And it’s not just retail and service businesses that are losing employees and the valuable skills those employees bring. Companies across all industries and sizes are struggling to retain and hire knowledgeable workers with the right skill sets to run and grow their organizations. This is a business sustainability issue and blocker to business and digital transformation.

The pressure to retain and hire quality talent with strong digital skills in particular has intensified with the COVID-19 pandemic, as the business digitalization need was accelerated by five to 10 years. Suddenly, harnessing the Internet of Things (IoT) and investing in robotic process automation (RPA) and machine learning are urgent priorities, not long-range plans. This acceleration has created employee skills gaps where organizations that might have been one or two years behind in digital skills transformation have suddenly found themselves to be a decade or more behind. This puts them at high risk of being unable to tap into the new digital economy, which is an opportunity cost few can afford.

The growing digital skills gap has also highlighted current and projected future inequalities because the gap has widened at different rates in different geographical locations and industry sectors. The looming digital divide is potentially so serious that the World Economic Forum has launched the , mobilizing a global movement, including a large number of 51·çÁ÷customers and partners, to prioritize digital inclusion as foundational to the achievement of their sustainable development goals. 51·çÁ÷has also prioritized its own digital literacy program.

To remain competitive and sustainable in the digital economy, businesses must have enough people with the right skills at the right time to help them accelerate their digital transformation. Every business and digital transformation is also a people transformation, but the key point is that the people transformation needs to happen first.

Embrace the “Unbound” Workforce as the New Normal

Today, it seems every employee might be a flight risk, especially those with the skills that are foundational to digital transformation and economic growth. One way to address the immediate skills gap is to stem the flood of people leaving your business for greener pastures – which, for many, are more flexible and less biased work environments. Retention has always been the best form of recruitment. During the peak of COVID-19, knowledge workers were freed from the office and became, at least in their minds, fluid, liberated, and free-range employees. Many don’t want to go back to full-time office work – especially women and people of color. As noted in a previous article, pulse studies have found that women, working parents, and employees of color are the most adamant about continuing to work remotely.

And it’s for good reasons. Most employees – especially women – found that they were able to sustain high levels of productivity working remotely while gaining more time for relationships, stress-reducing activities, responsibilities such as caring for children and aging parents, and more. They could work from anywhere, at any time that worked best each day, and do their jobs well. Most employees report that they are aren’t willing to give this up because an employer says so.

The benefits of working remotely have been even more significant for people of color. For example, Black men reported a massive improvement in their employee experience because, while working remotely, they felt they have not been subject to the same level of unconscious bias. In other words, they feel that they’ve enjoyed more equality working from home – which is critical to fostering a sense of belonging and increasing the likelihood of their retention.

This is why to and meeting the needs of remote and hybrid workers is massively important from both a sustainability and a diversity, equity, and inclusion perspective. It’s critical to develop flexible work environments that balance company and employee needs and create an employee experience they love. Because the fact is, every flight risk threatens your most valued digital skills, as the people with those skills are most likely to leave.

Empower Employees to Expand Their Capabilities to Advance Individual Growth

Another way to address skills gaps is to empower employees to work in cross-functional teams based on organizational tasks or projects. This notion of coming together with others to get work done and then disbanding when the work is finished is widely referred to as dynamic teams. They can be across hierarchies or lines of business and help to create an agile working environment while fueling skill development. By leveraging internal talent, managers and human resources do not have to create new positions, find budget, recruit, or support a team creation process with other time-consuming tasks. Instead, your business organizations can simply bring together employees to form optimal teams that can focus on short term tasks and priorities.

In addition to forming dynamic teams to bridge skills gaps, organizations can also take an employee-centric approach to development and growth by providing access to internal opportunities through fellowships, gigs, temporary assignments, mentor programs, and experiential learning. This allows an organization to build the skills needed for the future while empowering individuals to create a career completely their own. Connecting employees to meaningful work and new opportunities will drive the adaptability needed for better business outcomes.

Proactively Upskill and Reskill

Finally, invest in learning and development. Why? Because every digital transformation is also a people transformation where employers must upskill and reskill their employees to meet today’s changed needs and tomorrow’s capabilities demand. Not only must organizations provide the tools to help their workforce discover learning to upskill and reskill them, but they must create an environment supportive of continuous learning. For example, complementing formal training with informal, collaborative, and engaging communities of practice can offer easy access to experts and knowledge sharing to build up skills quickly. A dynamic environment of learning, feedback, and coaching empowers people to take charge of their development with confidence. Here, learning recommendations turn every employee into a proactive learner by giving guidance and nudging them to take action.

Undeniably, closing the skills gap and striving towards sustainable growth requires organizations to create a create a future-fit, resilient workforce that directly addresses its needs as well as those of each of its employees. This can be truly transformational.

To learn more, visit .

Tammie Eldridge is part of Solution Marketing at 51·çÁ÷SuccessFactors.

As a customer of multiple , Wellstar is familiar with the power of 51·çÁ÷and knew it could be getting more out of its 51·çÁ÷SuccessFactors Learning solution. Danielle Mecum, manager of Learning Technology at Wellstar, believed that improved governance of the system was part of the road to getting there. “When governance is lacking, the employee experience suffers,” Mecum explained.

With a nursing background, she knew firsthand the need to get new hires trained properly and quickly, and that reducing the time from hire to actual work was key. She added, “In addition to our non-clinical employees, our medical employees were taking longer to get to the patient floors to start providing care because of how the required onboarding training was organized and set up. There were inaccurate training assignments, courses not marked as required, and, in some cases, no required-by dates.”

In addition, users said that their learning assignments were too cluttered and disorganized, Mecum explained. And there were instances where new employees would get to a patient floor and realize that they were not able to enter a patient’s chart, for example, because a course hadn’t been assigned to them in the correct sequence.

The need to get employees onboarded faster could have been enough to justify the governance project, but to add to the complex nature of the project – and completely out of Wellstar’s control – the organization faced the impending deprecation of Flash content and the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic. To help tackle this challenge, Wellstar decided to work with its customer engagement executive to start a solution adoption engagement. This type of engagement is intended to provide recommendations to a customer to help them create an action plan to optimize their use of their system – in this case . A recommendation came out of this engagement that confirmed the needed for the governance initiative.

Mecum’s nursing background helped her understand the urgency of the situation. She and her team looked at the issues already discussed and began to build a governance model. For example, they instituted a content life cycle management process that incorporated a formal method for requesting the creation of new items, curricula, and assignment profiles. In addition, they implemented an ongoing review procedure that included automated notifications to course owners to review material that had reached expiration. Additionally, Wellstar leveraged and configured custom fields within 51·çÁ÷SuccessFactors Learning to track key data and report on it from within the system to ensure compliance with the new governance process.

Other governance steps included reviewing and consolidating LMS admin roles to ensure the right administrators had the right permissions to perform administrative tasks as appropriate in the system – without giving them freedom to add to the problem at large. A formal process for vetting new LMS administrators was created to ensure they weren’t simply giving just anyone these permissions. “We knew we needed to define what goes into the system, so we could control what comes out. This helps when we need to get rid of old, outdated courses,” Mecum explained.

These changes, among others, were implemented as part of the governance initiative. The result is that Wellstar is now reaping greater benefits from 51·çÁ÷SuccessFactors Learning and, most importantly, employees now have an improved experience with the system. Frustration levels are down and new hires are able to start their actual jobs much sooner than before – in three days rather than a week and a half!

Mark Tarallo is a solution marketing fellow for 51·çÁ÷SuccessFactors.

According to researchers at , precision medicine therapeutics have accounted for 25% to 40% of all FDA approvals in the past seven years. They believe precision medicine has “proven its worth with mounting evidence of improved patient outcomes in oncology, cardiology, endocrinology, and other disease areas.” From the patient’s perspective, analysts suggested a digital-first “health journey” vision that prioritizes digital engagement and the use of digital interactions, products, and services throughout an individual’s journey through health, wellness, and illness.

Data Makes Life Sciences Supply Chains More Intelligent

Michael Townsend, research director of Life Sciences Commercial Strategies at IDC, saw the industry in the early stages of digitalization, focusing on the value of technology that brings intelligence across life sciences supply chains.

“Companies are beginning to make processes more digital, applying intelligence from technologies to make better decisions,” said Townsend. “For instance, there’s significant investment in supply chain solutions like digital twins, where you construct a digital model to experiment with what-if scenarios in performance at various points along the chain such as assembly, shipment, or geography. You can stress test alternate choices without actually having to make any changes.”

Townsend said that segmentation was another intelligent node across supply chains, allowing companies to identify and store medicines and packaging based on country-specific regulations, improving lead times, reducing unused inventory, and simplifying shipping. Some organizations are also using control towers to track demand patterns against materials and component availability, avoiding overstocks and shortages. For example, if COVID-19 cases rise in a certain region, a vaccine manufacturer can act faster to stock up and start shipping prevention and treatment products to that location. Connecting data across supply chains for quick response times applies to any unexpected disruption, including natural disasters and political conflicts.

Ecosystems Surface Expert Wisdom

Mandar Paralkar, head of Life Sciences Industry at SAP, agreed that organizations are moving from historical emphasis on addressing disease with bulk manufacturing of medications to personalized therapies that improve individual patient outcomes and involve more ecosystem collaboration. In an industry with longer product development cycles, he said that collaborative consortiums like are a way to share intelligence for expedited success.

“Whether startups or established leaders, life sciences companies are using technology to improve patient outcomes and company profitability while reducing costs and risk,” said Paralkar. “They’ve realized the imperative to compete as an ecosystem across connected digital supply chains and smart factories. One example of this is 51·çÁ÷Intelligent Clinical Supply Management, a solution we innovated with a consortium of customers and partners. This collaborative effort exemplifies how innovation in the cloud can potentially help life sciences organizations create, manufacture, and deliver effective solutions faster, allowing the partner ecosystem to compliment value-added services.”

Cloud-Based Technology Disrupts Life Sciences

The pandemic has irrevocably disrupted life sciences, revealing a new vision for innovation from cloud-based collaboration. Almost overnight, companies invested in technology to work from home, and that bled over into new ways of thinking about the use of technology in areas like process automation and decentralized clinical trials, along with working together in trusted relationships.

“Collaboration hubs where multiple, trusted entities can exchange information, collaborating to learn from each other and solve problems is part of the life sciences vision,” said Townsend. “Experts involved with clinical supply chains and other aspects of life sciences are motivated to streamline processes, make suggestions to software providers, and share information between systems. Cloud-based software is critical. If you’re on subscription-based software, updates are almost in real time and it’s much easier to collaborate and access different sources of data when it’s available in the cloud.”

Achieving a Healthier and Profitable Vision

As costs and regulatory pressures rise and educated patients clamor for personalized treatment, digital innovations will inexorably alter the life sciences landscape. Within a few years, researchers predicted 75% of trials will be “patient-centric” decentralized clinical trials, 90% will be hybrid, and at least 10% will be virtual, driven by a 30% growth in connected health technologies.​ They said that by 2025 the market for prescription digital therapeutics will more than triple, focusing on mental health and chronic conditions, blurring the boundaries between healthcare and life sciences. It’s no wonder that analysts advised life sciences manufacturers to prioritize “clinical solutions that include interoperability as a core feature, including easier connectivity of content and data between clinical sites, sponsors, clinical research organizations, and other ecosystem participants.” Trusted intelligent data is the must-have for a healthier future.

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This is especially true in the current fast-moving market when businesses are still facing material sourcing and supplier challenges triggered by the international pandemic. Yet are moving forward with expansion despite economic concerns and supply chain challenges.

As the COVID-19 threat accelerated, SAP’s longtime client examined its operations and saw that there was an overwhelming opportunity to improve how the business runs and come out of the pandemic as an even stronger business.

Freudenberg’s vast footprint – its presence can be found in 35 countries – was both a blessing and a curse. Different regions, as well as business areas, utilized dissimilar planning approaches and sources, limiting the ability to gain an overall picture across the entire company. Some of these planning processes were carried out manually, with employees relying on hundreds of different spreadsheets to compile reports. Often, comptrollers had to be personally consulted during this period to confirm data and statistics, slowing the pace. Yet, even with confirmed figures, discrepancies between financial and production plans remained.

Franco Giacomini, vice president for big markets in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa, stated, “In a rapidly fluctuating market…forecasting is crucial for us. We need it to ensure we produce enough of the right products at the right time and understand the financial impact of various planning scenarios.” Clearly, a new – and fully digital – approach was needed to bring business processes into a single platform to anticipate, understand, and meet customer expectations to keep the company thriving.

Remodeling a Long-Established Business

Based in Weinheim, Germany, the Freudenberg Group’s legacy goes back more than 170 years. Of its diverse branches, Freudenberg Home and Cleaning Solutions produces everything from floor cleaning systems to laundry care products to household cloths and rubber gloves.

SAP’s relationship with the company began in the 1990s, when the Freudenberg Group first adopted 51·çÁ÷software. In an early example of the type of platform that would later be required as the pandemic intensified, Freudenberg Home and Cleaning Solutions merged multiple applications into a global, centralized pricing scheme in 2003.

Fast forward nearly 20 years, that remains in use, but now a new platform was created to deploy a hybrid architecture consisting of data and analytics solutions based on . Using consolidated finance and supply chain data, and integrating it with a cloud planning tool that operates in real-time across multiple regions and product categories, Freudenberg is able to simulate best- and worst-case scenarios to grasp operational impact, along with potential profit and loss. A definite game changer for the disparate business unit planning that had been taking place.

