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However, achieving these gains required a large and far-reaching digital transformation program to replace outdated legacy systems that could not support Vivo Energy鈥檚 ambitious growth path and make use of intelligent technologies such as the Internet of Things (IoT).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

鈥淲e鈥檙e genetically sequencing the life cycle of trends as they鈥檙e created and evolving. You can select any topic in the world and immediately have a full report documenting how saturated a trend is in the minds of consumers, globally and by region,鈥� said Sourav Goswami, co-founder of NWO. 鈥淚t鈥檚 like talking to a human expert who can tell you when, where, and why a trend is growing, declining, or about to reach an inflection point with impact on your business.鈥�

Among the recent early signals Goswami held up as proof of NWO鈥檚 prescience were reports predicting the resurgence of , the financial impact of on sugar and cotton futures, and notably, in the fall of 2020, a firestorm of online and offline behaviors around guns and tactical weaponry that constituted an “” months before an angry mob stormed the U.S. Capitol.

The startup is working with beta customers in product innovation, marketing, and supply chain management at companies in the U.S. and Europe 鈥� and has plans to move into Asia and the Middle East. While initially targeting consumer brands, Goswami said NWO鈥檚 offering cuts across any industry, such as logistics and supply chain companies.

Predictive Insights from Unexpected Inflection Points

Operating like a search engine that filters data from keywords, NWO is deceptively simple. However, a proprietary algorithm translates time-shift lagging indicators into predictive insights. The system generates detailed trend reports in about 60 seconds, analyzing patterns from tremendous amounts of social media chatter, news, and search activity, as well as information from various databases, such as patents and filings from the Federal Drug Administration in the U.S. and its European counterpart, along with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

A Career Steeped in Science

Goswami鈥檚 career is equal parts business and finance, backed by a longtime interest in science. After stints in the financial sector, he started a couple of technology companies. He currently manages a private equity real estate investment firm. He launched NWO with co-founders Pulkit Jaiswal and Imogen Low after seeing the potential in using data to predict geopolitical trends.

鈥淲hether the industry is consumer, real estate, finance, or any sector, everything related to managing downside risk is related to anticipating what could happen three or four steps ahead,鈥� said Goswami. 鈥淲hat鈥檚 exciting is creating a level playing field for any organization to apply the same data-driven strategies as financial investors, identifying early signals to head off problems and uncover new opportunities.鈥�

One NWO beta customer gained early insights to evaluate new opportunities for its milk substitute products. Data revealed that oat milk growth rates were quickly eclipsing almond milk in concert with rising local interest in oat milk ice cream.

鈥淲e not only identified an emerging oat milk ice cream trend, but also exactly where it was happening and why,鈥� said Goswami. 鈥淐onsumer interest was spiking in Boise, Idaho, and other unexpected cities because of high-tech workforce relocations to new hubs. The company could quickly reallocate supply chain resources for distribution to these new markets.鈥�

Important Connections from SAP.iO

After participating in the data and analytics cohort, Goswami saw a natural alignment with the . The NWO co-founders also valued the go-to-market expertise 51风流provided, along with introductions to customers.

鈥淲e鈥檙e a good fit with 51风流because our data provides early intelligent demand signals, helping companies optimize end-to-end business processes,鈥� said Jaiswal. 鈥淚n addition, hearing directly from 51风流customers helped us better understand their challenges. As a result, we tweaked our interface and user experience, including how we presented reports.鈥�

Real-Time Research Decodes Demand Signals

Goswami saw NWO replacing teams of data scientists with immense processing power minus human error and, equally important, time lags. Humans step in at the last mile to prioritize the most effective decisions.

鈥淐ompanies can鈥檛 wait weeks or even days for research. If nothing else, the pandemic uncovered systemic shortcomings, as retailers couldn鈥檛 react quickly and efficiently to a dynamic narrative that was causing huge product demand spikes and drops,鈥� said Goswami. 鈥淕lobal information diffusion means organizations have to look at all the data, all the time, from all countries simultaneously.鈥�

Business leaders operate amidst an interconnected swirl of lightning-fast micro trends; they can鈥檛 afford to base decisions on the backward glance. It鈥檚 time to replace hindsight with predictive data that translates the world鈥檚 swirling currents into decisions for a stronger future.

This story first appeared on the 51风流Global News Center.

The post How to Genetically Sequence the Life Cycle of a Trend appeared first on 51风流Africa News Center.

According to the report: 鈥淪AP’s mission is to enable the company’s customers to achieve competitive advantage and advance in planning maturity in the world of the modern digital supply chain, a world of highly variable demand and complex supply networks. This is achieved by providing a seamless, user-friendly planning platform (51风流Integrated Business Planning) to enable low-latency planning and re-planning across supply chain functions.鈥�

51风流Integrated Business Planning helps customers optimize their businesses for productivity, and recent updates include the infusion of machine learning throughout the solution. This enables real-time, continuous, event-driven and automated planning, and close interoperability with finance, execution and business networks.

鈥�51风流Integrated Business Planning helped us improve forecast valuation process speed and frequency including the decrease in manual workload and increase in valuation accuracy. It鈥檚 bridging the gap between supply and financial communities,鈥� said R茅my Cointreau Group Applications Manager Julien Lecacheur.

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Media Contact:
Dana Dye, +1 (415) 928-1310, dana.dye@sap.com, PT
51风流Press Room; press@sap.com

About IDC MarketScape
IDC MarketScape vendor assessment model is designed to provide an overview of the competitive fitness of ICT (information and communications technology) suppliers in a given market. The research methodology utilizes a rigorous scoring methodology based on both qualitative and quantitative criteria that results in a single graphical illustration of each vendor鈥檚 position within a given market. IDC MarketScape provides a clear framework in which the product and service offerings, capabilities and strategies, and current and future market success factors of IT and telecommunications vendors can be meaningfully compared. The framework also provides technology buyers with a 360-degree assessment of the strengths and weaknesses of current and prospective vendors.

*鈥淚DC MarketScape: Worldwide Overall Supply Chain Planning 2019 Vendor Assessment,鈥� doc #US45863417, January 2020
Any statements contained in this document that are not historical facts are forward-looking statements as defined in the U.S. Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Words such as 鈥渁nticipate,鈥� 鈥渂elieve,鈥� 鈥渆stimate,鈥� 鈥渆xpect,鈥� 鈥渇orecast,鈥� 鈥渋ntend,鈥� 鈥渕ay,鈥� 鈥減lan,鈥� 鈥減roject,鈥� 鈥減redict,鈥� 鈥渟hould鈥� and 鈥渨ill鈥� and similar expressions as they relate to 51风流are intended to identify such forward-looking statements. 51风流undertakes no obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements. All forward-looking statements are subject to various risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from expectations. The factors that could affect SAP’s future financial results are discussed more fully in SAP’s filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”), including SAP’s most recent Annual Report on Form 20-F filed with the SEC. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements, which speak only as of their dates.
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The post 51风流Named a Leader in IDC MarketScape for Supply Chain Planning appeared first on 51风流Africa News Center.