In the beginning, there are needs to be filled, pain points to be identified, and processes to be improved. With the benefit of years of industry experience, close partnerships with leading organisations, and an eye on the latest technology, SAP’s Asset Intensive Industries Centre of Excellence keeps track of a backlog of topics. Through consultation with customers, partners and alignment with , this backlog is prioritised into a vision.

Vision is important; and formulating that vision along with high-level conceptual architecture, value to industry, and to 51ˇçÁ÷forms part of a business case that we socialise with stakeholders for consideration. Once a topic is approved, the rubber hits the road and the work can begin in earnest.

I’d like to share a real-world example. One topic the COE is passionate about is the efficient maintenance of assets. Over many years 51ˇçÁ÷has become a leader in this space with a feature-rich . Managing all aspects of an asset lifecycle including history, planning, spare parts, availability, the people involved, and their health and safety.

Increasingly the management of assets is outsourced to 3rd party service providers. Leveraging these partner organisations brings many benefits but also introduces new challenges and risks including double-handling of information, lack of visibility, data timeliness, and the management of asset knowledge.

Back when I started my career, we used to handle orders by fax; and these days we use the to manage procurement. And this network approach is the vision for a collaborative work order, where Asset Owners (for example mining companies, public sector organisations, and utilities) share their information with 3rd parties to enable modern collaboration that no longer relies on emails and phone calls.

To realise the network vision, we decided to leverage the and as the core foundation of the solution architecture. From here we have been able to design high-level process flows, data model, and screen concepts.

Inviting industry collaborators meant explaining the vision and agreeing to work together on the solution. The response has been fantastic with hundreds of hours of support from industry to articulate the as-is processes and associated pain points. And to provide input and review the to-be process and concepts.

During the pandemic, this has meant remote workshops leveraging tools such as Mural to collaborate. Along with the world’s leading mining and utility companies our co-innovation includes organisations such as Deutsche Bahn one of the world’s leading mobility and logistics companies.

With industry and 51ˇçÁ÷working together we have been able to develop and publish a to realise the vision of a collaborative work order. has been a breath of fresh air to help me through the pandemic. I knew I’d find some interesting challenges along the way. What I’m delighted to find is a passion from both our customers and our product engineering teams to make the world run better. about the new Centre Of Excellence for Asset Intensive Industries.

This article originally published on

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Australia’s Asset Intensive Industries (AII) are a significant anchor for the nation’s economy. Together, these industries – including mining, utilities, oil and gas, chemicals and manufacturing – contribute around a quarter (24 per cent) of Australia’s GDP. This year, despite the pandemic, the natural resource and energy sectors alone are forecast to drive $256 billion in export revenue.

Despite these impressive figures, many companies in this sector are faced with more complex challenges than ever before. Challenges like how to move up the value chain, maximise profits on commodity pricing, and deliver new products to their customers, as well as how to follow through on sustainability goals to create a new industry advantage.

To achieve these objectives, the industry must rise to the task of bringing together technology, people and processes in new and more effective ways. We believe that by  collaborating with our industry leading customers and partner ecosystem across ANZ, 51ˇçÁ÷can build the capabilities asset intensive industries need to fully embrace digital transformation and their future potential.

Introducing the 51ˇçÁ÷Centre of Excellence for Asset Intensive Industries

Launched late last year in Australia, SAP’s Global Centre of Excellence (CoE) for Asset Intensive Industries (AII) is already playing a lead role in enabling collaboration between SAP, its partners and customers. Based on an established global model, it will foster collaboration and harnesses the innovation capabilities of 51ˇçÁ÷and its ecosystem to address the common challenges and opportunities facing asset intensive industries globally.

The opportunities to learn from each other are enormous. After all, SAP’s customer base represents 97 per cent of the mining sector and more than half (54 per cent) of the utilities sector alone. Together, the companies we work with in these asset intensive industries generate over $500 billion in revenue annually. In Australia and New Zealand, our customers include some of the most innovative and forward-thinking mining and utilities companies in the world, making it the perfect location for the CoE.

