The best of both worlds: How SAP and OutSystems combine for advanced outcomes

The best of both worlds: How SAP and OutSystems combine for advanced outcomes 

There’s no doubt that implementing an ERP system into your business is a game changer. Streamlining your systems, automating your processes and supporting compliance and reporting, an ERP system puts your business in a position to make more informed decisions.  

Many businesses choose SAP as their ERP system. SAP is a global leader in technology solutions, and its ERP solutions are used in businesses all over the world. It brings business functions together, reduces silo-based working and enables real-time insights. It works for businesses with one location in one country, or multiple locations around the world.  

It might seem like introducing SAP is all you need to put your business in a prime position for growth, but there’s more you can do. And that’s where OutSystems plays its part. OutSystems is a low code platform that allows developers to design and build fast, intelligent applications. By integrating with SAP, OutSystems allows businesses to tailor-make the applications they need, based on the information that SAP holds. 

Why do you need SAP and OutSystems? 

Of course, many businesses assume that investing in an ERP is enough. And depending on your ambition, it can be. If your business wants a true competitive advantage, however, or just wants to make life easier for its staff and its customers, it needs to take the next step. 

That step is to see how you can truly exploit the insights within SAP to leverage ERP benefits faster. It’s often true that just investing in ERP technology isn’t enough. Of course, the technology is there to help you, but it takes time to work out what it can deliver, how that information is most useful to your business and how to use it to direct and support your strategy. 

What you need is effectively an ERP add-on. A way to make SAP truly bespoke to your sector, your customers and your business plans. For us, that solution is OutSystems. 

What about integration? 

Businesses are often nervous about integration. That’s usually because they’ve had their fingers burned in the past. But today’s leading suppliers know that seamless integration is a central criteria when you are selecting a system. So, they make sure that they have the ability to integrate without unnecessary downtime, preparation or cost. We talk about ‘extending’ SAP – that’s because OutSystems increases what’s possible with SAP. 

Let’s look at how this works: 

• Out-of-the-box ability to connect to major enterprise System of Record platforms like SAP. 

• Wizard-style tool that ensures security and scalability. 

• Easy for developers to integrate both SAP ECC and SAP S/4HANA 

• Ability to create a customised connection and more using the SAP Extensibility API 

• Full end-user authentication integration 

Working with your development team, you can integrate SAP and OutSystems quickly and easily. Fully instrumented, integrations can generate error logs and performance metrics without the developers having to write any code. This allows any problems to be identified and managed quickly. 

What can you do with SAP and OutSystems? 

Using both technologies together gives you endless opportunities to make your business work smarter.

1. Optimising internal processes 

Every business is looking for efficiencies. Investing in SAP is a big step towards this, and building dedicated new processes using OutSystems can take you to the next level. For example, you could transform inventory tracking, speed up accounts preparation, and improve compliance reporting. 

2. Improve customer service 

Where businesses have very similar product or service offerings, customer service can be the make-or-break area. Use OutSystems and SAP to improve your customer complaints process, design more efficient transportation routes, speed up time from enquiry to proposal or build personalised customer engagement. 

3. Engage your teams 

Build an app that your field sales team can use on the go – both to deliver sales pitches to prospects, and to log relevant sales information. Create a better intranet offering that allows interaction with holiday planning, rota management or wellbeing benefits. Use the power of OutSystems to update processes that free up staff time. 

These are just a few of the ways you can use intelligent applications, based on information from SAP to build efficiency, high performance and better outcomes into your business. 

Flexible and scalable 

Businesses need to be able to pivot quickly. They need access to the information to make informed decisions and they need the ability to roll that information out across staff, customers, stakeholders and regulatory bodies fast. As they grow, businesses need their systems to grow with them. This delivers the flexibility they need to look at new markets, launch new products, open new facilities and take advantage of both market and economic trends. 

Using SAP and OutSystems together gives businesses this flexibility and support for growth. As a low-code platform, OutSystems doesn’t need long and costly development times: applications can be designed, tested, refined and reworked quickly, so that they are giving the right outcomes and the best value for money. 

The best of both worlds 

Smart businesses want smart technology. And using SAP and OutSystems together delivers exactly that. That’s why, at ISB Smart Solutions, we are proud to be both an SAP & an OutSystems Partner, and proud to have integrated OutSystems and SAP into our own solution, Waste & Recycling One. 

We deliberately chose the platforms we thought were best suited to rapidly building and testing ideas and processes without incurring unnecessary cost or taking too much development time. It’s proved to be a great decision, giving our customers the best of both worlds. 

Contact us to find out more.