The IT Nerd

Long-time partners SAP and the NHL today unveiled new, significant enhancements to the SAP-NHL Coaching Insights App for iPad. These upgrades stemmed from offseason workshops with all 31 NHL coaching staffs to further simplify the user experience, expand on critical metrics desired by coaches, and extend usability for deeper preparation before and after games.  

The app, which is based on SAP Business Technology Platform (BTP) powered by the SAP HANA Cloud database, launched in 2019 and has continued its evolution since inception. This has led to a massive 4x increase in league-wide usage, which further validates its reputation as an important coaching tool throughout the league.   

 Now, coaching staffs for all 31 NHL teams can tap into unique new features in the app such as: 

• “Home Plate” Customization: Every team has their own perspective on where the danger zones are around the net. This feature allows coaches to select one of five different variants of high-chance scoring areas to develop strategies and compare the team versus the opponent. 
• Head-to-Head Faceoff Matchup Planner: Coaches can cycle through potential matchups for each faceoff to isolate the best opportunities to win them. This functionality tracks players’ win/loss rates at different faceoff locations, and against various opposition. There are even specific times during the game (like icing) when a coach will know who the exact opponent will be, the Faceoff Matchup Planner provides coaches with real-time targeted data to assist in rapid decision-making. 
• Enhanced Game Trends/Analytics: Coaches can analyze detailed shot differential from key segments of each game, allowing for game trending capabilities to unlock insights within targeted momentum shifts. 
• Player Speed: NHL clubs will have insights to the total distance a player skates during the game and their top speed, so coaches can manage their player’s ice time throughout the game. Specific to speed and distance, the app can break it down into 10-second increments to help develop optimal shift lengths. 
• 24/7 Access: Now,the app is empowering coaches to better strategize prior to the game, make data-driven adjustments during the game, and analyze performance after the game. Usage data tells us that this expanded access is driving the increased adoption and coaches are watching their next opponent play, thru the app, to help collect information and shape the game plan … even on off days. 

Once Puck Tracking data is fully operational in the Puck and Player Tracking system, the following future enhancements will be integrated into the SAP-NHL Coaching Insights App for iPad: 

• Puck Zone Time: Coaches will be able to display eight different variants of data making it even more accurate to identify puck zone time. Also, coaches will be able to filter by player and periods of games.  
• Virtual Replay: These new animations coming next season visually simplify how coaches can see how the puck enters specific zones, and greater details on the X’s and O’s in terms of how the players either collapsed or prevailed during these pressure moments. Every game will be available to view in real-time or in full-game replay. 

And, when tracking enabled pucks are brought back on to the ice, paired with the NHL’s existing player tracking system, the full data processing capabilities of the SAP HANA Cloud database will be recognized.  

As the processing engine, SAP HANA Cloud will house, update, and translate a tremendous amount of new, actionable data in near real-time to coaching staffs. In the future, as these advanced analytics become more mainstream, it’s reasonable to expect an influx of new statistics for fans to consume on broadcasts, nhl.com/stats, and social media.  

You can predict a large number of unsung heroes – those that have excelled at the little things – to gain some exposure from success in less obvious areas like zone-time effectiveness in offensive/defensive zones, and player +/- in zone-time possessions. As these technologies continue to advance, fans can expect to enjoy deeper insights and new statistical categories to rank, compare, and debate their favorite players in new ways. Not to mention, the enjoyment of watching “the fastest game on ice” … become even faster.  

Check out the Global Sponsorships page to learn more about our sports & entertainment transformations. 

During the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, more Canadian women working in technology agree that they have a good work-life balance and feel supported by their company, compared to Canadian women working outside of technology. However, they are more likely to report feeling like their career growth and goals have been stunted, and an astonishing 44 per cent of respondents agree that the pandemic notwithstanding, technology companies do not really want to hire women.   

The survey shows that technology companies have done a good job helping women manage the new way of work: Women in technology are more likely to agree they feel supported by their company (63 per cent vs. 51 per cent in non-technology roles), have a good work-life balance (57 per cent vs. 50 per cent in non-technology roles) and feel more productive (54 per cent vs. 33 per cent in non-technology roles).   

However, due to the pandemic, nearly half (48 per cent) of women in technology agree that their career growth or goals have been stunted, higher than those not in the technology sector (31 per cent). This is particularly true with younger women in the industry and those who are also caregivers. Over half (53 per cent) of younger generations are more likely to agree that their career growth or goals have been stunted than older generations (37 per cent). Nearly two-thirds (59 per cent) of women in technology who care for an adult and over half (52 per cent) of women with childcare responsibilities agree with the sentiment.   

