OREANDA-NEWS. December 23, 2015. A cloud platform for services, a catalyst for in-store business, “real-time retail” – these are just three approaches that show how the process of digital transformation is revolutionizing companies’ mindsets and actions.

According to an analysis by the consultancy Roland Berger, there is still a massive gap between companies that consider themselves digitally sophisticated and their actual opportunities. Managers continue to view increased sales as a secondary goal in connection with digitalization. However, it is also evident that more than 90% of companies describe themselves as “well equipped” in this regard based on data from Crisp Research. This seems like reason enough to take a look at a number of interesting projects.

The range of companies that have already carried out digital transformation projects (or are in the process of doing so) is certainly extensive: a mechanical engineering company using predictive maintenance to monitor its machines; an automotive manufacturer increasing traffic safety based on big data; a retailer seeking to improve the performance of its brick-and-mortar stores using digital channels. As diverse as their methods might be, all of these organizations have ultimately set their sights on enriching their enterprises by means of intelligent networking and new business ideas.

1. Gearing Up for Big Data

The Challenge: Back in 2011, 21sportsgroup had not yet cracked ˆ6 million in annual sales; just a year later, that figure suddenly spiked to ˆ12 million. For the current year, Jörg Mayer – founder and CEO of the Mannheim-based multichannel sporting goods retailer – is expecting over ˆ100 million in sales revenue. Along with the thrill of achieving such outstanding success, however, came a number of new challenges. “Our business systems were running up against their limits,” Mayer recalls. 21sportsgroup needed a new ERP system capable of both processing over a million orders from some 2.5 million customers each year and accounting for country-specific payments in more than 15 different nations. In purchasing the action sports retailer Planet Sports in early 2015, the company then sent another clear message that its strategy now focuses on multichannel sales. In the past, however, the lack of integration between its online and brick-and-mortar business had led to problems in selling the same items to multiple customers. This is what 21sportsgroup wanted to avoid in the future. “We want to serve our customers not only online, but locally, as well,” Mayer explains. His company thus offers biomechanical analyses, biometric footprints, and other services designed to help it provide its customers with the best shoes possible. 21sportsgroup’s new system needed to be able to keep up with its impressive growth while achieving even greater synergy between its online and in-store sales channels.

The Solution: The new solution had to be robust enough not only to grow along with the company, but to “cope” with 21sportsgroup’s dynamic evolution right from the beginning. To quote Jörg Mayer, the “software with the right solution at its core” is SAP ERP ECC 6.0, which includes key components for finance (FI), sales (SD), and logistics (WM, MM). Based on an enterprise service bus, SAP NetWeaver Process Integration middleware also makes it possible to connect third-party systems to the application. Mayer sees this as a means of keeping his company’s business processes as simple as possible, from ordering and payment all the way to tracking and delivery. Another crucial argument for SAP ERP related to 21sportsgroup’s ambition to increase its share of business abroad from 30% at present to 70%, which would make it a multichannel player on the international stage. “A customer in Spain wants an invoice in Spanish, not English,” Mayer points out. To make this possible, his company needed the ability to integrate its online stores in 15 countries.

21sportsgroup went live with its new system on May 1, 2015 – seven months after the project began. The company’s ratings on Amazon.com and the consumer feedback platform eKomi have remained high ever since, convincing its executives that this step was the right one.

The Future: Since sporting goods manufacturers and retailers will be dealing with more and more data, they will require infrastructures that offer ever-greater speed and flexibility. According to Jörg Mayer, 21sportsgroup is thus already planning the next step in its software evolution: taking advantage of the SAP HANA platform. First, however, the company will be focusing on bringing in the first nine-figure sales result in its history in fiscal year 2015.

2. Laying the Foundation for Digitalization and Big Data

The Challenge: Over the past eight years, the German organic grocery chain Alnatura has nearly quadrupled its sales. In fiscal year 2013/14, the Bickenbach-based company generated ˆ690 million in revenues. Its established IT environment, however, seemed to be standing in the way of its further expansion. The Navision ERP system Alnatura was using at the time was starting to show its age and no longer providing adequate support to its current and future business processes. CIO Richard Kneis resolved to “rethink the company’s IT landscape and devise an IT strategy for the years ahead.”

