As finance professionals, we’re becoming more and more relied upon to steer businesses, even going as far as exiting things that don’t work and supporting innovations that new technology enables. By applying the example of Tesla to the finance world, one can learn about ambition and how to do things that are dramatically different from the status quo, saidĚýDarrel Orsmond, industry head of financial services at enterprise application software company,ĚýAfrica.

“People think about change in different ways,” he says. “Considering the fact that certain cultures are ingrained in companies, you therefore have to think really hard about what you’re trying to do. If you get things marginally wrong, the failure is business wide.”

The convergence of industries that has been accelerated by COVID-19 has facilitated a more integrated network economy and reinforced the fact that change is inevitable. “As industries converge and we all move into one another’s spaces, business demands fundamentally shift,” said Darrel. So how do we equip ourselves to be prepared, especially considering predictions that by 2024, tiny bits of legacy infrastructure will be left in functions like finance?

“Companies are recognising that there’s another way to run their businesses, which necessitates reporting in a completely different way,” said Darrel. For example, existing bank structures are trading themselves out of business, he said, as boundaries between business and borders change. “As this happens, the ability to control the processes banks traditionally run disappears.” No one cares where debit processing comes from: they care about the transaction itself, no matter who facilitates it. This completely changes the way banks think about what they do. Consumers are ultimately driving such changes through their behaviour.

“The notion of defined boundaries in business is completely flawed,” Darrel continued. “The value-driven question for finance is: why are the most valuable customers in our business transacting less on channels we built for them?” It’s difficult to answer such questions and others that go beyond finance. “Yet the nature of finance function is now having to answer value function,” he added, “because the finance function has the role of steering the organisation, because they are ultimately the custodians of the truth.”

Applying the example of Tesla, Darrel spoke of the way that Elon Musk decided that the future is in battery-driven cars – which at the time didn’t exist. “He therefore needed to build every single thing that was required from car charging points, to special lithium batteries, to a completely new vehicle production line.” The rate of the change that Tesla brought was so fast that there was no need to even patent this new technology.

This rate of innovation is key when we decide how we compete in the business space, whether we’re a big or small organisation. Like Musk, we need to completely redesign things. All of us face constant changes happening around us – every organisation is in a state of flux. “You therefore need to move your ambition as far out as you possibly can – learning from the example of Tesla,” said Darrel.

“Yet, while marketing people may sell you the future, finance people need to account for it. It’s important that in thinking about where we are and we need to be, we all support all the people we work with to be as ambitious as possible.”

Yet, he added, we need to marry ambition with a clear plan that’s facilitated by carefully architected platforms based on the data that we as finance professionals collect. We therefore need to start building our capabilities with an end goal in mind – while accounting for real-time information that allows for immediate course corrections.

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Having worked in the tech industry for over 30 years, I still get goosebumps when I consider the positive potential of technology on our continent. Thanks to technology, we are better off than ever before.

However, popular culture tends to accentuate the worst of technology’s potential. Movies glorify hackers that bring cities to their knees. Future humans are enslaved by robots, with rebel groups celebrated as they save the world from ‘the machine’.

Social media, designed to connect people and create platforms for engagement, have been misdirected to spread fake news, perpetuating a mistrust of businesses, governments, and brands.

All of this has done serious damage not only to democracies around the world, but to the relationships we have with one another. This has hampered our ability to come together in the face of the enormous challenges we face.

An era of unprecedented progress

And yet, it’s not possible to think about progress without considering the role that technology plays.

Technology and human innovation have unlocked huge benefits for mankind and have helped usher in an era of unprecedented growth and opportunity.

We are healthier than ever before, and our life expectancy continues to increase, thanks in part to advances in medicine including vaccines that have eradicated previously lethal diseases.

Fewer people live in extreme poverty than before. showed a 50% drop in people living on less than $1.25 per day between 1990 and 2015.

More people have access to education, and most of the world enjoys greater freedom than ever before, thanks largely to the internet and our smartphones that give us new ways of expressing ourselves socially, politically, and creatively.

Solutions to an uncertain future

As we enter an era of uncertainty and rapid change, it is worth considering our relationship with technology and whether we are positioned to meet the inevitable challenges coming our way.

We will face more change in the next ten years than the last century. Our current ways of living and doing business are unsuited for this future.

Futurist Gerd Leonhard believes it’s not a question of whether we will have the technology to solve the world’s most pressing issues – we already do.

What remains a question is whether we will cooperate to use technology wisely and whether we can act in time.

Overcoming the challenges of a changing climate, food insecurity, pollution and waste, economic development and social upliftment require new technologies – or new and innovative uses for existing technologies.

Let’s take the issue of food security as an example.

The farm as digital enterprise

Food is one of the most basic and fundamental needs. Alarmingly, nearly nine million people die of hunger or hunger-related disease each year. And yet, the US alone spends more on diets every year than would be needed to ensure every hungry person on Earth can eat.

Africa is particularly vulnerable to food scarcity due to its relatively lower levels of development and wealth. The pandemic has only exacerbated the problem: data indicates that about 20% of the continent’s population experience hunger.

This makes the agricultural sector, which is responsible for 60% of jobs on the continent, vital to Africa’s fortunes.

