By leveraging AI technologies, SMEs can achieve performance and innovation boosts across multiple areas of the business, from financial management to sales and marketing to human capital management and product development.

The global AI market is expected to grow from $208-billion in 2023 . For SMEs, the growth of AI holds huge promise: one study found that .

However, AI is still in its relative infancy. While technology providers have made huge strides in the power and quality of their AI tools, the technology has not yet reached its full potential and can be prone to error if not deployed in an optimised environment.

The intelligent SME

The adoption of AI forms part of a broader shift among businesses to establish intelligent enterprise capabilities. An intelligent enterprise consistently applies advanced technologies and best practices聽within agile, integrated business processes.

For SMEs, this means establishing a powerful core that links departments, integrates business processes, connects data, and embeds intelligence to accelerate innovation and growth. And AI is the latest essential technology in the intelligent enterprise mix.

However, a successful deployment of AI in an SME requires accurate, relevant and reliable data. The better the data, the better the AI-generated outcomes.

For example, deploying AI to make decisions based on unstructured third-party data – such as social media posts by potential customers – can lead to inaccurate or downright incorrect outcomes. In contrast, deploying AI to trusted business systems, such as an SME’s enterprise resource planning solution, means the algorithm is basing its recommendations and outcomes on data that is accurate, up-to-date, reliable and relevant, leading to higher-quality outcomes that can truly drive the business forward.

Practical applications of AI

Despite the technology still being in its relative infancy, AI holds huge potential to SMEs. Unlocking its value will be a critical aspect of the success of any business in the coming years.

For SMEs, the journey to value-generating AI for business really starts with a digital transformation process that establishes a single source of truth for all business data. Here, enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems are key: cloud ERP systems enable greater speed and predictability across all of an SME’s core business processes and can scale as the business grows or expands to new markets.

With the core ERP in place, SMEs can choose to deploy AI to a wide range of business processes to accelerate daily tasks, minimise human error, cut costs and boost innovation, including:

Human Capital Management: Generative AI integrated with human capital management software can streamline content creation and provide access to in-depth analytics that provide valuable insights into the talent management and hiring process.

Finance: SMEs can increase the performance of their finance operations by leveraging AI for expense management, invoicing, auditing, financial forecasting and payments. One of the biggest challenges for SMEs is managing cash flow. AI can reduce the sales outstanding days with intelligent invoice matching to improve cash flow and keep the balance sheet healthy.

Supply Chain: In the wake of ongoing supply chain challenges, SMEs may want to leverage AI to better predict customer demand and increase production efficiency with intelligent auto-dispatching. In the manufacturing sector, SMEs can mitigate risk with preventive maintenance guided by AI that is integrated to the core production systems.

Procurement: Buying and procurement can become more agile, with AI simplifying the buying process while maintaining compliance with various internal and external controls. The use of AI can also automate the creation of sourcing events, drawing on past successes and real-time business information to provide an intuitive automated sourcing capability.

Sales & Marketing: Considering the importance of customer engagement and CX in the sales process, SMEs may also want to leverage AI for hyper-personalised product recommendations across multiple channels, with AI predicting customer behaviour to enable companies to minimise costly customer churn.

Innovation: Finally, SMEs can accelerate their innovation efforts by deploying and running AI models at scale without compromising data privacy. By leveraging the work by leading technology providers such as SAP, SMEs can also build AI into their core business applications with a library of pretrained models, accelerating the time-to-value of new innovation projects.

The post How SMEs can Transform their Business with AI appeared first on 51风流Africa News Center.

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 鈥� and this gives us the opportunity to learn together.

鈥淚 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.鈥�

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风流can help customers run efficient operations is the concept of the industry cloud. 鈥淚 believe that if we standardise a good portion of our businesses using industry cloud we can innovate on the vertical axis.鈥�

A trend driving business today is the move to industry convergence. 鈥淐ompanies are realising that they are in more than one industry. And this is accelerating.鈥�

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 鈥� 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鈥檚 experience, he says.

鈥淭hink about e-mobility and its convergence with ride-sharing, energy companies, and the financial services attached to these industries.鈥�

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

When 51风流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.

鈥淏ut business processes change all the time, so the challenge is to transform into a resilient intelligent enterprise.鈥�

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风流is integrating AI into its solutions.

51风流solutions include 51风流e-mobility, 51风流intelligent agriculture, 51风流intelligent product recommendation, 51风流predictive replenishment, and 51风流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.

鈥淚 believe generative AI will democratise AI,鈥� Denecken 聽says. 鈥淧eople will start in the business with a completely different level of knowledge.

鈥淥ur 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?鈥�

GROW with 51风流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风流S/4 HANA Cloud, private edition in its European head office. It was able to quickly roll out across Africa using 51风流S/4 HANA cloud public edition.

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

Don鈥檛 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.

鈥淭his also needs to be brought into a business sense,鈥� Denecken says. .