The Solution: Following an intensive selection process, Alnatura opted to go with SAP, kicking off the company’s largest corporate project to date in early 2013. It has since implemented the industry solution SAP for Retail over a period of 24 months. Since the overarching goal of the project was to stay within the SAP standard, Alnatura set about implementing all of its core business processes in its new SAP solution, from product development and listing to deliveries and sales. In doing so, it concentrated in particular on integrating its in-store and centralized processes and connecting its logistics and materials planning systems to SAP for Retail. One compulsory task involved cleaning up the company’s master data even before the project began. “The actual challenge was to migrate the data from our legacy systems into SAP’s new and different structures, but we did a good job of handling it,” explains Kneis, who is responsible for IT and process design at Alnatura. “Our business processes are now more mature and we’ve made significant improvements to our inventory management, flows of goods, and incoming quality control. All in all, we’ve established a system platform that’s going to help us respond faster to future changes and requirements.”

Six months after going live with SAP for Retail, Alnatura reached another milestone on its new IT road map in implementing a new point-of-sale solution. “We obviously went with point-of-sale software that integrates with our SAP system,” Kneis affirms.

The Future: Upon implementing its SAP solution, Alnatura soon noticed an increase in not only the quantity, but especially the quality of its data. Here, the company expects to achieve enhanced reporting that will enable it to identify potential improvements in short order. “The ability to react to changes quickly and dynamically will be a key component of our future tasks and projects,” Kneis predicts.

Alnatura’s CIO is also paying close attention to subjects like digitalization, big data, and SAP S/4HANA. For the time being, however, the company plans to bide its time and stick to its strategy of “analyzing the latest developments first to determine whether they make sense for us,” as Kneis puts it.

3. Gaining Clarity on Carbon Footprint in Logistics

The Challenge: In the past, the process of calculating CO2 emissions along supply chains was often rife with errors. Many companies used to employ rudimentary tools like Excel spreadsheets to determine their carbon footprint. The result? “Even some corporations listed on the DAX have published inaccurate information,” reports Matthias Wohlfahrt, head of green SCM at the consultancy BearingPoint. Since 2012, however, the European Union has introduced a corresponding norm. France has taken it a step further in passing a law that governs how carbon footprints are to be calculated and disclosed. Meanwhile, environmental awareness is now essential to maintaining a positive image: Related information is published in sustainability reports and even factored into rating agencies’ analyses. Companies that place high on the Dow Jones Sustainability Index, for instance, are perceived to be following sustainable business practices, which generally increases their creditworthiness. These factors are part of the reason why the concept of “carbon accounting” has emerged alongside conventional financial bookkeeping. Such efforts seek to maintain a precise running account of the carbon footprint along a company’s supply chain by factoring in manufacturing, delivery, and all of the parts supplied. In doing so, an organization can achieve greater transparency regarding the carbon emissions of its logistics processes. Just as a controller tracks sales in financial accounting, CO2 officers will now need to be able to calculate and optimize the emissions produced by their logistics processes on the fly.

The Solution: In order to come up with as accurate a result as possible, companies need to adhere to the aforementioned norms and link their carbon calculations to the business processes in their ERP systems. If an automotive supplier wants to set CO2 reduction targets for the production and shipping of its parts, for example, it needs a system that can access all of the relevant data on its individual components, vendors, and transport service providers. BearingPoint has developed a calculation tool for precisely this purpose. “Our Logistics Emissions Calculator, or LogEC, was originally developed in Java based on an Oracle database, but we’ve since migrated to the SAP HANA platform,” explains Nicolas Löwe, a senior manager at BearingPoint. “Customers can use the solution on-premise in their own systems or as an SaaS cloud solution on SAP HANA Cloud Platform.” LogEC quantifies the difference between transporting parts by plane and by ship, for instance, or the extent to which shifting manufacturing operations to Asia would compromise a company’s carbon footprint. BearingPoint’s Logistics Cost Calculator (Log COST) takes this a step further by calculating how changes along the entire supply chain would affect a company’s carbon emissions in relation to the costs and transport times at hand. Its simulations make it possible to weigh the pros and cons of focusing more on the environment or the bottom line, such as by equating a 10% reduction in CO2 with a 2% cost increase and up to several weeks of added transport time. So far, the pilot customers taking advantage of these new carbon calculations have mainly included automotive and retail companies and those that sell fast-moving consumer products.