Digital Legend

As ambitious as this project sounded, the architecture was deployed when it was needed most and when much of the world was locked down in 2020.

Forging through the start of the pandemic paid off for Freudenberg. The single-source repository has revolutionized how Freudenberg runs, harmonizing the planning and forecasting processes across the consumer products division, regardless of international boundaries.

The enhanced knowledge allowed planners to quickly scan details about product volumes, available raw materials, and sales value, closing gaps that might have otherwise remained open and undetected.

“The smart combination of sales plans, forecasts, and operative plans in one integrated global simulation and planning platform truly accelerated decision-making,” said Andreas Hass, Freudenberg’s corporate IT manager for Analytics Processes and Systems.

Through this innovative method of scenario planning, and the deeper understanding of profits and loss, planning transparency and accuracy increased. What decreased was inaccurate, manually derived figures and time spent on repetitive report preparation tasks, freeing up teams to evaluate new trends and engage in other high-value work that could lead to increased growth in current and potential markets.

Most impressive though was how, despite the massive amount of data acquired for analyzing and processing, planning occurred at a rate that was 10 times faster than in the past.

The earned Freudenberg Home and Cleaning Solutions the unique and well-deserved distinction as a 2022 51·çÁ÷Innovation Award winner in the 50^th Anniversary Legend category. More significantly, like companies everywhere that have benefited from digital acceleration, Freudenberg has begun rethinking the future, using the current momentum to extend its solution to other business functions.

Claudio Muruzabal is president of Cloud Success Services at SAP.

Industry innovation has been a fascinating topic over the last few years. It’s impossible to ignore how companies create new offerings and experiences that dramatically shift how an industry – or in some cases, multiple industries – operates and how people live. Such groundbreaking changes are usually built with an appreciation of existing data and technologies and through a desire to do things better in terms of product safety, supply chain optimization, and business finances.

I’ve been very fortunate to experience the power of such industry innovation through the Customer Innovation & Maintenance team as part of the Customer Solution Support & Innovation organization at SAP. For years, we have worked with various organizations to navigate existing crises, address emerging challenges, and deliver new opportunities for the world. In this article, I will discuss three of our latest projects.

Saving People’s Lives by Reducing Counterfeit Drugs

One prime example of our efforts is tackling a global menace that impacts the entire world: counterfeit pharmaceuticals. Many falsified or substandard medicines contain dangerous ingredients, such as heavy metals, highway paint, and rat poison, that worsen people’s health conditions and create new diseases. As a result, the World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that more than yearly from these snake oil cures.

For years, governments have initiated legislation and regulations to criminalize and control the production and distribution of counterfeit drugs. However, my team discovered that the lack of a rigorous, universal network makes it difficult to curtail the problem often hidden within complex supply chains and sophisticated packaging.

Based on input from 51·çÁ÷customers in the life sciences industry and working with 51·çÁ÷industry experts on this international challenge, we developed . The industry network hub enables pharmaceutical firms to share product information for traceability and verification across the supply network and with government regulators. Running on and leveraging 51·çÁ÷Blockchain Business Services, it is the first public-cloud, industry-specific business network used by more than 45 pharmaceutical firms, over 1,500 trading partners, and 80% of COVID-19 vaccine manufacturers.

But our contribution to the fight against counterfeit drugs is far from over. We are working toward adding aid workers from organizations – such as the Red Cross and Doctors Without Borders – to the hub so they can verify critical medicines and vaccines on the fly in low- to middle-income countries. This innovation is accomplished by integrating the hub into the application.

Accelerating the Development of Lifesaving Therapies

Another barrier to delivering large quantities of medical therapies quickly, efficiently, and safely is the structure of the traditional clinical supply chain. During the COVID-19 pandemic, supply chain resilience was highlighted as a critical requirement for providing lifesaving vaccines, prophylactics, and therapies created through industry-wide collaboration and a patient-centric focus.

To accelerate clinical R&D and time to value, my team worked with Roche, Tenthpin, and more than 25 additional customers and vendors connected to the pharmaceutical sector. Together, we reimagined clinical supply operations and brought to life a digital transformation of the entire life sciences ecosystem by developing the solution.

This next-generation cloud solution enables faster clinical supply cycle times, fewer inventory overages, and better-informed decision-making by providing accurate insights into forecasted demand and clinical site stock levels. It is also a milestone in the industry’s adoption of the cloud, facilitating end-to-end process operations and visibility to plan, source, manufacture, distribute, and reconcile supplies for clinical R&D. In addition, the solution helps address the blinding and randomization needs of clinical trials during the manufacturing, packaging, labeling, and shipment of clinical supplies to hospitals and clinics.

Meeting Financing Needs to Boost Growth

In addition to counterfeit drugs and the need for resilience, supply chain volatility and turbulence is providing the impetus for innovation. This reality is prompting capital investments including end-to-end due diligence and product tracing services; machines and plant setups that improve environmental impacts; and networks for finding, vetting, and onboarding new suppliers quickly.

Incorporating all these innovations into business operations – regardless of ecosystem size and geographic reach – requires money that many companies may not have immediately on hand. But to meet those finance needs, businesses and banks need to connect with each other smoothly, quickly, and securely without introducing more work and complexity to finance and treasury processes.

By delivering the solution, we play a key role in increasing the reliability of relationships between companies and their banks. Built on top of 51·çÁ÷Business Technology Platform, the solution creates a multi-bank, digital channel between each party’s enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems to embed Electronic Banking Internet Communication Standard (EBICS) and SWIFT connectivity into the remote data transfer of payment transactions.

In return, treasury operations can be refined and simplified by updating payment status and cash positions in real time across business and bank ERP systems. 51·çÁ÷Multi-Bank Connectivity can automate manual, error-prone steps associated with the execution and reconciliation of payments, order-to-cash applications, and order entry documents – helping to increase control, efficiency, and transparency.

Helping the World Run Better – One Innovation at a Time

The news headlines running across our screens every day prove that industry innovation is far from done. Unfortunately, no person, organization, or business carries the ultimate wisdom to solve every problem single-handedly. But if industry practitioners, business and technology experts, thought leaders, and inspired problem-solvers collaborate toward a common goal, a better future can be possible for everyone.

It is this vision that guides my leadership of Customer Solution Support & Innovation. My team of experts continuously looks for opportunities to do better for our customers, business, and global neighbors. And with the feedback and knowledge shared during every interaction, we look forward to working side by side with our customers and partners to provide the digital capabilities they need to make the world a better place – today and in the future.

Andreas Heckmann is executive vice president of Product Engineering and head of Customer Solution Support and Innovation at SAP. Follow him on and .

While they are not contagious, people suffering from long COVID might experience one or more symptoms such as fatigue; shortness of breath; memory and concentration problems, sometimes referred to as “brain fog”; sleep problems; muscle aches or pain; psychological symptoms, such as depression or anxiety; and changes in smell or taste. These symptoms may impact quality of life and limit the ability to complete everyday activities — making a normal working routine hugely challenging.

Looking after yourself and seeking help early on are extremely important, especially when it comes to long-term illnesses. That is why the Global Health, Safety & Well-Being team at 51·çÁ÷is working to make employees aware of the possible long-term effects of a COVID-19 infection and providing practical advice.

Company Medical Officer Dr. Torsten Paul shares more here about living and working with long COVID.

Q: We often hear or read about long COVID and post-COVID conditions in the media, but what do these terms mean exactly?

A: Before we go into that, I’d just like to point out that other viruses can cause long-term health issues as well, so this isn’t new.

“Post-COVID conditions” is used as an umbrella term to capture health problems that occur four or more weeks after an acute COVID-19 infection and cannot be explained by an alternative diagnosis. New, recurring, or persisting symptoms from four weeks up to 12 weeks after the initial infection are called long COVID. If you experience symptoms for more than 12 weeks and they cannot be explained by an alternative diagnosis, then we would refer to that as post-COVID syndrome.

What can I do to protect myself from post-COVID condition? Do vaccinations prevent it?

The best way to prevent post-COVID conditions is to protect yourself and others from becoming infected. Being fully vaccinated against the virus and following the measures to prevent infection help with this.

But if you do catch the virus, being fully vaccinated significantly reduces the risk of severe COVID-19 illness and the likelihood of post-COVID conditions. Although research on the prevention of post-COVID conditions is still ongoing, current findings strongly suggest that people who are vaccinated but experience a breakthrough infection are less likely to report post-COVID conditions, compared to people who are unvaccinated. Unfortunately, people who are fully vaccinated can still suffer from post-COVID-19 conditions, as our colleague Nicky’s story shows (see below).

At SAP, we are also doing our part to prevent the long-term effects of a COVID-19 infection: so far we have administered more than 30,000 vaccines to employees worldwide and continue to do so.

Does long COVID affect only people who suffered from a more severe COVID-19 illness?

The long-term health problems that can occur are mostly unrelated to the severity of the original COVID-19 illness. Sadly, this means that people who had a mild or asymptomatic infection still have a certain risk of developing long-term health issues. The good thing is that their risk is lower compared to people who had to be treated in an intensive care unit during their COVID-19 infection. Current research also suggests that women are more likely than men to develop long COVID, but we do not yet know why.

It can be difficult to distinguish many of these symptoms from symptoms that occur for other reasons.

Do physicians, hospitals, and authorities now recognize long COVID as an illness?

If a patient experiences symptoms following a SARS-CoV-2 infection, a thorough clinical evaluation is important. If the symptoms cannot be otherwise explained, physicians should always suspect a post-COVID condition. Fortunately, the general awareness of these conditions is growing, and we continue to learn more about them. Many countries now have official guidelines on diagnosing and treating post-COVID conditions.

What can employees do if they think they might be suffering from a post-COVID condition?

In most countries, the first point of contact for employees is their general practitioner or family doctor. Company physicians can also play an important role in the case of so far undiagnosed post-COVID conditions by referring patients to further external diagnosis and treatments.

What types of treatment are available?

Unfortunately, we are not yet able to treat the underlying causes of post-COVID conditions. Current treatments focus on improving symptoms and quality of life. Many official international guidelines recommend interdisciplinary, outpatient care provided by specialist physicians and in some cases by general practitioners. Because the symptoms often affect multiple organ systems, it is not unusual for treatments to involve multiple specialists in, for instance, general medicine, pulmonology, neurology, psychosomatic medicine, psychiatry, and psychotherapy, and, for children, pediatrics. Many countries have already set up post-COVID clinics or outpatient centers, some of which are located at university hospitals, to take care of patients with more severe illnesses.

How does the 51·çÁ÷Health team help colleagues?

We offer medical consulting and referral as part of our general occupational and preventive . Our services do not replace, but rather complement, the specialist diagnosis and treatments that are available outside SAP. We also have separate post-COVID consultation sessions, during which patients can discuss their symptoms with our medical experts and receive recommendations to find the right external diagnostic and treatment pathway, as well as the support available in the workplace.

For colleagues who have been ill for some time, we offer support in the return-to-work process to help ensure that their working environment meets their medical needs.

“There isn’t a CPG manufacturer who would disagree that having visibility across their supply chain is paramount to resilient business during these disruptive times,” said Stanko Simonski, CPG industry value advisor at SAP. “The question is how to close the gap between the vision and reality. Market leaders are gaining the visibility to first, understand what’s likely to happen and how they need to respond, and second, act on the decisions they’ve made.”

Settle for Nothing Less Than One View of Your Data

Deciphering everything from early demand signals to third-party transportation issues across complex supply chains is all about combining data for one integrated view. Managers who have their finger on the pulse of market demands in real or near real time can adapt forecasts and shop floor production lines faster. The same concept applies to imminent supply chain delays at any point, including raw materials stalled in transit from suppliers, down to finished goods held up from sales order fulfillment. Connecting data in the system, such as the bill of materials with product life cycle management, helps companies make changes on short notice without compromising quality.

“Companies can use technology to connect information at scale throughout supply chains across third parties and on a detailed level all the way though to factory shop floor,” said Simonski. “Integrated network alerts can tell you to change a purchase order, talk with alternate suppliers because one of the ingredients in your recipe isn’t available, or shift production processes for different materials. Having more options provides greater predictability.”

Create a New Kind of Redundancy

Demand spikes, whether positive or negative, increase company risk. With updated information, manufacturers can change production sites between factories while recommending comparative products to customers. However, CPG manufacturers tend to have regionalized facilities, with designated suppliers close by factory locations. They typically cannot transport products further distances without compromising profitability, hence the proliferation of lean supply chains. That changed with the pandemic.

“Manufacturers that supplied individual markets typically from one location to optimize costs pre-pandemic were stranded when they couldn’t obtain materials. They’ve realized the need for some redundancy in the supply chain,” said Simonski. “Some manufacturers have expanded the capabilities to source markets from more than one factory in case customer demands increase too fast for the one factory to handle. Others have turned to designed-in flexibility, where equipment in the same factory can be converted to produce various products in sync with market needs to mitigate disruptions.”

In a highly uncertain market, demand planning has become much more sophisticated. In fact, IDC analysts predicted that by 2025, 30% of all direct procurement transactions will be based upon capacity availability instead of units or volume. The most resilient manufacturers will be able to shift demand-based production between various factories, their own or a network of contractors. Managers might deliberately plan for free capacity in certain factories, with contingency staffing for short-term demand spikes. Even the ability to replicate the same product less efficiently on a different production line is preferable to completely lost revenue.

