As enterprises strive for the resilience to counter these challenges and pivot to new opportunities, digital transformation can be a critical weapon in their arsenal.

The way companies think about how they plan for technology has to take these macro-economic factors into account, says Nihmal Marrie, MD and partner at Boston Consulting Group (Johannesburg).

A massive 70% of CEOs have said they need to change – but only 12% have made plans to do so.

A lot of the global events are a result of the Ukraine war, Marrie says. So far, 12-milion people have been displaced and the cost of reconstruction runs into the trillions of dollars. But the global supply chain has also suffered from the conflict.

But the Ukraine conflict is not an isolated event, Marrie says. Across the globe unpredictable geopolitics is playing out, underlining other potential flashpoints.

“We have never seen the pace of change like now. So we need to anchor digital decisions on this level of uncertainty.”

In Africa, we will suffer reverberations from the global situation, leading to food insecurity, ongoing conflict, and climate risk. So the continent, and South Africa, need to gear for these changes and prepare for higher inflation.

Dr Martin Kotula, global vice-president: industry and value at SAP, points out that inflation rates have surged by about 400%.

Some of the root causes have been exploding freight costs and volatile lead times; Covid-caused production and harbour shutdowns; food and grocery price increases; and material shortages and reduced supplies.

There have been further pressures from labour unions pushing for increases, spiralling inflation rates and foreign exchange fluctuations, changing company valuation and more.

Into the future, one potential scenario could see global power plays reverting to collaborative mode. Another scenario could see ongoing conflict with concomitant economic shocks.

We could potentially see the building of a western and eastern bloc, and undecided nations forming a third bloc.

The last scenario could see global escalation, which will lead to further conflict, more supply chain disruption and other economic challenges.

These scenarios are important for resilience planning for companies.

A massive 82% of CEOs expect high interest rate to affect their company’s performance; 52% pack the capability in comprehensive cost management to transition to a lean organisation; 97% will take action this year to address global challenges.

Technology and digital transformation could be a game-changer, says Marrie.

“We see an unpredictable outcome, and anything could change day by day,” he says. “The good news is that the advances in digital technology allow us to chart a path to make organisations much more resilient.”

Making the right decisions means building a more resilient and secure tech platform; and to build digital and technology as a capability that can increase efficiency and create competitive advantage.

These organisations will be more resilient and more agile and more innovative.

Enterprises can turn ambiguity into opportunity by rapidly deploying and adapting technology and digitalisation to withstand, recover and thrive in altered circumstances.

Of course, cost is a key element of any CEO’s agenda, Marrie says. “We use the term fit for purpose – tech should be a key enabler of business outcomes, but must be built on a fit for purpose platform.”

Companies are spending significant amounts of money on tech, but there is significant value to be realised.

“However, in gaining cost savings, the technology function must also be fit for purpose.”

New technology projects could save 30% to 50% in costs. But only part of these savings can be realised purely by technology – the rest have to be achieved through business collaboration, with a systematic approach to a business technology model.

Disentangling technology is going to be key to these savings, Marrie says. Regulatory compliance is one driver, followed by risk mitigation, and business and user expectations.

Technology leaders are already looking at various decoupling projects, including social media, applications, data platform, infrastructure, network and vendors. But these all need to be undertaken against the backdrop of regulator compliance, risk mitigation and expectations.

Enterprises have to pay special attention to reducing the digital risk. The potential cost of cyber threats is $2-trillion this year – which is a big potential loss.

At the same time, 82% of breaches are still caused by organisational and people failure. But, with 3,5-million unfilled cybersecurity roles, tis number is not expected to decrease in the short- to medium-term.

Against the backdrop of these challenges, technology and digitalisation re a key driver to future-proofing the business, says Dr Kotula.

It might be obvious, but companies need to focus on planning and forecasting, optimising forecasting and panning, optimising prices and contribution margins, and ensuring supply chain transparency.

Funding the journey can be done by bringing the cost of operations down – using technology. Kotula says defining use cases can be useful in doing this.

“We also have the opportunity free up money t fund large systems, but enterprises also need to protect the core.”

Marrie sys this can be done by disentangling technology and reducing digital risk.

The ideal outcome is to future-proof the business by building a business with growth and resilience.

Technology and digitalisation can help companies to do this.

Analytics can guide companies to fast, informed decisions across all business dimensions. A digital supply chain lets companies identify and analyse the supply chain disruptions, take corrective actions and respond and collaborate in realtime.