The Future: “The next step will be to extend carbon footprints to individual products,” says Matthias Wohlfahrt. “It will take a few years before there’s a binding EU or global standard, however.” At that point, every car, bottle of water, smartwatch, and pair of jeans will come with two tags: one for its price, and one indicating the amount of CO2 that was produced in making it. Customers will then be able to make their own decisions about how much their environmental awareness is worth.

4. Setting the Stage for Connected Customers

The Challenge: For Andreas Kranabitl, CIO at the Austrian grocery chain SPAR Österreich, the topic that would have the greatest importance and resource requirements in 2015 was clear: digitalization. The past might have been about process automation, but the focus has since shifted to digital consumers, predictive analysis, and the use of mobile and social media. In SPAR ICS, Kranabitl’s company has its own IT subsidiary that has also been operating an innovation lab since 2013. Digitalization, however, was hardly on SPAR Österreich’s agenda – until the company attended a conference that included a presentation on BMW’s ConnectedDrive. With this technology, BMW vehicles now feature not only engines with impressive horsepower, but services made possible by connectivity, as well. The primary objectives of retailers like SPAR have thus begun to turn increasingly toward related concepts like “connected retail” and “connected consumers.”

The Solution: SPAR Österreich’s IT specialists had already taken a number of steps in this direction along with the company’s partners. In fact, they are currently piloting a new technology involving electronic shelf labels at a SPAR store in Vienna. Barely distinguishable from conventional labels printed on paper, these identifiers display current prices that are set from a central location. “We worked with the company Umdasch Shopfitting on developing this innovation,” Kranabitl reports. “It combines all the advantages of electronic price marking with functional, environmentally friendly technology.” SPAR then collaborated with the lighting specialist Zumtobel on outfitting its supermarkets with lights equipped with iBeacons. It is now planning to expand its use of these transmitter devices. “These days, it’s definitely possible to deploy 100 iBeacons at a store for ˆ3,000,” Kranabitl reveals. He thus considers it a modest investment with potentially significant added value. SPAR could use iBeacons to issue tailored messages about promotional campaigns to customers who frequently buy fish, for example; guide customers to products; or ask them to provide feedback using their smartphones following every shopping trip. To be able to make profitable use of these innovations and fine-tune its offers to individual shoppers, the company needs to know as much as possible about its clientele. This is one of the reasons why SPAR Österreich made the decision to implement SAP HANA as its future platform and migrate its SAP Business Warehouse and SAP Customer Relationship Management applications to the in-memory technology. Another of SPAR’s more recent efforts involves the use of SAP Customer Activity Repository, which also offers in-memory support.

The Future: SAP Customer Activity Respository and its underlying SAP HANA technology are designed to offer greater transparency in point-of-sale transactions, warehouse inventories, sales at individual stores, and customer segmentation, as well as a comprehensive sales-channel overview. This dovetails with SPAR’s current IT strategy, the goals of which include predicting customers’ purchasing behavior, presenting tailored offers, and devising personalized promotions for loyal shoppers across all of its channels. The company plans to continue rolling out SAP Customer Activity Repository in 2016.

5. Digital Innovations Driving In-Store Business

The Challenge: Dodenhof and its more than 2,500 employees are active in a number of fields: The family-run company operates shopping centers in northern Germany; owns a supermarket and a department store that features fashion, sporting goods, electronics, and furnishings; and leases retail space to the likes of H&M, S.Oliver, OBI, and Aldi. For CIO Andreas Iken, its identity lies in the traditional retail business. To this day, many customers are on a first-name basis with Dodenhof’s employees. The process of digital transformation seeks in particular to improve the consumer experience in new, but related ways. “Our digital environment is designed to leverage emotions in encouraging customers to come here for their shopping,” Iken explains. “For us, the digital realm is becoming a catalyst of our in-store business.”

The Solution: Dodenhof is in the process of replacing a range of individual systems and an outmoded application landscape with software from SAP. The company has been running the industry solution SAP for Retail in its fashion and sporting goods department in Düsseldorf since May, and in electronics since October. Having also migrated its financial accounting to SAP, Dodenhof now plans to make the move in its furniture business, as well. “Without this solid foundation, going digital would have been impossible,” Iken says.

The Future: From now on, Dodenhof wants to engage customers through all of its channels. They should be able to book appointments with sales staff at the click of a mouse, for example, and try out interior decorations for their apartments in a virtual setting. In other words, the company is focusing on online activities that are designed to drive in-store business.