The survey identifies other factors that technology companies need to address during and post-pandemic:  

As a result of the pandemic, women in technology are more likely to feel unmotivated in their careers (45 per cent vs. 39 per cent in non-technology roles), feel stifled in their career growth or goals (43 per cent vs. 33 per cent in non-technology roles), and overall have felt their careers have been impacted negatively (41 per cent vs. 29 per cent in non-technology roles). 

The majority of women in technology indicate it is important that their employer offers career growth workshops or programs (78 per cent vs. 68 per cent in non-technology roles) and increase informal meetings to foster employee engagement (74 per cent vs. 65 per cent in non-technology roles).While companies are still facing the challenges of the pandemic, the technology industry needs to focus on both recovery efforts and continuing to support women as future leaders.   

True Global Intelligence fielded an online survey on behalf of SAP Canada of 592 Canadian women who are professionals in technology and non-technology fields. The survey was fielded online from February 18 to March 2, 2021. Women in technology were identified as employed in a technology role or technology company.  

For more information, visit the SAP News Center or follow SAP on Twitter at @SAPNews.  

SAP Canada has announced the appointment of Brian Moore as SAP Canada’s Chief Operating Officer. As COO, Brian will design and implement business strategies, set performance and growth targets, drive operational excellence that supports customer success, and promote SAP’s award-winning company culture.

Based in Calgary, Brian has served as North America’s COO for SAP’s Intelligent Spend Management Team, leading the transformation of the business in partnership with regional leaders across the continent. He has earned a reputation as being customer-focused, outcome-oriented, and as an advocate for promoting diversity and early talent across his teams.

Prior to his North American role, Brian led the Intelligent Spend Management business turnaround in Canada, with his team winning accolades internally for its success in 2018 and 2019, which he credits to the culture of the team. Recently celebrating a decade with SAP, Brian also previously served as Canada’s western leader. Prior to SAP, he led successful teams with SAS and Sun Microsystems.

Brian will take over from former Canadian COO Sam Masri, who has taken on a new role as the Global Head of the Industry and Value Advisory organization. Sam has joined a global league of industry-leading professionals who partner with SAP customers around the world to create business and societal value by leveraging SAP innovations.

SAP Canada has become one of Canada’s most revered employers. In 2021, the company was honored with a Glassdoor Employees’ Choice Award, recognizing SAP Canada as one of the best places to work in Canada.

SAP Canada Inc. has been honored with a Glassdoor Employees’ Choice Award, recognizing the Best Places to Work in 2021 in Canada. The Employees’ Choice Award, now in its 13th year, is based solely on the input of employees, who elect to provide anonymous feedback by completing a company review about their job, work environment and employer on Glassdoor, the worldwide leader on insights about jobs and companies.

On Glassdoor, current and former employees voluntarily and anonymously share insights and opinions about their work environments by sharing a company review, designed to capture a genuine and authentic inside look at what a specific job may be like at a particular company. When sharing a company review on Glassdoor, employees are asked to rate their satisfaction with the company overall, and key workplace factors like career opportunities, compensation and benefits, culture and values, senior management and work/life balance. In addition, employees are asked to describe the best reasons to work at their companies as well as any downsides.

Glassdoor’s Best Places to Work were determined using company reviews shared by U.S.-based employees between October 22, 2019 and October 19, 2020. To be considered for the Canada category, a company must have had at least 1,000 employees and have received at least 25 ratings across each of the eight workplace attributes from Canada-based employees during the period of eligibility. The final list is compiled using Glassdoor’s proprietary algorithm, led by its Economic Research Team, and takes into account quantity, quality and consistency of reviews. Complete awards methodology can be found here: https://www.glassdoor.com/Award/index.htm

For the complete list of the Glassdoor Best Places to Work winners in 2021, pleasevisit: https://www.glassdoor.ca/Award/Best-Places-to-Work-Canada-LST_KQ0,26.htm

SAP today announced the launch of the SAP® Intelligent Trade Claims Management solution, which enables consumer products companies to increase their financial efficiency. SAP Intelligent Trade Claims Management is a cloud native solution in SAP’s industry cloud that applies intelligent technologies to automate and improve the trade claims process between consumer products companies and retailers.

By utilizing SAP Intelligent Trade Claims Management, companies are able to auto-match deductions instead of the previous time-consuming, inaccurate and costly manual matching process. The virtual assistant uses a combination of machine learning and artificial intelligence to automate claims processing, to recommend actions to accounts receivable analysts for faster exception handling, and to provide visibility from the retailers to the consumer products company. The solution enables brands such as MapleLeaf Foods Inc. to save money, improve compliance and reduce financial risk.