With a dedicated team in Australia of analysts, architects and designers, working with SAP’s product and engineering teams, the CoE will bring SAP’s global expertise, and learnings from our global customer base, to bear in ANZ. In turn, solutions developed by the centre will be made available for relevant customers worldwide. This will allow customers in Australia and New Zealand – and across the world – to more rapidly discover and deploy smart technology to solve key industry problems.

The CoE will also promote the latest industry solutions developed by SAP’s extensive partner ecosystem, as best-of-breed, industry specific cloud apps will be endorsed by 51ˇçÁ÷and made available through .

Cloud revolution and new collaboration models

Engagement with our customers through the CoE will take several forms. Co-innovation will see 51ˇçÁ÷and a customer jointly invest to build a solution that a particular customer requires. The CoE will create new opportunities to discover and prioritise those needs. This might involve extending a particular 51ˇçÁ÷solution by introducing capabilities our customers need or sharing elements of a successful solution deployed by one customer with other organisations or industries.

Co-innovation will see 51ˇçÁ÷and a customer jointly invest to build a solution that a particular customer requires. The CoE will create new opportunities to discover and prioritise those needs.

All of this is possible today because of the improved availability and faster development cycles enabled by cloud technologies, which is accelerating the pace of innovation. Traditionally, engineering was locked in long, complicated development cycles that could not rapidly take account of shifting customer needs. Today, the cloud enables a more agile development cycle, accelerating the pace of innovation from years to months. This makes it easier and faster than ever to work collaboratively and have customers directly engaging with our engineering teams.

Targeting challenges at the core of Asset Intensive Industries

The CoE sees us using the latest technologies – including predictive analytics and automation – to develop asset efficiencies and extend industry capabilities, while helping our customers to embed sustainability into all areas of their operations.

In particular, the Centre of Excellence aims to tackle four key challenges that Asset Intensive Industries are grappling with on their journey to digital transformation:

• management of contractor workforce and assets;
• embedding sustainability;
• a digital supply chain end-to-end; and
• planning and scheduling activities.

Despite the significant uptake of technology in recent years, many asset intensive organisations have struggled to digitise these businesses processes. Two examples of challenges faced by organisations in the sector, which the CoE could help to address, include:

• Efficient and effective management of assets and a contractor workforce
  For many asset intensive companies, procurement of services is a significant cost component (30-40 per cent of total spend). Unless procurement and contractors are effectively managed to maintain assets, they may suffer costly and unnecessary downtime – or worse, injuries and fatalities. Bringing together the concept of ‘networks’ that will allow asset owners, service providers, operators and contractors to collaborate around a single Work Order, will ensure everyone is aligned, risks are managed, and work gets executed in the safest and most efficient way.
• Embedding sustainability
  Sustainability increasingly has the potential to impact an operator’s license to do business and raise capital. The CoE will expand on SAP’s initiative to find new ways for the traditionally resource intensive industry to reduce emissions at every stage of the supply chain, from extraction to transport. Not only will this support initiatives like the Paris Climate agreement, it will also deliver business results: consulting group BCG has linked environmental, social and governance standards to a 19 per cent valuation premium and increased EBITDA margins of 3.4 per cent for top performers in the oil and gas sector alone.

The next step

The Asia Pacific market is increasingly one where innovative ideas are born, not just one where they are sold – and the CoE aims to build on this. Just look at the likes of , which is using a machine vision-enabled app to identify and schedule asset maintenance, saving time and money.

So far, the response to the launch of the CoE has been very exciting. Our customers tell us they see the CoE as an opportunity to put their challenges on the table and talk to industry experts who understand how IT can effectively help.