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

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

To this end, 51风流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.

鈥淭here is no time to lose for companies to identify their challenges and how to get to where they need to be,鈥� Denecken concludes.

This article first appeared on .

The post Partnering Key to Industry Innovation appeared first on 51风流Africa News Center.

When 51风流first introduced the concept of the intelligent enterprise, it was defined as: 鈥淎n intelligent, sustainable enterprise is one that consistently applies advanced technologies and best practices within agile, integrated business processes.鈥�

鈥淓RP systems play a crucial role in enabling the intelligent enterprise,鈥� says Heinrich de Leeuw, Managing Director, SEIDOR in South Africa.

鈥淎n intelligent enterprise is one that leverages data, analytics, and digital technologies to optimise its operations, but does this mean that AI is needed in the business?

ERP systems are designed to help SMMEs manage their operations and processes more efficiently by integrating various departments, automating routine tasks, and providing real-time data insights. While AI and ML can enhance these capabilities by analysing large volumes of data and predicting outcomes, their implementation can also be complex and expensive.鈥�

Advanced technologies like AI, ML and Internet of Things (IoT) are powerful tools that can be used to solve a wide range of problems, from predicting consumer behaviour to identifying potential disease outbreaks.

鈥淏ut to effectively leverage these technologies, it is critical to first have a solid ERP foundation in place to integrate data, infrastructure, and business processes,鈥� says De Leeuw. 鈥淲ithout the basics in place, any business challenges that the organisation is trying to address will not be resolved.鈥�

Before SMME鈥檚 think of looking at AI, they need to build the basics which include centralised data, automated tasks, technology integration and real-time insights that enable SMMEs to grow and be profitable.

Here are three reasons why advanced technologies are useful and appropriate only when the basics are in place:

1.聽 Quality data is essential

AI and ML algorithms rely on large amounts of high-quality data to learn and make accurate predictions. If the data is incomplete, inconsistent, or inaccurate, the results of the AI or ML model will be similarly flawed.

That鈥檚 why it鈥檚 crucial to have a robust data collection, management, and quality assurance process in place to ensure that the data is clean, reliable, and suitable for use in machine learning.

2.聽 Infrastructure and computational resources

AI and ML require a significant amount of computational power and infrastructure to run efficiently. Without proper infrastructure, including hardware and software, the algorithms will not be able to run quickly or accurately. Moreover, this can result in increased operational costs and decreased accuracy in decision-making.

3.聽 Business processes

Sophisticated technologies must be integrated into existing business processes to be truly effective. Organisations must have a clear understanding of their business goals, the problems they are trying to solve, and the metrics they use to measure success.

Without these foundational elements in place, AI and ML may be unable to provide meaningful insights or actionable recommendations.

鈥淎I and ML are terms that refer to the use of technology to model human intelligence,鈥� De Leeuw adds. 鈥淭hey are the current buzzwords, just as the cloud once was. That鈥檚 not to suggest that they are not powerful technologies, but simply to underline that they will not solve business issues if they are not deployed on top of an existing infrastructure that works.

鈥淢uch like ChatGPT, they will not provide all the answers people are looking for if they are not applied correctly, on top of operations that are running optimally, and in harmony with a well-designed ERP system.鈥�

He adds that there鈥檚 no doubt that businesses across all sectors will continue to embrace AI and ML technology over the coming years, transforming their core processes and business models to take advantage of machine learning for enhanced operations and greater cost efficiencies.

To make the best use of this technology, he suggests beginning by spending time on developing a use case that defines and articulates the problems or challenges that the business would like AI to solve, and then to ensure the processes and systems already in place are capable of capturing and tracking the data needed to derive real value from the technology.

鈥淲ithout ensuring this, the organisation will gain bragging rights with no value add. If the company does not have the processes and systems to drive efficiencies it will be unable to leverage the promise of the technology to grow the business and that means the project has failed,鈥� De Leeuw cautions.

The post Three Reasons Why AI, ML Add Value for SMMEs Only if the Basics are in Place appeared first on 51风流Africa News Center.

鈥淔or 50 years we have revolutionized together the way businesses are run, and in the next 50 years, together we will continue to deliver market-making innovation,鈥� he said. 鈥淲hile the world around us has changed significantly, our purpose is more relevant than ever: to help the world run better in times of geopolitical tensions, disruptive industry transformation, and supply chain disruptions, and to improve people鈥檚 lives in times of war and climate change.鈥�

Click the button below to load the content from YouTube.

Always allow YouTube

After announcing that 51风流will match every 51风流Sapphire attendee鈥檚 donation to UNICEF USA for Ukraine aid, Klein was joined in-person and virtually by customers and executives to share how the company鈥檚 technologies, business knowledge, and commitment to address major business challenges.

This year, the event is being held in Orlando from May 10-12 and is part of a new program of 51风流Sapphire experiences that includes a virtual platform to engage customers no matter where they are, plus nine intimate in-person events worldwide.