Build Customer Trust through Product Quality and Availability

Trusted customer relationships depend on both quality products and delivery as expected. analysts said that companies are prioritizing improvements in supply chain resilience and agility in meeting customer needs, finding “new trade-offs between cost, speed, and service in a changing landscape where uncertainty and higher customer expectations go hand in hand.” Again, technology has a major role in supply chain resilience. By next year, analysts expected 50% of all supply chain forecasts will be automated through the use of artificial intelligence (AI), improving accuracy by five percentage points. Simonski equated accurate demand and supply planning, as well as regulatory compliance and product quality, with supply chain resilience as the bedrock of trusted customer relationships.

“CPG manufacturers need to stay on top of the next event that will cause disruption,” he said. “As new regulations like the UK Plastic Tax are passed and other countries follow this trend, can you stay profitable with products that comply with increasingly stringent mandates and reporting proof? That’s why we developed . In the circular economy, the quality of data across the supply chain is essential to sustainable business.”

Whether or not business ever returns to so-called normalcy is anyone’s guess. One thing we know for sure is that supply chain resilience leads directly to business resilience.

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Breakthroughs happen less often than most people are inclined to believe. Instead, I often find that most innovations are incremental in nature. Admittedly, a slow-building approach doesn’t grab the spotlight like more daring alternatives do. Still, it’s no less important – driving countless small improvements that add up to massive transformations and huge gains down the line.

One prime example of incremental innovation’s impact is the continuous development of mobile devices. The first handheld cellular phone launched nearly 40 years ago. Since then, each new release introduced different sizes – some smaller and some larger – and functionalities such as texting, Internet access, context-driven command, touch screens, tracking and tracing, and many more capabilities now considered standard. In essence, mobile device providers allow themselves to experiment with new ideas while generating revenue that is then reinvested into making the product’s design and purpose more impactful and game-changing in the near future.

Ideas Are Only the Beginning

Ideas are only the start of an innovation journey, no matter how new, novel, or useful. It takes creativity and domain expertise to bring them to life and evolve them gradually by applying the latest lessons learned and scaling capabilities or user experiences to deliver more meaningful value.

As part of SAP’s “reinvent” strategy, my team of customer innovation and maintenance experts from within the Customer Solution Support & Innovation organization at 51·çÁ÷focuses on turning ideas into valuable solutions for critical challenges. Working with various industries, including agriculture and life sciences, allows us to innovate and deliver sustainable solutions that accelerate business success – from idea inception and proof of concept to implementation and maintenance.

Customer Solution Support & Innovation offers tremendous industry expertise that can enrich our customers’ growth areas, drive continuous innovation, and deliver prototypes faster to support their transformation into intelligent enterprises. And from our experience, innovations best realize their full value when scaled to add value while they are maintained and developed further to help the world run better and improve people’s lives.

Outcomes Are the Heart of Good Innovation

Our contributions in helping to overcome the impacts of the global COVID-19 pandemic were one of those moments where we revealed the true value of incremental innovation. Developing innovations in partnership under unprecedented conditions, we designed and rolled out numerous digital solutions more quickly and securely for millions of people.

A prime example is the . In only two months development time, we innovated a digital gateway with T-Systems that provides a standard for valid vaccine certification across the European Union and currently supports 600 million users. By removing the risk of falsified documentation, the introduction of this digital certificate represents an important step toward normalizing the freedom of movement within the eurozone and, as a result, stimulating the economy.

In addition, our team worked with Deutsche Telekom AG and Germany’s Federal Ministry of Health to develop the Corona-Warn-App to help identify infections quickly and notify people of their potential exposure. The mobile app, available for iOS and Android, was developed in open-source mode, and the program code was continuously visible to the public on the development platform – all without violating data privacy rights.

While the pandemic marked a significant era of innovation for businesses worldwide, our team has produced innovations important for business security. For instance, our work in detecting and preventing security breaches from cyberattacks plays a vital role in many of our customers’ IT infrastructure. Our experts combine the application – a leading threat detection software – with 24/7 managed security services. The application is continuously upgraded to help detect cyberattacks in on-premise and cloud solutions from 51·çÁ÷as they are happening and analyze the threats quickly enough to neutralize them before severe damage occurs.

More recently, we innovated with climate-focused technology company CHOOOSE to deliver a climate app. As one of the first solution extensions developed with existing capabilities available in and 51·çÁ÷Concur solutions, helps neutralize carbon emissions through high-quality compensation projects. As a result, our customers can acquire accurate data from their business flights and discover high-impact ways to offset their carbon footprint – all in one place.

We are also working on a prototype – – that marks the first step toward embracing virtual reality for running business. With the sustainability-focused concept, our experts are experimenting with collaboration with targeted data sharing between competing companies and integrating the virtual environment with open ecosystems such as . In addition, a decentralized peer-to-peer network based on 51·çÁ÷Business Technology Platform is being created without requiring central persistence.

Innovation That Delivers High Impact

Most companies make the mistake of looking too narrowly at the overall context of their innovation initiative. At Customer Solution Support & Innovation, we are constantly evaluating the 51·çÁ÷solution portfolio to find opportunities to adapt and add functionalities that can increase value in ways that can be quickly applied and scaled to meet our customers’ current and future needs.

Embracing the concept of incremental innovation has empowered us to shape a culture that is full of purpose, ingenuity, and discovery. So instead of dedicating all our resources to years-long projects with uncertain outcomes, 51·çÁ÷is committed to driving innovation close to our customers’ everyday environmental, social, and governance challenges – and we will continue to do so in the years to come.

Andreas Heckmann is executive vice president of Product Engineering and head of Customer Solution Support and Innovation at SAP. Follow him on and .

As employees know, the reality of working from home is… going pretty well, actually. Most of us are still working in our basements, sheds, or spare rooms while monitoring our Wi-Fi connectivity, adjusting our work hours to meet with trans-global colleagues, devising a smarter , and advancing our digital fluency to make use of new productivity tools and apps. Overall, we’re happier and healthier, as study after study confirms.

The Future of Work Is Not Location Bound

When asked about their preferred work model for the , of workers said they want a hybrid work arrangement, according to the by . In the study, Accenture interviewed more than 9,300 workers in 11 countries across 12 industries to understand workers’ mindsets toward three different work models – on-site, remote, and hybrid – and the resources they require for their health and productivity.

Published at the height of the pandemic in April 2021, the study classified employees into four mindsets along a spectrum: thriving (42%), ambivalent (12%), apathetic (15%), or disgruntled (31%). While those who were disgruntled worked largely on-site, those employees who were thriving were mostly working in hybrid arrangements. They experienced less burnout and reported feeling across six dimensions of well-being: financial, emotional and mental, relational, physical, purposeful, and employable.

Three years into the pandemic, we are now capable of managing the virus with vaccines. Despite existing research on work models, many employers continue to struggle with developing a cohesive set of policies for hybrid work. Instead, they opt for one-size-fits-all solutions that fall short in the face of reality. Too many are still narrowly fixated on the question of location: “Where should we work?” However, a surprising outcome of the Future of Global Work Report has potential to reframe this discussion.

During the study, Accenture researchers identified a segment of workers (40%) who felt they could be productive anywhere. For this group, work location did not matter because they could be equally productive on-site and remotely. How do they do it? The researchers studied this group more closely to find the answer.

“We were initially interested in that location question – what helps to drive worker productivity remotely or onsite,” says Gabriela Burlacu, PhD, talent researcher at Accenture. “But actually, what was far more interesting and far more impactful on a company’s bottom line was this idea of a segment of workers that felt they could be what we called �productive anywhere.’”

Traits of Workers Who Are Productive Anywhere

That many workers can be productive, happy, and healthy in whichever setting should be welcome news for any company trying to hammer out an intentional policy for hybrid work. “It’s location agnostic,” Burlacu says, regarding the impact on the future of work. “It’s also a precursor to effective hybrid work, because if you feel you can be productive anywhere, then you really could work comfortably in both places.”

Much more important than work location seemed to be an employee’s individual potential and the resources available to support their work. The Accenture team found some commonalities among the “productive anywhere” cohort that can be carried over to other organizations as well. These workers had more autonomy, positive mental health, a desire to participate in learning, advanced digital fluency that enabled them to evaluate and adopt technology to get the job done, strong social bonds at work, and work-life enhancement, which means that they felt their work added to their ability to enjoy other areas of their lives.

The organizations that these workers belonged to also had interesting commonalities. They tended to be agile, intelligent, digitally mature, and have supportive leadership. They also have beneficial health policies that signal that employee health and safety is valued by the company.

Autonomy is a key theme in any discussion about hybrid work. It takes steady effort and awareness to balance autonomy and organizational goals for business success. Burlacu has some suggestions. “The ways that we measure productivity have to look a little different. Giving people some level of freedom to manage their own time and how they complete tasks is important,” she says. “But another side is also giving manageable feedback that’s really clear in terms of what the expectations are and how to improve. It’s an often-overlooked part of autonomy. Workers don’t always know if they’re working on the right things for the company’s success; whereas being really clear about the objective can actually help drive autonomy.”

Resources Prove Essential to Fight Workplace Stress

While the research shines a light on workers who thrive no matter where they work, it also uncovered another 8% of workers who experience the same disconnection, frustration, and inefficiency regardless of location. These workers were, in essence, productive nowhere. Researchers assumed this group had endured hardships and stress during the pandemic. Instead, they found that what separates the two groups is not stress.

“Our �productive anywhere’ group was actually more burned out than our �productive nowheres.’ They had a host of other negative work stressors as well. But what really differentiated them and their work experience is they had much higher levels of resources,” says Burlacu, indicating that this is something within companies’ power to address so that all workers can fulfill their potential.

The Future of Work Starts with Mindset

Perhaps some of the best news of the study is that researchers found that of high-growth companies have already adopted a “productivity anywhere” workforce model. This suggests that a future of work that looks beyond where to work may be just around the corner.

“We were able to identify what aspects of a company’s environment and work experience really help workers be productive anywhere,” says Burlacu, “Because that should be the goal – not more seamless remote work, not better on-site work – but enabling people to have this â€�productive anywhere’ mindset.”

First a runny nose sets in with your source of raw materials, then a sore throat grabs hold of your logistics partner, and pretty soon entire industries grapple with fragmented supply chains, logjammed seaports, and mismatched labor markets. But what if the human respiratory system’s own natural defenses point the way toward remedying afflicted supply chains? What can the humble sneeze or cough teach us about restoring systemic resilience at a time when an airborne contagion disrupts not only the flow of oxygen but that of global commerce as well?

Some analysts fault the modern supply chain for its length, sometimes crisscrossing oceans from sourcing to processing to manufacturing to shipping. Others say its weakness lies in its complexity. But consider the average pair of lungs, whose airways 2,400 kilometers in total length and whose surface area that of a tennis court. Lungs, after all, a vast network of 480 million air sacs, also called alveoli. Clearly, length and complexity alone, which characterize even the healthiest lungs, fall short of explaining pulmonary dysfunction. Difficulties with breathing, not unlike those with supply chains, tend to arise from external factors. The culprit may be a wayward dust particle. Or it could be the outbreak of war that throws off established patterns of commerce between buyers and suppliers.

Nature’s response to obstruction is the sneeze or the cough, a remarkably efficient reflex to cleanse respiratory passageways. Hair-like receptors trigger the medulla, located in the brain, to expel the irritant with a forceful thrust of air. After the perfunctory “Bless you!” from courteous passersby, all is well! The body’s processes for regulating the exchange of carbon dioxide for oxygen return to normal.

In contrast, nature holds little recourse for clogged supply chains. Organizations instead rely on cloud-based . When uncertainty looms over the sourcing of critical materials or volatility undermines the demand for goods and services, businesses turn increasingly to integrated digital platforms to gain visibility into the interconnected operations of trading partners – spanning procurement, supply chain, logistics, and asset maintenance. Serving as a central nervous system for these and other core business processes, cloud-based networks lend organizations the data-driven insights they need to anticipate backed-up supply chains or logistics pathways – and to decongest them.

Unfortunately for many businesses, by the time congestion sets in, relief can be hard to come by. They are lacking a fast and effective reflex to the situation. But other firms are well prepared since they adopted the cloud-based solutions necessary to counter disruption, instill resilience, and mitigate risk. Only with the aid of 360-degree visibility both within an organization’s four walls and beyond them can it collaborate with trading partners, achieve mutually beneficial sustainability objectives, and lay the foundation for new digital ecosystems within which partner relationships thrive and customer value accelerates.

As cloud-based networks yield actionable insights from massive troves of operational data connecting organizations with their trading partners, they increasingly look toward – not unlike the brain signals responsible for triggering the familiar sneeze or cough. When businesses automate previously manual procurement and supply chain processes, they free up their professionals to redirect their time and talents to more strategic pursuits, such as collaborating with customers, shoring up partner relationships, and fostering joint innovation.

Where are integrated digital business networks headed in the future? Toward systems that can carry out end-to-end operational processes within guidelines set and supervised by humans. These cloud-based solutions are bringing organizations closer to an era of automated decision support, in which digital transformation helps to prevent businesses from coughing, sneezing, or even coming down with the hiccups – long before contagion can take root.

Through integrated digital networks and the competitive advantage they extend, businesses and their trading partners can, despite the headwinds of ongoing disruption, breathe easier.

Andreas Heckmann is executive vice president of Product Engineering and head of Customer Solution Support & Innovation at SAP.

