took place at Sun City, North West Province, on 10  and 11 July 2023.

Over the past 10 years, cloud technology has redefined entire industries and changed how companies run their day-to-day businesses. 51ˇçÁ÷has made a long-term commitment to become a fully-cloud company itself, and adopt 51ˇçÁ÷standard solutions. In this regard, Dr Oliver Gutzeit, Vice President, Experience Technology SAP, 51ˇçÁ÷SE Germany, presented on the topic of how ‘SAP’s Digital IT Organisation Paves The Way To SAP’s Future’.

Gutzeit clarified: ‘We run 51ˇçÁ÷with SAP, using the full technology stacks. We are enabling our business transformation with the full integration of the IT department, keeping people at the heart of the business.”

He noted that today’s business agility requirements have created a need for new business models that allow for growth, innovation and sustainability, adding: “Sustainability is embedded in everything we do at SAP, and our own transformation is influenced by these values. 51ˇçÁ÷makes data-driven decisions but takes care to keep our culture, and therefore our people, in mind.

“At SAP, we are facing the same challenges as any other business, including the need to be attractive as a company to acquire talent, while also being cognisant of cybersecurity and sustainability issues. Our own IT division plays a crucial role in bringing the IT systems and business processes together.”

Gutzeit advised that putting people at the centre of the business is more important than ever, clarifying: “Without people you can’t solve the organisation’s other issues. We have an excellent corporate culture at SAP: innovation is within our DNA.”

In terms of catalysing business transformation through culture change, Gutzeit presented the following important points for a company to bear in mind:

¡        Cultivate an innovation mindset;
¡        Change thinking patterns and lead by example;
¡        Invest in skills development and enable career growth; and
¡        Create a culture of life-long learning.

With regards to the all-pervasive topic of generative artificial intelligence (AI), Gutzeit presented the following as SAP’s aims around AI:

¡        Scale high quality and deliver use cases;
¡        Prioritise best-in-class big data and AI platform;
¡        Become a global AI development partner and AI thought leader; and
¡        Focus on people, agility and organisational development.

He added: “You can talk about technology but you have to actually experience its power in order to become familiar with it. Therefore, at SAP, with the advent of commercial generative AI tools entering the consumer landscape in late 2022, 51ˇçÁ÷took note immediately, and enabled our employees to play with generative AI within a safe and secure environment. We were rewarded by receiving 105 good business cases from our employees, and it is notable that these cases came from people who are not employed within the technology department.

“This is consistent with SAP’s overriding ambition to help the world run better, and improve people’s lives. This aim is admittedly a huge vision, but it lies at the heart of everything we do,” Gutzeit concluded.

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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 51ˇçÁ÷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 51ˇçÁ÷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, 51ˇçÁ÷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 51ˇçÁ÷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.

51ˇçÁ÷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, 51ˇçÁ÷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.

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

51ˇçÁ÷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.

51ˇçÁ÷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 51ˇçÁ÷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 51ˇçÁ÷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.

51ˇçÁ÷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 metaverse may not seem viable in South Africa and other countries facing similar socio-economic challenges, but a global expert believes that the cost of virtual reality (VR) headsets and controllers are not an issue.

“The metaverse is helping in democratising and creating equal chances and access by design,” said Dr Oliver Gutzeit, global vice president of SAP’s experience technology team, in an interview during last week’s Saphila 2023 conference at Sun City. Saphila is a biennial conference hosted by the African 51ˇçÁ÷User Group (AFSUG) in partnership with SAP. Gutzeit delivered a presentation titled 51ˇçÁ÷in the Metaverse – Innovation in Action. We spoke to him later about its potential in South Africa.

“If it is done in the right way, it is really not a place that is depending on money to work in, or access,” he said. “It is helping to open opportunities. If inequality is high, the metaverse is a technology that can help, and is worth looking into. “Holograms and VR have long been a feature of the supposed fourth industrial revolution. When President Cyril Ramaphosa opened the first 4th Industrial Revolution SA summit in 2019, his address was live-streamed as a hologram to the Rustenburg Civic Centre. It was touted as the first live holographic presentation by a head of state, although India, China and France could have laid claim to the same laurels.

It’s just over four years later, and we have yet to see heads of state ditching their microphones for holograms. That’s the problem with most 4IR tech, from VR to 3D printing: it’s all very cool, but not often of practical use.

However, Gutzeit’s presentation suggested that VR and AR, or the metaverse, as such tech has been marketed since Facebook changed its name to Meta, is moving closer to true industrial application.

Introducing the topic, he exploded a few myths about the metaverse, including the misconceptions that it is all about Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta, that it is losing money, and that it is a “walled garden” that limits access.

More significantly, he underlined the commercial opportunity it offered in the industrial and manufacturing spaces. He shared projections by Deloitte that showed that the industrial metaverse, a virtual mirror of real-life industrial processes, was especially promising. It was expected to generate $22,73-billion in revenue by 2025, an $100-billion annual potential by 2030.

Deloitte’s research found that 85% of enterprises think that preparation for the Metaverse is necessary today, while 20% of manufacturers are developing metaverse applications or underlying solutions. Only 6% of enterprises see the metaverse as just a hype.