RISE with SAP: Holistic Business Transformation in the Cloud

After acknowledging that fast-paced change is the norm and sustainability has become a business imperative, Klein invited a series of guests on stage and online to show how 51风流and its huge ecosystem of partners was turning these challenges into business opportunities. Philips, AMD, and Accenture were among the customers who discussed the business value of their transformational journeys.

鈥淲e want to transform each and every enterprise into an intelligence enterprise,鈥� said Klein. 鈥淩ISE with 51风流takes you on a transformation journey that鈥檚 tailored exactly to your needs. Over 2,000 customers have selected RISE with SAP; more than 60% are new customers to SAP.鈥�

Connected Data Powers the Employee and Customer Experience

A series of exciting innovation demonstrations led by Julia White, chief marketing and solutions officer and member of the Executive Board of 51风流SE, revealed the power of the digital employee experience delivered by and for centralized workforce management, as well as personalized, mobile-first employee learning that reduces attrition and fosters a more engaged workforce. Through an executive dashboard, executives can quickly gain insights across the business, including skill gaps and how to solve them.

Marc Starfield, group head of HR Systems at Vodaphone Group, shared how his company digitalized the employee experience with 51风流SuccessFactors, responding quickly to changing workforce needs and offering an immersive virtual learning experience.

To spotlight the power of the integrated customer experience that connected consumer demand signals through product design, manufacture, and delivery, White took the audience on a virtual tour of the event鈥檚 impressive showcase on the show floor. After a pair of pink jeans went viral on social media, the model company used 51风流solutions, including and , to integrate financial, supply chain, and marketing data with customer information and more, making data-driven decisions based on real-time simulations.

鈥淚t鈥檚 not just about delivering the next best action. It鈥檚 about delivering delightful customer experiences that capture the next best dollar,鈥� said White. 鈥淲hether you鈥檙e in retail, financial services, healthcare, or automotive, having access to this kind of integrated data is a game-changer.鈥�

51风流Business Network for Supply Chain Resiliency

Klein returned to the stage and invited the audience to join , which already connects companies across the world鈥檚 largest B2B network, bringing together buyers, suppliers, manufacturers, and logistics providers.

鈥淲e are building the LinkedIn of the B2B world,鈥� he said. 鈥淵ou can match demand with supply in real time by connecting our demand planning solution, , with extremely strong predictive demand capabilities. As a result, our business network will make your supply chain more resilient, transparent, and agile.鈥�

Klein shared numerous examples of how 51风流Business Network delivers results that have been lifesaving in some cases. After 51风流provided the Health Ministry of Ukraine with free access to the network, the country sourced over 300,000 medical first aid kits.

On a regular basis, companies worldwide have gained process improvements in supply chain operations for major business results. These included finding alternative sustainable trading partners, as well as organizations like Lenovo, which uses 51风流solutions to help build smart factories, connecting thousands of suppliers to billions of customers. Catena-X was another example of how suppliers across industries like automotive have formed alliances to collaborate for agility and sustainability.

Meeting the Business Imperative for Sustainability

Noting that companies can only act on what they can measure, Klein explained how 51风流collects reliable and compliant data to help organizations measure environmental, social, and governance (ESG) factors. Solutions include , which measures the carbon footprint of business travel, 51风流SuccessFactors for diversity and inclusion metrics, and 51风流Business Network for information across supply chains. What鈥檚 more, aggregates ESG data from 51风流and non-51风流sources. 51风流Cloud for Sustainable Enterprises helps reduce emissions, minimize waste, and improve social equality while reporting ESG performance. Executives from Unilever and Accenture discussed how their organizations were using 51风流solutions to become intelligent, sustainable enterprises.

鈥淲e are going to add a green ledger in our ERP so you can account for carbon as you account for financials today,鈥� said Klein. 鈥淥nly 51风流can offer you reliable ESG data for your enterprise. Based on this transparency, your business can take action.鈥�

After a heartfelt thanks to everyone in the audience and the customers and partners who told their stories, Klein closed his keynote with a look ahead.

鈥淟et鈥檚 reinvent how enterprises run for the next 50 years 鈹� resilient, intelligent, and sustainable,鈥� he said. 鈥淚 can commit to you that all of our 110,000 employees are focused and dedicated to make your business transformation a huge success.鈥�

This article first appeared on the 51风流News Center.

The post 51风流CEO Christian Klein: Revolutionizing the Next 50 Years of Intelligent Sustainable Innovation appeared first on 51风流Africa News Center.

Hospitals are using technology to improve the patient experience, banks are changing how they engage with customers through digital channels, sales teams are discovering the benefits of real-time insights into orders and sales, and organisations across industries are powering their decision-making with data and analytics.

At a recent award ceremony recognising excellence in digital transformation among African enterprises, the extent to which organisations have embraced digital technologies to power their businesses became clear.