In , half of business leaders surveyed said they already require or plan to require employees to return to full-time, on-site work by the end of the year. Making headlines are managers like who point out the productivity gains that come from the social connection, culture keeping, and idea generation that they say can only be created in a shared workspace. But others disagree: several senior executives attending the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting 2022 in Davos, Switzerland, in favor of a hybrid work model, saying it was the most realistic approach for attracting and retaining talent.

Employees are on a mandated return to office, emboldened by newfound bargaining power as a result of the record and worker resignations of the Great Reshuffle. reveal that up to half of employees say they will quit or look for a new job if expected to return to the office full time.

Flex Work Models Up for Debate

Lost in the debate that is playing out in the media is valuable scientific research on the effects of different work models on worker productivity. This discussion is largely being driven by subjective impressions and entrenched ideas based on the “old normal,” said Dr. Gabriela Burlacu, talent research manager at , speaking at the recently held annual conference of the Society of Industrial and Organizational Psychologists (SIOP).

Joining her for the session “Where Will We Work? I-O Psychology Puts Flexible Work Models on Trial” were industrial and organizational (I-O) psychologists Dr. Benjamin Granger, head of Employee Experience Advisory Services at , and Dr. Kristen Shockley, associate professor of Psychology at the . Joshua Acosta, a research analyst with , also later provided insights from the recent 51·çÁ÷SuccessFactors report “.”

Autonomy Fuels Motivation for Greater Productivity

“If we think about theories in I-O psychology, autonomy and control permeate a lot of these theories,” said Shockley, who pointed out that “autonomy as motivation for sustained effort” is a frequent theme in I-O literature. “Autonomy is a fundamental need and when you allow people to work remote, it inherently gives them more of this autonomy. That is something which relates to a host of outcomes, like productivity and well-being.”

The psychologists agreed that the optimal work model for the average global employee is a hybrid work arrangement. They noted, however, that this is not necessarily the best model for every individual or organization. For those organizations that opt for a hybrid model, they emphasized that the work needs to be structured so that collaborative tasks, like brainstorming, are done on-site and more analytical tasks are done remotely. “I am very pro the hybrid model, with the caveat that it does need to be intentionally and holistically designed,” said Burlacu.

Workers Expect Flex Work after Pandemic Productivity Sprint

A , which surveyed 10,000 workers in 12 industries in 12 countries in 2021, found that 83% of workers identified a hybrid model as optimal for them. Those already in hybrid environments reported better mental health and stronger work relationships, and felt they were doing better work for their organizations.

The , which studies work-from-home arrangements and attitudes, tracked the productivity of remote workers from April 2020 to January 2022. It found that on average people were in remote work arrangements, even with the added stressors of the pandemic.

For the , Qualtrics carried out a study of 14,000 employees in 22 industries across 27 countries to look at general job attitudes, engagement, inclusion, and well-being. Employees generally felt more energized at work – compared to the previous year – with half saying their physical and mental well-being actually improved while working remotely.

“Many organizations haven’t lost step in terms of productivity,” said Acosta from 51·çÁ÷SuccessFactors, citing the latest research from 51·çÁ÷SuccessFactors, which found that workers’ attitudes are shifting to expect hybrid arrangements. “If people are working in a hybrid setting or home setting, we’re seeing they’re often just as productive as when they’re in the office. It’s our perspective that hybrid work isn’t going away anytime soo˛Ô.”

Hybrid Work Moves from Contingency to Certainty

If 2021 was the year hybrid work was utilized for health and safety, then researchers at 51·çÁ÷SuccessFactors predict that 2022 will be the year that it moves from contingency to certainty. This means that organizations will need to establish policies, practices, and cultural norms to operationalize hybrid work arrangements. Acosta noted this will look different across all organizations, depending on the composition of the workforce.

Accenture’s study revealed that a number of demographic factors influence workers’ decisions about where to work, including age and gender demographics and where they live. For example, Gen X women said they could be more productive in remote work, while Gen Z men felt strongly about being on-site. Urban dwellers felt they would be more productive in the office, while people living in rural areas preferred remote work.

“All of that together suggests that if you let people choose, you will end up with demographically very different workforces on-site versus remotely,” Burlacu said. “That wouldn’t be a problem if you created equitable work experiences and equitable access to development and promotion opportunities.” She then followed up with a hard truth: “But the issue of equitable access has never been properly resolved in the workplace.”

Just ask deskless workers. This group – defined as employees who perform their jobs away from a desk – was largely absent from the discussion in 2021. In 2022, however, these workers are presenting more pronounced views, according to research by 51·çÁ÷SuccessFactors. With companies facing talent shortages in all job categories, Acosta said that organizations will need to seriously consider deskless workers’ changing expectations for autonomy and flexibility while balancing organizational and job demands.

Maybe It’s Time for a New Definition of Flexibility?

“A lot of times we assume workplace flexibility means where you work, but what’s become clear to us in our work is when employees define flexibility, they’re talking about where and when they work, and they’re also talking about how work gets measured and managed,” Granger said. “Employees are defining workplace flexibility much broader than many organizational leaders. We need to be more flexible in how we define workplace flexibility.”

Acosta agreed, saying “Organizations are going to need to be really thoughtful in operationalizing how they can deliver flexibility as well as autonomy, and perhaps even redesign not only where people work, but when and how work takes place.”

Three Trends Drive Investments in Digital Startups

Nino Marakovic, founder and CEO of , said that enterprise software startups have experienced record-breaking investments in the past two years, driven by the urgency of large companies adopting technology to help them transform and position themselves for the future. Originally SAP’s corporate venture capital arm, Sapphire Ventures has been an independent financial investment firm for 12 years. 51·çÁ÷is the largest investor in the Sapphire Ventures portfolio that totals US$10 billion.

“Last year alone, more than $60 billion was invested in startups making supply chains more sustainable, intelligent, and resilient,” said Marakovic. “Another major investment area is data and machine learning as we see more of the workflows and data move to the cloud. Companies want solutions that help customers manage, orchestrate, organize, and analyze that data. The third high-growth area is future of work. Company shifts from on-site to remote and hybrid work, [coupled with] a tight labor market and wave of employee resignations, have a created a perfect storm that’s modernizing the workplace.”

Data Saves Money and the Environment

Ivaldi Group is a great example of how startups are innovating to help supply chains hardest hit by pandemic-related disruption, in this case, in the automotive industry. Uvaldi Group participated in the New York City COVID-19 recovery cohort. SAP.iO Foundries is the company’s external startup accelerator. Integrating data from customers, Ivaldi Group’s software calculates the carbon footprint of an auto supplier’s spare parts operation, analyzing potential candidates for advanced, local digital manufacturing such as 3D printing.

“Customers are interested in finding money where they didn’t know they were losing it and reducing their carbon footprint,” said Stefani Pellinen-Chavez, COO at Ivaldi Group. “We review the data, including how far a customer ships products, how long they remain in inventory, how hard it is to source these parts, and how long their factory or facility would be down if this part was not available…Suppliers might create local manufacturing centers so the community can partner with larger corporate customers.”

Holistic Planning with Connected Data Company-Wide

In an uncertain world, supply chain planning has become one of the major challenges for companies navigating disruptions. Juergen Mueller, member of the Executive Board of 51·çÁ÷SE and chief technology officer at SAP, shared how organizations are innovating on to collaborate with their ecosystem, explore what-if scenarios for planning purposes and flexibility, and gain competitive advantage. He said that advanced analytics and connected data help people immediately see and act on the impact of material shortages and potential alternatives for factory production lines, suppliers and logistics partners, finance and cash flow outlook, and workforce demands.

Sustainability Data Shores Up Supply Chain Resilience

Jan Gilg, president and chief product officer of 51·çÁ÷S/4HANA, said that organizations are “jumping all over” resilient, sustainable supply chains, using 51·çÁ÷solutions for data visibility that bolsters strategic business advantage. Holding up the example of an everyday item like a cup of coffee, he said that numerous companies worldwide were involved in its production, from the farmers growing and harvesting coffee beans, to a vast network of suppliers and transportation providers that deliver fresh brew to consumers.

“One of our large customers manages 288,000 farmers across two thousand brands of coffee they sell, with thousands of suppliers,” said Gilg. “We have an entire portfolio that helps customers like this manage their supply chain and make them more resilient…managing the flow of materials and value. Now we’re adding the third dimension, managing the flow of environmental information to understand the carbon footprint created while a product is produced, shipped, and brought to their customers. Over one-third of investors have global assets related to companies that are sustainable. Two-thirds of consumers are willing to pay a premium for sustainable brands.”

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President Joe Biden has called on seven major oil refinery companies to take “immediate actions” to ramp up gasoline supplies in the U.S. where the war in Ukraine and other factors, including bottlenecks at refineries, have sent gasoline prices soaring to more than $5 a gallon for the first time ever.

The Biden Administration acknowledges that Russia’s war in Ukraine is the primary factor driving oil and gasoline prices higher. Oil prices have jumped by more than 50% this year, raising gasoline prices more than $1.70 per gallon.

However, the oil price jump has been exacerbated by what Goldman Sachs has called “unprecedented” bottlenecks at oil refineries, where crude oil is converted into usable products like gasoline.

SAP’s Take

“Refiners were hard hit by the coronavirus pandemic in early 2020 when demand for gasoline and other products derived from oil plunged and many refineries had to close their operations,” said Benjamin Beberness, global VP of Oil, Gas, and Energy at SAP. “Now that demand has increased, refiners are facing a shortage of skilled labor.”

Analysts at Wood Mackenzie, an energy consultancy, estimate that 3 million barrels a day of refinery capacity shut down in 2020 and 2021.

Refineries are complex, and once shutdown or shut-in it can be hard to get them to full capacity again. That has made it difficult for oil refiners to respond quickly to the rebound in consumer and industrial demand for gasoline, diesel, and jet fuel.

“While some companies have shut down their least efficient refineries, other companies have taken the opportunity to perform planned maintenance or turnarounds. Unfortunately, this means it could be some time before refining capacity is restored to pre-pandemic levels,” Beberness said.

Companies and investors in the energy sector are also wary of repeating the mistakes made at the end of the 2010s, when the sector overinvested in fracking and refining at a time when demand evaporated. Several U.S. energy companies went bankrupt, and access to investment money evaporated.

In the longer term, they also know that they will have to invest in cleaner energy sources and are keen to avoid over-investment in oil and natural gas refining when the underlying trend is towards alternative energy.

“Whatever the short-term pressures, the refiners are having to balance between meeting the demand for fuel and the vast array of other byproducts that consumers use every day with lowering their ESG (environmental, social and corporate governance) output,” Beberness said.

“To do this they are seeking to mitigate emissions through CCUS (carbon capture, utilization, and storage) and other technologies, in addition to investing in a more diverse portfolio or repurposing existing infrastructures for renewable transportation fuels and hydroge˛Ô.”Ěý

Contact:
Ilaina Jonas, Senior Director of Global Media Relations, SAP
+1 (646) 923-2834, ilaina.jonas@sap.com
51·çÁ÷Press Room

Having received this news on the eve of 51·çÁ÷Sapphire 2022, it highlighted once again that we are doing the right thing by our customers in delivering innovative solutions in the cloud and enabling them to transform their businesses effectively, efficiently, and intelligently.

Manufacturing ERP

In times of unanticipated events and sudden demand shocks such as COVID-19, competition has never been higher in manufacturing. There are more companies competing for the same customer base and this makes differentiation a challenge. The commoditization of products impacts a manufacturer’s ability to grow revenue or move into new markets.

For manufacturing companies, a solution to issues such as agility, sustainability, the right product-service mix, customer experience, modular and integrated systems, continuous focus on artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning, and an anywhere, anytime access is key.

51·çÁ÷S/4HANA Cloud is a complete, modular cloud ERP software designed for every business need – powered by AI and analytics. With 51·çÁ÷S/4HANA Cloud, customers can run mission-critical operations in real time from anywhere, introduce new business models in their industry, and expand globally with a trusted partner. For 50 years, 51·çÁ÷has been proudly helping enterprises of all sizes – in all industries and geographies – run at their best with ERP software.

is based on a thorough evaluation of SAP’s strengths and capabilities and lists them as follows:

Manufacturing Footprint and Expertise
SAP’s expansive footprint and experience working across the manufacturing industry is a clear strength. Customers that have been interviewed backed up this sentiment, stating that they can’t think of a vendor with more expertise than 51·çÁ÷when it comes to automotive and engineering-to-order type industries as an example, and it allows a lot of best practices to be adopted. This is also reflected in the customer base, as customer references noted that all major companies in their industry use 51·çÁ÷or are at least familiar with the company, which makes finding employees experienced with the system much easier.

Innovation
51·çÁ÷continues to evolve its products with innovation, combining technological expertise with its industry expertise. SAP’s focus on AI and machine learning was cited by multiple manufacturing customers as an area they are very excited about. Automation is another area mentioned by manufacturers as an important focus that 51·çÁ÷is helping with. One reference shared how over the next few years the company expects to generate a lot of additional efficiencies by reducing efforts through process automation.

Level of Value Delivered
51·çÁ÷continues to deliver value for clients, from innovation to best practices to additional insights. Customers have mentioned that the best practice use cases and additional insights provided are bringing substantial value as they reset their businesses to new business processes and the use of 51·çÁ÷S/4HANA Cloud.

