Technology is not something that executives have time to focus on every day. Often frustration, and added business consequences, is the result of slow management reporting. Each time you run a query, your analytics software has to find the right data in your back-end database, run calculations, and deliver them to you - a process that can take 30 seconds or even up to a minute or more.
At a certain point, after similar delays, you're out of time and still need to make the best decision you can with the information and insights available to you. Even with an enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution, you likely can't access the insight you need instantly if you are sifting through large amounts of information.
SAP Business One specialist and business management software provider, 4most, offers a solution for SMEs which demand insight into business operations as they happen, but find that the volume of operational data available to manage customer relationships and complex data analysis often exceeds the amount of data that traditional disk-based systems can process within a reasonable time.
The solution, SAP HANA, is a next-generation data management platform with no need for data redundancy or extra baggage. It is designed from scratch to run entirely in memory - for processing of large amounts of data extremely fast.
Simply put, HANA is built to run on a single database on clusters of affordable servers, which can be scaled to fit the exact needs of your business. It can manage transactional and analytical data in the same database. This means that all the information of any branch or department can be made available at any given time, and updates are practically instantaneous. It enables business executives to make better decisions, faster, by providing immediate access to relevant information - and requires far less reliance on IT to gain the insight needed.
More importantly, SAP HANA provides a flexible, cost-effective, real-time approach for managing large data volumes, allowing organisations to dramatically reduce hardware and maintenance costs associated with running multiple data warehouses, operational and analytical systems.
SAP HANA will form the technology foundation for new, innovative applications based on in-memory technology, thus enabling better performing business applications such as planning, forecasting, operational performance and simulation solutions.
4most business development director Eugene Olivier says the key difference of SAP HANA from traditional analytic models is the absence of any materialisation. "All models are purely virtual, and calculate results based on the underlying detailed operational data. The absence of materialisations makes model changes very easy."
There is no doubt that some of the key value adds of HANA are speed and multiple functionality in real-time. The needs of southern African SMEs are fast extending beyond standard system capacities, and 4most is geared to roll-out this incredibly versatile new business management platform.
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