introductions of generative AI products from Oracle, Salesforce and SAP.

Rimini Street CTO Eric Helmer explains how the company provides tech support and maintenance for SAP and Oracle ERP systems and where on-premises ERP fits in SAP's cloud strategy.

Matt Hobbs, Microsoft practice leader at the consulting firm PwC, explains ways to embed AI in ERP and why generative AI could transform business process automation.

SolidWorks and Onshape founder Jon Hirschtick, now chief evangelist at PTC, shares his cloud-centered vision of the future of product design technology.

TechTarget editors discuss SAP AI announcements and demos unveiled at Sapphire 2023 conferences in Orlando and Barcelona, including SAP's generative AI partnership with Microsoft.

John Turner and Anil Sawhney of the Digital Twin Consortium explain how deploying a digital twin of a building could significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

SAP's Benjamin Stoeckhert reveals the most common types of blockchain applications, explains SAP product offerings and gives tips on how to get started.

ServiceNow VPs Jeff Gore and Kirsten Loegering elaborate on the steps involved in deploying the platform to enhance the employee experience with ERP and HR systems.

Plex CTO Jerry Foster explains how the metaverse could enable factory line workers to perform their duties remotely through a combination of virtual reality technology and high-speed connectivity.

Holger Mueller of Constellation Research explains how ERP vendors' low-code/no-code development tools offer considerable advantages to both professional developers, as well as business users with no technical background.

In 2013, Gartner introduced the idea of postmodern ERP, forecasting a shift from traditional, monolithic ERP systems to more flexible, primarily cloud-based business applications. Now, a new term from Gartner—composable ERP—is gaining traction among ERP vendors and industry analysts.

But is composable ERP merely a rebranding of the previous concept?

Few individuals can answer this question better than Mike Guay. As an analyst in Gartner's ERP practice, he played a key role in shaping the concept of postmodern ERP. He also contributed to the early conversations about composable ERP before leaving in 2020 to become vice...