The Boardroom of the Future Will Simplify Business...

former_member181920 · ‎2015 May 07

Thanks to huge gains in simplified data models, and the promise of in-memory technology, companies around the world will soon see “unbelievable business results”, according to Professor Hasso Plattner, Co-Founder and Chairman of the Supervisory Board of global software firm SAP.

Plattner’s remarks teed up a core part of his keynote presentation – The Boardroom of the Future - at SAP’s SAPPHIRE NOW event in Orlando, Florida.

“People simply cannot go to their jobs and work on ancient systems when at home they are working more efficiently on their iPhones and iPads,” said Plattner. “With in-memory technology, we can solve these issues and much more.”

Powered by SAP HANA, the Boardroom of the Future is designed to bring together the company CEO, head of sales, marketing and other experts when conducting monthly, quarterly and yearly planning. In other instances, the board might need to quickly convene when share price plummets, or don’t know how to deal with an influx of orders.

“We cannot solve these problems with green and white striped lists anymore,” said Plattner, taking a fun swipe at the over-reliance on Excel spreadsheets. “We cannot do this flipping through hundreds of pages. We need people to be in one room and to talk each other with real facts, not PowerPoints.”

Enter Plattner’s vision of a system that stimulates new thoughts based on questions it’s fed – all based on facts happening inside the company.

“Whether it’s in manufacturing, logistics, or sales… whatever it is, people have to sit together and work from the facts,” said Plattner. “In the system, you can see much more and cannot hide data. In companies where this is already happening, it’s a massive change. People are actually using real information to drive the success of the company. What other reasons should we have with our IT systems than to help the people of the company to run simple? That is our mission.”