SAP - Supply Chain Sustainability Report 2022 by BizClik Media

EXCLUSIVE REPORT:

Supply Chain Sustainability

SAP delivers company-wide functionality and industry-specific sustainability features that drive sustainability at scale

FOREWORD

INTRODUCTION

Supply Chain Sustainability Sustainability is in the DNA of SAP's solutions, as it helps businesses embed sustainable practices across the supply chain

ustainability has never been higher on the agenda, both politically and operationally, for businesses. Increasingly, organisations are looking to make net zero practices an integral part of their strategic thinking. This means that sustainability must be embedded into an organisation’s end to end operations, from design to consumption. This is where SAP comes in. Working closely with its customers, SAP helps deliver environmental, social, and economic impact. SAP enterprise solutions are designed to enable a future with zero emissions, zero waste, and zero inequality. In this paper, you will see how SAP delivers company-wide functionality and industry-specific sustainability features that drive sustainability at scale - by embedding operations, experience, and financial insights into your core business processes.

SAP customers generate

87%

of total global commerce

DESIGN & MANUFACTURE REPORT:

Sustainable supply chains are in SAP’s DNA 4

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EXECUTIVE INTERVIEW

Sustainable supply chains are in SAP’s DNA Sustainability - from a product’s conception to its recycling is baked into SAP’s enterprise software application solutions

or some time, sustainability has been gaining traction as a corporate aspiration. But following COP26 in 2021 the drive towards net zero carbon emissions by 2050 was enshrined in law by most nations in the developed world, making sustainability a mission critical business goal. At the sharp end, helping make today’s businesses more sustainable, is SAP. SAP has made sustainability integral to its solutions, so that businesses can think green and behave green, from one end of the supply chain to the other. “The supply chain encompasses every part of the process, all the way from design and manufacture to planning, logistics and asset and service management,” says Martin Barkman Senior Vice President, Global Head of Solution Management, Digital Supply Chain at SAP. “Not only does each of these directly impact sustainability, but they’re also interrelated.” 6

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This is why SAP solutions are designed to work at every stage of a product’s life cycle - from how it is conceived to how it is recycled. SUSTAINABLE SUPPLY CHAINS, FROM DESIGN TO OPERATION Barkman says that on sustainability, SAP solutions can be categorised broadly as enablers of:

MARTIN BARKMAN

• The drive toward lower or zero emissions • The drive towards zero waste • The drive towards a circular economy • The drive towards zero inequality Barkman and his global team help businesses across all sectors worldwide keep sustainability top of mind every step of the way, from product concept to product consumption; and to re-use as part of the circular economy. SAP does this by making sustainability a focus in how products are designed, manufactured, moved, and used.

DESIGN & MANUFACTURE

“If you think about how a product is going to be manufactured when you design it, then that’s a much better and more holistic approach,” says Barkman. A properly designed product will impact how sustainably that product can be manufactured.” Not just how it is manufactured, either, Barkman reminds us, but also how a product is distributed, used, and recycled. “Design can impact the cost of logistics, and ultimately also how the customer experiences the product, and how that product is recycled, reused, or returned to the earth,” he adds. How SAP is able to bring together the stages of design, planning, production, distribution and operation - and digitalise those processes and allow them to operate continuously with each other - “is particularly interesting to me,” Barkman says.

A properly designed product will impact how sustainably that product can be manufactured He adds: “For example, when you design a product, how do you design with sustainability and the circular economy in mind? You have to think about whether the raw materials can be reused, or at least if they are biodegradable? “Then, when it comes to manufacturing, you want to know you’re making it in the right place - that you’re not generating too many emissions by transporting the raw material. Are you generating too much waste in the manufacturing process, and ensuring the health and safety of the workforce?” OVERCOMING THE CHALLENGES OF SUSTAINABILITY IN MANUFACTURING The manufacturing process also poses sustainability challenges, says Barkman: “You have to be smart about keeping equipment properly maintained and serviced, so that you’re not constantly replacing and disposing of components. The aim is to extend the life of all of your supply chain assets.” He adds: “It can get complex, which is why SAP solutions are absolutely geared towards helping companies navigate through all of this, to make sure they’re always headed in the right direction.” sap.com

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On the ground, SAP solutions help businesses make sustainable decisions in practical and profitable ways. SAP has software that allows companies to design and produce products in an environmentally responsible way, by helping them manage exactly what needs to be in any given product’s bill of material.