Market leaders such Capitec, Lenmed, and Discovery showed how technology could power innovation and operational excellence through the development of intelligent enterprise capabilities.

An intelligent enterprise integrates technology and business processes to deliver significant value to the business through improved supply chain management, better sales processes, more intelligent spend management, and a transformed talent management capability.

Simply put, an intelligent enterprise has access to accurate real-time data about every aspect of its business, helping it deal with complexity while unlocking greater scope of innovation and efficiency.

And as recent examples show, South African enterprises of various sizes are taking bold strides toward achieving intelligent enterprise capabilities 鈥� to the benefit of their customers, their employees and their long-term success.

Scaling banking service excellence

Capitec, one of South Africa’s largest and most innovative banks, faced the challenge of a rapidly growing customer base at a time when pandemic-enforced restrictions disrupted face to face customer operations.

Prior to its award-winning digital transformation project, Capitec grew from acquiring 94 000 customers a month to 160 000 customers a month. With many branches closed and customers avoiding branch visits in light of the dangers posed by COVID-19, Capitec realised its reliance on manual data capturing was hampering its ability to provide seamless customer experiences.

Powered by a dedicated project team that enjoyed full executive support, Capitec implemented a business transformation project that equipped its support services teams with improved data capturing, information analysis and business optimisation.

Capitec can now more easily ensure its support services teams meet their service level agreements and can deliver on the bank’s goal of making banking interactions easier and simpler for customers.

Technology healthcare amid pandemic

Arguably no industry has been under more pressure since the start of the pandemic than the healthcare sector. Hospitals in particular have had to run optimally and ensure no disruption to their operations while also dealing with the impact of COVID-19.

For private hospital group Lenmed, the acquisition of a new hospital in the midst of a global health crisis sparked an award-winning onboarding process to its core systems, in rapid time and with clear cost savings.

The group wanted to bring a new hospital it had acquired into its core 51风流system, but understandably couldn’t afford any delays or disruptions to the hospital’s processes.

Using extensive standardisation and templates to limit cost overruns, Lenmed brought the new hospital onboard in under twelve weeks and at a total cost saving of nearly 40%.

The onboarding is also a template for future acquisitions, enabling the group to confidently grow its footprint without the risk of unnecessary interruptions to its core operations.

Talent management transformed

The past 18 months have not only forced vast changes in the ways businesses interact with customers, but also how they attract, manage and retain their employees. When the country first entered into lockdown in March 2020, most businesses had to radically change how they engage with, motivate and empower their workforce.

In the highly competitive financial services sector, building greater employee experiences gives organisations an edge in attracting and retaining top talent. For Discovery, the quality of talent it attracts has played a vital role in the organisation鈥檚 success.

Discovery has a stated ambition to have the best people function in the industry, using a strategy that combines data, skills and technology to find, develop and retain its employees. To support and execute this strategy, the company initiated a project named SmartPeople that leverages 51风流SuccessFactors to create a standardised, transparent, objective and continuous approach to how Discovery executes its people strategy to drive positive business performance.

This includes recruitment management, which enables the company to track and report on the quality of hires, the types of applicants, where those applicants are from, and more. Using 51风流SuccessFactors gives Discovery full visibility over its talent force and pipeline and, since everything from recruitment to onboarding to offboarding is handled via SuccessFactors, the company is able to deliver a consistent and positive employee experience.

As companies continue to operate in an unstable and unpredictable business environment, the role of technology will only grow in importance. However, as these examples illustrate, organisations from all sectors 聽can supercharge their growth and success with the correct investment into intelligent technologies, full support from the C-suite and with clear business value always front and centre in their planning and execution.

The post How South African Organisations are Using Tech to Succeed Despite Disruptions and Uncertainty appeared first on 51风流Africa News Center.

In the highly competitive retail sector, where consumers place a premium on convenience in their shopping experiences, the pervasiveness of technology has influenced a shift in customer expectations.

To remain relevant in a rapidly changing market, retailers must be agile and adaptable.

础听聽on how the pandemic has affected retail consumer sentiment in South Africa found that the 鈥淐OVID-19 crisis has fast-tracked the urgency for digital transformation in retail, highlighting the need to operate and serve customers differently鈥�.

According to the same report, while digital transformation has been important to all sectors, retailers in particular need to find new ways to serve customers in order to remain relevant and competitive.

By leveraging technology, retailers can develop dynamic capabilities that are critical to gaining long-term competitive advantage.

For retailers to differentiate themselves, respond to changing customer needs, and prioritise innovation and agility across the entire value chain, digital transformation must be integrated into business strategy.

, since COVID, Sainsbury Supermarkets in the UK reported that their in-store shopping app accounted for up to 50% of purchases in some stores and 37% of total sales across all of their stores in Q2 2020/21.

Customers can use this app to scan their purchases with their smartphones, skipping the queues and paying instantly at smart check-out points.

