Better Together: Partnering to Deliver the Intelligent Enterprise

What do word-of-mouth job referrals and fighting international money laundering have in common? Or financial exchange-rate data and helping a mine inspector access information while they're underground?

These are just a few of the things that the huge variety of apps available on a software application marketplace help to address.

More about these later. But first, what is a software application marketplace? And why should one be created to drive business innovation?

Enabling the Intelligent Enterprise

The lightning pace of innovation has propelled us into the age of the Intelligent Enterprise. As the name suggests, it leverages intelligent technologies like artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning, the Internet of Things (IoT), cloud, advanced analytics, robotics, and blockchain to transform how businesses work. Data is the fuel that powers these technologies, enabling companies to run better by creating new business models, automating processes, and delivering a great customer experience.

At the same time, industries and lines of business are constantly changing and fragmenting into smaller vertical sub-sectors and niche processes. No enterprise software can possibly cover every single customer requirement at this new level of granularity, so it can be difficult to find the software that does exactly what's wanted and needed.

Therefore, providing a technology framework and a toolbox of intelligent applications, platforms, and integration capabilities for our partners to develop and build their own apps is critical. These apps incorporate the latest technologies to meet customers' highly specific needs. Think of it like Apple's iPhone and App Store: Apple provides the clever technology platform and an army of developers create and promote their apps on a public marketplace.

Bringing Buyers and Sellers Together

Similarly, software developers - particularly smaller startups - can find it difficult to get their products in front of prospective customers. The idea behind a software application marketplace is simple: Bring buyers and sellers together on a single, easy-to-use, global online platform.

On SAP App Center, companies can discover, try, buy, deploy, and manage applications developed by SAP partners, safe in the knowledge that each app has been stringently tested by SAP for quality and suitability. It's all designed to help customers enhance and extend their enterprise and line-of-business solutions and enable partners to monetize their intellectual property.

Delivering Intelligent Applications

Here's a little more detail about the examples above.

Financial crime has worsened considerably in the digital age. Money laundering alone amounts to an eye-watering $1.6 trillion annually, and as criminals employ increasingly sophisticated digital techniques, less than two percent is tracked back to the source.

Quantiply's Sensemaker app leverages advanced technologies like machine learning to help banks fight back. Unlike standard fraud-detection software, Sensemaker learns and adapts based on individual transactions and behaviors between specific entities and their subsequent relationships. Because it runs in real time, financial institutions can continuously and automatically monitor all activities and instantly detect suspicious activity.

'I embarked on a journey to tackle dirty money at a grassroots level,' said Quantiply's founder and CEO Surendra Reddy.

The good news is that the vast majority of international financial transactions are legitimate and rely on accurate and reliable data. Brisken Market Data Hub automatically loads exchange-rate and other market data from central banks and external providers like Bloomberg and Thomson Reuters. It then integrates the data directly into back-office systems while monitoring the incoming data quality to ensure accuracy and consistency.

'Now, with our solution available on SAP App Center, we have access to thousands of customers worldwide,' said Dirk Neumann, co-founder, Brisken, LLC. 'For them - our customers - it's fully configurable and immediately consumable once installed.'

Many of us spend our professional lives in workplaces that have fast Internet access. But what about all those people who work in areas with no Wi-Fi connection? How can a service engineer on a remote gas pipeline or a mine inspector working underground access the information they need to do their job properly? On Device Solutions has addressed this common problem with myJobCard, a mobile app that integrates with enterprise asset management and maintenance software via the cloud and enables field operatives to work offline yet still retrieve job-critical information.

'With the free trial, customers can really see it, understand how it works, and compare it to other apps, and that's a huge benefit for them,' explained Navdeep Singla, director and lead architect, On Device Solutions. 'I'm excited about the potential of the app within the broader application software ecosystem.'

Even in today's digitally connected and socially networked business environment, the power of word-of-mouth referrals remains as strong as ever. That's the theory behind MintMesh, a referral management tool that aims to actively engage employees in the recruitment process and reward them for successful referrals.

'We set out to build the world's largest referral network, and we're doing it by helping people make use of their network of contacts in a positive and productive way and make that network a tangible asset,' said Sunil Chathaveetil, CEO and co-founder, MintMesh, Inc.

Recruiters can track, schedule, e-mail, and text candidates from the app to assess their suitability.

To explore more partner stories and the apps currently available, visit the SAP App Center.

This story originally appeared on Digitalist.