While Dodenhof is starting from a strong position – around 500,000 of its customer cards see active use – it believes plenty of potential has gone untapped thus far. “At the moment, we don’t have the ability to address each individual customer the way we’d like to. In the future, however, anyone who buys diapers at Dodenhof shouldn’t be surprised to get an offer on children’s clothing,” Iken reports. “This ERP project with SAP has opened the company’s eyes to the importance of master data. We’ve taken our first steps into a new era with a new point-of-sale system that will use our customer cards to offer a personalized shopping experience.”

6. Using SAP HANA Cloud Platform as a Logistics Hub

The Challenge: By the year 2030, the Port of Hamburg expects its container turnover to increase from just under 10 million at present to 18 million units. Since the space available for its operations is limited, however, the Hamburg Port Authority (HPA) is facing the challenge of finding efficient solutions for utilizing and managing its infrastructure. This is why it kicked off the pilot project smartPORT logistics back in 2011. In cooperation with the container trucking company Stapelfeldt, the logistics specialist and parking lot operator Hoyer, the ADAC motoring association, the implementation partner T-Systems, and SAP as its software provider, HPA began developing a system that would optimize port-side traffic flows. Its ongoing goal is to facilitate increased revenues and container turnover using the same amount of space.

The Solution: Serving as the technological basis for this project is SAP HANA Cloud. By feeding data provided by trucking companies and parking lot operators into SAP’s in-memory database, T-Systems and SAP have enabled truck drivers to track current parking availability and access other information right on their Samsung tablets. As a result, waiting times are shorter, trucking companies can plan their routes more effectively, and communication is easier – particularly for the truck drivers.

Meanwhile, many of the port’s stakeholders can now offer their services based on the SAP HANA platform. The smartPORT logistics team, which comprises specialists from HPA, the logistics IT provider DAKOSY, Deutsche Telekom, and SAP, is busy preparing for an influx of users to HPA’s cloud application. The plan is for more truck drivers and “mobile units” to access the system. Their current locations and destinations – combined intelligently with third-party data (from container terminal operators, for example) and information on road construction – are set to make traffic conditions and flows to and within the Port of Hamburg more efficient. For HPA, the unique advantage of cloud technology lies in the ability to access additional applications quickly and easily through a Web interface to its smartPORT logistics system.

The Future: HPA expects to continually increase the number of participants and information sources involved in the project. The slot information truckers need to retrieve containers will soon be available, and further freight forwarders, port-based forms, and some initial container terminal operators will be brought on board. In addition, the project is serving as a pioneering example for other high-turnover harbors in China, India, and other locations around the world.

7. Extending the Internet of Things to B2C Operations

The Challenge: Whether it’s in street sweepers, scrubber-dryers, or steam cleaners, Dr. Matthias Mehrtens from the cleaning equipment specialist Kärcher has sensed a trend: “Soon, every device is going to have its own IP address.” Two years ago, Kärcher drafted the first plans for making use of the Internet of Things in its professional equipment division. Mehrtens – the company’s vice president of information systems – had set his sights on offering digitalized versions of its machines to interested customers for evaluation purposes. In addition to aiding Kärcher’s product developers by providing feedback on potential flaws, this enabled cleaning services to find out how effective the equipment was and which devices were prone to increased downtime.

The Solution: For around a year now, new teematics components in Kärcher’s machines have delivered data on their location, battery status, and any issues registered back to the company. “We’re giving our customers access to a cloud platform where they can analyze their fleets,” Mehrtens explains. “They can view cost and usage data on their machines on-screen in real time.” Customers can also ascertain the total cost of cleaning an office building or shopping center, for example. This type of transparency is helpful during product development, as well.

The Future: Meanwhile, Mehrtens has observed an exponential increase in the variety of data his company is producing. The number of devices outfitted with IP addresses also continues to rise. In light of these developments, it is only a matter of time before end consumers and the wider service sector start to benefit from interconnected equipment, as well. From watering systems that automatically come to life when plants get thirsty to vacuum cleaners that send their owners a text message when the bag is getting full (along with a link to order more), Matthias Mehrtens describes these advances simply as “making targeted use of Big Data.” In doing so, Kärcher currently uses both SAP Business Objects solutions and SAP Business Warehouse, the latter of which just recently received a new enhancement package (EHP 7). Mehrens also wants to gather some initial experience with the SAP HANA in-memory platform based on the supplier portal his company uses to assess potential partner companies before working with them. “Here, we’ve already taken the first step,” he says.