The consumer products industry is expected to grow to $14 trillion by 2025, and brands spend at least 20 per cent of their gross revenue on trade promotions with retailers. Furthermore, trade promotions are the second line item on a consumer products company’s profit and loss statement, and they have a direct impact on key performance indicators. 

With an estimated 20 per cent of gross revenue tied up on the balance sheet, many companies write off thousands of small claims, aged deductions and invalid deductions. SAP Intelligent Trade Claims Management helps companies reduce their financial loss and reinvest the savings into growing their businesses. As this Harvard Business Review study notes, companies that survive economic downturns “master the delicate balance between cutting costs to survive today and investing to grow tomorrow do well after a recession.”

Changes to the workplace are accelerating in Canada, forcing leaders to adapt to unexpected disruptions, anticipate future challenges, and plan for strategic changes, according to a survey released today by Oxford Economics, the Society of Human Resources Management (SHRM) and SAP SuccessFactors, a division of SAP SE.

Some 50 per cent of Canadian respondents said they expect flexible work policies to be a talent differentiator, according to the report “The Future of Work Arrives Early: How HR Leaders are Leveraging the Lessons of Disruptions.” However, 57 per cent expect maintaining productivity given new ways of working to be an ongoing challenge. More than 37 per cent of respondents said that establishing a culture that supports remote employees will also be a challenge when the pandemic subsides, and most acknowledge that their workers have had very different experiences depending on if they are salaried, hourly, office or field workers. Nearly 30 per cent of respondents plan to invest in listening tools or employee surveys, which could help organizations keep a pulse on employee sentiment as changes to the workplace continue.

The report found that 74 per cent of respondents in Canada said their company has the technology it needs to navigate the changing work environment, and 37 per cent expect to invest in remote collaboration tools. Still, only 22 per cent of respondents said that their workers can work remotely and have the necessary technology and environment to do so effectively. Some 38 per cent of respondents expect to reduce their office footprint.

When it comes to attracting talent, 17 per cent of respondents in Canada believe competing for talent will be a major challenge. Top factors to attract and retain talent include flexible work policies (62 per cent), finding new ways of delivering/selling/marketing existing products and services (61 per cent), and the financial stability of the organization (59 per cent).

Looking forward, only 27 per cent of respondents in Canada are planning to invest in learning programs for reskilling and upskilling over the next 12 months. This compares to 22 per cent of U.S. respondents and 38 per cent of respondents outside of the U.S., despite employee readiness to learn new skills.

“The Future of Work Arrives Early: How HR Leaders are Leveraging the Lessons of Disruption” reportsurveyed HR leaders in 10 countries, including Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, India, Mexico, Spain, the United Kingdom and the United States. The data in this press release represents more than 300 HR leaders in Canada. Download the Canadian report and the global report.

A new SAP study conducted in partnership with IDC Canada discovered that companies that were well into their digital transformation, performed better through the COVID-19 pandemic, while companies without a robust digital strategy are being left behind.

The study found that while 95 per cent of enterprises surveyed had established a formal digital strategy, up from 85 per cent in 2019, most companies were at wildly different stages on their journey to becoming a digitally transformed “intelligent enterprise.”

Of the 17 per cent of Canadian enterprises identified as Intelligent Enterprise (IE) Leaders, 82 per cent have a digital strategy that is fully integrated into the core of the business or is complete and already producing significant results. At the other end of the spectrum, 98 per cent of Canadian enterprises categorized as IE Observers (14%) are only just beginning to build their digital strategies or executing on them. This divide in digital readiness has revealed a clear connection between COVID-19 resiliency and IE progress. 

The study examined the impact of COVID-19 on organizations’ revenue, workforce, operational capacity, and facilities. While these core business functions have been impacted in two thirds of Canadian enterprises, IE Leaders have been more resilient, with 14 per cent of IE Leaders indicating they expect a revenue increase during the pandemic.

The new study also found key attributes that have helped IE Leaders remain resilient through the pandemic:

• 49 per cent of IE Leaders are very willing to adjust their workforce mix to support digital initiatives, compared with only 7 per cent of IE Observers.
• 91 per cent of IE Leaders believe it is very important to improve employee experience while improving customer experience, compared to 42 per cent of IE Observers.
• 47 per cent of IE Leaders have a change management strategy that is fully integrated into the digital strategy, as compared with IE Observers, who either are still developing a change management strategy or do not have one at all.  

Created by IDC Canada, The Intelligent Enterprise: Building an Agile and Resilient Business, can be read here.

AppDynamics, a part of Cisco and the world’s #1 APM solution, today announced SAP Peak. This is the latest innovation in application and business performance monitoring, which allows IT technologists to manage complex ERP and business intelligence environments in real-time.