“A business may need to make a change to a product’s bill of material,” says Barkman. “We can help them WATCH: make that change at the design stage, DIGITAL and then translate this into a bill of SUPPLY CHAIN material for the various manufacturing SOLUTIONS steps. If a business can do this digitally, more or less on an ongoing basis, then that’s going to drive both productivity, profitability, and sustainability to a whole new level.” Other SAP solutions are allowing companies to take carbon-emissions tracking to the next level, says Barkman. “We have software applications that allow companies to manage the environment, health and sustainability of their operation in the best possible way,” he explains. “We’re bringing sustainability KPIs into our applications.”

We have software that allows companies to manage the environment, health and sustainability of their operation 8

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DESIGN & MANUFACTURE

GRAND AMBITIONS AROUND SUSTAINABILITY CAN BE A CHALLENGE When it comes to embedding sustainability into company-wide processes surely there are challenges? Changing regulations from country to country, for example. “Of course, we want to ensure our customers have the right tools, processes, and systems to be in compliance with regulations,” says Barkman. “But in some ways, it’s gone way beyond regulations. The journey into sustainability kind of began with that base level of regulations, and these don’t really change.” Now, he says, the real challenge is more about keeping up with customers’ ever-more ambitious sustainability goals, while maintaining profitability. “The United Nations has set some pretty top-level sustainability goals, and many of the businesses we meet have rigorous aspirations and goals for how they want to operate, and how they want to help lead us towards a more sustainable world. I’d say that the real challenge is how we lead these companies towards those noble, but high-level, goals.” Sustainability is complex, rewarding work for SAP, but Barkman says the tech that underpins its solutions has a paradoxical tinge. He cites the pandemic e-commerce boom, which has seen a global shift away from in-store purchases to omnichannel-driven e-commerce. “The technologies that are helping drive us towards sustainability are the same ones that are enabling consumers

MARTIN BARKMAN TITLE: SENIOR VP, SAP DIGITAL SUPPLY CHAIN SOLUTION MANAGEMENT GLOBAL HEAD Martin Barkman is senior vice president and global head of marketing & solutions for digital supply chain at SAP. Martin’s global organisation leads marketing, strategy, and growth initiatives for SAP’s Digital Supply Chain solution portfolio, which encompasses software for R&D, engineering, supply chain planning, manufacturing, logistics, and asset management. These solutions enable resilient and customer centric supply chains that are more agile, productive, connected, and sustainable Martin joined SAP in 2013 following SAP’s acquisition of SmartOps Corporation, where Martin served as the Chief Executive Officer. In his career, Martin developed a broad supply chain technology and management experience through roles ranging from corporate strategy consulting at McKinsey & Company to product supply and manufacturing management at Procter & Gamble.

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to behave in ways that aren’t so sustainable,” he says. “People sitting at home ordering one thing after another to be shipped to their doorstep in a way that involves multiple journeys is not the most sustainable way to do things.” He adds: “The pandemic changed many things for consumer packaged goods companies and of course retailers, and the key question now is whether we are going to continue buying the products online at the same rate, or if that will change, like it was showing signs of doing prior to the pandemic.” Outside of e-commerce, Barkman says there are other factors posing sustainability challenges. “Different industries are facing many different challenges these days, of which sustainability is but one thrown into the mix. The ultimate aspiration is creating resilient customer-centric and sustainable supply chains. I think different industries and sectors will take different routes and paths towards this.” NET ZERO IS CHANGING THE WAY BUSINESSES SEE THEMSELVES Beyond the paradox of technology, there are other philosophical elements

