Introduction

In the fast moving world of digital today, businesses are under an immense amount of pressure when it comes to application development. Slow development cycles, disconnected systems, and scattered data can really hinder a company’s innovation and agility. Integration complexity is stopping digital transformation. According to Gartner, 70% of organizations identify integration as a barrier.

And this is where the SAP BTP Platform comes in. SAP Business Technology Platform (BTP) is a unified, cloud-based platform to help you progress your application development more quickly, simplify system integration and better approach advanced analytics. A single platform for database and data management, analytics, application development, intelligent technologies, and more, SAP BTP enables businesses to adapt their business models and innovate at scale.

Here in this blog, we shall see 7 implementation insights – how SAP BTP as a Platform facilitates the process of application development. We’ll offer things listeners can do today, real stories from the field and best practice strategies that companies big or small can consider.

Unified Environment for Faster Development

One of our SAP BTP Platform’s greatest strengths is this single development space. Building in traditional processes typically means working across many systems, languages and different tools; allowing for a fragmented workflow. With SAP BTP, these silos are broken down and it offers a unified platform for developers where they are able to:

• Develop apps with SAP Fiori, CAP (Cloud Application Programming Model), or RAP (RESTful ABAP Programming Model)
• Connect to data from a variety of SAP and non-SAP systems without an integration middle layer
• Build, test and publish applications fast and easy

Example: SAP BTP helped a retail company shorten the duration of its application development from 12 weeks to 5 weeks, by using cloud-native services. This was made possible by consolidating development, testing, and deployment on one platform, thus reducing the need to recode and manually integrate in multiple places.

Best Practices:

• Standardize on a framework (CAP or RAP) for new projects
• Accelerate UI development by using pre-configured Fiori templates
• Use the provided SAP BTP cockpit to have a central overview and manage all development artefacts

For more read our Blog SAP Fiori App Development

Seamless Integration Across Systems

Today’s businesses are made up of a patchwork quilt of systems, from SAP S/4HANA to third party SaaS solutions. Broken: Data silos cause business to hit a speed bump. Prebuilt Connectors and Integration Tools in SAP BTP Platform are used to:

• SAP ERP systems (for example S/4HANA) in such a way that these systems can exchange data with each other
• Cloud and in-house applications for syncing data
• Third-party apps to be able to seamlessly communicate with one another–no coding required

Benefits:

• Faster integration without complex coding
• Reduced errors and maintenance costs
• Real-time available information for better decisions

Example: A logistics company utilized SAP BTP Integration Suite to integrate its warehouse management system with S/4HANA and cut the time it took to process orders by 30%.

Advanced Analytics and AI Capabilities

SAP BTP Platform includes an array of advanced analytics and AI tools to help customers develop data-driven insights. Key capabilities include:

• Business KPIs monitoring through real-time analytics dashboards
• Trend prediction by machine learning models
• AI services to automate routine jobs

Case study: A manufacturer utilized SAP BTP’s AI services to estimate machine maintenance requirements where reduces downtime by 20 percent, and saved thousands in maintenance fees.

Best Practices:

• Predict with SAP Analytics Cloud
• Automate common operations with machine learning
• Use dashboards to track and control your operations in real time

Custom Extensions for Business Processes

Businesses frequently must extend SAP systems without necessarily altering core code, so that is where SAP BTP could come in. Companies can:

• Extend SAP S/4HANA with new functionality
• Automate unique workflows
• Build industry-specific applications

Custom Extensions in SAP BTP

Business Need	Solution with SAP BTP	Outcome
Automated invoice approval	Fiori app on BTP	Reduced approval time by 50%
Customer loyalty app	Custom CAP app	Improved customer engagement by 35%
Inventory tracking	SAP BTP integration	Real-time stock updates

Cloud-Native and Scalable Architecture

A Better Way to Account for Development in the Cloud. The SAP BTP Platform is designed with cloud-native development in mind, giving organizations the ability to develop applications that scale quickly. Features include:

• Scaling high on user loads in both Horizontal and vertical perspective
• High availability and disaster recovery
• Global deployment across regions

Example: A leading global retail company rolled out its inventory management app on SAP BTP and processed 10x the number of users during high sales seasons, without sacrificing performance.

