Global Supply Chains Archives - 51��Africa News Center

51��Unveils its Vision for the Intelligent Enterprise

Kathy Gibson — Thu, 03 Jun 2021 08:19:51 +0000

Over the last year interconnectedness has become key in helping people, relationships and resources come together to solve the world’s greatest challenges.

Christian Klein, CEO of SAP, points out that the last year has showed us just how fragile many businesses and society can be.

“What is clear is that the way we live, work and consume will never be the same again.”

Technology has played a massive role in holding communities and families together, and helping businesses to adapt over the last year or more.

“Since the pandemic hit, 51��has been working with customers across the globe,” says Klein. “Whether helping to make supply chains more resilient, creating new business models, or enabling remote work – together we have made it happen.”

He outlines three key insights that have been learned over the last year.

The first is that the most resilient companies were those that embraced technology to change their business processes.

“But business transformation is a pretty overused term these days. Migrating to the cloud on its own doesn’t change a business process.

“What Covid has underscored is the need for every company to become an intelligent enterprise.”

Klein says intelligent enterprise are those that have the courage to leave traditional business models behind and change how their run their business. “They are enabled by integrated, agile business processes powered by data with embedded AI.”

The second insight is that no business does business alone.

“We win together as a community,” Klein says.

“One intelligent enterprise on its own can achieve great things. But we live in an interconnected world. I have talked to many CEOs and it is clear that many of the issues last year came from global supply chains.

“Over 75% of all companies reported such disruptions as a result of Covid.

“Many enterprises still manage complex relationships in their supply chain as static one-to-one connections. But Covid showed us how crucial it is to have realtime transparency across the supply chain.

“The real value comes from the network and the millions of interconnections it facilitates in realtime.

“But no-one has yet done this for businesses doing businesses together,” Klein explains. “The next part of our strategy is to create the world’s largest and most comprehensive business network.

“We think business will be revolutionised when businesses turn into communities.”

The third insight, and the one Klein believes is the most important for the future of the planet, is about sustainability.

“We must act now on sustainability. This is the decade during which we must act. We must build sustainability into the fabric of how we do business.

“Given the importance of supply chain and sustainability, the 51��community has the power to save the planet to create future our children will be proud of,” Klein says.

To enable this goal and operationalise sustainability as a core business process, 51��has announced a portfolio of new sustainability-specific products. This includes the 51��Responsible Design and Production solution to ensure product designers can make sustainable choices from initial product concepts to production; the 51��Product Footprint Management solution to track sustainability through a product lifecycle; and the 51��Sustainability Control Tower solution to provide end-to-end visibility.

Julia White, chief marketing and solutions officer and member of the executive board at SAP, believes that only 51��can enable all the innovations needed to achieve the dream of an interconnected and sustainable intelligent enterprise.

The company has announced a number of new innovations to help customers transform business processes, drive improved performance and run their best.

They include:

*��Business process intelligence solutions now offer 51��process insights – As part of the business process intelligence (BPI) portfolio, the 51��Process Insights solution enables organizations to analyse and improve their real-world business processes.

* Verify, a New 51��Concur feature, uses artificial intelligence and machine learning to simplify expense auditing – It also automatically identifies potential expense report issues and anomalies. The AI models are built from analysis of more than $1-trillion in spend and tens of millions of expenses and receipts. Verify can approve expense reports that have no issues while flagging anomalies for auditors to review. This AI-powered experience means auditors don’t waste time reviewing compliant expense reports, but can detect issues of compliance or fraud.

* 51��Upscale Commerce is a no-code solution enabling direct-to-consumer engagement – Midmarket retailers can create an omnichannel shopping experiences in minutes. With built-in AI, retailers can provide personalised offerings based on a 360-degree view of their customer from social sentiment and purchase data. With a headless API architecture, retailers can provide customers real-time information about their purchase and delivery through any channel. 51��Upscale Commerce is integrated with 51��S/4HANA to help ensure customer-facing experiences work with back-end finance, logistics and fulfilment systems to deliver a smooth customer experience

* A trio of new 51��business technology platform capabilities surfaces insights from data – The 51��Analytics Cloud solution now offers operational workforce analytics and planning capabilities and integration with 51��SuccessFactors solutions. These capabilities link operational, financial and people data to give organisations more comprehensive insights into their workforce. The new data marketplace for the 51��Data Warehouse Cloud solution lets customers and partners connect to data providers across industries and lines of business to gain insights for better decision-making. 51��is also expanding its low-code/no-code offering: 51��Intelligent Robotic Process Automation services can now capture and automate user interactions and integrate with 51��Process Insights to identify high-impact automation opportunities.

This article first appeared on .

The post 51��Unveils its Vision for the Intelligent Enterprise appeared first on 51��Africa News Center.

Resiliency Will Refloat Global Supply Chains

51��News — Thu, 01 Apr 2021 05:00:32 +0000

Just when global supply chains were recovering from the impact of the global pandemic, they were grounded by a mega-ship. The blockage of traffic through the Suez Canal by the Ever Given, one of the largest container ships in the world, showed once more how fragile global supply chains are.