Different industries are facing many different challenges these days, of which sustainability is but one thrown into the mix 10

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to the global drive towards net zero, says Barkman - namely, the way sustainability is changing how companies view themselves. “There was a time when the only school of business thought was that companies exist for the sole and exclusive purpose of driving value for shareholders,” he says. Economics and sustainability have usually been at odds, admits Barkman, but adds that he is now seeing a “coming together” on this front. He says that this most often manifests in corporate goals and mission statements coupled with real innovation that is profitable because it facilitates sustainability. Consumers and customers will expect it, and so that is how sustainability in the end leads to shareholder value. “Increasingly, these are not limiting what corporations are setting out to do,” he says. “Businesses are still taking care of stakeholders but by driving strategy that in part has a vector specifically aimed at and around sustainability. In fact,

DESIGN & MANUFACTURE

investors are putting their money into companies that can show that they are both sustainable and profitable.” While businesses are undoubtedly moving towards their net zero goals, are they being pushed by the court of public opinion into doing so at a rate that will prove unsustainable for many? “Sustainability is an area of innovation,” he says. “As such it’s going to draw new investment and new areas of focus. There will be some amazing successes, and there’ll be those who struggle and perhaps those who fail. That is expected.” He adds: “That’s actually a sign of something positive happening. That means risk is being taken. Things are being tried. It shows that businesses are stretching the limits of their imagination and capabilities, and in many cases, the failures will provide the largest source of continuous learning.”

Businesses want to feel good about what they do and how they do it. We can help them with this As for the biggest barrier to sustainability, Barkman feels this is “information, collaboration and visibility”. “These are the priorities,” he says. “Companies want to go on this journey but what they find difficult is how to get started in a meaningful way? How do you do something with all this information?” He adds: “In many cases, people will know what should be done, but putting this into action can make them feel like they’re stuck in the starting blocks. Once they start working around visibility across the end-to-end supply chain, though it soon becomes clear that it’s data where you begin.” But the need for businesses to embark on sustainability transformation programmes will only ever grow more pressing, says Barkman. “Consumers want the companies, products or services they purchase and interact with to be sustainable,” he says. “Increasingly the products people purchase are being looked at through the lens of sustainability. I see a lot of companies making this central to what their value proposition is, as they are driving innovation. At the end of the day, businesses want to feel good about what they do and how they do it. We can help them with this.” sap.com

PLANNING & SOURCING REPORT:

SAP makes sustainability a question of planning 12

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EXECUTIVE INTERVIEW

SAP makes sustainability a question of planning

SAP’s Integrated Business Planning software solution is helping businesses make sustainability part of the fabric of their enterprise-wide operations

he age-old adage, ‘Fail to plan, plan to fail’ has never been more true for those in charge of today’s disruption-hit and unpredictable supply chains. In truth, an agile approach to supply chain planning has always been a prerequisite for any efficient and cost-effective supply chain. It’s just that in today’s pandemicshaped world the density of disruptions to both demand and supply - and the structural integrity of global supply chains - rapidly evolved and accelerated the adoption of digital technologies. One man who knows better than most just how far the planning needs of businesses have evolved is David Vallejo, SAP’s Global Head of Digital Business Planning Vice President. Vallejo runs solution management for digital business planning at SAP, whose Integrated Business Planning software solution is a market leader in this area. 14

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DAVID VALLEJO

“I’ve been in supply chain planning all of my career,” says Vallejo. “The reason I moved to SAP was I saw the exciting work it was doing in moving supply chain planning into the cloud.” Sustainability is a key area that Vallejo and his team are helping businesses plan around - particularly in terms of how to balance sources of supply. With 80% of a company’s carbon footprint being Scope 3 emissions from its supply chain, this is a vital area. “Sustainability starts with product design, and this then feeds into the manufacturing and logistics processes. Planning is the intelligent brain that holds these areas together to attain the desired business outcomes,” says Vallejo. “Have you designed a product that contains elements or components that are bad for the environment, or have you set it up to be recyclable,

