When measuring the business-value of innovation in products and services, improvements in planning, ideation, execution, or portfolio management have the potential to deliver incremental benefits. However, a siloed operational approach to innovation may fall short of providing the engine for growth that is required to compete long term and capture a sustainable advantage.

To drive new levels of performance, organisations need to integrate innovation with closed-loop support across all stages – and within the context – of value-chain capabilities and strategic objectives. The benefits are compelling as observed in AMR's recent report, "Predicting Total Business Impact To Achieve Maximum Product Lifecycle Value," stating that "simulating the impact of product decisions across multiple business groups has delivered 50% improved time to market, 40% improved forecast accuracy, and millions of dollars in savings in the supply chain costs of a new product launch." *

Software and services from SAP and our partners help enable and support continuous product and service innovation through a comprehensive approach that links strategy to execution. Only through a combination of business insight and business process integration, you can connect key functions including planning, innovation management, complex project execution, and product portfolio management – to transform your ability to employ innovation as a sustainable and profitable competitive advantage.

Learn how SAP's family of software, result-driven services, and world-class partners can help best-run businesses achieve differentiation and growth by:

• Improving responsiveness to customers and market opportunities
• Leveraging the right talent, partners, and capabilities in co-innovation processes
• Achieving speed and efficiency across complex programs and projects
• Measuring the strategic impact of innovation investments

Solutions for Continuous Product and Service Innovation

Strategy and Planning
Developing faster responsiveness to new market and customer opportunities requires comprehensive business intelligence and aggregation of relevant knowledge, including product performance analytics, project pipeline, operational metrics, competitive information, market trends, and customer analysis. SAP and SAP BusinessObjects provides a rich set of business intelligence and analytic tools to support collaborative approaches to proactively identify strategic road map and innovation opportunities.

Managing Innovation
Leveraging the right talent, partners, and capabilities required to enhance your company's core innovation competencies requires tools to support the critical front-end of the product and service development process. The SAP Product Definition application supports smart idea management and integrated concept development to capitalise on the best ideas and translate them into successful, innovative products.

Program and Project Management
To increase speed and efficiency in the execution of complex programs requires information across project portfolios, human resources, and financial systems. The SAP Resource and Portfolio Management application provides comprehensive visibility and management capabilities designed to improve the ongoing selection, scoring, monitoring and review of projects and associated resources.

Portfolio Management
Measuring the strategic impact of the product and service portfolio against overall business performance metrics is a fundamental requirement to understand the return on innovation initiatives and investments and to guide ongoing strategy and planning processes. SAP and Business Objects support the development of product and service performance dashboards based on actual companywide development, supply chain, manufacturing, support, and sales metrics that are required to assess the strategic impact of initiatives and investments and to provide the foundation for a sustained and continuous approach to product and service innovation.

* Michael Burkett, Jeffrey Hojlo, and the AMR Research Value Chain Strategies Team,
"Predicting Total Business Impact to Achieve Maximum Product Lifecycle Value," August 2007

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