Operational ERP

Demand for cloud-based ERP applications continues to grow because of the ability to access and analyze massive amounts of data in near real time and with anywhere, anytime access. Software-as-a-service (SaaS) and cloud-enabled ERP systems enable growing businesses to quickly expand into new regions around the globe without making major investments into their technology infrastructure because they are extremely adaptive to accelerated rates of change. SaaS and cloud-enabled systems are adaptive to dynamic operations environments,Ěýwhich is why this is extremely important as a technology vendor guide for today’s COOs, CFOs, CIOs, and IT buyers.

The IDC MarketScape evaluated criteria important to using technology as a competitive edge for discrete manufacturing companies, recognizing that manufacturers are looking for technology that can be an innovation accelerator. Operational ERP includes product-centric organizations in industries such as manufacturing, high-tech, engineering, and consumer products. These organizations’ ERP systems incorporate operational modules, including order management, finance, procurement, enterprise asset management (EAM), manufacturing, and supply chain, to maximize operational efficiencies. According to the report, the following issues were top of mind:

• Key metrics: Improvements in productivity are key.
• Manual processes: Organizations still use error prone manual processes.
• Visibility issues: Resources need to spend extra time to report and verify transactions.
• Resource constraints: Employees are asked to do more with less and, in many cases, the use of legacy systems add to the workload instead of reduce it.
• Lost money: Companies with inefficient operational and financial processes often lose opportunities to take advantage of cost-effective and efficient processes.

As part of digital transformation initiatives, operational workflows are changing fast. Characteristics such as robotic process automation (RPA), machine learning, embedded intelligence, predictive analytics, modular and integrated systems, and anywhere, anytime access were most commonly found in the IDC MarketScape research.

51·çÁ÷S/4HANA Cloud offers the following strengths:

• Level of value delivered: From innovation to best practices to additional insights, 51·çÁ÷continues to deliver value for clients. Customers reported that the best practice use cases and additional insights provided are bringing substantial value as they reset their businesses to new business processes and use 51·çÁ÷S/4HANA Cloud.
• Innovation: 51·çÁ÷continues to evolve its products with innovation. One reference said, “Our operations and finance areas have been enhanced with artificial intelligence and machine learning, helping us generate more in operational efficiency with greater automation of processes.”
• Pricing models and terms: Customers told IDC they find the flexibility of pricing, including units as a component of the pricing, appealing, supportive, and customer friendly. In addition, organizations noted the opportunity to migrate is much more palatable with this aspect of pricing.

SAP’s recognition by IDC MarketScape is a testament to our steadfast dedication to pushing the envelope and developing cutting-edge solutions for customers that leverage the greatest enterprise systems for manufacturing customers and customers aiming to increase the efficiency of operational processes. We believe that this evaluation is a superior measure of the competitive position of 51·çÁ÷S/4HANA Cloud in the market and shows that our solutions and innovations prove our underlying commitment to our customers. Our teams have worked day and night to successfully navigate the challenging environment of COVID-19 and other disruptions to deliver on our promises to our customers and help them confidently take yet another step in the right direction.

For the report excerpts, please visit: and .

*IDC MarketScape Worldwide SaaS and Cloud-Enabled Operational ERP Applications 2022 Vendor Assessment, and IDC MarketScape Worldwide SaaS and Cloud-Enabled Manufacturing ERP Applications 2022 Vendor Assessment by Mickey North Rizza and Reid Paquin from International Data Corporation (IDC), 2022

Jan Gilg is president of 51·çÁ÷S/4HANA at SAP.

Corporate leaders can be forgiven for feeling that the whole toolbox — not just a wrench — has been thrown into their supply chains. From the war in Ukraine to renewed lockdowns in China, supply chains have never been under so much stress.Ěý

SAP’s TakeĚý

Tight restrictions designed to limit the spread of COVID-19 in China have resulted in some of the latest supply chain constraints, particularly in the electronics and consumer goods sectors. Shanghai is the world’s largest container port, has been locked down for more than six weeks and is not expected to open again until at least June 1.Ěý

At the end of April,  were awaiting berthing space at Chinese docks. By some estimates, a third of global shipping delays have their root cause in Asia. And currently, one in five cargo ships are stranded in a port somewhere in the world as the result of the Shanghai lockdownĚýhas a domino effect. China as a whole accounts for about 12% of global trade.

For supply chain managers, the latest disruptions have put a premium on risk assessment. “If companies have not addressed the increased risk across their supply chains at the start of the pandemic, they will again be seeing shortages of materials and products,” says Richard Howells, an 51·çÁ÷supply chain expert.Ěý

He adds: “The need is for resilient supply chains that address topics such as identifying alternate sourcing strategies to reduce dependencies on individual suppliers in low-cost regions.”Ěý

In addition, inventory optimization strategies can help decision-makers identify key materials, intermediates and products, as well as determine how much and where to store them across the supply chain. Ěý

“Many organizations need to improve collaboration and increase visibility with suppliers, logistics service providers, contract manufacturers and other key trading partner,” says Howells. “Supply chains will continue to remain front and center in governmental briefing rooms, company boardrooms and even family dining rooms.”Ěý

Contact:
Ilaina Jonas, Senior Director of Global Media Relations, SAP
+1 (646) 923-2834, ilaina.jonas@sap.com
51·çÁ÷Press Room

A prime example is , where innovations like air taxis and space travel herald a new era. is equally exciting as manufacturing revs up to localize production in many countries.

“Companies must prioritize ongoing development to address the significant shift in how employees expect to work and what they expect from their employers,” said Jill Popelka, president of . “By building a culture of lifelong learning, companies set themselves – and their employees – up for success. Individuals can develop the skills they want and need to build a career that is personally fulfilling. And companies can build an agile and adaptable workforce that can overcome ongoing change.”

Digital Learning Platforms Are the Future for Manufacturers

Leaders in A&D and industrial manufacturing have an aging workforce, many of whom opted for retirement during the pandemic. A&D stalwarts are up against a bevy of startups, especially in the latest space exploration sectors where many have gone . Similarly, industrial manufacturing doesn’t captivate recent graduates the way startups exploring net new innovations can. Younger engineers are drawn to more nimble startups where they have the freedom to assume greater responsibilities on exciting projects. To build and maintain a qualified, diverse workforce in this market, companies are turning to centralized digital learning platforms.

“Siloed information is one of the biggest challenges in the A&D manufacturing industry,” said Torsten Welte, global vice president and head of A&D Industries at SAP. “ dynamically connects content from numerous applications in systems across the organization. The employee can track project performance and quality, collaborating with others to share ideas and make improvements, which they can apply individually and team-wide. Training and skills development is embedded in everyday activities while the platform tracks and monitors appropriate certifications and renewals.”

Industrial Manufacturing Retools Employee Development

In some countries, midsize manufacturers are expanding local production facilities as a hedge against disrupted supply chains. Sparked by the pandemic, these changes are having a far-flung impact on talent recruitment and career development.

“Midsize companies are often located in spacious, but remote areas less attractive to people early in their careers,” said Patrick Lamm, senior director of Industrial Manufacturing at SAP. “They lack the brand cache of well-known large players but are actually hidden champions and market leaders in their niche area. Many are actively recruiting from local universities and also starting their own local academies to upskill existing workers, providing them with a career path to move up and explore new technologies aligned to their digital transformatio˛Ô.”

On-the-Job Training Innovations for Agility

Some A&D and industrial manufacturing companies are bringing in augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) to train and upskill employees. Digital simulations reduce airplane design cycles, dramatically increasing the pace of new release improvements. At one global A&D manufacturer, the combination of artificial intelligence (AI) with VR transformed airplane service and maintenance quality control, with self-directed learning modules at the point of fix and assembly.

“In-the-moment, ongoing learning guides workers so they can confidently meet the highest quality control standards. This is extremely important in highly regulated industries,” said Welte. “Companies are also using , which provides step-by-step, 3D product assembly models using digital twins. Digital instructions and training speed up individualized skill development, especially for new workers who might get more overwhelmed.”

Electronic work instructions using digital twins are particularly effective in keeping workers updated on fast-changing design elements. An industrial connectivity company brought intelligent data to mobile devices on the factory floor, reducing downtime by up to 50%, boosting knowledge sharing between employees, and improving worker engagement.

“As soon as development engineers release changes, it can be reflected in the electronic assembly instructions seamlessly,” said Lamm. “There’s no gap between design innovation and execution on the factory floor. Companies can upskill frontline workers for business agility.”

Digital Transformation Requires New Learning Options

Digital training and development extends manufacturing operations to aftermarket services post-delivery and installation of equipment and machines. One automaker reduced field service calls by 20% using smart glasses that provided guidance and instructions in real time with integrated visualization tools.

“Remote service is on the rise, allowing service technicians to log on and conduct maintenance and repair,” said Lamm. “With digital work instructions, it’s easier to train people faster on self-service, anywhere, at their convenience, including mobile apps and videos. You should start small, piloting digital learning projects first, then scale up across teams based on those experiences.”

Continuous, career-long learning is part of the workforce-centered strategy of every agile business. It’s just as flexible and dynamic as the digital transformation of high-growth industries worldwide.

Follow me @smgaler.

As the only bank in Honduras with a nationwide presence through branches and non-banking counterparts, Banco Atlántida remains one of the country’s leading financial services organizations and steers financial inclusion efforts by providing access to financial services to the otherwise unbanked population. In all, the bank serves more than one million customers through a large national footprint, including operations in El Salvador, Belize, Nicaragua, and Ecuador.

Banco Atlántida credits its consistent leadership in key performance areas, such as deposits, to the experience and integrity of its employees. Cultivating a professional culture rooted in diversity and inclusion, Banco Atlántida employs a multigenerational team from across Honduras. Strong ties with the community also loom large for this bank, with frequent corporate responsibility activities organized to help people in need.

Banco Atlántida is a well-respected bank committed to meeting its clients’ needs by working with efficiency, agility, and innovation. The bank strives to promote access to financial services and financial education nationwide with convenience and high security standards.

Central to this commitment is the delivery of a positive experience for customers and employees alike. With COVID-19, this called for the bank to accelerate the deployment of its digital transformation strategy so customers could continue to complete their financial activities uninterrupted. And for the well-being of its employees, the bank implemented special programs and safety measures. This included a smooth transition to remote work while maintaining close contact with coworkers and their superiors through technological tools including interactive communication.

A major part of its digital transformation strategy involved streamlining its HR operations and improving how work gets done with people-centric processes that are enabled by unifying HR functions into a single user-friendly system. Specifically, the bank integrated its core HR database and .

Linking the 51·çÁ÷SuccessFactors Employee Central solution with modern tools for learning, performance and goals, succession and development, recruiting, and compensation management, Banco Atlántida established a single source of HR data truth. Self-serve tools free up its HR team from performing manual tasks and increase employee engagement by giving its people access to the information they need, when they need it.

Banco Atlántida can also embed personal learning objectives and design courses specifically for people who are getting ready to take on a new role. All this functionality comes with robust reporting, allowing the bank to monitor training completions and identify knowledge gaps.

Reflecting on the HR transformation, María José Rodríguez, vice president of Human Resources at Banco Atlántida comments, “Our people have readily embraced the digital transformation of HR processes. Strategic initiatives such as succession plans and performance reviews are now monitored and executed digitally, and routine operations are easier than ever. For example, employees request paid time off through a virtual and speedy system, and they can access their customized learning experience whenever it suits them best.”

“In the long term, we expect even more benefits from digital employee experiences, such as enhanced continuous performance appraisals, which will help us surpass client expectations and foster our company growth,” Rodríguez adds.

In addition to its investment in advanced HR technology, Banco Atlántida has migrated its enterprise data to . This provides the technology foundation to help meet the constantly evolving needs of its customers and enhance their experience with its financial services offerings.

As its customers become more confident conducting many of their day-to-day activities in a digital way, Banco Atlántida will be well prepared to deliver constantly updated solutions, while its people will be ready to better meet customer needs.

To learn more about how Banco Atlántida adopted human experience management software in the cloud, take a look at the business transformation study, ““

Its health information systems were weak, outdated, and underfunded. Data was manually collected and siloed. Information tended to be listed on paper forms rather than in the cloud.

Given the circumstances, it was difficult for health officials to identify high-risk regions, spreaders, and asymptomatic patients. Administrative delays prevented all but a few labs from testing. But even when the results came in, details about available drugs were hazy at best.

A Need for the Ugly Truth

Aggravating the situation was the nature of the Moroccan healthcare system, which was divided into complicated layers, distinguishing facilities by location, university affiliation, and other categories.

The conditions had officials alarmed about the possibility of COVID-19 exploding up and down the Atlantic and Mediterranean coasts, as well as the country’s mountainous interior.

To save lives, Morocco’s Ministry of Health needed to quickly come up with a single source of truth – whether the truth was ugly or not. At a glance, officials would then be able to gain insights into total confirmed cases, instances of recovery and death, the growth of daily outbreaks across the various tiers of the country’s healthcare network, and the stock of drugs in various hospitals and regions.

“We didn’t have a system like this,” observed Dr. Ahmed Rguig, director of Morocco’s Centre of Epidemiology. “We were very aware that we had to put something in place that allowed us to manage the scale of the pandemic with professionalism and in real time.”

Quickly Partnering to Combat a Crisis

With no time to spare, the ministry turned to the ALGO Consulting Group, an international technology services provider based in the city of Rabat.

ALGO proposed a user-friendly, innovative solution, enabling country-wide monitoring of the pandemic in real time. The application would be available on numerous devices and help officials make accurate decisions swiftly.