PLANNING & SOURCING

Sustainability starts with product design, and this then feeds into the manufacturing and logistics processes

to support the circular economy? This is a key question when planning new product launches for example.” PLANNING COMES INTO ITS OWN WHEN FACED WITH TOUGH CHOICES “It’s a question that feeds into others,” says Vallejo - such as whether a company is transporting lots of raw materials from around the globe. “The strength of sustainability planning comes into its own when there are marked alternatives.” sap.com

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“Do you use suppliers in China for raw materials, or local suppliers, for example?” he asks. “There will be a price difference for sure, but also a huge sustainability difference, because one will probably involve air transport. Planning can help with making sustainability decisions like this.” Sustainability measures are sometimes cast as being bad for the

We encourage customers to think of sustainability data as being like a currency 16

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bottom line, but Vallejo says that being green and making money “often times actually go hand in hand”. DIGITAL He adds: “For example, I’ve worked with BUSINESS PLANNING a customer whose supply chain was set up with what’s called international direct ship. They were manufacturing electronic devices in China and packaging them ready for air shipment to the US market. “The business benefit of this is a two-day lead time from production to arriving in the US. The disadvantage is the huge environmental footprint of air versus sea transport.” Vallejo says that in situations like this, business planning helps balance transportation volumes with customer service and availability. “We helped this company balance profitability, sustainability, and customer

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service simultaneously. We helped them find a sweet spot whereby a certain volume goes by sea and a certain volume by air. It was a happy medium that allowed it to meet all of its goals.” The end result was that a lot more volumes could be shipped by sea which saves thousands of tons in CO2 emissions. HOW DOES SAP HELP BUSINESSES WITH EMISSIONS? Vallejo says that SAP business planning solutions help with emissions by encouraging companies to begin tracking data. “You can’t control anything you don’t track,” he says. “Everything in the supply chain is measurable and can be added into the planning environment. We encourage companies to think of tracking as being like a currency. You take all aspects of supply - transport, manufacturing, supplier footprint and you track it all. When you onboard a supplier it shouldn’t be just about product quality and price. There should also be sustainability questions included in supplier questionnaires.” He reminds us that this is not just for tier 1 suppliers, either - but also tier 2 and 3: “Who supplies your suppliers? This is where the technology is evolving, so that it can propagate information downstream in the supply chain, and create standard ways and best practices to onboard suppliers with a view to delivering more-sustainable output.” Having a sustainability dimension to data is something SAP takes very seriously. “This is exactly why we believe such data should be treated just like a

DAVID VALLEJO TITLE: SAP’S GLOBAL HEAD OF DIGITAL BUSINESS PLANNING VICE PRESIDENT David Vallejo is globally responsible for solution management and go-to-market for SAP’s Digital Business Planning portfolio which includes SAP’s cloud flagship SAP Integrated Business Planning (SAP IBP). David helped many global companies define and implement their strategy around Supply Chain Planning and Execution and has been honored with the “Prosto-Know” award in 2014 by the Supply & Demand Chain Executive Board. David held various leadership roles within SAP, before assuming his current role also driving the successful launch of Ariba’s supply chain business network focusing on Direct Materials collaboration across the extended supply chain and driving the customer co-innovation program as product owner for SAP IBP. Prior to joining SAP 8 years ago, David had several global leadership roles managing Customer Delivery, Solution Management and Product Management at E2open and icon-scm.

