Supply Chain Management Blogs by SAP
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Former Member

Today, turbulent and volatile markets are now the norm. We face continuous fluctuations in consumer demand, and increasing complex supply chain networks. We encounter endless advancements in technology and increasing levels of globalisation, and as a result, we find that our businesses are now competing in an unpredictable world. So, given such challenges how should we still seek to ensure supply chain stability? And how do we optimise our supply chains to ultimately remain competitive?

Until recent times, a vast array of applications have been build within the constraints of existing databases and platforms. Systems have been built separately, with different systems, and as a result it's been both difficult and time consuming for businesses to obtain real time demand information, and operate with agility.

Yet, these aren't the only consequences. As many of these systems are unable to manage the vast amounts of data our organisations now obtain, our businesses have often made decisions based upon inaccurate, incomplete and outsourced data. Clearly, if we are to strengthen our market position and maximize our efficiencies, we need to evolve. But, how do we do this?

SAP HANA

"Simplify. Accelerate. Innovate."


In today's world, our businesses are only able to go as far as our IT infrastructure lets us. However, SAP HANA seeks to change this. HANA breaks businesses free from the limitations they face in order to allow firms to manage, monitor and analyse their processes like never before.

SAP HANA is a new platform based upon an in-memory data base, which enables real-time decision making to become a reality. By accelerating core processes, HANA allows firms to monitor their business processes in an up to the second fashion, and therefore enables users to make key decisions easier, faster and more accurately. In addition, by operating in real time, businesses can respond to unexpected events with unprecedented agility, to ensure that they remain ahead of the competition. HANA also has an ability to manage high volumes of data. No longer must users rely upon their own judgement and intuition when making decisions, as HANA enables firms to utilise all the data their businesses acquire to validate and improve the accuracy of their decision making.

Why Run APO on HANA?

Making Supply Chain Faster & Responsive

SAP Advanced Planning and Optimisation (APO) is an application at the heart of Supply Chain Management. APO offers businesses a fully integrated pallet of functions that enable firms to plan their end to end supply chain processes. With APO, businesses can collaborate on a tactical and operational planning level to continuously optimise their supply network efficiency.

By placing APO on HANA, Supply Chain Management Issues are turned into Opportunities.



- With APO on HANA, accessing timely information is no longer a major problem for businesses. The application increases productivity through providing faster planning processes and improved user experiences.

  • - By installing liveCache on the same HANA server, the need of a separate maxDB server is eliminated, hence reducing TCO and simplifying set-up and administration.
  • - Before HANA, many decisions made by firms have been based on incomplete, inaccurate and outdated information. However, with APO's real-time reporting Supply Chain Info Center, businesses can increase the speed and accuracy of their analysis to improve the effectiveness of their decision making.

Every year, the adoption of APO on HANA continues to increase and these users continue to gain tangible benefits from their upgrade. In January 2015, a major communication technology provider made the decision to implement APO on HANA, and as a result increased the performance of their back Order Processing by 5 times. Before HANA, this process took the company over 30 minutes, but through the use of HANA, such processes was reduced to 6 minutes.

In addition, a major apparel industry player also chose to implement SAP APO on HANA, and found more than a 30% improvement in end-to-end Demand Planning and Supply Network Planning processes. Another leading consumer appliance company also reaped the benefits of APO on HANA as they were able to reduce their MRP Process Run in PP/DS by almost half. Clearly, these results have had a major impact upon both productivity and decision making capabilities within the firm, as they have largely enhanced both the strength and stability of their supply chains.

The evidence is therefore clear. Run data in Real-time, in reinvent your business processes, and reimagine your business decisions with APO on HANA.


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