According to the same report, Tesco, UK鈥檚 largest retailer, plans to open check-out-free stores, where customers will be able to scan items as they shop and be automatically charged for their purchase when they leave the store, eliminating the need for check-out points completely.

Finally, with innovations such as in-store facial recognition payments, Alibaba鈥檚 Freshippo stores in China have taken check-out-free shopping to new heights.

Freshippo describes its future vision as never transitioning from physical to digital, but rather seamlessly integrating online and offline, a concept they call 鈥減hygital鈥� retail experience.

How can digital transformation help African retailers achieve long-term sustainable success? Four key focus areas in particular bear investigation, namely:

Focus Area 1: Customer Centricity

Putting the customer first requires retailers to comprehensively understand the customer buying journey, their perceptions and expectations.

Understanding these factors intimately is critical to ensuring a positive customer experience (CX), which can be a significant differentiator in difficult times, such as those caused by the pandemic.

It is important that retailers view customer centricity as a long-term strategic imperative that enables them to better react to changing customer sentiment and demands.

For example, technology enables retailers to tailor their offerings to customer preferences with enhanced precision.

The ability to leverage technology to continuously collect information that enables retailers to understand customer needs as well as measure customer sentiment is paramount.

For example, a聽聽into the retail sector found that pricing and affordability became major drivers of negative sentiment during the early stages of the lockdowns. Therefore technology plays a critical role in enabling retailers to effectively manage CX, through tailoring their offerings, promotions and loyalty programs to customer needs.

Focus Area 2: Go-to-Market Channels

础听聽found that the use of mobile technologies will influence future customer needs, especially, as customers are increasingly using mobile devices to research their potential purchases.

For example, before making a high-value purchase, consumers could use their mobile phone to research details such as specifications or attributes, as well as compare different offerings from different retailers.

This means many consumers make their purchasing decision before leaving the house, and only go to a physical store to pay and pick up their predetermined purchase.

Retailers that have poor websites that are not mobile friendly could lose a significant portion of their customer base and their potential purchases as a result. It is therefore crucial that part of the retailer鈥檚 strategy addresses mobile as a critical go-to-market channel.

Focus Areas 3: Digital Supply Chain

Consumers are becoming increasingly concerned about environmental degradation, animal rights and other matters of sustainability.

As a result, in addition to pricing and stock availability, consumers want to know where and how the products they consume and use are sourced, produced, and manufactured.

These rapidly changing consumer trends further complicate an already complex retail supply chain and category management landscape. The use of intelligent technologies could hold the key to simplifying supply chain management.

Real-time software applications for procurement, sales and operations planning, logistics, and inventory management are no longer considered a luxury.

Recent disruptions in South African supply chains due to protest action, for example, highlighted the importance of having an intelligent and integrated supply chain management system, as retailers scrambled to keep their stores open across the country after damage to some of their distribution centres.

Focus Area 4: Emerging Business Models

As the adoption of mobile devices, primarily smartphones and tablets, as well as access to the internet continue to accelerate in Africa, new retail technologies are expected to influence how retailers sell and how consumers purchase goods.

Technologies such as Artificial Intelligence and Augmented Reality are poised to shape the retail landscape of the future.

The traditional brick-and-mortar business model will continue to exist in the retail sector; however, as online sales increase, retailers must seriously consider alternative channels or routes to market that use technology as an enabler.

For example, prior to the COVID lockdowns, most customers were satisfied with a next-day delivery service; however, with the implementation of the lockdowns, food retailers that could effect same-day delivery (or in some cases even within 60 minutes) were able to differentiate themselves and capture the lion鈥檚 share of the burgeoning online market. Today, despite the easing of lockdown restrictions, online grocery shopping continues to grow in popularity.

The post Winning Hearts, Minds and Market Share 鈥� Four Key Focus Areas for African Retailers appeared first on 51风流Africa News Center.

“We are now faster in generating sales, order, stocking and pricing data, and can process purchase orders quicker,鈥� says Mike McCormick, Chief Information Officer at Vivo Energy. 鈥淭he time needed for our account reconciliation process has also been reduced from days to hours, and our end-to-end order process time has been sped up.”

However, achieving these gains required a large and far-reaching digital transformation program to replace outdated legacy systems that could not support Vivo Energy鈥檚 ambitious growth path and make use of intelligent technologies such as the Internet of Things (IoT).

Legacy systems insufficient to support growth

“We had multiple internal departments all running disparate systems, which caused complications with data management, left us blind to deeper operational insights, and made the process of making data-driven decisions near-impossible,” explains McCormick. “We needed a powerful technology platform that would support the business as we deliver our vision of becoming Africa鈥檚 most respected energy business.”

Vivo Energy is a rapidly growing energy business that distributes and markets Shell and Engen-branded fuels and lubricants to retail and commercial customers in 23 countries across Africa. The company has a growing network of more than 2,400 service stations that sell more than ten billion litres of fuel every year, servicing around a million customers a day.