As the first partner in Africa to be certified for , ALGO already had experience developing a solution for Morocco’s transport sector. Now, it went back to 51·çÁ÷to use its enterprise software proficiency to help manage the pandemic.

“Because of our analytics expertise…we could help our country adopt its first-ever digital tracking system in response to the coronavirus outbreak,” noted Naoual Hammane, the 51·çÁ÷director working with ALGO.

The use of 51·çÁ÷Analytics Cloud allowed for the creation of real-time, role-specific dashboards, which could be accessed via desktops and mobile devices. Every 10 minutes, the control center data would be updated, empowering experts to make efficient, life-saving decisions.

“Two teams worked in 24-hour shifts to get the project delivered,” said Hammane. “I have been managing 51·çÁ÷projects for 14 years and this is the first time ever a project has been managed virtually. We used video conferencing and telephone calls.”

Working at Breakneck Speed to Slow Outbreaks

On March 1, 2020, just two weeks after the first case of COVID-19 was recorded in Morocco – and 11 days before the World Health Organization (WHO) declared the outbreak a pandemic – the country’s COVID-19 Real-Time Monitoring system was deployed.

Officials accustomed to tracking down data with phone calls now had all the data they needed at their fingertips.

The results were nothing short of miraculous:

• ALGO developed training videos that enabled users to learn the intricacies of the new system in just four hours.
• Laboratory test capacity increased 100 times – from 100 to 10,000 COVID-19 tests administered each day.
• The ability to receive IT resources, data, and other technology services increased four times.
• The speed at which information was received allowed the government to deliver tests where they were most needed.
• With the enhanced understanding of the drug stock, allocations could be capably targeted.

Using Mass Media to Save Lives

To ensure that everyone – regardless of technological capacity – was informed, the Ministry of Health provided televised updates each night at 6:00 p.m.

The number of lives saved as the result of these broadcasts is impossible to calculate.

“We can use this project as something to be proud of,” said Dr. Rguig. “It demonstrates that we have succeeded in this crisis.”

Its quick deployment of the COVID-19 Real-Time Monitoring system helped the Moroccan Ministry of Heath earn recognition as a 2021 51·çÁ÷Innovation Awards finalist. The yearly awards honor organizations that have used 51·çÁ÷solutions to improve business and society.

Get all the details about the Moroccan Ministry of Health’s innovative solution .

Keith Greenberg is an 51·çÁ÷global marketing contributor.

In late February 2022, war broke out in Ukraine and the urgent need for medical and other essential supplies to help the people of Ukraine once again put the spotlight on the fragility of supply chains.

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Supply Chain Disruption Can Come from Anywhere

When the pandemic began, consumers responded by stockpiling their pantries with enough food – and toilet paper – to last years. At grocery stores, empty shelves became the norm. The early days of the pandemic exposed something many experts already knew: our global supply chain had become far too linear and vulnerable to the unexpected.

As the two-year mark approached, we surveyed U.S. consumers* to understand their perceptions and attitudes about supply chains after living in a pandemic environment. What are they thinking? Are they losing patience? What do they envision for the future?

The survey responses pinpoint a period of time in early February 2022 before the tragic events in Europe started to unfold, and attitudes are likely to continue changing. Still, the survey results offer useful insights for procurement and supply chain leaders, as well as retailers, to understand the challenges people are facing and consider what actions can be taken to help them.

What Do Consumers Expect?

To summarize consumer sentiment based on our survey results, survey respondents overwhelmingly — 67% — said they think product shortages are the “new normal,” two words we’ve all heard ad nauseum.

But as with most things, it isn’t that simple. Here is a closer look at what the survey revealed about what consumers are thinking:

Consumers believe significant supply shortages will continue to make headlines in 2022.

A whopping 74% of respondents said they believe shortages will continue to dominate the conversation. Their top concern was the supply of food, which was mentioned by 77% of those surveyed. Over half (52%) expressed concern about the availability of hygiene or personal care products, and 35% said they are worried about being unable to get prescription medications.

Consumer loyalty is never guaranteed.

Due to out-of-stock issues, 66% of consumers have bought from a brand they normally would not have. This is not surprising, but almost one-third (32%) of respondents said they have stopped purchasing from at least one brand altogether due to supply chain challenges.

Consumers believe brands are not effectively communicating about supply chain issues.

The survey revealed that 87% of consumers have experienced shortages, but only 20% say brands communicated supply chain challenges effectively. For example, furniture buyers are seeing delivery dates slip two months, four months, six months — even a year. Unfortunately, retailers cannot see far enough into their supply chains to understand what’s going on. Digital business networks like can enable more visibility and help retailers stay resilient and agile to fill orders in a timely manner.

If you aren’t working to reduce the “landfilling” of returned goods, you risk losing customers.

When we told survey participants about a highlighting the amount of waste generated by returned goods in the U.S., almost two-thirds (61%) said this knowledge impacts their future purchase decisions. Further, 25% of these respondents are already aware of this issue and are making their buying decisions accordingly.

There is no clear consensus about buying sustainable or ethically sourced products — yet.

When asked about buying sustainable or ethically sourced products, respondents were prompted to select the various ways they are doing this, if at all. Among the respondents, 36% said they have made efforts to purchase from brands that practice sustainability; 35% said they buy from brands that practice ethical sourcing; and 19% responded that they also prioritize sustainable practices themselves, such as choosing slower shipping options to combine deliveries and reduce waste. Yet, 30% said they make no effort to prioritize such practices. This suggests that while there is a sizable group prioritizing sustainability and ethical sourcing, there is an almost equally sizable group that does not.

Easing Consumer Concerns

The survey makes clear that as we move into the third year of the pandemic, many consumers see a future with some empty shelves. In particular, they fear shortages of food, hygiene supplies, and prescription medicine.

As procurement and supply chain leaders, we cannot change the course of world events. However, we can help consumers by making supply chains more resilient, which can limit the impact of these events. One way to build resilience is to connect buyers and suppliers via business networks. This makes it possible to:

• Share information to improve forecasting, identify risks, and avoid supply disruptions
• Integrate and improve business processes for faster, more efficient transactions
• Find and onboard new sources of supply quickly and efficiently

Business networks are not new. Some are industry focused, like Catena-X, which was developed to support the auto industry. Others have cross-industry benefits, like , which supports supply chain collaboration, logistics, and asset intelligence.

If your organization isn’t already doing this, my call to action is simple: identify business networks that can help you build more resiliency and agility into your supply chain. This will not only help your business to thrive, but it will be one step toward easing consumers’ fears about empty shelves in the years to come.

Tony Harris is senior vice president and head of Marketing & Solutions for 51·çÁ÷Business Network.

*The survey was conducted February 9-10, 2022 on a sample of 1,000 U.S.-based adult consumers.

With this goal in mind, the global multidisciplinary 51·çÁ÷AppHaus team of designers, project leads, and enterprise architects set about planning and delivering several guest lectures at universities for students, the workforce of the future. It was a pleasure and an honor for the team to be able to share the knowledge and methodologies 51·çÁ÷AppHaus has gathered over the years with students of six different universities in 2021.

It is not only close collaboration and co-innovation with customers that is fundamental to the team. 51·çÁ÷AppHaus also works closely with universities, enabling mutual learning and fostering the promotion of its core innovation values by making them tangible for students. With tight integration into the respective curricula, lectures were held at the University of Mannheim, Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, DHBW Mannheim, Graduate School Rhein-Neckar in Ludwigshafen, DHBW Mosbach, and Neu-Ulm University of Applied Sciences.

Making Our Key Innovation Values and Practices Tangible

What united the guest lectures was the focus on teaching how 51·çÁ÷AppHaus helps drive co-innovation, particularly during the pandemic, which is marked by virtual work for students as well. Besides an introduction of our 51·çÁ÷AppHaus vision, the “how-to-innovate question” was addressed as the core of the lectures.

The focus was on . Combining design thinking and architecture thinking, it is the key to providing viable, feasible, and desirable innovations for our customers. In addition, the innovation methodologies and best practices included in the , updated and virtualized last year, were also presented. While the guest lecturers condensed the theoretical part, they made the 51·çÁ÷AppHaus innovation approach tangible through well-organized virtual and on-site workshops. After the lectures, students felt empowered to apply what they learned in their own academic, professional, or private contexts.

“For the entire 51·çÁ÷AppHaus team, working with universities is incredibly important. We appreciate the opportunity to pass on the innovative mindset of design thinking combined with 51·çÁ÷technology on the one hand, and to receive valuable feedback from students on the other.”

— Dirk Ziegeler, Head of 51·çÁ÷AppHaus EMEA/MEE

Unleashing Student Creativity with a Hands-On Focus

In addition to teaching some theoretical content, the goal was to bring the methodologies to life by solving a challenge to which all students could relate. Depending on the schedule and needs of the university, the agenda and its content were adapted. All universities considered “design the ideal learning environment in a hybrid world” to be a suitable central challenge. Triggered by the pandemic, universities and students faced the challenge of transitioning from in-person lectures to virtual formats in a very short period of time. To improve the recently established hybrid format, the guest lectures aimed to take on a new approach to teaching and learning by tapping into the enormous creative potential of students.

At the University of Mannheim, known for its first-class teaching in business administration, the guest lecture content was woven into the Digital Marketing Strategy course led by Prof. Dr. Sabine Kuester. After Dirk Ziegeler, head of 51·çÁ÷AppHaus EMEA/MEE, presented 51·çÁ÷AppHaus projects with a focus on customer experience, it was the students’ turn. In a compact workshop using the collaboration tool Mural, students jointly generated solution ideas and developed a visual prototype for an ideal hybrid learning environment.

“At the Chair of Marketing and Innovation, we focus on research and teaching at the interface of marketing and innovation management. The guest lecture was a highly suitable complement to our Digital Marketing Strategy course, as it illustrates the shift towards human-centered marketing and equips students with the right tools to drive innovation themselves. We look forward to continuing this successful collaboration with 51·çÁ÷AppHaus in the coming semesters.”

— Prof. Dr. Sabine Kuester, Chairperson of the Chair of Marketing & Innovation and Director of the Institute of Market-Oriented Management at the University of Mannheim

The latest engagement of 51·çÁ÷AppHaus at the University of Applied Sciences Neu-Ulm originated from an initial guest lecture of Beate Riefer, design strategist at 51·çÁ÷AppHaus, in 2018. Last year, Riefer and Patricia Franzreb, professor for User Experience, Design, and Media, came up with the idea for a competitive user experience project spanning a whole semester. With a focus on sustainability, design, and hybrid co-innovation, students of IT, business administration, and communications worked in teams to ideate and prototype solutions.

“At the University of Applied Science in Neu-Ulm, our first guest lecture a few years ago provided the basis for a long-term collaboration and a corresponding user experience project over the course of one semester. It was incredible to see the students’ innovation potential and ideas come to life, and we are excited to see how they will develop moving forward. I am happy to have been part of this course and look forward to continue working together.”

— Beate Riefer, Design Strategist at 51·çÁ÷AppHaus Heidelberg

Similar to the sessions in Mannheim and Neu-Ulm, the “hands-on experience first” maxim was also applied in the engagements with the Graduate School Rhein-Neckar in Ludwigshafen, as well as DHBW Mannheim, and DHBW Mosbach.

A Win-Win Relationship

Younger generations studying at universities today will shape how we work and collaborate in the next decades. This is why 51·çÁ÷AppHaus is passionate about guest lectures, for they present a great opportunity for students, as well as the team, to learn from each other and leverage synergies. Feedback from the students is particularly valuable as they ask the right questions and challenge the content by taking an external perspective. Students can leverage the applied tools and methodologies to co-innovate virtually, which can help them grow both at their university and in a professional context.

The entire team is thrilled to see how mutually beneficial and fun their guest lectures have been so far, which is why 51·çÁ÷AppHaus maintains an ongoing exchange with universities to enable knowledge-sharing and raise awareness for human-centric and sustainable innovation.

The entire 51·çÁ÷AppHaus team is grateful for the opportunity to collaborate with the universities in Mannheim, Munich, Ludwigshafen, Mosbach, and Neu-Ulm! The guest lecturers value the students’ contributions and are confident that working and learning together has successfully ignited the fire for expanding their knowledge and learning how to make innovation real.

Eric Klebeck is part of Marketing & Communications for 51·çÁ÷AppHaus.
Julia Jakob is part of Communications for 51·çÁ÷AppHaus.

Every business involved in the consumer products value chain – including raw material suppliers, ingredient producers, manufacturers, logistics providers, retailers, and wholesale distributors – has made great strides in digitalizing its internal operations. Yet, a lack of data exchange across the entire network could intensify delays and inefficiencies as resources or products move from one part of the supply chain to the other.

Moving Supplies with Better Transparency and Insight

According to , consumer products companies are beginning to get the message: 39% of surveyed industry players expect to increase spending on integrated enterprise content management (ECM) applications in 2021. Moreover, nearly half of them expect this digital investment to be a key contributor to operational performance (43%) and employee productivity (44%) – two factors that can significantly ease today’s consumer goods supply strain.

During the pandemic, most consumer products companies adopted point solutions while maintaining a preexisting infrastructure of isolated legacy systems and spreadsheets for critical functions. However, this setup – which, at the time, was a response to changing consumer behaviors and employee needs – is missing the connectedness, intelligence, and transparency necessary to align operational capacity with surging demand.