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financial currency,” explains Vallejo. He adds that businesses are also coming to realise that sustainability is now mission critical, and that it can help them achieve their economic goals. “If it hits the news that your supply chain is not operating in a sustainable way this can have a tremendous impact on your brand, and a disastrous impact on the consumption of your products,” says Vallejo. “Businesses are beginning to realise there is a relationship between success and operating sustainably.” He adds: “Increasingly customers are looking for sustainable products and services. Over time it will be the norm for products to be labelled for sustainability in the same way they’re labelled for ingredients. Companies that take the view that being profitable is all that matters will eventually cease to exist.” 18

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OPTIMISING INVENTORY IS KEY TO BEING SUSTAINABLE Optimising inventory is another area in which SAP can help companies operate more sustainably. In today’s world, when it comes to inventory, the past can no longer be used to predict the future. “Inventory should be a function of how well you can predict both demand and supply,” points out Vallejo. “If it’s 100% predictable, in theory you can have no inventory at all. Everything can be just-in-time.” What SAP’s Integrated Business Planning solution does is help customers measure volatility, and it’s this that helps control spoilage and waste. Vallejo says: “We use a scientific method to right-size inventory across the supply chain, which we call multiechelon inventory optimisation. Companies have seen fantastic results using this technique. They’ve been able to reduce inventory, which not only lessens the drain on working capital but also reduces waste. This is especially important for products that can have a high carrying cost or deteriorate in value.

If it hits the news your supply chain is not sustainable it can have a big impact on your brand and on the consumption of your products

PLANNING & SOURCING

We use multi-echelon inventory optimisation to help businesses reduce inventory and cut waste “And let’s say a customer wants to change the formulation of a product. Here, they would want to know exactly how much inventory of the old product they have left before introducing the new product. Inventory optimisation can help tremendously in this way with reducing spoilage and waste in the supply chain.” Even in complex consumer-goods markets - where sales of one product might impact demand for the same company’s other products - SAP can help keep inventory on track in terms of carbon footprint - to manage those phase-in/phase-out processes. And thanks to better support of artificial intelligence (AI) these processes now happen in more real-time and low-touch. “Managing inventory for interrelated products can be a massive problem,” admits Vallejo. “This is where demand planning built on AI and ML comes in. We can use this tech to look at patterns and interrelationships between not only the products themselves but between the products and other factors, such as the economy, the environment and the market. One simple example

is how the price of steel and oil impacts the portfolio mix and prices in automotive prices.” AWARENESS THE BIGGEST BARRIER TO PROGRESS ON SUSTAINABILITY But of course, integrating sustainability into enterprise-wide systems and processes can be hugely challenging for companies. Often the biggest problem is one of awareness. “There is a lack of awareness of how important sustainability is as a planning discipline,” reveals Vallejo. “We often see companies create offline afterthe-fact sustainability reports - maybe on how they did on this front in the previous quarter. “The biggest challenge is making them realise that their sustainability

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SAP’s Integrated Business Planning software solution provides end-to-end supply chain visibility Today’s supply chains have become difficult to manage, due to unprecedented levels of demand and supply volatility, the rise of omnichannel, an increase in geopolitical uncertainty and the inability of siloed data to offer a holistic view of the supply network. SAP Integrated Business Planning (IBP) is a cloud-based planning solution that helps businesses analyse, manage and optimise their supply chain. It provides a single platform to analyse, predict and simulate the entire value chain to anticipate changes and respond with a resilient and sustainable action plan. With SAP IBP, the customer is able to manage multiple end-to-end processes in real time, by combining planning functions such as sales and operations planning, demand planning, inventory management, and supply planning fully integrated into financial planning, manufacturing, logistics and the SAP Business Network for trading partners. This cloud-based solution also allows companies to simulate the effects of customer demand on processes, in terms of capacity, cost and profitability. It can execute planning processes through real-time supply chain management, while allowing businesses to analyse data and generate real-time predictive and prescriptive analytics.

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goals must inform their decisions around supply chain planning. In logistics, an example this would mean deciding how much volume you send by boat, air, truck, rail.” “Sustainability is an awareness hurdle, but it’s not actually that difficult to incorporate into your planning. We’ve just released a carbon-footprint dimension across SAP Integrated Business Planning. Really now it’s all about awareness and training.” Of course, planning isn’t solely about sustainability; avoiding disruption is also vital. “To overcome disruption you need to be able to anticipate what could happen, what the impact would be and how you can be prepared to mitigate better,” says Vallejo. So for example, if you have a single-source supplier that’s performing well today, what if that supplier has a problem in the future? It’s the same if you use a single transportation route that’s critical for you.”

