SAP report urges Middle East's businesses to invest in tech or risk irrelevance

A recent report from German software giant SAP and the Economist Intelligence Unit urged businesses in the Middle East to keep up with the ever-changing digital world if they want to stay competitive.

Firms are jostling to capture the competitive advantage that comes from leveraging big data and predictive analytics as well as advances in mobile technology at the heart of their core businesses.

Many organizations are reaping unforeseen benefits in business performance resulting from increasing the accessibility of information across organizations, the report said. 

The ability to share information – be it on prospective clients, existing customers, on internal processes or any other kind of data – is showing itself to be a boon to business operations. McKinsey & Company reported that businesses that embrace digital transformations could see increased revenue as much as 30 percent.

“This will be not just another evolution in technology,” Hannes Liebe, COO for SAP in the Middle East, said. “It will be a revolution for both the way business are run and also how new business models are suddenly possible... . Businesses will have to redefine their approach to stay relevant.”

The SAP report says new technologies are already creating a whole business reality, and companies will have to invest or risk becoming irrelevant.