According to UN data, food production in Africa is led by 250 million smallholder farmers who collectively produce 80% of food consumed on the continent.

However, the farmers are often at the mercy of the elements with very little in the way of tools, technology, or data to improve their yields or unlock market opportunities.

The introduction of technology tools in the African smallholder farming supply chain has helped farmers mitigate risk and scale their operations to move away from subsistence farming.

SAP’s Rural Sourcing Management tool, which connects smallholder farmers with agriculture supply chains and brings transparency to the sourcing of raw materials, is turning these farms into digital enterprises and the farmers into digital entrepreneurs.

In Nigeria, for example, 850 000 small maize producers have been integrated into the larger agricultural value chain and now enjoy access to weather, crop and farming data as well as better selling opportunities.

Tech as a force for good

Every person and every business have a role to play in helping to solve some of our current challenges. In Ghana, for example, a collaboration between SAP, the World Economic Forum and the Global Plastic Action Partnership is bringing positive change to the country’s plastics supply chain.

More than 2000 Ghanaian waste pickers are being incorporated in a ground-breaking circular economy initiative in a project that measures the quantities and types of plastic they collect.

Through the Rural Sourcing Management tool, data about the plastic waste they collect is analysed and matched to market-related prices in local and global value chains.

Organisations that prioritise sustainability can then opt to pay a premium for more socially responsible plastics, while the waste pickers can enjoy higher wages for their work.

In our own business, 51·çÁ÷has committed that 5% of global procurement will be with social enterprises by 2025, with another 5% to diverse businesses.

As we journey into an uncertain future, we have the opportunity every step of the way to choose to use technology in the service of good. Whether you are a tech start-up looking for a breakthrough, a social enterprise solving the next big problem or a corporate wondering how to make a difference, think about the future you want to help shape on the continent.

In a world with so many challenges and such an abundance of bad news, technology holds the key to a brighter and happier future – provided we choose to use tech for good.

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Unleashing the creativity and potential of every employee

At SAP, there are several programs that develop talent, while bringing SAP’s purpose to life and creating social impact. One of those programs is the 51·çÁ÷Social Sabbatical Program, an award-winning CSR portfolio. Another example is , SAP’s flagship social intrapreneurship initiative that drives innovation and gives employees the permission, time, technology, and mentorship to turn their passion for making a difference into sustainable, income generating ventures. Founded by Adaire Fox-Martin, Executive Board Member, 51·çÁ÷SE Customer Success, the 1BLives initiative is SAP’s social innovation platform that aspires to help improve the lives of one billion people.

From social entrepreneurs scaling their ventures, to large corporates re-examining their supply chains, through to governmental bodies looking to support wider social change – by finding challenges and potential solutions 51·çÁ÷supports the winning ideas of their employees with investment funds of those who seek to make a positive difference in the world. 51·çÁ÷One Billion Lives is about unleashing the creativity of every employee to generate social impact around the UN Sustainable Development Goals. To put the previous outcomes into perspective: Until now, One Billion Lives has improved the protection of over 23 million people from natural disasters, improved the results of cancer treatments for over 60 percent of the cancer population in India and is gearing to eliminate child labor in cobalt mines. Life changing, isn’t it?

Times of change present limitless opportunities

The 51·çÁ÷One Billion Lives Initiative is open to employees across the globe and organized by global teams in collaboration with regional program managers. Each year regional teams plan and execute ideation workshops across their respective regions where colleagues meet and jointly ideate. The planning for the 2020 edition of the program was ongoing when suddenly the world changed due to the Coronavirus pandemic. The new reality forced the organizing teams to shift this program to a virtual format. What seemed to be a challenge back then turned into an opportunity of a lifetime.

Undoubtedly, there are many benefits of meeting face-to-face but so there are of virtual collaboration. SAP’s EMEA South region spans from the South of Europe, over the entire African continent to the Middle East, making it the most diverse region in all of SAP. Some colleagues work in cross-regional roles and teams, others don’t. By turning SAP’s flagship social intrapreneurship initiative into a virtual one, SAP’s EMEA South region provided its over 5.000 employees the unique opportunity to collaborate and co-create for social impact – together with peers, who they have never met before. A sense of community across the program participants was created: colleagues wished each other happy Easter, happy orthodox Easter and Ramadan Kareem. Participants learned new local expressions and most importantly they learned a lot from each other.

When looking at the success of innovation in teams and organizations, diversity is a key differentiator and a catalyst for innovative outcomes. Hence, in addition to the unique value for individuals the new format also led to a higher innovation outcome. The result: within just a few weeks the teams of dedicated colleagues have crafted innovative solutions for social challenges, operating at startup speed in addition to their day-to-day jobs. Diversity matters: to make a positive difference for individuals and for one billion people out there.

“The situation around the pandemic made us pause and remember what we had already known but not taken into consideration in the context of One Billion Lives: there is a direct link between innovation and diversity,“ said Marita Mitschein, Senior Vice President – Digital Skills, 51·çÁ÷Southern Europe, Africa and Middle East, and Managing Director of the 51·çÁ÷Training and Development Institute. “The new normal forced us to adjust what has always been working well. And those changes impacted the experience of the One Billion Lives program in a positive way.”

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