PLANNING & SOURCING

To this end, he says what-if scenarios are key, because it means that before any disruption happens, there will be a response plan in place. “This is where planning can help tremendously, in terms of being prepared and, therefore, resilient,” says Vallejo. He adds that another important resilience-boosting aspect of planning is how it helps with supply chain response management, which is about responding better when disruption actually hits. “Remember, disruption isn’t always upstream, with suppliers,” Vallejo stresses. “It can also be downstream, with changes in demand or problems with transportation. Using real-time planning, you can see what the impact of such disruption will be, and figure out alternatives. You might reroute volumes, for example, or rebalance

I think we will see dramatic changes in the way products are designed inventory. All of these decisions need to happen instantly, and this is where a digital planning environment can help to synchronise decisions across finance, manufacturing, logistics and the business network in near real time. These are today’s problems, but in a forward-looking business such as SAP, experts like Vallejo always have one eye on the future. He sees big changes afoot in what it will mean for supply chains to be sustainable “I think we will see dramatic changes in the way products are designed,” he says. “Today, when you order things online sometimes the product is way smaller than the packaging it comes in. We’ll see reusable packaging that you can return for the next product to be shipped to you, for example.” And he believes some products themselves will change drastically. “Take detergent, such as shampoo. Up to 99% of shampoo is water, which is heavy and bulky to transport. Yet when you’re in the shower, you’re standing in water anyway. I believe shampoo will come in capsule form eventually. Previous generations might not have been open to such a change, but I think today’s younger generations will be.” sap.com

DELIVER & OPERATE REPORT:

SAP going the extra mile on sustainability 22

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EXECUTIVE INTERVIEW

SAP going the extra mile on sustainability SAP’s software solutions are helping its customers improve ESG and sustainability performance in logistics, last mile and asset management.

missions from logistics businesses during the delivery of goods have been on an upward trajectory, increasing by 1.9% annually since 2000. Most of this can be attributed to the rise of globalisation and increased demand for consumer goods. Investors, regulators, consumers and employees are all starting to demand sustainably derived products and services with a smaller environmental footprint across the entire supply chain, opening up a world of possibilities for businesses of all sizes and across all sectors. Helping businesses harness the immense power of such technology is SAP, whose digital solutions are designed to help reinvent the flow of goods,making it smarter, faster and cleaner. In today’s global supply chain, goods 24

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MINDY DAVIS

might travel half-way around the world before reaching their final destination, which can have a large impact on a company’s carbon footprint. Add to this the increase in e-commerce over the past two years, and the resulting need for directto-consumer shipments, and again, the emissions increase exponentially. Transportation is one of the areas in which getting to zero emissions is a big goal. That includes reducing travel distances and increasing efficiency. It’s not uncommon, for example, for trucks to return empty once a delivery has been completed. Such trips are called ‘deadhead miles’ or ‘empty miles’. SAP helps businesses optimise loads and reduce mileage across operations, making such deliveries more sustainable, end to end - from raw materials, to factory, to warehouse to doorstep.

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SAP’s Transport Management System helps businesses optimise loads and reduce distances across last-mile operations IT’S ABOUT ZERO EMISSIONS, WASTE AND INEQUALITY “It’s about zero emissions, zero waste and zero inequality,” explains Mindy Davis, SAP Digital Supply Chain Global Marketing VP. Shippers need tools to adapt to dynamic market conditions so they can plan and execute on freight, and track

and settle it in tight collaboration with carriers. Where capacity is unexpectedly scarce, shippers need the ability to secure resources and spot-pricing where needed the most, to optimise travel time on the road, air, and sea. SAP can help shippers optimise loads and reduce drive time and emissions. Jointly with partners, SAP can now sap.com

