November 2, 2020 Continuous Innovation Remains Pain Point for Enterprise

New research reveals organizations are spending more than twice as much time executing on current strategies than planning for the future.

(London, UK, and Philadelphia, PA) – A report released today from Avantra, a leading AIOps and automation platform for SAP, and research partner ASUG reveals organizations are spending more than twice as much time executing on their current strategies than planning for the future.

To better understand the digital transformation and innovation needs of SAP customers, ASUG conducted an independent survey commissioned by Avantra. The survey aimed to:

• Identify innovation drivers in the SAP operations market,
• Understand SAP-centric enterprise operational challenges,
• Explore challenges in digital transformation, and
• Uncover the tools and technologies enterprise leaders need to solve these challenges.

Of these goals, key findings from the study revealed:

• Organizations are spending more than twice as much time executing current strategies (67%) than planning for the future (33%),
• The number of self-identified innovators (organizations that spend more of their time innovating than executing) is only 13%, while the number of self-identified executor organizations is 67%; and
• 74% of respondents rate their IT operations department as somewhat or extremely willing to adopt new technologies.

“At one point, implementing SAP was the very definition of innovation and digital transformation; however the cost of keeping these systems running has become a major cost for many organizations,” says John Appleby, Chief Executive Officer at Avantra. “The findings from this report show that it is imperative that companies use automation to drive down the cost of running enterprise software so they can become more agile, innovative and deliver business value,” Appleby adds.

The SAP landscape, over the last few years, has become increasingly complex making it a major factor when it comes to organizations spending more time trying to ‘keep the lights on’ rather than innovating and driving business transformation.

“It’s clear that the SAP customers who participated in this study are committed to delivering the value of innovation to their organizations. But we learned that they struggle with the complexity of maintaining those systems, along with constraints such as a lack of resources to run their SAP environments. We not only identified the factors that are holding these customers back, but also the factors that are propelling some organizations toward achieving their innovation goals,” adds Ann Marie Gray, Vice President of Content Strategy and Research, ASUG.

In partnership with ASUG, Avantra will host a webinar, delivering insights from the market research on SAP operations innovation and trends ahead of 2021, Wednesday, October 28, 2020. For more information and to register, click here.

About Avantra
Avantra is the industry-leading AIOps platform for SAP automation operations: helping companies transform into a self-healing enterprise. Avantra helps SAP customers to improve business experience, performance, and compliance, focus valuable resources on digital transformation and reduce operational cost. Avantra delivers a unified operations platform, whether on-premises, in the cloud, SaaS, or hybrid, for both Build and Run operations. Founded in Switzerland in 2000 with a global presence, Enterprises as well as Managed Service Providers trust Avantra to provide them unmatched intelligence and insight into their landscape health. Learn more at avantra.com.

About ASUG
ASUG is the world’s largest SAP user group. Originally founded by a group of visionary SAP customers in 1991, its mission is to help people and organizations get the most value from their investment in SAP technology. ASUG currently serves thousands of businesses via companywide memberships, connecting more than 130,000 professionals with networking and educational resources to help them master new challenges. Through in-person and virtual events, on-demand digital resources, and ongoing advocacy for its membership, ASUG helps SAP customers make more possible.

Media Contacts
Emily Tippins, Avantra, press@Avantra.com
UK – Aaron Frank, Berkeley Communications, avantra@berkeleypr.com
US – Tawanda Carlton, Media Frenzy, tawanda@mediafrenzyglobal.com

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