Sourcing and procurement lets companies understand spending patterns.

Sales can be optimised with an omni-channel presence with realtime adjustment depending on material availability, lead times and demand changes.

Supply chain finance enables digital capabilities for suppliers in vital cash flow freedom. Working capital can be achieved by leveraging inventory optimisation strategies and hedge risk. Receivables finance gives companies an understanding of when the customer might pay, and how to speed it up.

Human resources systems let employers monitor the employees’ pulse of engagement levels, identify problem areas and mitigate them.

Kotula advises that, to combat inflation, companies must have insight-driven analytics to assess the impact of price spirals. They must look to accelerate cost and cash management. The should become more nimble in decisions and pricing. They must build an agile supply and demand chain.

“The hardest thing is to become a digital and resilient company,” he concludes.

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“In our vision, every organisation and industry will become a network of intelligent, sustainable enterprises,” says Dr Oliver Gutzeit, vice-president: experience technology 51·çÁ÷at SAP.

“When we talk about business transformation, we talk about business agility, supply chain resilience, and sustainability outcomes.”

Transforming the business is the first step in any journey, Dr Gutzeit explains.

This starts with defining the strategic priorities and the business capabilities that support them.

At 51·çÁ÷this started with defining the corporate strategy, defining strategic themes, going through a review and decision-making processes, then moving to IT architecture – and finally delivery of systems that map to the corporate strategies.

Importantly, 51·çÁ÷leveraged its capabilities as a steering instrument to establish a clear link between strategy and execution.

“At the end of the day, IT had to deliver to 51·çÁ÷useful systems to deliver on the business strategy.

“This was a huge game-changer, enabling the business transformation through technology.”

The technology part of the transformation started with translating the business strategy into enterprise architecture, future-proofing this with data management and democratisation of the data.

Scale was vital, and this was achieved with hyperautomation and AI. The end result is to enable a sustainable enterprise that makes sense for employees and customers.

When designing a new enterprise architecture a new business model is vital. At SAP, the traditional business models were run while the new ones were developed within the house of business architecture that encompasses both runways in tandem, on the same foundation with common configuration and master data.

This tandem operation continues as business processes are migrated, modernised and simplified.

51·çÁ÷runs S/4 HANA on a private cloud while running some traditional enterprise systems on-premise.

“That is why we dare to tell customers how to make the migration,” says Dr Gutzeit. “Because we are doing it ourselves.””

Once the architecture is in place, and there is a runway for enterprise transformation, 51·çÁ÷moved to future-proofing the enterprise with data management.

“We are also affected by trends in the market,” Dr Gutzeit says. These include data quality, multi-domain master data, data literacy, data automation, data marketplaces, and a requirement for a chief data officer.

51·çÁ÷focuses on five strategic priorities: configurable material, one customer view, data governance, third-party centre of excellence, and cloud product master data.

51·çÁ÷has defined data as a business capability within the company which is a strategic way of looking at data, Dr Gutzeit explains.

The end goal for data transformation is to democratise data which will increase productivity, accessibility, and agility.

SAP’s data democratisation framework is based on the data foundation layer, enriched with the semantic layer, and the consumption layer which gives users insights, based on the user persona. These personas could be consumers, data analysers, report creator, data modeler or data scientist among others.

Hyperautomation and AI are vital for scaling the digital enterprise.

51·çÁ÷focused on the priorities identified to execute its AI strategy, defined in accordance with the company AI global AI ethics policy.

The priorities were to scale high-quality AI and deliver big data use cases; and to prioritise best-in-class big data and AI platform. The company aims to become a global AI development partner and AI thought leader and focuses on people, agility and organisational development

The company needed to realise value, and it did this by highlighting use cases and successful deployments.

A good example of how 51·çÁ÷embraced the digital enterprise was enhancing more than 50 live AI and ML use cases with new technology trends. The result was 105 new business processes that, developed by business users, increase innovation and outcomes.

“Employees can use these processes every day to increase their innovation and productivity,” Dr Gutzeit says.

Sustainability is at the centre of SAP’s policies, and the digitalisation of processes has helped the company to be more sustainable, to improve people’s lives.

“We have such a multiplication impact at 51·çÁ÷by doing things right,” Dr Gutzeit says.

At the end of the day, the mandate of the transformation journey is to create a digital experience for employees and customers.

The ONE customer portal transforms the digital experience, offering a single point of entry and delivering intelligent and personalised services.

No big change in any enterprise can be accomplished without keeping the people front and centre of the project.