We are eager to begin this new phase of collaboration to more rapidly and flexibly address the most challenging problems facing ANZ’s Asset Intensive Industries – producing capable, scalable and efficient solutions that will also support our global customers along the way.

To learn more or get involved, visit the website or contact us today.

To read more about the Centre of Excellence, check out .

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Orica expects new technology will deliver a $15 million boost to EBIT in the 2021 financial year, following the completion of its multi-year 51ˇçÁ÷roll out and further investment in digital technology.

In its full-year result published today, the company recorded a 31 percent decline in profit citing disruptions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic but said it still achieved key strategic milestones.

The explosive maker said the largest and final phase of the 51ˇçÁ÷project was implemented in July 2020.

Simplifying with 51ˇçÁ÷S/4HANA 

Orica’s 4S program – ‘Simple, Standard, Single SAP’ – covers eight end-to-end business processes and consolidates Orica’s entire business on an S/4 HANA core, supported by 51ˇçÁ÷cloud add-ons.

The business notified the market on October 12th that it needed to delay publishing its full results after “COVID-19 related challenges” caused a delay in closing the books in the new system.

At the time, Orica managing director Alberto Calderon described the deployment of 51ˇçÁ÷as a “historic, and game-changing, milestone” and noted, “the underlying business has transitioned without major disruption.”

To read the full story, read the original article on .Ěý

To find out more about the latest 51ˇçÁ÷technology, today.Ěý

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To watch the Procurement Reimagined session with BHP’s Chief Procurement Officer, Sundeep Singh, you can .

The post BHP uses 51ˇçÁ÷Ariba to drive deeper into its $20bn spend appeared first on 51ˇçÁ÷Australia & New Zealand News Center.

As part of SAP’s commitment to helping business become more resilient and agile in today’s challenging environment, the recent Forum provided free industry-specific webinars that explored how governments, business and the community can work together to drive a faster economic recovery.

The Forum was a follow-up to the inaugural Adaptive Strategies event in May, where industry advisors and executives shared their perspectives on the strategies that Australian and New Zealand organisations were taking in response to some of the challenges we have faced this year – from the bushfires to the global pandemic. Regardless of industry, common themes that emerged were; digital preparedness, the importance of collaboration, business continuity, keeping customers and employees safe, safeguarding supply chains, mitigating risks, and building resilience for future events. Members of our team in the Digital Transformation Office at 51ˇçÁ÷Australia & New Zealand participated in these sessions and here are some highlights.

Adaptive Strategies in a Changed World ACCELERATED

Small and medium enterprise (SME) will play a pivotal role in getting Australia back to work, which according to the 2019 Small Business Ombudsman Report accounts for 35% of our national GDP and 44% of Australia’s workforce. The SME sector, much like larger enterprises, has been hit by three primary challenges – cashflow management, employee engagement/availability, and supply chain disruption.

To further understand how innovation and increasing productivity can foster growth in this sector, Hannah Baudert, Federal Government Director at 51ˇçÁ÷spoke with the Australian Small Business and Family Enterprise Ombudsman (ASBFEO), Kate Carnell in the dedicated

For the , Anton Kroger, Director of Energy and Natural Resources at 51ˇçÁ÷hosted a discussion with Angela Williamson, Partner at Integral Supply Networks Advisory, Sanjiv Manchanda, CEO for Atlas Iron, and Robert McCarthy, GM at Dyflex Solutions.

A key takeaway from this session was the importance of engaging with remote workforces and contractors while managing supply chains during this time of uncertainty. With ever-changing legislation and continued fears around the safety and supply of resources – both human and material, mining operators should utilise technology that helps keep its various stakeholders connected and compliant.

As highlighted in the discussion, it’s not just about reducing costs and maintaining business continuity but ensuring the productivity and wellbeing of various staff members, processes, and equipment throughout the product lifecycle. Miners should use this opportunity to take stock prior to digital transformation, understand business capacities and systems to ensure they’re aligned with overarching strategic goals.