Considering around 12% of global trade runs through Suez, it is not surprising that the impact is being felt even before the recently stranded ships reach their final destinations. The expectation of delays and shortages .

The pandemic has made us aware of SAP’s leadership role in making supply chains resilient and sustainable. Lesser known, however, is that nine of the 10 largest shipping companies run 51��solutions.

Based on this collective expertise, we asked Sabine Hamlescher, chief product owner of 51��Logistics Business Network, and Till Dengel, head of Digital Logistics Solution Management, about the current challenges for shipping companies and how 51��solutions are helping supply chains become more resilient.

What crossed your mind when you saw the container ship blocking a major commercial waterway?

Dengel: It makes clear how interconnected everything is and shows the importance of logistics resiliency to global trade. Even before the Suez Canal incident, we had a shortage of containers and congestion in commercial ports triggered by the pandemic. This just adds to the pressure on global commerce. Supply chain management has been focused so much on driving efficiency that there is almost no room for failure. Goods like chemicals and automobile parts supplied from China have delivery windows of only a few days. A production stop when a slot is missed is costly for everyone.

Hamlescher: A man-made disaster turned the world’s largest ships into floating warehouses, and even the shipping companies sometimes don’t know what’s in the containers. I can imagine some CEOs are getting very nervous not knowing if their goods are aboard, let alone when they will arrive at their destination. The fact is, there’s not yet enough transparency in the logistics and transportation industry to find out. But 51��has the solutions.

How involved is 51��in serving global logistics customers?

Dengel: As the market leader in digital logistics, we are deeply immersed in supply chains across all major industries. There are more than 1,000 customers using our transportation solution, and several thousand across the logistics space, including warehousing. We manage the supply chains for many leading companies in many sectors, including consumer products, chemicals, and fashion — and I’d bet that many of them are nervously waiting for goods aboard those ships. In addition, we also serve the liner shipping side, supporting ocean freight operations for some of the largest shipping companies in the world.

Last year was the best year ever for our . We continue to see a strong focus from customers in solutions for solving routing and scheduling problems and for improving logistics visibility, like .

51��Logistics Business Network helps customers gain real-time insight into current shipments and how they are likely to be impacted by interruptions like the Ever Given incident.

How are 51��solutions able to support the industry during a crisis like this?

Hamlescher: We have been approached by many customers for a solution to address exactly the kind of problem this event triggered. In the coming weeks we will announce new intelligent insights capabilities as part of 51��Logistics Business Network, which helps companies gain insight into all current shipments and how they are likely to be impacted by interruptions like the one playing out. Customers currently testing the beta release like that they can determine if there is an impact and then choose alternatives based on which parts of their business are affected.

The Ever Given is maneuverable again. Everything is going to be fine, right?

Dengel: Not by a long shot. The queue of hundreds of ships waiting to enter the canal will be reformed at major container ports like Rotterdam and Hamburg. Once they are unloaded, a mad scramble will ensue to transport the containers to their final destinations.

There are two dimensions to this – transportation planning and empty container repositioning. can help rescheduling of transport from the port to the final destination. Since everyone is trying to find a trucking company that can deliver the containers, there is also a freight collaboration capability enabling customers to tap into the spot market to find a carrier in times like this of extreme scarcity. Take, for example, our partnership with , which is like Uber for the freight industry in Europe and is connected into 51��Logistics Business Network.

The other constraint is empty-container repositioning, because there will most likely be an imbalance between Europe and China for a while. can help reestablish stability in an optimal way.

What is SAP’s next move in logistics and freight?

Hamlescher: We continue to foster partnerships technology to provide real-time visibility into supply chains. Paired with supply chain risk and operational data, we create a powerful data layer to help logistics professionals assess the impact and react to disruptions like the one we just witnessed.

Dengel: Over the past 20 years, it’s been all about efficiency and squeezing out the last cent in cost, but now the vulnerabilities have been laid bare and it is most certainly leading to a change of thinking leading to even stronger digitalization efforts. With the new offering, we provide every customer access to 51��Logistics Business Network. Together with our ecosystem of partners we also created solution packages enabling customers to move from analog paper-based transportation management to a digital solution in 90 days.

Does the Ever Given incident have a message for us?

Dengel: Everything that we put into place during the COVID-19 crisis can be applied to this short-term incident. In 2020 we refocused our solutions and messaging, appealing to companies to prepare for the next crisis by making their supply chains more resilient, more digital, and more transparent. The same message applies to man-made disasters like this one.

Hamlescher: Despite the negative impact this is having on the global economy, it is a confirmation that we at 51��are working on the right topics to deliver solutions that our customers need. We have a great opportunity to help companies better navigate natural and man-made impacts to global supply chains.

This article first appeared on the 51��Global News Center.

The post Resiliency Will Refloat Global Supply Chains appeared first on 51��Africa News Center.

Global Supply Chains Archives - 51����Africa News Center

51����Unveils its Vision for the Intelligent Enterprise