51·çÁ÷realised it had to catalyse transformation through a culture of change. This involved cultivating an innovation mindset, changing thinking patterns, and leading by example; investing in skills development and enabling career growth; and creating a culture of life-long learning, Dr Gutzeit explains.

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“The end of the project is not the end of the story,” says Wassilios Lolas, global vice-president and head of the Signavio Centre of Excellence at SAP. “It is the beginning.”

51·çÁ÷has been in this business for a long time and customers all tell them the same things: it is hard to get the business excited about IT transformation and that transformation is often IT-driven not business-driven.

“We see that customers face two major internal challenges: the one is the C-level perspective; and the other is the businesses and IT realities.”

One the one side, the CEO wants to move quickly, be more agile, able to respond to changing businesses or crises.

On the other side, the reality is the complexity of systems and huge variety of processes.

In most cases, business and IT have grown in complexity together and often lose control of where they are.

Almost all companies find themselves in the position of facing enormous complexity, so they don’t know where or how to start their transformation.

Once a project has started it takes months to prepare, to implement, and to go live – it is too time-consuming.

And once the solutions are up and running, customers often find they have not created enough business value.

“It is this complexity on one side, and the disconnect between business and IT on the other, leading to the decision to move the old ECC systems, as is, without trying to implement changes,”  says Lolas.

To make it more complicated, decision-makers want facts to make data-driven decisions.

“But it is very hard to fix past mistakes if you don’t know where they are, or how they run today.”

Typically, these problems are solved by external consultants. It takes a lot of time and money – and, at the end, only a part of the picture is uncovered.

The end result is that no-one really trusts the answers and business models that don’t necessarily reflect the reality are produced.

51·çÁ÷has launched Signavio, what it calls a plug-and-gain approach to running a RISE initiative and transforming processes fast and with confidence.

Lolas points out that a transformation project usually includes preparation, deployment, and run phases.

In the preparation phase, it is literally as simple as connecting the 51·çÁ÷system to Signavio. This gives the fastest time to direct insight, offering C-level driver summaries, over 1 000 process performance indicators, almost 100 process flows, most frequent blockers, industry-level benchmarks, and more than 1 000 recommendations.

This preparation step can be done in literally a couple of hours, Lolas says. Teams can quickly decide which processes need to be fixed or changed using trusted data.

In deciding how to proceed with business process transformation, Signavio offers the fastest time to deeper intelligence through process variant analysis, process execution investigations, pre-defined dashboards, detailed mining analysis, and best scores across key process areas.

Signavio now includes a best run score comparing the way a process is executed with the best way it could be run. “This comparison gives you an understanding about the best possible performance versus how a business unit is actually performing,” Lolas explains.

The final piece of the preparation picture is the faster time to business process design. It does this via reverse engineering of process models, identifying the company’s best-run execution, defining the to-be processes, and simulating the final process. Signavio offers a library of more than 7 000 best-practice processes that can be plugged in if relevant.

These preparation capabilities are on a platform of process reference content, and collaboration and governance.

The second phase, deployment, is about bringing together the worlds of business and IT.

Signavio helps enterprises to deploy faster, offering a collaboration hub that facilitates collaboration and governance between business and IT. The Solution Manager/cloud application lifecycle manager makes application lifecycle management easier. Meanwhile, the Central Business Configuration helps to ensure applications are properly configured.

Signavio offers fast insights when running the processes, enabling continual innovation.

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Intelligent automation can help to address challenges in 51·çÁ÷custom codes, says Arndt Hoffman, chief customer officer at smartShift, and BMW has achieved some major inroads.

The 51·çÁ÷modernisation story to 51·çÁ÷S/4 HANA is pretty simple on the surface, he says. The end result should be a new 51·çÁ÷system with custom code neatly decoupled from the system.

The reality is not so simple, though – and one of the biggest issues is legacy custom code. In BMW’s case, this goes back to 1989.

Indeed, the average 51·çÁ÷systems has about 22 000 customer objects, 2,7-million lines of code, and up to 2 000 transports per month. Making it worse, about 40% to 60% of custom applications are not used.

All of this leads to an average of 9 000 HANA issues, 17 000 S/4 HANA issues, and thousands of person days of technical debt.

“So why not just throw all the custom code away?” Hoffman asks. “Because there are good reasons to have custom code – so 72% of customers want to keep their customisations.”

The traditional approach to this is manual remediation which is labour intensive, time-consuming, and risky. “And it only scratches the surface, not looking at how you can optimise the code for the future.”