Many businesses now realize that standardized information sharing is a critical first step toward strengthening much-needed resiliency, efficiency, and control. It allows internal and external supply chain participants to exchange consumer expectations insight, communicate actionable next steps, and scale operations as one ecosystem.

With cloud-based 51·çÁ÷enterprise content management solutions by OpenText, the entire supply chain can connect all this information so stakeholders can access curated content anytime, anywhere, and across the business. Plus, the inclusion of embedded artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning enables the technology to automatically capture, organize, and analyze massive amounts of data to support higher productivity.

Along with supply chain operations, 51·çÁ÷ECM solutions by OpenText can improve adjacent departments – such as accounts payable, accounts receivable, inventory, and trade promotion management – that directly impact overall customer satisfaction. These back-office functions can use real-time supply chain information, coupled with insights into emerging customer demand and financial constraints, to reduce the pressure of supply challenges. For example, they can shape product allocation to minimize waste and optimize existing production capacity by adjusting consumer segmentation, evolving product portfolios, and innovating business models – all while offering a consistent brand experience.

Satisfying Consumers Better Despite Shortages

While conditions on the supply side may not ease until ports add capacity and companies can keep up with growing demand, it’s never too soon to unify the business network with smooth information sharing and workflows. Otherwise, brands risk ignoring revenue growth opportunities while wrestling with supply chain disruptions.

51·çÁ÷ECM solutions by OpenText can help relieve consumer products companies from making that trade-off. Now, their employees and stakeholders can make highly informed, data-driven decisions that help satisfy consumer demand – even as the stakes increase during peak buying seasons.

Find out how personalized communications and a complete understanding of your sellers and consumers can lead to unique and differentiating brand value. Read the info sheet, “.”

Most companies are ready to accelerate their digital transformation strategies after experiencing a long list of shocks brought on by a lingering pandemic. From supply chain volatility and dramatic shifts in customer expectations to new workplace dynamics, there’s no shortage of inspiration when it comes to enhancing profitability, improving efficiency, and innovating more products and services.

But excitement and motivation are not enough to transform competitively nowadays. As the global economy increasingly becomes based on or influenced by digitalization, businesses will inevitably need to pivot how they future proof their operations and customer relationships with digital technology.

For many organizations across Europe, the first step toward tackling their objectives is leveraging the fresh perspective of a trusted partner – the services organization at SAP.

KITE: Growing Profitable Yields with Insight

Whether developing the latest crop protection products or designing new precision agriculture technologies,ĚýĚýunderstands the value of partnership. The company has joined forces with farmers all over Hungary to redirect the future of food production toward greater sustainability and effectiveness.

After realizing that the region’s farmers needed to digitalize and automate processes that required manual and paper-intensive reporting and data analysis, KITE decided that it needed a technology and innovation partner of its own. Choosing 51·çÁ÷Services and Support empowered the company to innovate a precision-farming IT solution, beginning with a six-month design thinking phase guided by the database know-how of 51·çÁ÷experts.

Using 51·çÁ÷Services and Support, KITE built a platform that automatically collects, analyzes, and shares data and insights in real time and from any source, such as multiple satellite feeds, field consultants, soil samples, and machine units. Farmers can now visually see on a dashboard how the quality of their fields is changing and determine the optimal balance between seeds planted and fertilizer used to help ensure better yields and maximum profits.

KITE CEO Levente Szabo states, “From now on, with the help of 51·çÁ÷Services and Support, we have data and analysis to help make our customers’ farming systems more sustainable and profitable.”

Swiss Life: Ensuring Continuity Despite Disruption

As Switzerland’s largest life insurance company,Ěý – consisting of its tied agents and Swiss Life Select sales organization – is always striving to unlock better ways to engage with its customers and sales advisors. However, midway through a project with 51·çÁ÷Services and Support, the COVID-19 pandemic emerged and threatened a long pause on its customer experience initiative and ability to sell and fulfill customer needs effectively.

By making its experts available remotely, 51·çÁ÷Services and Support helped Swiss Life push through the disruption and move forward with its plan to deliver modern, end-to-end processes that reflected the needs of changing customer behaviors. The two companies worked to deploy multi-cloud solutions, such as 51·çÁ÷Marketing Cloud and , to boost customer experience.

“Despite the pandemic, we felt that everyone in the program, including 51·çÁ÷Services and Support, was striving hard to deliver this project on time, in budget, and within scope,” states Marc von Wartburg, head of End-to-End Customer Processes at Swiss Life. “And we succeeded.”

As a result, Swiss Life’s sales advisors continue to receive leads, create appointments, get to know new prospects, and give customers the service they expect.

Takeda: Improving Lives with Faster Supply Chains

After discovering a breakthrough stem cell therapy that can improve the lives of people with complications from Crohn’s disease,Ěý needed a partner that could quickly unlock its supply chain’s ability to deliver stem cells on demand within a strict schedule of only 72 hours. The R&D-driven global biopharmaceutical company initially looked at a set of potential partners. Still, 51·çÁ÷was the only one that could meet Takeda’s challenging timeline of five months, from kickoff to go-live.

Takeda and 51·çÁ÷Services and Support built a fully customized, cloud-based control tower platform that follows the entire supply chain process, from order placement to production and final delivery to the hospital. The platform also considers seasonal trends when generating flight plans, allowing the 150 hospitals with patients that rely on this therapy to be notified of delivery delays and schedule surgeries more efficiently.

“With SAP, we have an enterprise-wide program running where we develop innovative solutions on a cloud platform and leverage modern technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning, and blockchain solutions,” adds Nathalie Van Damme, lead of EDGE of ERP Product Management at Takeda.

Uniper: Evolving Energy with Fast-Paced Change

ForĚý, working with 51·çÁ÷is based on time-tested friendship. “We work very closely together,” shares Guido Hoever, vice president of Commercial Solutions IT for Uniper. “Uniper and 51·çÁ÷colleagues feel like one team. This is special, and we are proud of that.”

As an energy company striving to empower energy evolution, Uniper relies on 51·çÁ÷services to constantly transform and improve its business processes and the ways its people work. The 51·çÁ÷ActiveAttention program is one of those services, engaging a close relationship that helps accelerate innovation delivery. Such efforts include implementing solutions and services within , such as the 51·çÁ÷Analytics Cloud solution and 51·çÁ÷Conversational AI.

The efforts of Uniper and 51·çÁ÷have led to efficiencies that enable faster reaction times, less paperwork, and shorter end-to-end processing time. For example, Uniper’s plant maintenance area uses a work clearance management system that permits workers to respond to requests immediately by switching on their mobile devices and getting the approval to start an inspection. Plus, the financial services team has reduced the time spent processing 200 to 300 invoice inquiries daily by 50% and acquired a system that generates a payment status report in seconds.

Hoever concludes, “For the future, I would like to see that we still develop innovations in a short period of time, with a high frequency, and through a strong collaboration between us and SAP.”

Building Trust with Expertise and Innovation

I do agree with Hoever: I also look forward to watching our 51·çÁ÷Services and Support experts work with our customers in the future.

Every day, 51·çÁ÷Services and Support experts prioritize digital transformation plans, define road maps, re-platform software landscapes, and share best practices – all with a focus that puts our customers’ vision first. And it is our hope that our efforts help ensure an enterprise-wide transformation journey that is always strategic, life-changing, and meaningful.

To tap into expertise, services, and support that can help your business intelligently create value faster with greater visibility, focus, and agility,ĚývisitĚý.

Guido Schlief is senior vice president and general manager of Customer Success in Middle and Eastern Europe at SAP.

The Ěýdescribes sustainability as “meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.” This topic becomes more critical for each new generation. And my generation is on the receiving end of a potentially bleak future. But because I am both a realist and an optimist, I went looking for good news. And I started close to home.

51·çÁ÷has aĚý, one that helps businesses address plights of every kind – such as social, economic, and environmental sustainability. Here’s how just a few 51·çÁ÷partners are doing their part to make a difference.

Social Sustainability

Social sustainability can be understood as the capacity of the current generation to create healthy and livable communities for future generations.

We saw a dramatic breakdown of communities in the early days of the pandemic, as older people in assisted living facilities, such as retirement and nursing homes, were some of theĚýĚýby COVID-19. These communities were left isolated and in danger due to staff shortages and a lack of testing.

Two businesses,ĚýSanctuary GroupĚýandĚýNTT DATA Business Solutions, rose to the challenge of understanding and responding to the hurdles COVID-19 presented by focusing on data.

Sanctuary Group, a housing and care provider in the UK, manages more than 105,000 homes. NTT DATA Business Solutions, an 51·çÁ÷partner, designs, implements, and manages 51·çÁ÷solutions for companies. Working together, they usedĚýĚýandĚýĚýto gain real-time insights into the impact COVID-19 was having on Sanctuary Group’s customers, employees, and the organization as a whole.

These insights led to changes across the business that reduced the risk of COVID-19 for customers and employees by, for example, determining optimal staffing plans. The effort also resulted in winning “Best Socially Sustainable Project” at the .

Economic Sustainability

Before the pandemic, most people knew little about the invisible global network of manufacturing and transportation that keeps our store shelves stocked. COVID-19ĚýĚýand revealed just how fickle they can be.

51·çÁ÷partnerĚýInspectorioĚýhelpsĚýĚýin the retail and consumer industries with its cloud-based software-as-a-service (SaaS) solution. “Our focus on building more sustainable supply chains and our commitment to the environment are values deeply rooted in our company,” said Inspectorio CEO Carlos Moncayo.

Digitalizing, standardizing, and optimizing management and compliance operations help customers predict and mitigate risks in their supply chains. Due to the services Inspectorio provides, it has been invited to joinĚý for sustainability in the retail and consumer industries.

Environmental Sustainability

Environmental sustainability has become a major goal for many companies that recognize the need to take action now to help our planet address pollution, water scarcity,Ěý, and more.

“Measurement is the first step that leads to control and eventually to improvement,” said Dr. H. James Harrington, author of Business Process Improvement. “If you can’t measure something, you can’t understand it. If you can’t understand it, you can’t control it. If you can’t control it, you can’t improve it.”

SupplHi, an 51·çÁ÷partner, is all about the measurement. It’s created a social network for energy and natural resources industries toĚý. This measurement can help industries visualize their carbon footprint to make data-driven plans and initiatives.

Through its innovation in this space, it’s been selected to participate inĚýĚýfor sustainability in utilities, energy, and natural resources.

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Grifyn McErlean is a marketing design specialist at SAP.

Global semiconductor industry sales reached a record $555.9 billion, up 26.2% year on year, the U.S.-based Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA) said this week.

SAP’s Take

The record sales came as global chip makers ramped up production to meet demand amid a worldwide chip shortage that has impacted a wide range of manufacturers — including car makers in the U.S., forcing them to cut production, eliminate showroom discounts and raise prices.

New cars prices rose by 12.2% in the year to the end of January, while used car and truck prices jumped by 40.5% according to U.S. Department of Labor .

“At the beginning of the COVID-19 outbreak, as the demand for cars plummeted, the automotive industry cut its forecast by about 13%,” notes Richard Howells, an 51·çÁ÷supply chain expert.

At the same time, he notes, there was a huge surge in demand for consumer electronics as working from home became the norm. This resulted in increased demand for additional bandwidth, improved audio equipment, new video lighting and high-resolution cameras.

The stay-at-home mandates and office closures also increased demand for home appliances such as televisions, washing machines and dishwashers. “This caused a surge in demand for semiconductors, and high-tech OEMs quickly seized the opportunity and increased their forecast to take advantage of the additional capacity,” Howells says.

“So when car sales rebounded in late 2020 and the automotive industry started placing new orders, they couldn’t get enough chips to meet the demand. It’s simple economics. If demand is higher than supply, it usually results in increased prices.”

Adding to the uncertainty, there is no general consensus on when the chip shortage will ease, although most expect supply pressures to ease in the second half of 2022.

This week Herbert Diess, Volkswagen’s chief executive, said he expects a continued hit from a shortage of semiconductors this year, but believes the company should be able to ramp up production in the second half.

AMD’s chief executive, Lisa Su, said she believes the semiconductor industry is making progress in adding capacity. “I do believe that the first half of this year will continue to be quite tight. But the second half of this year, I think things will get a little bit better,” she told Yahoo Finance Live.

Contact:
Joellen Perry, Head ofĚýGlobal Public Relations, SAP
+1 (626) 265-0370,Ěýjoellen.perry@sap.com, PT

North America’s busiest trade link — the Ambassador Bridge between Canada and the U.S. — reopened on Sunday evening, after Canadian police ended a six-day blockade by protesters objecting to COVID-19 mandates and restrictions.

SAP’s Take

Canadian police cleared the bridge, which had been blocked by truckers and other protesters, after obtaining a court order on Friday. Normally the bridge carries goods worth about $360 million every day between the two countries — roughly a quarter of all Canadian/U.S. daily trade.

Detroit-based auto makers ,including General Motors, Ford and Toyota, have been particularly hard hit and have announced production cutbacks because many of the components they rely on traverse the bridge.

The bridge blockade has had an impact on a wide range of industries and added to inflationary pressures in both nations while once again highlighting the fragility of some supply chains.

“When a major bridge like the Ambassador Bridge is blocked, it can have a ripple effect across the entire supply chain,” says Richard Howells, an 51·çÁ÷expert on . “Companies must have the resiliency to minimize and mitigate risks by designing supply chains to withstand disruptions and respond to business opportunities.”