8. Partially Automated Forklifts

The Challenge: Some time ago, the Hamburg-based company STILL resolved to create a forklift capable of receiving and carrying out orders on its own. “These days, it’s no longer about higher, faster, and farther,” says Thomas Fischer, chief sales officer at STILL GmbH. “It’s about building an intelligent network.”

The Solution: A STILL creation dubbed cubeXX now not only chooses its own destinations, but reacts to sudden obstacles, as well. To integrate its order and vehicle data, the company uses SAP HANA Cloud Platform, which processes huge amounts of information in real time and makes order data available online. It thus serves as a link between STILL’s ERP system and the data produced by its sensors and devices. This is also what gives the cubeXX its autonomy and logistics managers transparent overviews of their fleets. As a result, they can now monitor sensor and process data on entire fleets from any location and quickly devise corrective measures when necessary.

The Future: Today, the humble forklift of old has already become not only an autonomous vehicle, but a service that can fulfill orders without human intervention. According to Fischer’s predictions, they will also soon be able to coordinate among themselves and make their own decisions as to which vehicle should handle which order.

9. Using SAP HANA Cloud Platform to Support Patients with Chronic Illnesses

The Challenge: Germany alone is currently home to between six and eight million people who suffer from diabetes. Most of them have type-2 diabetes, which is typically caused in part by an unhealthy lifestyle. The disease affects nearly 350 million patients around the world and generates over ˆ460 billion in costs, placing tremendous strain on healthcare systems everywhere. According to World Health Organization calculations, deaths caused by diabetes have increased by 50% in the past 10 years. Many heart attacks and strokes can be attributed to type-2 diabetes. In collaborating with SAP, Roche Diabetes Care is focusing on providing preventive assistance to “metabolic” patients – that is, those who typically exhibit high blood pressure, excess weight, and elevated blood lipids – to keep them from developing the disease in the first place.

The Solution: The technical solution SAP Health collects data on patients by means of a mobile app and makes it available through SAP HANA Cloud Platform. Their blood glucose meters – Accu-Chek Aviva Connect devices – use Bluetooth to send their current levels to their cell phones. Patients can also incorporate a pedometer to record their daily movement. Through an SAP smartphone app, the measurements taken are automatically stored on the platform, where they can also be accessed by the doctor involved following patient authorization. The ability to peruse the entire history of an illness and assess all of the attendant factors (how much the patient has exercised, for instance) in an online medical portal offers physicians a number of benefits, as patients only need to come in for a checkup when absolutely necessary.

The Future: As time progresses, doctors will increasingly be able to offer remote consultations and take action online based on reliable measurements patients take themselves. The key to this lies in a technology with which data from various sources can be combined and made accessible. As a result, patients will be able to improve their lifestyles by paying more attention to their health and getting enough exercise. “In principle, this platform has the potential to optimize and individualize doctor-patient relationships more than ever before, no matter what the chronic illness at hand,” states Oliver Haferbeck, director of Roche Diagnostics’ Diabetes Care division in Germany.

10. Progressing Toward Lot Size One with “Luxury Toys Every Adult Wants”

The Challenge: In 2009, the Austrian engine specialist BRP-Rotax was suffering under the effects of the global economic crisis. Demand for the premium products made by its Canadian parent corporation, Bombardier Recreational Products, was on the decline. BRP-Rotax is the subsidiary that manufactures engines for “ultimate recreational vehicles” like Ski-Doo snowmobiles, Sea-Doo jetboats, and all-terrain, roadster, and side-by-side models under the Can-Am Spyder brand. “Back then, we were making finished products on a make-to-stock basis and wound up with too much inventory,” recalls Harald Okruch, IT director at BRP-Rotax. Each year, his company produces around 250,000 engines for vehicles that are sold by 4,200 dealers in more than 100 countries. BRP-Rotax then set itself a goal: to pinpoint the number of units the market would bear and adjust its production accordingly. “It was essential that the company become more flexible in order to deal with the kind of ups and downs the economy had been going through,” Okruch explains.