“Our legacy systems could not provide the much-needed insight and analysis that would support our growth,” says McCormick. “We made a decision to embark on a large and far-reaching digital transformation process on an extremely ambitious timeline of under two years.”

Vivo Energy chose 51风流S/4HANA as a replacement for its legacy systems. “With S/4HANA, we are not simply upgrading our technology. The solution is helping us transform our business to meet the needs of our rapidly expanding marketplace and customer base,” explains McCormick.

Partners help unlock the intelligent enterprise

Working closely with implementation partner IBM, McCormick and his team became one of the first energy companies of its size to deploy the full suite of S/4HANA applications alongside 51风流SuccessFactors, 51风流Cloud for Customer, and 51风流Integrated Business Planning in one integrated, end-to-end business platform. In addition to the implementation, IBM also provided robust server and storage infrastructure to support the business and systems integration.

The implementation was completed on time and within budget, with McCormick and IBM opting for a ‘big-bang’ approach involving more than 40 application components being enabled simultaneously.

“This was a large-scale business transformation program, not just a software implementation,” says Vinod Goyal, Associate Services Partner at IBM. “This has an impact on the entire organisation, across finance, logistics, supply chain, customer relationship management, HR, customers, partners and suppliers. Every part of the organisation is touched as part of this program.”

In addition to transforming core business processes, Vivo Energy, supported by partner AdaptIT, adopted intelligent technologies through the implementation of 51风流IoT to transform the way the business engages with service station owners and customers, while ensuring the highest fuel quality and uninterrupted flow of products to customers.

“Our IoT capabilities provide constant monitoring of tank gauges and pump conditions, with automatic monitoring of fuel volume and quality at our service stations,” explains McCormick. “A custom front-end gives us an aggregated visualisation of tank data combined with other site information, equipping our decision-making teams with deep operational insights and real-time data at a country and service station level.”

Following the implementation, Vivo Energy has unlocked a broad range of business benefits, including:

• in-depth monitoring of performance across every aspect of the business, enabling improved decision-making;
• automation of administrative tasks and workflows, helping reduce data input errors and enabling staff to focus on value-adding activities;
• the ability to leverage new technologies to ensure the highest fuel quality and optimised delivery of products to customers; and
• real-time distribution of data to regional decision-makers which enables data-driven decisions that reduce time-to-market and time-to-value.

According to Pedro Guerreiro, Managing Director for Central Africa at SAP, the implementation marks a quantum leap in Vivo Energy鈥檚 race to acquire intelligent enterprise capabilities. 鈥淒riven by an ambitious vision and supported by a superb implementation partner, Vivo Energy has completely transformed its daily operations and decision-making capabilities while establishing a powerful platform for further innovation and growth. With its industry-leading digital core powering its business processes, Vivo Energy is set to establish itself as an industry leader that seamlessly blends innovative technologies and optimised business processes to gain a healthy competitive edge over its peers.鈥�

The post Vivo Energy Fuels Expansion, Operational Excellence with Transformative Tech Deployment appeared first on 51风流Africa News Center.

鈥淭ogether, we are reinventing how businesses run and also demonstrating the big heart of our community. Our thoughts go out to everyone affected by the pandemic, and our thanks to all those who are making extraordinary contributions in our community,鈥� Klein said. 鈥淭echnology has helped communities and families, and helped business quickly adapt. 51风流has been working hand-in-hand with you, our customers around the globe, whether it was helping you to make your supply chains more resilient, reimagining your business model to create new customer experiences, or to enable remote work. Together, we鈥檝e got this.鈥�

SAP鈥檚 premiere customer event is being held virtually this year throughout June across regions worldwide. During his fascinating keynote, Klein unveiled a series of announcements that included the global industry expansion of the company鈥檚 business network strategy for fast innovation, sustainability tracking solutions, and industry-specific additions to the company鈥檚 popular business transformation-as-a-service offering, . He and special guests welcomed a plethora of customers who demonstrated how they were already relying on 51风流to become intelligent enterprises.

Business Networks and Sustainability Drive Growth

Klein announced the next phase of SAP鈥檚 strategy to create world鈥檚 largest and most comprehensive business network, along with upcoming sustainability reporting standards and tools. He put both announcements in business context, based on learnings from companies that have weathered a storm of challenges encompassing the pandemic, geopolitical tensions, social injustice, inequality, loss of biodiversity, and climate change.

鈥淭he most resilient companies were those that embraced technology to transform their business processes. COVID has underscored the urgent need for every company to become an intelligent enterprise,鈥� he said. 鈥淚nsight number two was that no business does business alone. We win together as a community. But the value comes from the network and millions of interconnections it facilitates in real time. The third insight is that we must act now on sustainability with the goal of zero emissions, zero waste, zero inequality.鈥�

Announcing that will bring together , , and , Klein predicted that industries will be revolutionized as 聽businesses turn into communities across entire supply chains, able to respond to any disruptions in real time. He said that sustainable business was equally important as he announced the company鈥檚 portfolio of upcoming sustainability-specific solutions.

