We brought together SAP with Partners from the Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) region in this edition of the Hack2Build to adhere to the ERP Clean Core strategy.

Partners brought their innovations that can easily be plugged into the ERP without disrupting the core. The participants had a week, from November 21^st to 28^th, to prototype their business use cases in SAP Business Technology Platform (SAP BTP) and present to a jury of SAP executives. Onwards, partners intend to develop the proof of concept and build a solution to customers.

The Hack2Build initiative from SAP is a rapid prototyping initiative to drive early-stage inspiration, use case exploration and technology adoption for SAP partners. In this experience, partners validate their ideas, get coaching and support during the build of the prototype, and get hands-on experience with SAP Technologies. After the hackathon, they also explore how to package the solution and get ready for go-to-market.

With an ERP Clean Core strategy the customer can help ensure his organization benefits from the latest release with minimal modifications and cloud-compliant extensions and customizations. This strategy brings the stability of standardization with the flexibility to innovate. By standardizing the processes and data underlying ERP operations, your business can benefit from more best practices and customize what it needs to differentiate itself.

The Hackathon Week

Hack2Build: ERP Clean Core Strategy using SAP Business Technology Platform – LAC – November/2023 Participants

Kicking-off in November 21^st, we were glad to welcome eleven SAP partner companies with over 60 individuals from five different countries in LAC (spanning four time-zones!). The participants of this edition were: Abside, Alfa, Cast Group, CSTI Corp, Grupo Meta, Hexagon, Intechpro, Numen, Ramo, Softtek and Stratesys.

With diverse backgrounds, the partners had different expertise with SAP BTP and SAP S/4HANA Cloud. The proposed business use cases were diverse as well, ranging from localization challenges to niche customer pain points.

We started the event with a kick-off to motivate the participants and educate them in the event’s theme. Executive presentations enlightened the participants that the ERP Clean Core is a journey, which brings opportunities for recurrent revenues, and spans over several facets, including software, integration, data, operations and more. The partner enablement path was made clear with the presented assistance services, which include learning, certification, coaching and advisory.

The executive sessions were followed by a technical presentation that highlighted the required technical skills needed for the hackathon. A Clean Core Technical Overview was presented, informing about the extensibility and integration options and tools, followed by an SAP BTP – SAP S/4HANA Cloud communication guide, which comprehended prototype and effective integration paths. The sessions were closed with the latest news from the SAP TechEd, which happened just a few weeks before.

For the following week, the participants went heads down to develop their prototypes, supported by the SAP Hack2Build LAC Team and SAP BTP experts. There was little time to waste and much to prepare for Demo Jam.

Showtime: Demo Jam

The Demo Jam was held one week after the event’s start, on November 28^th. All participants were eager to exhibit the results of the intense week to the audience and panel of judges.

As the participants reach the final session, they had only 10 minutes to present their use case and operational prototype. With so little time, they strived to showcase the business potential, technical skill, and innovation to the Panel of Judges, composed of a diverse perspective of four SAP Leaders and Subject-Matter Experts.

Panel of Judges

Given the high quality of the presentations, the discussion among the judges to elect the winners wasn’t short, but eventually the scores were settled. They also had the chance to provide insights and feedback to each partner.

The Winners

Winner: CSTI Corp

CSTI Corp innovated with a system for publishing, registering, and awarding biddings that allows for uploading different documents related to each supplier’s proposal for quick comparisons with AI, which then converts into a Purchase Order in SAP S/4HANA Cloud, reducing the evaluation time of proposals, minimizing errors in reading documents, conducting comparative analysis of proposal information, and facilitating efficient communication through notifications throughout the process (registration, tender stages, awarding). A solution suitable for companies in any industry that carry out biddings with a moderate volume of documents.

First Runner-up: Ramo

Ramo created an integration in SAP BTP between their Realty One system and the SAP S/4HANA Cloud. The solution manages Real Estate sales and rental contracts, thereby integrating the financial flow with SAP S/4HANA Cloud.

Second Runner-up: Grupo Meta

Grupo Meta developed a comprehensive inventory management system that integrates physical stock with the SAP S/4HANA Cloud, ensuring legal compliance in Brazil and providing tools for inventory counting, analysis, adjustment, and reporting. It offers features such as spreadsheet upload, supervisor oversight, price and cost analysis, re-counting, spreadsheet export, log analysis, and integration with third-party warehouse management systems. The solution solves the problem of accurate and efficient physical stock management, providing significant business value by ensuring compliance, minimizing errors, saving operational time, and enabling informed decision-making with precise data.

The Voice from the Winners (subtitles available in English)

Beyond a Hackathon

As the intent of Hack2Build event is to help our partners to build their solution, the move to the next BUILD phase is critical for the partners to drive successful outcome with their innovations. Most of the partners plan to continue with their development and bring their solutions to customers as soon as possible.

Acknowledgment

We would like to thank all finalist teams, in no order, and the use cases they prototyped during this Hack2Build:

• Abside – Internal portal to buy products by employees using money or credit bonus;
• Alfa – Business Retail Cloud – a centralized order solution for Retail sector to automate the creation of high volume similar orders;
• Cast – Assembly Best Sales Order: a solution that proposes a mix of related products with discounts based on historic customer purchase data;
• Hexagon – Automated loading of bank statements, including anomaly detection and automatic categorization in an Argentinean specific scenario;
• Intechpro – a complement to SAP FSM to track record the daily work history of field maintenance service technicians, providing visualizations and reports in individual and team levels;
• Numen – Numen Hours: an app to track and record consultant’s hours in multiple projects;
• Softtek – an AI application that uses historic customer data to propose their orders for the next weeks; and
• Stratesys – U-Compliant: a solution that validates SAP S/4HANA Business Partners for compliance risks.

All the participant partner teams will receive digital badges by Credly.com from SAP, as a result of the excellent work results presented.

Virtual Selfie during the Demo Jam

We also would like to thank all the SAP teams and colleagues for their passionate and tireless commitment and the tremendous support they offered, which made this event possible! Kudos and special thanks to:

• Carolina Bastos, João Cavalcanti and Rudi Held for the executive support and event sponsorship;
• André Cunha, Ivan Mirisola, João Cavalcanti and Luciana Santo, for acting as Judges;
• Alexandre Pereira, André Silveira and Rodrigo Riveros for the presentations;
• Alessandro Biagi and Thiago de Castro Mendes for the technical support throughout the event; and
• All colleagues from SAP Partner Ecosystem Success and SAP Co-Innovation Lab for helping and supporting this event.

Thank you for your excellent support during all phases of the Hack2Build. We couldn’t have it done without your leadership, domain expertise, and dedication to the success of SAP and our Ecosystem.

SAP Hack2Build LAC Team 

Authors: Ronildo Santos and Lucas Rigo