The ability to monitor these environments is crucial, but limitations with SAP has meant that technologists have struggled to identify performance issues across their SAP landscapes and the applications they connect. Resulting outages, issues with core transactions and lengthy mean-time-to-resolution (MTTR) all negatively impact the customer and employee digital experience and ultimately cause a loss in productivity and revenue.

With AppDynamics SAP Peak, technologists can now utilize the world’s leading application and business performance monitoring tools to monitor the SAP landscape in real-time, including logs, metadata, background jobs, S/4HANA database and the application server. This enables technologists to gather the business critical insights they need to ensure the smooth running of their operations. With full stack observability across SAP and non-SAP components before, during and after migration, organizations can also mitigate risk and confidently move to S/4HANA or the cloud.

SAP Peak builds on AppDynamics’ existing SAP monitoring solution by providing new and advanced functionality, including:

• Business iQ for Business Scenario Transaction Analytics: Bringing visibility and understanding to how bottlenecks are impacting critical business processes by allowing users to monitor key SAP business scenarios, starting with Order to Cash, and then correlating that information back to business performance.
• ABAP Code-Level Visibility: Provides base-level APM functionality for SAP monitoring that includes transaction/code level visibility, dynamic baselining, easier Root Cause Analysis of issues, reduced MTTR and application flow maps of the SAP ABAP stack.
• Deep SAP Performance Insights: Supplies dashboards that display performance metrics, logs and events for the overall SAP landscape, including processes outside of the user business transactions. These views can help to reduce cost of managing data, save time in performance and regression testing, and help provide visibility into the availability of business related transactions.
• Server and Network Visibility: Facilitates full-stack visibility across SAP landscapes to identify and isolate infrastructure performance issues, further reducing MTTR and breaking down operational silos.

AppDynamics SAP Peak is generally available today. Read more about SAP Peak on the AppDynamics blog to get started.

Although it is difficult to predict what the future of business travel will look like, one thing that’s certain is the key role technology will play in easing the concerns of business travellers.

A recent survey of business travellers by SAP Concur – a leader in integrated travel, expense and invoice management solutions – shows:

• Mobile check-in is the most important mobile app feature (52%) Canadians want when travel resumes, followed by traveller safety information (38%,), the ability to book air travel (38%), andthe ability to view and manage their trip itinerary (36%). 

• Canadian business travellers are looking for a breadth of on-demand functions, including loyalty programs (30%), the ability to automatically create and submit an expense report (21%), and even the ability to track and offset their carbon footprint (12%)
  • Nearly 3 in 10 (28%) also want automatic notifications for out-of-policy bookings or expenses.

• 93 per cent of Canadian business travellers note some measures are critical for safely returning to the road, especially mandatory personal health screenings for travelling employees (40%), limiting travel to only the most critical trips (38%), and real-time health and safety updates (34%).

• When travel starts, Canadian business travellers are most likely to start their booking with online travel agencies (24%) or directly with an airline or hotel website/app (22%). 

Additional findings:

Notable highlights of the 200 responding Canadian business travellers in the global study include:

·       Business travel plays an important role in the success of today’s enterprise:

o   Canadian business travellers expect their company to experience negative outcomes due to travel restrictions around COVID-19, including a reduced number of deals or contracts signed that require in-person interactions (51%) and declines in new business wins that require in-person meetings (44%).

·       Business travellers expect an increase in discrimination against certain groups while travelling:

• Nearly 9 in 10 Canadian business travellers (89%) expect increased discrimination in the wake of COVID-19, especially against travellers exhibiting cold or flu symptoms (59%), travellers from countries with high infection rates (43%)—and even travellers of Asian descent (43%).
• More than 1 in 4 Canadian business travellers (27%) also believe there will be an increase in discrimination against the elderly, as well as those wearing enhanced personal protective equipment (26%).

• Health and safety are now top priority for business travellers when on the road:

• Health and safety have become the top priority for 2 in 5 (43%) Canadian business travellers which is more than three times as many who prioritize business needs (13%).
• Safety was only the second priority last year, but the effects of COVID-19 have exacerbated the issue from 24% to 43%.
• Top concerns about returning to business travel also include infecting their families (69%) and getting sick themselves (68%).

·       Companies need to update travel policies to help business travellers return to the road safely:

• 93% of Canadian business travellers consider some measures critical for safely returning to the road, including:
  • Mandatory personal health screenings for travelling employees (40%), limiting travel to only the most critical trips (38%), real-time health and safety updates (34%), and easier access to personal protective equipment (28%).
• More than 9 in 10 Canadian business travellers (92%) believe they’d benefit from company training, especially, trainings on how to protect their health and safety during travel (50%) and how to maintain healthy habits while travelling (50%).

The full global white paper and Canadian findings can be found here.