Evan Mantis, General Manager for Consumer and Service Industries at 51ˇçÁ÷introduced the with Steven Moraitakis, Transformation Lead for Consumer Goods and Retail at SAP, and Jackie Pearson, Executive GM for Business Transformation at Sigma Healthcare.

Ms Pearson which they kick-started due to the legacy ‘technology debt’ created across the organisation. With four separate ERP systems and a host of different applications that were highly customised, disparate, and not providing the necessary insights, Sigma Healthcare needed to optimise its technology and processes to operate more intelligently.

Moving ahead with their digital transformation program not only mitigated risk but broke down structural silos and unified all parts of the organisation, allowing staff to work more efficiently while creating value in multiple business areas. Currently in the process of evolving its ERP ecosystem to integrate all data touchpoints into a single platform with 51ˇçÁ÷S/4HANA, Sigma Healthcare was able to withstand the COVID-19 disruption by relying on agile technology and its best in class distribution centres. Ms Pearson is fiercely powering through implementation remotely, emphasising the organisation’s ability to quickly adapt to new circumstances.

For the , Jonathan Fogarty, Utilities Lead Architect for 51ˇçÁ÷hosted a panel discussion with Danica Lawrence, IS Lead Chief Architect for Powerco NZ, Rob Scott, Director and Principal of HR Strategy and Innovation at Deloitte, Aaron Green, Senior VP and Head of 51ˇçÁ÷SuccessFactors APAC, and Gavin Mooney, Utilities Lead Architect for 51ˇçÁ÷Australia.

With ongoing challenges and uncertainties, the panel discussed the importance of connecting and collaborating with staff while maintaining company culture. As businesses focus on productivity and safety, the key is facilitating remote work with operational and intelligent technologies – helping staff to work seamlessly and minimising manual, in-field work. For example, Internet of Things (IoT) and machine learning capabilities are facilitating predictive maintenance, optimising asset use and longevity while increasing the efficiency of maintenance crews. By assisting fieldworkers through augmented reality, and reducing the amount of fieldwork required using touchless substations and smart metering, utilities are improving their processes and keeping everyone safe during the pandemic.

In the , Peter Jose, General Manager for Financial Services at 51ˇçÁ÷introduced a discussion between Darryl Fox, Industry Account Director at 51ˇçÁ÷and David Earls, Executive GM of Enterprise Services and Technology at IAG. They discussed how IAG are utilising digital technology to empower staff, stay connected to their customers and maintain service continuity. Prior to the lockdown, IAG already had 30% of staff working predominantly from home which helped set a solid foundation in terms of technologies and practices for ensuring productivity.

Evan Mantis opened the with Asha Bisla, GM of Business Applications at Broadspectrum, Shenaz Bilkis, Global Industry Director for Construction and Real Estate at SAP, and Mike Denning, Business Architect for Service & Engineering Industries at SAP.

Asha shared insights into how Broadspectrum are working closely with strategic partners to fast track critical processes. Leveraging technology allowed the business to facilitate remote working at scale, manage the scheduling and safety of projects and people, while using communications and analytics software to forecast and plan for ever-changing circumstances.

Uday Bonu, Regional Industry Lead for Public Sector at 51ˇçÁ÷, VP of Digital Government Transformation at 51ˇçÁ÷to explore the impact of COVID-19 on public services and the strategies that can help governments work more efficiently to deal with the increasing demand for social services in the face of declining revenues. By implementing and accelerating digital initiatives, governments and private businesses can help set the industry norms and motivate change for the better in terms of processes and systems.

Taking insights from each of these industry sessions, it is clear that organisations of all sizes, in all industries, are squarely focussed on safeguarding their employees and customers, while maintaining business continuity. Technology and digitisation is playing a vital role in supporting and facilitating rapid change. In polling attendees, 51ˇçÁ÷found that businesses across industry sectors are reprioritising and/or accelerating digitalisation projects in response to the pandemic – using the global shift to focus more on future-proofing operations.