The manual approach is not satisfactory to customers, with most of them giving it a poor score.

smartShift developed its Intelligent Automation Platform to improve this process. Since first developing it 15 years ago, it has enhanced it considerably to cater for new challenges as they arise.

The system takes custom code in the existing 51·çÁ÷environment, analyses it and then transforms it for the target 51·çÁ÷environment – usually 51·çÁ÷S/4 HANA. It can then do a clean core analysis and clean core realisation. The result is a modern 51·çÁ÷system that allows for future innovation in a flexible, scalable, and agile environment.

BMW South Africa has over 16 000 applications, with plenty of custom code. “We wanted to use custom code in an efficient way, but we couldn’t afford to have our developers sitting there and changing it,” says Hanlie van der Berg, 51·çÁ÷architect at BMW’s Rosslyn plant.

The company decided to take a custom code transformation approach customised for each project, using the smartShift Intelligent Automation Platform.

“We had to have guaranteed KPIs,” Van der Berg adds.

BMW identified 69 51·çÁ÷system landscapes in the scope of a multi-year transformation roadmap.

The intent of the project was to improve systems stability and resilience, and allow true speed and agility in transformation.

The project started in September 2018 and so far 116 projects in 45 51·çÁ÷landscapes have been successfully completed.

A massive 60 151 custom objects and 9,7-million lines of code have been decommissioned.

This has resulted in massively reduced yearly maintenance costs, addressed 950 000 issues, and saved 60 000 days of manual labour. “We feel our developers should be working on new systems, not wasting their time modernising old custom code.”

Van der Berg adds that the IT risk has been reduced as well, and agility improved to a two week lead time today.

Manufacturing plant system

The BMW ZAP system at Rosslyn is the local manufacturing plant system that is fully integrated with logistics, finance, retail and sales. It was established in 1995 on release 51·çÁ÷ECC6 Eh97. It is an extra large system with more than 50 000 objects and more than 22 000 interfaces.

“It is an old system and a massive system, but it runs well. And, like all systems, it has to be transformed to the new systems.”

Among the challenges relating to custom code are those relating to upgrades, security, maintenance, performance, documentation, and support.

Using intelligent automation, BMW was able to define how the custom code should change, and the platform takes over from there.

In 2019, the initial analysis was undertaken and a repository cleanup initiated to eliminate unused custom code. “Then we were left with the code that we actually use.. We wanted to modernise this, and also build in more security.”

The code security remediation began in 2020 and was completed in 2022.

BMW and smartShift then did an interface analysis, which  is still ongoing.

The next step will be the S/4 HANA clean-core analysis to let BMW know what code needs to be replaced and what needs to be done to clean up the core.

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But apart from the stress of having to migrate for the deadline, there are huge benefits to making the move to S/4 HANA, says Dr Uwe Grigoleit, senior vice-president: 51·çÁ÷customer evolution.

Customers today face major challenges and imperatives. The world is changing faster than ever, so companies need the agility to adopt new business models, gain efficiencies and transform their mission-critical systems to drive sustainable growth.

Digital transformation is important, but enterprises also need to consider technological transformation, environmental transformation, and economic transformation, Dr Grigoleit says.

SAP’s 2023 product strategy places cloud ERP at the centre, on the business technology platform as a single, unique platform that drives the master data strategy.

Surrounding the cloud ERP system, are industry-specific and sustainable systems, supported by human capital management, spend management, and the business network and customer relationship management. On the next layer are ecosystems solutions, all supported on the business technology platform.

The 51·çÁ÷S/4 HANA Modular Application Portfolio (PAP) includes modules for buy, design, supply, maintain, make, service, sell, people, finance, and cross topics.

Dr Grigoleit explains that the new business processes in S/4 HANA help to drive business transformation by supporting the requirements of the digital economy.

These features include capabilities for service-based businesses and the combination of tangible and non-tangible goods. They also support new industry trends such as contribution-based formulations and others. Modern business processes allow for increased organisation flexibility with an easy-to-manage framework, while new algorithms support complex scenarios.

“We are also making sure the system is easier to use,” says Dr Grigoleit.

S/4 HANA can be accessed from any device, including a mobile, where users can gain instant access to the Intelligent Enterprise Suite.

The 51·çÁ÷Business Technology Platform (BTP), as the base of the S/4 HANA system, is where enterprises can differentiate themselves, Dr Grigoleit says.