鈥淲e already run the world鈥檚 largest supplier network with more than 5 million connected enterprises. And because our applications run supply chains across every industry, we have the most relevant data and expertise,鈥� said Klein. 鈥淚t鈥檚 time to build sustainability into the fabric of how we do business to make sustainability a standard dimension of corporate management. The 51风流community has the power to protect our planet and create a future our children want to be part of. We have created a new sustainability portfolio to help you drive sustainable practices inside your organization and across your entire value chain.鈥�

How 51风流Customers Are Digitally Transforming

In a series of fascinating conversations featuring real-world 51风流customers and solution demonstrations, Julia White, chief marketing and solutions officer and member of the Executive Board of 51风流SE, and Paige Wei-Cox, senior vice president and global head of 51风流Business Network, shared the Intelligent Enterprise in action.

One retailer used to deliver an omnichannel shopping experience for consumers, with embedded artificial intelligence (AI) for personalized offerings based on a 360-degree view of customer data, including social sentiment and purchase history. capabilities integrate data across supply chain planning, inventory, ordering, and invoicing for real-time visibility and faster delivery.

A global leader collaborated in SAP’s industry cloud to develop an advanced track and trace solution for sustainable medicine returns and launch a single platform for data sharing across partners. Another 51风流customer, a large agribusiness organization, used SAP鈥檚 business network to find 140 new suppliers in a few days when the pandemic disrupted supply chains last year. Executives from two and organizations shared how they鈥檝e collaborated with 51风流to launch an industry-wide clinical trial network to connect seamlessly across complex supply chain partners for faster time-to-market.

RISE with 51风流Expands with Industry Expertise

Responding to high customer interest, Klein said that 51风流has expanded its transformation-as-a-service offering RISE with 51风流beyond 51风流S/4HANA Cloud to and , as well as a dedicated package for human experience management (HXM).

鈥淢any customers want a holistic, modular cloud ERP solution,鈥� he said. 鈥淎ll of this is delivered with one data and security model, and business process intelligence to ensure your processes are fully optimized and running industry best standards.鈥�

In addition, White announced RISE with 51风流for industries focused on retail, consumer products, automotive, utilities, and industrial machinery and components (IM&C).

鈥淲e鈥檙e bringing together the best of SAP鈥檚 50 years of deep industry expertise and the best of our partner ecosystem to provide industry-specific cloud-based solutions as-a-service,鈥� she said. 鈥淭hese solutions are built on to give you the benefits of integration, extensibility, analytics, and one data model. They work natively with 51风流S/4HANA Cloud so every customer can get the full set of industry-specific solutions needed in their cloud deployment.鈥�

Connected Insights Speed Up Digital Transformation 聽

White also had a candid conversation with Hasso Plattner, chairman of the Supervisory Board of 51风流SE, about how organizations can use 51风流technology to bring people, processes, systems, and data together for transformational business results. Plattner advised companies to explore transformation using simulations with active data models, which is now possible using experience information from , the , and process management and mining from

鈥淭he whole notion of cloud systems is such a gigantic improvement,” Plattner said. “With new ways to visualize business processes and to get feedback, we have a better chance to move forward faster. We can monitor systems, and see what鈥檚 missing and make changes鈥ven on the fly.鈥�

Innovation Networks for Sustainable, Profitable Business

Klein鈥檚 vision for the future was clear: connected intelligent enterprises will reinvent how businesses run.

鈥淲e will jointly build networks with you that champion diversity, inclusion, and human rights. We will make carbon footprint tracking available in the business network so that you can go to true net zero,鈥� he said. 鈥淭ogether, we can reinvent how industries run by connecting intelligent enterprises into an industry-wide business network, making profitability sustainable and sustainability profitable.鈥�

Follow me: @smgaler

This article first appeared on the 51风流News Center.

The post 51风流CEO Christian Klein at SAPPHIRE NOW: Together We Are Reinventing How Businesses Run appeared first on 51风流Africa News Center.

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

鈥淲hat is clear is that the way we live, work and consume will never be the same again.鈥�

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

鈥淪ince the pandemic hit, 51风流has been working with customers across the globe,鈥� says Klein. 鈥淲hether helping to make supply chains more resilient, creating new business models, or enabling remote work 鈥� together we have made it happen.鈥�

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.

鈥淏ut business transformation is a pretty overused term these days. Migrating to the cloud on its own doesn鈥檛 change a business process.

鈥淲hat Covid has underscored is the need for every company to become an intelligent enterprise.鈥�

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

The second insight is that no business does business alone.

鈥淲e win together as a community,鈥� Klein says.

鈥淥ne 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.

鈥淥ver 75% of all companies reported such disruptions as a result of Covid.