The Solution: The strategists at BRP-Rotax thus resolved to move away from mass production and focus more on custom manufacturing. They also wanted to give consumers the option to configure their own chassis and engine online. “We’re going to be producing fewer standard models from now on,” reports Okruch, who considers the digitalization of the company’s processes as key to this trend. In assembly, for example, BRP-Rotax now relies on automated guided vehicles – highly intelligent, self-driving machines that provide the flexibility the company needs to achieve custom production. BRP-Rotax is also working on increasing the level of integration between its production floor and ERP system. “That will give us better control of our processes than before,” Okruch reveals. As it gains the ability to track the history of each individual component, the company is also watching its products and machines grow more intelligent thanks to built-in RFID chips enriched with additional process and control data. “During the construction of an engine, SAP Manufacturing Execution now monitors the processes involved and catches errors at a very early stage,” Okruch says. These days, he shudders to think of the system BRP-Rotax used before. Real-time transparency; fast, sound decision-making based on the latest manufacturing data; precise monitoring of work progress – in using its new solution, the company has already begun to enjoy many of the benefits touted by SAP. Okruch, however, is enough of a realist to know that for a subsidiary of a corporation with 7,600 employees, the process of change can be even more demanding than the actual technology involved. He adds that BRP-Rotax has not yet finished expanding its predictive maintenance efforts, as it first needs to convince its parent corporation in Canada of the merits of its new approach and the first steps involved in becoming a smart factory by presenting its own best practices as an example. “It’s a lighthouse project of sorts for the corporation,” Okruch notes.

The Future: BRP-Rotax has already begun consolidating its process information into big data. At the moment, however, Okruch has not yet begun to speak of “smart data” or a “control station” that would enable the company to integrate its intelligent analyses. His goal is to see the old assembly lines eventually disappear from the production floor and enable BRP-Rotax to work with a lot size of one throughout its manufacturing. “Then all of our suppliers will be integrated into the process chain,” says Okruch, who happens to drive a Spyder Roadster himself. “In the end, BRP is nothing more than a factory that makes luxury toys for adults – and everybody wants one!”

11. Opting for a “Data Lake”

The Challenge: Back in the 1920s, Maschinenfabrik Reinhausen (MR) made it big manufacturing stepping switches for regulating transformers. When more electricity is required, these switches ensure that the voltage provided to power outlets remains stable. Half of all the electricity in the world flows through products made by MR, which leads the global market from its headquarters in Regensburg, Germany. Meanwhile, the top priority in the company’s impending digitalization project involves doing away with many of its individual data silos and allowing their information to flow into a “data lake.” In doing so, MR wants to prevent its IT systems from being overwhelmed with the corresponding processing and maintain a constantly high transfer speed. According to the Reinhausen Group’s 51-year-old CIO Christoph Heiss, another goal is to “consolidate knowledge that’s currently distributed across a series of databases.”

The Solution: MR’s solution goes by the name SAP HANA, which Heiss believes is the right platform for the job. Since the decision was made some 18 months ago, MR has gone live with in-memory versions of SAP Customer Relationship Management in the summer and SAP Business Warehouse just a few days ago. In Q2 2016, this hidden champion – which employs 3,000 people and generated ˆ650 million in revenues in 2014 – also plans to move its ERP to SAP HANA. “We already have big data, but it’s stored in a variety of databases,” Heiss explains. “With SAP HANA, we’ll be able to establish a central repository for this information and integrate it in intelligent ways.”

Right now, the IT experts at MR are coming up with use cases to help ascertain where the company can improve its processes while reducing costs and preventing errors. It wants to track every single stepping switch through each phase in its 30- to 60-year life cycle while optimizing internal processes and using dedicated pattern recognition to generate further benefits for MR customers.

Heiss is also looking forward to analyzing the “mass of sensor data that’s stored around here somewhere.”

The Future: Over the course of next year’s second quarter, MR will be taking the aforementioned next step in this multimillion-euro project: running its ERP on SAP HANA, as well. “If basing our ERP on SAP HANA is a milestone, our data lake will be the icing on the cake,” says Heiss, who already has visions of in-memory financial processes dancing through his head. Until then, however, there are few items left on the agenda. MR has to keep in mind, for example, that only a modest number of SAP HANA specialists have entered the market thus far. As the digital transformation progresses and big data grows even more important, so too will demand for IT experts in these fields. “As a leading employer in the region, MR offers interesting challenges in a stable, family-run environment,” Heiss states in summary.