March 5th was a milestone in Bilot’s history. We headlined at SAP Innovation Forum as Platinum Partner for the first time. We have naturally taken part during earlier editions of this event, but now we decided to take center stage for a couple of reasons. The timing felt perfect this year – Antti Soini, who was the moderator throughout the day, interviewed me and asked the obvious question: why this time?
Firstly, the decision was intuitively a no-brainer, it just felt like the right moment. Secondly, SAP’s strategy and our strategic direction are so well aligned, it was our moral duty towards our customers and prospects to speak up. Our consistent and continued pioneering in developing and deploying the latest SAP solutions has positioned us as one of the (if no THE) most relevant players in our market. Our value proposition resonates perfectly with our customers’ agendas and our vision is fully aligned with SAP’s strategy.
This year’s Innovation Forum was reportedly the biggest event in SAP’s history in Finland with an estimated 600+ participants at the famous Finlandia Hall, an Alvar Aalto landmark and the venue of numerous historical events. We kicked off the day with a VIP Breakfast session, where Metsä Group’s CIO Panu Hannula and SAP’s country manager Marika Auramo accompanied me in a narrative on today’s hot topics. Our customers, leaders of prominent companies interacted with us and prepared for the event’s agenda, saturated with interesting keynotes, presentations and demonstrations.
Our stand was well trafficked the whole day with open-minded prospects and happy customers who wanted to know more about our proceedings and latest innovations. Meanwhile, we had the opportunity to share the main stage with e.g. Onninen’s CIO Terhi Nyyssönen who presented, together with our very own BI sorcerer Antti Lyytikäinen, the latest on our joint SAP HANA crusade. Caverion also quoted our broad collaboration in their presentation regarding improved usability and efficiency with BusinessObjects and HANA.
The climax of the day was the show-and-tell demo IntoJAM, where four brave SAP partners (of the initial seven invited) showed-off their respective innovations which attempted to enrich the Taltioni personal health-file portal with as many new SAP innovations as reasonably possible. Our decorated demo-crew came up in record-time with a breath-taking, fully-functional and user-friendly solution combining SAP HANA, Predictive Analytics, Lumira, Hybris webshop (also mobile) and SAP UI5.
It was technically outstanding but also insightful as it unearthed a very plausible business opportunity for the ecosystem connected to Taltioni. The audience voted unanimously thumbs-up for Bilot, but the jury (with clearly separated views) voted (in contradiction with the given judgment criteria) another participant as the winner. The initial disappointment evaporated quickly when we heard that the consensus of the crowd was pro-Bilot.
Life after the SAP Innovation Forum is much the same as before. We continue on our steady course and look forward to working with our many new prospects and customers.
