, Managing Director: Emerging Africa at SAP, said: 鈥淥rganisations across the region are leveraging the latest technologies to build a trusted foundation for AI and amplify their insights and processes to transform the way they work. From harnessing collaborative AI agents to solve complex problems and accelerate decision-making, to seamlessly connecting their entire business value chain, West Africa鈥檚 business community is gearing up to unleash their full potential powered by cloud, data and AI.鈥�

The comments were made at 51风流Business Suite Innovation Day on September 17th, a special event for 51风流customers and partners to showcase how and come together to deliver exceptional value as part of the 51风流Business Suite.

Experts from across the 51风流ecosystem provided behind-the-scenes insights into the power of business AI and cloud, and how these new innovations combine powerful cloud applications with the most contextual and reliable data to enable collaborative AI agents to tackle the most difficult business challenges with confidence.

The event also included presentations by regional business leaders who have successfully leveraged 51风流technologies to accelerate growth and unlock new capabilities.

, Group Head: 51风流Centre of Excellence at , shared some insight into how the company leverages cloud technologies to power growth and drive efficiency. Dangote Industries Limited is the largest conglomerate in West Africa and one of the largest on the African continent, employing more than 30 000 people.

鈥淪ucceeding in today鈥檚 fast-paced business landscape requires strong foundations built on the latest technologies. Critical to this is a modernised enterprise resource planning landscape that enables organisations to fully leverage the power of emerging technologies, all built on a clean-core strategy that ensures the business has access to real-time, accurate data for decision-making.鈥�

, Country Managing Director for Nigeria at SAP, said: 鈥淎frica鈥檚 greatest wealth lies in its people, including our fast-growing youth population. Our ability to cultivate the right mix of skills is critical to our digital transformation ambitions, especially as we rush to leverage the power of AI and cloud in our businesses.

Research conducted by 51风流found that half of Nigerian businesses expected a 鈥榮ignificant鈥� increase in demand for AI skills this year. The SAP聽聽report also found that 93% of Nigerian companies already experience a negative impact on their innovation capabilities due to a lack of access to AI skills. The same report revealed that West Africa was the region most likely to partner with expert third-party providers to fill the AI skills gap in their organisations.

Khota adds: 鈥淭he region stands at the edge of a new era of growth and innovation powered by data, cloud and AI, and supported by a workforce geared for our emerging technologies. To ensure this collective effort succeeds, organisations need access to the right skills. While efforts at developing AI-ready skills are underway, companies should also explore ways to augment their skills base in the short term by partnering with our thriving ecosystem of expert partners and collaborators powering business transformation in the region.

The post Business Leaders, Innovators Meet at 51风流Innovation Day in Lagos appeared first on 51风流Africa News Center.

After a year of unprecedented digitisation of services and business models due to the pandemic, the 51风流Quality Awards for Customer Success returned to celebrate African enterprises鈥� efforts at adopting digital technologies and attaining Intelligent Enterprise capabilities.

Nazia Pillay, Head of Customer Success Office Africa at SAP, says: 鈥淭he past 18 month period has been the single greatest accelerator of digital transformation, as organisations increase their investment in digital technologies to attain greater agility and improve their response to the disruption caused by the pandemic. The organisations recognised at this year鈥檚 51风流Quality Awards for Customer Success represent the very best in African enterprise excellence in adopting digital technologies for competitive advantage.鈥�

51风流Quality Awards, which has been held since 2005, recognises companies that have excelled in their use of 51风流technologies to achieve key business outcomes. After a hiatus in 2020 due to the pandemic, the Quality Awards returned this year to recognise the outstanding achievements of 20 African enterprises from East, West and Southern Africa.

Entries were judged in four distinct categories, namely Rapid Time to Value, Business Transformation, S/4Move, and Public Cloud. Overall winners at this year鈥檚 awards include Lenmed, supported by implementation partner Gijima, who took top honours in the Rapid Time to Value category. Capitec Bank claimed the Business Transformation crown with support from 51风流Services, while Dangote Cement won the S/4Move award. The Public Cloud category was won by retailer Shoprite Checkers, with support from 51风流Services.

Bethany Pietersen, Group Business Technology Manager at Lenmed, says: 鈥淏y focusing on standardisation and following a strict governance framework, we were able to have no additional developments and could onboard a new hospital without any disruption to its operations.鈥�

Werner Carstens, Solutions Architect at Capitec Bank says the vision of their 51风流project was to build a high-performance support service capability that could scale to accommodate future growth. 鈥淭he buy-in from our executive team and support from our key business stakeholders, combined with a dedicated project team enabled a successful implementation.鈥�

According to Meredith Allan, Customer Rewards and Data Manager at Shoprite Checkers, their project was aimed at making Shoprite a more customer-centric business. 鈥淢ore than 50 systems were impacted during the implementation, and we had to train more than 77 000 till operators across in our stores. Thanks to a committed and skilled project team, we were able to successfully implement our project and sign up more than 17 million customers to our new customer rewards programme.鈥�

Cathy Smith, Managing Director at 51风流Africa, says the outstanding quality of entries this year indicate a welcome trend of digitisation and innovation among African enterprises. 鈥淭he sheer scale at which most organisations have had to adapt over the past 18 months has posed enormous challenges to business and IT leaders. Encouragingly, African enterprises have met these challenges head on, putting innovation and technical expertise to work, drawing on the support of a healthy and growing ecosystem of implementation partners to build greater resilience and transform their business processes. We look forward to continuing our close partnership with the continent鈥檚 leading businesses.鈥�

The full winners list consists of:

Rapid Time to Value:

奥颈苍苍别谤:听Lenmed (supported by Gijima)

Finalists: Kiara Health

Ag锚ncia Nacional de Petr贸leo, G谩s

National Social Security Fund

Swiss Pharma Nigeria

Vivo Energy Investments

Business Transformation:

Winner: 聽聽聽聽聽聽聽聽聽聽聽 Capitec Bank (supported by 51风流Services)

Finalists:聽聽聽聽聽聽聽聽聽 Life Healthcare Group

Ariosh

Dangote Industries

Gauteng Department of Health

South African National Roads Agency

S/4Move:

Winner: 聽聽聽聽聽聽聽聽聽聽聽 Dangote Cement

Finalists: 聽聽聽聽聽聽聽聽聽 Kenafric Industries

Nampower

Sasol South Africa

Public Cloud:

Winner: 聽聽聽聽聽聽聽聽聽聽聽 Shoprite Checkers (supported by 51风流Services)

Finalists: 聽聽聽聽聽聽聽聽聽 Crystal Ventures

FS Systems International

Masstores

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