Access the from the 51ˇçÁ÷2020 Adaptive Strategies in a Changed World ACCELERATED Forum to gain further insights on specific industry challenges and how 51ˇçÁ÷solutions are helping organisation to become more adaptive and resilient in this rapidly changing environment.

This blog originally published on .

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Within mining, this global pandemic has demonstrated the need for flexibility and rapid responsiveness. While mining services have been deemed essential to the economy, this shift has led to roles labelled non-essential moving towards digitalisation. Companies have been driven towards work-from-home capabilities to limit public contact and mining is no exception.

Digital transformation was and remains a critical safeguard to limiting people’s immediate contact as it enables staff to operate remotely and unlock avenues for automation. At times of heightened caution for people’s safety, automation is paramount to protecting people and businesses.

Supply Chain Impact
As of writing this, Australian mining production continues, however news changes develop quickly, and governments continue tightening restrictions on people’s movement and gathering. With availability of workforce under risk, the other critical impact is on availability of goods and potential bottlenecking at primary shipping ports.

With increasing mining organisations undergoing streamlining supply chain processes and optimising inventory management, this increased efficiency has also reduced the ability for some companies to cope with global shock events like COVID-19.

However, digital platforms and intelligent technologies have equipped many businesses with the right demand management systems to leverage different strategies and sources for supplies. The dynamic complexity of comprehensive data analysis can help highlight vulnerabilities in real time and present other options or outcomes.

It’s a challenge to understand completely the effects of COVID-19 for mining as the pandemic continues evolving and measures a continually being implemented to curb its spread globally. Organisations with links to countries that have seen significant impacts, such as China, Korea, the US, Italy, and Spain should proceed with caution and consistently monitor how the virus could impact on operations.

The Vital Next Steps
outlined some valuable next steps for businesses that applies to any industry. The first and most important step is to support and protect employees during this time of uncertainty.

As the challenge is ever evolving, it’s important to listen closely to staff to help ensure their safety whether on- or off-site. Now is the time to communicate with people clearly and calmly, explaining what they can do to remain safe, productive, and informed.

The next step is to monitor key indicators of where the pandemic is evolving and start planning for more potential impacts as coronavirus continues to develop. Data from the regions of your key suppliers and customers could be vital in adapting your business process to safeguard from further interruptions to your supply chains and production processes.

Mining organisations must think about the next horizons of COVID-19. The urgency of immediate response to changes can make it difficult remain forces on what’s needed tomorrow or further down the road. Beyond the needs to today companies should be adapting to this change and hopefully emerge more resilient, more efficient, and flexible for future changes.

Centralising your systems and communications is paramount – not only for keep operations running and staff safe, but as a means of safeguarding against future impacts and getting ahead of any developments. It also helps to be transparent and responsive with staff, this ensures your organisation can maintain momentum and safety at challenge times like these.

With massive confusion and ever-changing news developments, it’s valuable having some reliable information resources that can offer guidance during this crisis. 51ˇçÁ÷recently hosted a series of virtual forums called , with industry-specific episodes to help companies make sense of the changing situation and utilise the latest technology trends for futureproofing their business. In looking back on the past few months, we also have a second edition of – Live on August 6^th.

The featured a panel of speakers to discuss some key topics, that included Paul Mitchell, Global Lead for Mining & Metals for EY, Indrasen Naidoo, Managing Partner with Integral Supply Networks Advisory, Barry FitzGerald, Australian Mining and Business Commentator and Melinda Cilento, CEO with CEDA.

The forum explored the future of workforce in this post-COVID-19 world, how companies can adapt and change in light of this global pandemic, and the new workforce strategies that will emerge from this worldwide shift.

We also assessed the full impact on mining and resource supply chains – looking at commodity prices and the major disruptions that continue to shake our industry.Ěý

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