He adds: “In this case, you need the visibility to identify which shipments and resulting orders are effected, and the agility to sense, predict and respond by re-planning distribution routes, or even identify different modes of transport.”

Among the factors Howells identifies as crucial for enterprises he says companies must have visibility into:

• Which materials and goods are at risk?
• What are my alternate sources of supply for key resources?
• Where is my inventory?
• Which shipments are affected?
• What are the knock-on effects to production scheduled, customer orders and ongoing campaigns?

In addition he says, they need agility toĚýredirect shipments in transit, identify and switch to alternate suppliers, identify alternate logistics modes and routes, collaborate withĚýtrading partnersĚýto secure alternate materials, products and logistics capacity, and adjustĚýmanufacturingĚýto respond to unavailable materials.

Contact:
Joellen Perry, Head ofĚýGlobal Public Relations, SAP
+1 (626) 265-0370,Ěýjoellen.perry@sap.com, PST

The turmoil in the U.S. labor market continues. The Labor Department reported today that the U.S. economy added 467,000 jobs in January and sharply increased the estimate for payroll growth by nearly 1.2 million in November and December.

SAP’s Take

The latest figures signal that the economy is growing solidly in the face of the omicron wave of COVID-19 and staffing shortages. Job growth in January
would have been even stronger if not for the surge in omicron cases, which closed businesses again and prevented an estimated nearly 2 million workers from looking for a job.

At the same time however, the number of employees quitting their jobs remains near record levels. An estimated 4.3 million American workers left their jobs in December — down only slightly from November’s all-time high.

Meanwhile, employers reported some 10.9 million job openings in a survey from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, well above pre-pandemic averages. While some workers were no doubt job-hopping — cashing in on labor shortages in certain sectors such as tech and trucking, which have pushed up wages and salaries — the continued high number of people leaving their jobs suggest other factors are also in play.

“We will continue to see a lot of movement in the labor market as part of this ‘Great Reshuffle.’ People are feeling burned out and, in many cases, not valued by their current employer,” says Jill Popelka, President.

Employees, particularly parents, many of whom had to juggle multiple responsibilities as omicron case numbers surged at the end of 2021, are looking for new opportunities to expand their skills and to find a work environment that is more aligned to their personal purpose and values, Popelka says.

So how can companies compete? “They need to think differently about the experience they’re providing for employees and in most cases they need a new approach,” she says.

“Compensation matters. But what we’re hearing from employees is that growth and learning is even more critical. Organizations need to provide opportunities for employees to learn new skills, try out different projects and find a way to align their job with their unique talents and interests. When companies can figure out how to provide this type of individualized experience, that’s when they’ll be successful retaining and recruiting talent.”

Contact:
Joellen Perry, Head ofĚýGlobal Public Relations, SAP
+1 (626) 265-0370,Ěýjoellen.perry@sap.com, PST

The causes are many: devastating storms and floods, trade wars, political upheavals, cybersecurity attacks, and much more. But the grandfather of them all has been the disruption caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.

I speak with a lot of companies about their supply chain challenges. Because of these disruptions, the word on the lips of everyone today is “.”

But How Do You Build Supply Chain Resilience?

To answer this question, I like to tell the story of one company that managed the shutdowns early in the pandemic much better than most – and they did it thanks to business networks.

This company is a large American power generator – one that orders a steady supply of engines that go into its generators. It just so happens that the supplier for these engines was in Wuhan, China, ground zero for the pandemic. After the shutdowns began in Wuhan, the company tried for days to call the factory to find out the fate of its latest order.

But no one at the plant would answer the phone. The reason was obvious: almost everyone in Wuhan was on lockdown. Operating without information, the company scrambled to find a new source of supply.

But before it did, an advance shipping notification came in over its business network: “Expect your order to arrive within six to seven days by air freight.” Crisis averted – thanks to the business network.

What Is a Business Network?

A business network is a system, ideally cloud-based, that brings together buyers and suppliers for real-time collaboration and visibility. But here’s the critical point about business networks: for them to work, you need to be up and running before the disruption happens.

Fortunately, the company in this story was up and running. So, despite a severe communication breakdown resulting from an unprecedented global health crisis, it was at least able to receive a signal that the order was on the way.

This signal helped the company avoid a cascade of quite dire business outcomes. Even if the company was able to find another supplier, the delays would have thrown schedules off, and the company would have had to retrofit the new engines to meet regulatory standards. That would have taken a lot of time, money, and energy.

The Nervous System of the Global Economy

Networks are resilient. If part of a network goes down, other parts step in to fill the void. Compare this to the old world of supplier interaction, which called for one-to-one data feeds typically managed through the tedious machinations of electronic data interchange (EDI). The vulnerabilities associated with this approach (particularly isolation) are obvious.

The network approach dramatically opens up the possibilities for connection. Instead of you against the world, it’s you in the world – connecting to and collaborating with an ever-wider range of suppliers throughout the world.

This is why companies are moving aggressively to to manage their supply chains. In the face of disruptions, the can help organizations get through the rough patches.

It’s About Using Data to Your Advantage

The lifeblood of any business network is the sharing of data. Based on this data, you can analyze almost anything in your supply chain to and run your business more efficiently.

Take, for instance, the that found itself grounded for six days in the Suez Canal back in March 2021. One company I speak with regularly had perishable goods on board with a short shelf life. Because of track and trace capabilities – enabled, in part, due to data feeds through its business network – it was able to monitor the status of its goods and then run simulations about the most feasible courses of action. That’s putting data to work.

The Importance of Moving Now

Business networks are demonstrating their value. But again, it’s worth repeating: the advantages can only be realized if you’re already on the network to begin with. It’s important to get set up now. Because if you wait for the disruption to happen – and it will – you can expect to be disrupted.

for a deeper dive into business networks.

Greg Mekjian is global VP and general manager for 51·çÁ÷Business Network.

In particular, COVID-19 continues to have far-reaching consequences on global supply chains. This perhaps would come as no surprise in early 2020, when many were scrambling in grocery stores for toilet paper, cleaning products, and other necessities in preparation for quarantine lockdowns.

However, more than a year has passed since this frantic phase and global supply chains are still trying to recover from the whiplash. In turn, major ports across the U.S. – from Los Angeles and Long Beach in California to Savannah, Georgia – are facing unprecedented backlogs. Whether it be buying gifts or purchasing a new car, the shipping crisis is sure to impact many of us.

Port Logistics Operations

Focusing on the ports and maritime industry, the most significantly affected sectors have been chemical tankers, cruise ships, and passenger ships. The ship traffic from Europe to China and the U.S. has declined compared to the same periods in 2019.

To cope with the disruption, changes are expected to happen in operational, financial, and economic areas – as well as sanitary protocols and processes and adjustments to working practices and organizational aspects.

So where do businesses like Tech Mahindra come in?

Based in Pune, India, Tech Mahindra is a multinational technology company with over 125,000 employees. Working with 51·çÁ÷Co-Innovation Lab, Tech Mahindra developed a cloud-based solution for handling port logistics operations. Its Port Logistics solution, built on , provides a unified and collaborative platform for secure and faster clearance processes in ports.

Sailing Past the Paperwork

Leveraging the Port Logistics solution reduces the amount of paperwork and in less time. This translates into more funds, and who doesn’t want to save a little extra money? The solution enhances port operations using automation that:

• Provides a single window for the port authorities receiving the products to have secure communication and exchange information with the ship personnel for handling the cargo and logistics clearance
• Tracks transactions and approvals
• Analyzes deviation reports for transparency

The solution offers real-time analysis for quick decisions, smooth information flow, and automated document verification. The new process saves time in checking in and cross-verifying for each clearance process requirement. This means no more manual paperwork, customers receive their goods faster, and revenue is realized sooner.

In real-world application, the process reduces the cost of data transfer and documentation management by 90% and increases revenue by 20%.

Looking to the Future

Automation is more than convenience – it’s necessary. It saves time and money in unexpected ways, such as facilitating supply chains for food. As we learn to stay afloat amidst a global pandemic, improving operational efficiency for ports remains a priority. Tech Mahindra has been planning for the next generation of smart ports to prepare for the expected upsurge in shipping volume.

To learn more about Tech Mahindra and its Port Logistics solution, check out its 51·çÁ÷Innovation Awards 2021 .

Rajshree Chauhan and Casey Tobias are 51·çÁ÷Global Marketing contributors.

U.S. business leaders, including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, are sounding the alarm over labor shortages and arguing that immigration rules need to be eased to allow more immigrants into the country.

In a recent survey conducted by The Conference Board, U.S. CEOs said labor shortages are the number-one threat to their businesses this year.

Background

From truck drivers to nurses and teachers, the headlines are full of stories about the impact of the pandemic and labor shortages on the supply chain and – indirectly – on prices. Since the start of the pandemic, millions of immigrants, older workers and mothers have left or otherwise been excluded from the labor force.

Based on census data analyzed by the University of California, Davis, there are about 2 million fewer working-age immigrants in the U.S. because of immigration restrictions related to COVID-19 — of which about half are higher-educated adults.

At the same time, some older workers facing workplace closures, pandemic-related restrictions, and concerns about health have decided to retire early. The Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis calculates that there were a higher-than-expected 3.3 million more retirees in October 2021 than in January 2020.

Meanwhile, about 1.5 million fewer mothers of school-age children are actively working compared with pre-pandemic times, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, reflecting the fact that mothers have borne the brunt of the impact from school disruptions and closures due to to reduced childcare options.

SAP’s Take

In many sectors, including technology, labor shortages predate the arrival of COVID-19 and partly reflect an immigration slowdown that began during the Trump administration.

Peter Selfridge, senior vice president and head of Global Public Policy and Government Affairs, argues that the current labor shortage in the tech sector — like supply chain problems — reflects a combination of problems, including those that predate the pandemic.

“It’s our immigration system that needs an overhaul,” Selfridge says. “The system is not keeping up with the times.”

Overall, he says, a combination of tighter restrictions on immigration, fewer work visas, and limits on the ability of foreign-born students to remain in the U.S. after they graduate has resulted in a significant shrinkage of the available workforce. “On top of that we had COVID, which has sidelined many workers, reduced graduation rates and the like.”

To help fix the problem, 51·çÁ÷supports U.S. immigration reforms to ensure U.S. operations have access to the best and the brightest global talent. In addition, 51·çÁ÷supports investing in the next generation of innovators to prepare workers for the digital economy by providing STEM education and skills training in artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning, and data science.

“We support raising the temporary cap for H-1B visas from its current limit of 65,000 per year, making employment-based green cards more readily available, and eliminating the arbitrary per-country caps on employment-based green cards,” Selfridge confirms.

Contact:
Joellen Perry, Head of Global Public Relations, SAP
+1 (626) 265-0370, joellen.perry@sap.com, PST

Global supply chain issues blamed for disrupting the flow of goods and sparking higher inflation may have finally peaked, according to a new gauge from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, but the rapid spread of the omicron variant of COVID-19 has already caused a new wave of labor and supply chain problems.

Background

As the published on Tuesday, supply chain disruptions have become a major challenge for the global economy since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Factory shutdowns, particularly in Asia, along with widespread lockdowns and mobility restrictions have resulted in disruptions across logistics networks, increases in shipping costs and longer delivery times.

In the post, the New York Fed unveiled a new gauge, the Global Supply Chain Pressure Index (GSCPI), which integrates a number of commonly used metrics with an aim of providing a more comprehensive summary of potential disruptions affecting global supply chains.

Based on the new tool, the New York Fed notes that supply chain pressures surged at the beginning of the pandemic period, when China imposed lockdown measures, disrupting the flow of goods and sparking higher inflation.

More recently however, the authors note that the index “seems to suggest that global supply chain pressures, while still historically high, have peaked and might start to moderate somewhat going forward.” Purchasing manager surveys in Europe and the U.S. also suggest that supply chain bottlenecks were easing in December and factories in China and the rest of Asia began to reopen following lockdowns.

But the spread of the highly transmissible omicron variant poses new challenges, exacerbating labor shortages in key sectors — including healthcare itself — and forcing governments to implement, or consider implementing,Ěý new lockdowns and quarantine requirements.

SAP’s Take

“The harsh reality is that constant disruption is the new norm,” says Darcy MacClaren, SAP’s SVP for Digital Supply Chain and Manufacturing in North America. “It’s now omicron, but it will be something else going forward. Companies just have to be prepared to be resilient and agile for whatever the next thing is that is coming.”

At the moment, the biggest problem is that so many people are sick with the new variant that it is causing supply chain problems across the board. “It’s really a people issue and it’s global,” she says. As a result, manufacturers cannot get the raw materials they need and even if they do get supplies, they don’t have the people to do the manufacturing and the logistics.

What’s Next?

Looking ahead, MacClaren says companies that have visibility into their entire ecosystem and the technology necessary to respond quickly and cost-effectively to the next supply chain issue will be in a much better position than those that are left scrambling from one disruption to the next.

In the meantime, in the U.S. in particular, a new round of omicron-fueled labor shortages have compounded problems caused by Ěýa lack of key components, ranging from semiconductors to lumber, and helped drive a spurt in consumer price inflation.

U.S. administration officials and central bankers have been left hoping that inflation will subside over the next few quarters as the omicron wave subsides and the immediate supply chain issues are resolved — averting the need to raise interest rates precipitously, which could stall the nascent global economic recovery.

Contact:
Joellen Perry, Head of Global Public Relations, SAP
+1 (626) 265-0370, joellen.perry@sap.com, PST