With S/4 HANA, 51·çÁ÷extends the digital core and backbone with intelligent tools embedded in the system. “And you can continue to build with extensions via custom code development and integration with BTP services.”

Using the AI-powered 51·çÁ÷portfolio offers numerous benefits. Dr Grigoleit points out that 51·çÁ÷started embedding AI long before it became topical in 2023.
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These AI-powered applications include 51·çÁ÷Cash Application, SuccessFactors Learning Recommendations, Concur Invoice Management, and Customer Data Cloud Intrusion Detection.

The company is also adding selected new AI capabilities to its systems. “We are framing these elements into business AI,” says Dr Grigoleit.

This will allow enterprises to retain their data privacy while training AI for their own business requirements. Using AI and generative AI, 51·çÁ÷has introduced a host of new capabilities that help enterprises to do things in new and more efficient ways.

“The AI can not only answer your questions; it can answer them in the context of your business,” he explains.

The last piece of the end-to-end process story is 51·çÁ÷Signavio Process Transformation Suite (PTS), a cloud-based process management platform that gives companies the ability to understand, improve and transform their business process – fast and at scale.

Dr Grigoleit emphasises that migrating to S/4 HANA enables companies to move their operations from a legacy on-premise landscape to an intelligent sustainable enterprise.

“Creating business value starts with business process optimisation and transformation,” he says.

51·çÁ÷offers end-to-end transformation support for customers making the transition. 51·çÁ÷Application Lifecycle Manager creates a framework for design, build, test, deploy and maintain, with defined methodology, operation automation, collaboration and integration.

RISE with 51·çÁ÷brings together the components need to help customers deliver on their digital transformations, bringing together Cloud ERP, Business Process Transformation, Business Platform and Analytics, and Outcome-driven Services.

To help customers make a start on their S/4 HANA migration, 51·çÁ÷has developed a customer evolution kit which details the steps they need to take.

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This is the word from Peter Blignaut, manager: pre-sales at 51·çÁ÷South Africa, who points out that computers can do nothing without instruction. And when it comes to AI, they need developers and they need governance. “We need people thinking about how the computer is going to do things,” Blignaut says.

Indeed, when we talk about machine learning, which is where the machines learn from people, Blignaut thinks this should be called people teaching instead.

At the same time, people need AI, he adds. “But what are we trying to get out of it?”

The short answer, Blignaut says, is to make us more efficient, to give us more time to think, or simply to work less. “That will help us.”

AI has its root in the 1970s, with the ability to analyse statistics – today it does many things that we take for granted.

More recently, it moved to predictive analytics, attempting to predict how people would behave. This is so ingrained in how we think about the world today that we almost forget that it is an analytical engine behind it, Blignaut says.

The latest iteration is generative AI, which takes enormous amounts of data and uses it to create things we might have though impossible.

Of course, there are some dangers that come along with this, Blignaut adds. “So where there is an opportunity to use it, we need to think about where we are going to use it.”

This is where governance and ethics come in. “This should not be an abstract exercise,” Blignaut says.

He adds that SAP’s principle is that AI needs to be integrated into IT systems in a responsible and ethical way, in a way that provides unbiased and sustainable support to people.

“We need to retain human agency. People need to be making the decisions: we don’t want machines making decisions without the people understanding how or why those decisions were made.

“Without human intelligence, AI can be used to solve a lot of things we maybe didn’t want solved. We must have a human in the loop.”

Of course, companies want their AI to make them more efficient and competitive, but these systems still need to have a human in the loop somewhere.

Addressing bias and discrimination is a big issue and one that needs to be solved. “We need to be aware of where we might be introducing bias and how we can remove it.”

Transparency in AI is vital, and the ability to explain what the I is doing, Blignaut says. Very few people in the world would be able to understand what the AI algorithms do, so we need to make them explainable in order to retain trust.

While we are introducing AI, we need to be aware of the potential impacts on society.

“In Africa we desperately need more jobs for young people,” Blignaut says. “At the same time, if we ignore AI we could lose competitiveness. So we need to think about how we can use young people inside the system.”

Blignaut points out that AI is already available for improving the supply chain. 51·çÁ÷Extended Warehouse Management has introduced an intelligent sorting capability that can reduce the initial setup by lowering implementation efforts and empowering staff. Humans are still involved in the process, supervising the machine learning model as it is regularly retrained using the most recent data.