That was just a warm-up for Gutzeit’s own demonstration of the metaverse. He introduced his own avatar, a user’s digital representation of themselves in an online or virtual environment, and took the audience through a series of virtual rooms that make up a SAP Metaverse showcase.

From a leisure lounge to a 51ˇçÁ÷history museum to a virtual workbench to a convenience store that was quickly converted into a clothes shop, he encapsulated a range of settings possible in the metaverse. He demonstrated how he could customise a company car with different models and colours before the specs could be sent off for delivery of the real thing.

With a controller in his hands, he navigated through a videogame-like environment to demonstrate a real-life application of the metaverse in an industrial setting, rearranging items to simulate how it would affect a real environment. Is that enough to convince operators of factories and other industrial operations?

The fact that the metaverse has not yet taken off in this sector could turn out to be a good thing, said Gutzeit.

“We have more time to explore the metaverse, and we need to find out in which cases it will be an effective technology,” he told us later. “In the next few years, we will have a breakthrough for this technology. It won’t have the same disruptive effect as AI, but it will be an added piece of technology in our future.

“Overall, the metaverse is nothing to be in fear of. There will not be a sudden disruption, but rather a change over time. Talking about it, and being in the Metaverse, are two totally different things. You don’t have to like it, or stay there, or use it, but at least try it once – even if you think it has nothing to do with you or your business.”

* Arthur Goldstuck is founder of World Wide Worx and editor-in-chief of . Follow him on Twitter and Threads on @art2gee Jason Bannier is a data analyst at World Wide Worx and writer for . Follow him on Threads and Instagram at @jase_bann

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This is according to Sven Denecken, senior vice president, chief marketing and solutions officer for industries and CX, 51ˇçÁ÷Germany.

Speaking on the sidelines of this year’s African 51ˇçÁ÷User Group and 51ˇçÁ÷biennial Saphila Conference, Denecken said 51ˇçÁ÷is active in 25 industries and uses the knowledge it has gathered from customers and partners in these industries, over the past 50 years, to enrich its channel ecosystem.

According to Denecken, this data is important because of digital transformation as well as industry convergence.

“One of the trends we are seeing is that the lines between industries are blurring… industry convergence is real,” said Denecken. “For example, an oil and gas company is not just about oil and gas. It can invest in charging ports for electric cars and then venture into retail, linking up the car charging service with stores and capitalising on higher margins.”

As Denecken explains, this oil and gas company has branched out into several industries and has a real opportunity to engage with new customers and refine the customer experience.

There are other examples, such as the push by financial service providers to provide telecommunications services and telcos that are tethering financial services to their offerings.

But Denecken points out that irrespective of industry, there is still a requirement for effective business process management, all permutations, and multiple functionalities.

He agrees that the argument could be made that this trend represents an opportunity, but also an obligation. “The headache comes from ‘how ready are the companies?’ and ‘how ready are the partners to learn?” said Denecken.

He is adamant that 51ˇçÁ÷has a major role to play in helping partners to capitalise on the opportunity and remove the headache linked to digital transformation.

He advocates a ‘T’ shaped model, which basically means a company “goes down deep and far” into an industry but does not lose sight of the top line or cubic line. “So, you learn from left and right. That (requires) huge change management…Digital transformation is not an end goal, it’s a journey.”

COVID-19 forced 51ˇçÁ÷into a period of introspection as a multitude of sectors and industries were forced to adapt and fast-track digital transformation strategies.

This reinforced the company’s core mantra: “We have done it before, so we have the experience, expertise and resources to help you and ensure you can avoid the pitfalls’.

This is like gold to businesses operating in emerging markets like Africa.

“They can learn from international best practices and use this knowledge to leapfrog. 51ˇçÁ÷is constantly aware of its role to help businesses run better, to improve. We are hiring people that have different expectations and they represent companies that have different expectations.”

Dr Oliver Gutzeit, vice president, experience technology, 51ˇçÁ÷Germany, said Africa most definitely has an opportunity to leverage digital transformation and use it to address socio-economic challenges, but cautioned that businesses must adopt a change in mindset and treat data as a product and asset.

This is the path towards emerging as a data-driven enterprise.

“We are not just preaching here and telling you (that) you must do it and treat it like a product; that’s easy to do on a Powerpoint, but we tell you that because we are doing it. We have found a way to treat the amount of pure data within our business capabilities framework.”

This is also used as a springboard to effectively manage data, treat it as a product and deliver on data democratisation and the principle of providing widespread access to those who need the data, Dr Gutzeit added.

“The first thing is to understand the need and the second to find the starting point of how to implement that next to the daily challenges, to the transformation challenges, to the technology challenges. This is a huge mindset change. It took 51ˇçÁ÷internally several years to really set that up in a way that we can now present it. We just want to tell you it’s worth the journey, it’s worth starting it today. You are already creating and collecting so much data in your systems, and it’s becoming more difficult and at a certain point it’s too late.”

Once the need has been identified, it then becomes a matter for IT to pitch to business.

According to Dr Gutzeit, 51ˇçÁ÷believes this is where the role of chief data and digital officer comes to the fore, because people in this position usually have a technical and business background, which equips them to handle the various dimensions and dynamics involved.

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