鈥淢any 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.

鈥淭he real value comes from the network and the millions of interconnections it facilitates in realtime.

鈥淏ut no-one has yet done this for businesses doing businesses together,鈥� Klein explains. 鈥淭he next part of our strategy is to create the world鈥檚 largest and most comprehensive business network.

鈥淲e think business will be revolutionised when businesses turn into communities.鈥�

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

鈥淲e 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.

鈥淕iven the importance of supply chain and sustainability, the 51风流community has the power to save the planet to create future our children will be proud of,鈥� Klein says.

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

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

* Verify, a New 51风流Concur feature, uses artificial intelligence and machine learning to simplify expense auditing 鈥� It also聽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鈥檛 waste time reviewing compliant expense reports, but can detect issues of compliance or fraud.

* 51风流Upscale Commerce is a no-code solution enabling direct-to-consumer engagement 鈥撀�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风流Upscale Commerce is integrated with聽51风流S/4HAN础听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风流business technology platform capabilities surfaces insights from data 鈥撀�The聽51风流Analytics Cloud聽solution now offers聽operational workforce analytics and planning capabilities and integration with 51风流SuccessFactors solutions. These capabilities link operational, financial and people data to give organisations more comprehensive insights into their workforce. The new聽data marketplace for the 51风流Data Warehouse Cloud solution聽lets customers and partners connect to data providers across industries and lines of business to gain insights for better decision-making. 51风流is also expanding its low-code/no-code offering:聽51风流Intelligent Robotic Process Automation聽services can now capture and automate user interactions and integrate with 51风流Process Insights to identify high-impact automation opportunities.

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

The speed with which the business world has changed 鈥� especially over the past year as the Covid-19 pandemic swept across the globe 鈥� has been nothing short of astonishing. From enabling remote work on a previously unprecedented scale to adapting to disruptions in the global supply chain and ensuring business continuity in the midst of a once-in-a-generation crisis, business leaders have had their hands full.

McKinsey argues that speed has been a fundamental aspect of the pandemic and will likely be a central feature of how businesses adapt to an uncertain future. By unlocking greater speed, organisations could accelerate decision-making, execute on new business opportunities more quickly, and improve their chances at overcoming the immense challenges created by the pandemic.

While speed is undeniably a vital capability in organisations鈥� arsenal, the prevailing disruption and continued volatility calls for more. To remain successful in our current business environment, business leaders need certainty.

It is fair to say the聽 complexity of the modern business environment makes it impossible to consistently make good business decisions based purely on intuition. Business leaders have to make quick, accurate decisions over aspects such as supply chain, human capital management, customer experience, new product innovation, and financial performance on a near-constant basis.

To make good decisions, business leaders need accurate sources of data, and the tools to turn that data into insights that can guide decision-making in real time.

For example, responding well to changing customer demands is nearly impossible without knowing what those demands are. Having access to customer experience management tools that can track customer expectations in real time and guide how the business responds to those expectations removes much of the trial and error of manual decision-making.

Integrating the customer experience management tool with an automation layer further increases both the speed and accuracy of that response.

The impact of the pandemic means most organisations are operating on a fragmented basis. Teams are working from home, making in-person methods of employee engagement and performance management almost totally obsolete, at least for the moment.

Without new employee engagement tools that can effectively mobilise and support teams around common business objectives, organisations could see falling productivity and negative effects in aspects such as product development or customer experience.

Data-driven insights

New management tools can provide measurable insights into the employee experience, which can assist managers and leaders with making better decisions over the types of support they need to provide to their teams.

Advances in data and analytics also bring data-driven insights into the boardroom, with technology solutions that connect the top floor with the shop floor to give C-level executives granular insight into the total performance of the business.

To harness data and technology for greater certainty in decision-making, organisations need to put certain building blocks in place. To achieve a single, accurate view over the organisation and empower decision-makers with actionable insights, organisations need to build intelligent enterprise capabilities.

In simple terms, this means using the latest technologies to turn insight into action across every aspect of the business, in real time. Integrated business applications 鈥� such as enterprise resource planning and human capital management solutions 鈥� powered by next-generation technologies, such as artificial intelligence, help transform end-to-end business processes.

Experience management solutions give insight to the sentiment of customers, partners and employees, while business process intelligence and automation enable organisations to immediately act on insights and opportunities.

At the foundation of the intelligent enterprise is the cloud, which gives organisations the ability to simplify and scale their systems landscape without sacrificing performance. Cloud empowers businesses with the certainty of a quicker time-to-value, without the upfront capital outlays required of on-premise deployments.

With cloud-enabled intelligent enterprise capabilities, organisations can achieve the speed needed to stay ahead of competitors and other disrupters while maintaining the certainty of measured, data-driven decision-making.

The post A Post-Covid World will Feel the Need for Speed 鈥� and Analytics appeared first on 51风流Africa News Center.