Best Practices:

• Leverage multi-region deployment for applications with global reach
• With BTP monitoring tools, track how your applications are performing
• Leverage containerized services for scalability

Simplified Security and Compliance

Security is also the primary concern of enterprises. Features developed by SAP are included in SAP BTP as security and compliance tools:

• Access control and identity—whether RBAC (role based access control) or identity-based management
• Encryption of data in itself (i.e. at rest and in-transit)
• Compliance with GDPR, ISO and more

Tip: Use SAP BTP Identity Authentication Service to get one centralized user management band for many apps.

Example: A financial-services company used SAP BTP to secure user roles among five applications and reduce the risk of unauthorized data access.

Collaborative Development with DevOps Tools

SAP BTP speeds up application rollout with DevOps and monitoring tools:

• Continuous integration/continuous deployment (CI/CD) pipelines
• Centralized monitoring and alerts
• Collaboration capabilities for teams that are distributed

Spinoff: An international company cut production errors by 30% after an integration of SAP BTP DevOps pipelines and SAP Fiori development.

Best Practices:

• Test and deploy with BTP CI/CD tools
• Real time monitoring of logs and system performance
• Foster inter-team communication by sharing development environments

SAP BTP platform in the industry applications

SAP BTP is applied to various industries to enhance application development and business processes:

• Retail: Inventory tracking in real time, customer loyalty apps and predictive analytics for sales
• Manufacturing: Predictive maintenance, IOT integration and optimization of the production process
• Financial services: Automated reporting, fraud identification and compliance enforcement.
• Logistics: Optimization of shipping route, automation warehouse and track orders

Essentials for Developers

SAP BTP Platform has all the key building blocks that you need to have for modern application development:

• CAP (Cloud Application Programming Model): Simplifying Cloud-Native App Development For cloud-native app development, there’s a lot to keep track of.
• SAP Fiori: Delivers user experiences that are responsive and easy to use
• SAP Integration Suite: Connecting SAP and Non-SAP Apps
• SAP Analytics Cloud: Offers guided insights through analytics and AI

Tip: Knowing this will help to faster development, easier integration, better UX.

Best Practices for SAP Business Technology Platform Projects

• Plan integration points before development
• Leverage DevOps tools for CI/CD, monitoring
• Use pre-created templates and services to help get your prototyping done more quickly
• Build role-based security and access practices
• Track analytics dashboards for continual improvement

Conclusion

The SAP BTP Platform is reinventing application development with a single, extensible, and secure platform. Speed development with integrations, advanced analytics, and DevOps collaboration. SAP BTP enables organizations to innovate at pace and rise above the competition.

When using SAP BTP, companies are able to:

• Reduce development time and costs
• Enable real-time insights and automation
• Develop apps for specific business processes
• Keep systems secure and compliant

Cremencing Solutions supports companies by planning and implementing SAP BTP solutions to accelerate the development of applications and optimize business performance.

FAQs

Q1. How does development speed get faster with SAP BTP?
A. It is a common environment, predefined services and cloud-native architecture for faster development.

Q2. Is SAP BTP secure?
A. Yes, it comes with encryption and role-based access and is GDPR, ISO, and industry standard.

Q3. What are the top industries benefiting from SAP BTP?

A SAP BTP is used by retail, manufacturing, finance and logistics businesses to improve operations and analytics as well as create custom applications.

Q4. What sort of scale can SAP BTP handle for enterprise applications?

A. Yes, it is built for cloud native scale, high availability and global reach.

Resources

SAP Official BTP Overview
Help Portal – Application Development on BTP
Community Blog – SAP BTP Best Practices