Another use case is in procurement, where 51·çÁ÷Ariba Buying offers personalised recommendations. The goal is to improve the buying experience with guided buying capability using data like employees’ roles to suggest product and services chosen by peers. This means there needs to be enough data, and people are needed to ensure this happens.

AI can also be used to strengthen human capital management, with 51·çÁ÷SuccessFactors now including generative AI capabilities.

The goal is to enable hiring managers to create compelling and accurate job descriptions that capture the desired skills and attributes of each role. People will still be needed, though, to ensure the language is accessible – and to adequately address all the safety and legal requirements.

Importantly, Blignaut says, we need to ensure that AI is practical in the context of Africa. This means paying attention to use cases, ensuring the technology is open source, and making the learning affordable.

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Sven Denecken, senior vice-president, chief marketing and solutions officer for industries and CX at SAP, points out that there are some trends that are common across all industries – and this gives us the opportunity to learn together.

“I believe that at SAP, together with our partner ecosystem and customers, knows industries. This gives us to ability to develop solutions that help make customers future-proof.”

Because it is an international company, experiences can be shared across the world, often allowing developing markets to leapfrog their developed counterparts, he adds.

An example of how 51·çÁ÷can help customers run efficient operations is the concept of the industry cloud. “I believe that if we standardise a good portion of our businesses using industry cloud we can innovate on the vertical axis.”

A trend driving business today is the move to industry convergence. “Companies are realising that they are in more than one industry. And this is accelerating.”

This convergence has significant implications for value chains cross the board, Denecken says.

From agribusiness to manufacture, from supplier to retail, there are major new opportunities driven by convergence.

Denecken cites an example of e-mobility venturing into retail – which uses the same technology to add services to attract and retain customers by offering services like electric vehicle charging and rewards.

The convergence of industries, like energy and retail , should spark companies to become more creative with their technology to improve the customer’s experience, he says.

“Think about e-mobility and its convergence with ride-sharing, energy companies, and the financial services attached to these industries.”

Best practices are key to shaping industries, Denecken says. “We need to think about best practice – but also next practice, powering innovation. We need to think about how we can shape each industry together.”

When 51·çÁ÷talks about the intelligent enterprise, it is about putting a lot of data into the context of a business process and consuming it as applications, Denecken points out.

“But business processes change all the time, so the challenge is to transform into a resilient intelligent enterprise.”

Reslience comes from managing risks, he adds. Any change needs to be sustainable.

Where technology is going is artificial intelligence. Denecken says. And so 51·çÁ÷is integrating AI into its solutions.

51·çÁ÷solutions include 51·çÁ÷e-mobility, 51·çÁ÷intelligent agriculture, 51·çÁ÷intelligent product recommendation, 51·çÁ÷predictive replenishment, and 51·çÁ÷intelligent trade, claims management.

Importantly, what is vital in the deployment of AI and generative AI is:

* It should be built into the processes, not bolted on.

* It needs to be relevant to the customers, within the context of the experience gathered over the years.

* It needs to be responsible and trustworthy.

“I believe generative AI will democratise AI,” Denecken  says. “People will start in the business with a completely different level of knowledge.

“Our job is to guide them into the right context. We need to open that dialogue. What is the responsible customer application and what is possible?”

GROW with 51·çÁ÷offers partners and customers the ability to enhance their solutions through a software as a service (SaaS) portfolio, together with adoption and acceleration services, and with community and learning.

A degree of technology standardisation allows companies to quickly expand their operations. Denecken cites the example of a company running 51·çÁ÷S/4 HANA Cloud, private edition in its European head office. It was able to quickly roll out across Africa using 51·çÁ÷S/4 HANA cloud public edition.

51·çÁ÷has set up the 51·çÁ÷Business Network for Industries to help customers learn from best practices across the supply chain.

Don’t look at business processes in isolation, but consider sharing that data across the supply chain to add value to all the players, he says.

Sustainabiiity is a big issue worldwide today. The world is facing climate change implications, extreme weather, sea level rise, resource scarcity, an increase in inequality, and a loss of biodiversity.

“This also needs to be brought into a business sense,” Denecken says. .

Companies need to be serious about mitigation and adaptation – and potential business partners will soon ask for proof of those.

51·çÁ÷is serious about demonstrating truth, and to discover the future in partnership with customers, Denecken says.

To this end, 51·çÁ÷has set up experience centres across the world to show how processes are changing and how solutions can be deployed. It has recently opened one in its Woodmead offices.

“There is no time to lose for companies to identify their challenges and how to get to where they need to be,” Denecken concludes.

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