With new technologies and a lot of innovative energy

South America is known for its particularly complex legal requirements. The fact that cbs customers no longer have to worry about implementing SAP and operating the systems in Brazil is thanks to the innovative spirit of some consultants who launched their first projects in Rio and São Paulo at the end of the 1990s. They took SAP's "Nota Fiscal Eletrônica - Nfe" solution and used it to develop a specially tailored cloud solution for government communications. This later led to the successful cbs product E-Invoice World Cloud. The all-round carefree package offers automatic, end-2-end integrated B-2-G solutions for 15 countries, with many more in the pipeline. The cloud solution has already been used to process 4.7 million transactions worldwide. 

First Mover

"Our idea is to develop new market-oriented business models from SAP's early product ideas and thus make new solutions usable for the requirements of global market leaders. These can then be developed further in the long term, explains Markus Geib, Member of the Executive Board. 

Developing new technologies, business models, concepts and methods in order to create highly innovative customer solutions is one of cbs' original drives. Innovation has always been at the heart of our ambitions. "They give our corporate concept its driving force. The hunger for new things, the desire to acquire new things, combined with the search for solutions, with passion for the matter itself and the ambition to make something special out of it, are in our genes," betont CEO Rainer Wittwen.  

Moving boundaries

Technologies, business constructs and customized methods are just the ingredients. The decisive factor is the active ingredient that combines them and sets them in motion. "The innovative energy of our consultants is what really drives us forward as cbs"says Geib.  

The history of cbs is also the history of this innovative energy. For over 25 years, it has been pushing consultants to solve clients' challenges in a future-oriented, creative and sustainable way.  

Example: ONE Finance - cbs has developed a solution package and the corresponding holistic consulting approach that enables industrial groups to move from heterogeneous structures, processes and systems to the Intelligent Enterprise based on a globally harmonized, digital finance and accounting system under S/4 Hana. 

Take cbs ET Enterprise Transformer and Selective Data Transition (SDT) to S/4 Hana: What began in the 1990s as an R/2-R/3 migration in close cooperation with SAP is now both a key element in the unique complete portfolio and an independent service and software business for holistic transformation solutions. Selective has long since been declared a global standard by SAP and has proven its market maturity in exceptional pioneering projects in the manufacturing industry. 

Take myleo/dsc from cbs subsidiary leogistics, for example: the cloud platform uses real-time data to simplify transportation management in a process-as-a-service solution. It connects producers, suppliers, warehouses and freight forwarders, creating a holistic supply chain network. 

What does innovation mean for large, international industrial customers who run a large part of their business with SAP software? Jürgen Remmert, Member of the Executive Board: "Our customers are faced with the major task of digital transformation and must successfully integrate this into their corporate vision, the global end-to-end business process platform of the future. Creating this connection is an exciting task." 

E2E without media discontinuity

Creating digital end-to-end business processes means digitizing processes, eliminating media disruptions, optimizing and streamlining them. The aim is to incorporate the potential of cloud computing, big data, AI and robotics into business processes. The trend is to create new processes for networked business models: Pay per Use, Predictive Maintenance, Integrated Business Planning, MRP live, Margin Analysis. Digital, data-driven innovations are changing practice: future IT systems will actively make suggestions to users, the push principle is replacing the pull, a new user centricity is changing perspectives, the trend towards gamification is changing the business process culture and the way problems are solved. 

Think tank

"Companies are in a permanent restructuring process. No one can predict what the business will look like in five or even ten years' time. That's why you have to set up your IT systems in such a way that they are as flexible and agile as possible in order to be able to react to rapid changes in the market and new competitors. We are the right partner for this"knows Consulting Director Henning Krug.  

Business Technology Platform

The SAP Business Technology Platform (BTP) is the strategic basis for innovation. "As a first mover, we have been working with BTP since 2015 and launched our first customer projects a year later. In the meantime, we have gone live with more than 100 apps - including for DAX companies such as Henkel, Merck and Brenntag," reports Consulting Director Karsten Kötter. We are involved in DSAG, and two of my colleagues were recently elected as spokespersons for the new DSAG BTP working group. Also in the "UI/UX technologies" working group we provide the speaker. This also shows that cbs is leading the way when it comes to innovative topics. 

 Offer for the CDO

"Innovations are not an end in themselves. They have to reach the customer. They must become solutions"says Kötter. A claim that is derived from customer requirements. The digital transformation of cbs customers is a multi-layered and interdisciplinary task that companies are not yet able to accomplish holistically enough. This is not easy. "We believe that a specific overarching corporate approach needs to be developed for SAP customers that gives more guidance and concreteness to the iterative process of digitizing the company's target image. We are currently working on such an offering for the Chief Digital Officer"says CEO Rainer Wittwen.