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capture engine emissions and bring that data back into a collaborative network. “We can optimise based on CO2 and not just cost and time,” says Davis.

and also the exchange of documents with key business partners. In this way, its customers improve transparency across DIGITAL the value chain. SUPPLY CHAIN Davis says: “We have software that AND OPERATION facilitates data exchange between supply SUSTAINABLE LOGISTICS IS A chain participants such as shippers, COLLABORATIVE EFFORT Logistics is a complex undertaking. logistics service providers and buyers. It manages the movement of raw This is at a global level, meaning they can leverage synergies, gain a common materials, intermediate products, understanding, and reach process and packaging across the globe to optimisation for decreased costs and manufacturing facilities, as well as the distribution of products from origin to improved capacity utilisation.” consumption. An open logistics network She adds: “In an increasingly volatile global business environment, customers that connects business partners for inter-company collaboration and insight need a network to help manage exceptions and foster productivity will not only optimise connections, but ultimately reduce emissions. through easier supply chain collaboration, based on real-time data and predictive SAP works to provide a central entryintelligence.” point to manage logistics transactions, 26

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“Many of our customers are dedicated to supporting business processes that save time and valuable resources,” adds Davis. “With distribution such a critical component of operations, SAP can boost the accuracy and speed of shipments, across order creation, transportation planning and freight payment.” One SAP customer is Roger Perala, Senior Director of Business Systems, United Sugars Corporation. Perala says: “Using SAP solutions, we’ve increased our freight spend

Customers can achieve process optimisation, for decreased costs and improved capacity utilisation savings, improved process automation and information flow, and improved our data management. Today, we are a more efficient shipper, and that saves us time and resources.” Moving on to helping customers address waste, Davis says SAP works with customers to manage returnable packaging, with a view to establishing circular flows for items such as pallets. “SAP’s solutions capture ownership, inventory and rental arrangement, and help customers reduce packaging waste,” she explains.

MINDY DAVIS TITLE: VICE PRESIDENT, GLOBAL MARKETING, SAP DIGITAL SUPPLY CHAIN Mindy Davis is passionate about building world class teams to successfully launch exceptional products. Mindy is a strategic thought leader and subject matter expert, possessing a depth and breadth of marketing and business knowledge to provide sound, innovative strategic leadership and initiatives while ensuring the preservation of and link between product, industry, field and marketing is maintained. Mindy’s most recent accomplishments include hosting a very well received LinkedIn Live series for Women in Supply Chain. Davis has been with SAP for 17 years, and has seen an enormous amount of change in that time - but no change more drastic than that which occurred during the pandemic. She says: "Many customers were unable to optimise supply with demand. “We were able to help them dig them out of this hole out by keeping inventory moving with software solutions. And it was all done in realtime, working remotely."

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Davis recalls working in a warehouse years ago, developing a pallet redistribution programme to ensure pallets were cleared from the warehouse floor in order to improve employee safety and reduce incidents, returned, reused, and recycled. “It was all in an AS 400 system,” says Davis. So yes, I’m dating myself!” She adds that much of the waste inherent in moving products via pallets can be eliminated by digitising the process. Davis continues: “As for inequality, we have the ability to track products back through the value chain to product origin. Our software captures data from all the parties that interacted with any given product, using tamper-proof blockchain for security. “With this, customers can seamlessly check product provenance by, for

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Customers can check product provenance by scanning a can or a package of coffee to see where it originated example, simply scanning a can or a package of coffee to see where it originated, or if it was traded fairly.” SAP HELPING CUSTOMERS EXCEL ON ENVIRONMENTAL, SOCIAL, AND GOVERNANCE (ESG) TARGETS SAP’s customers - and their suppliers can certainly see the difference when it comes to ESG. A consumer coffee brand well-known for hand-roasted and specialty coffees across Europe, is using SAP solutions to improve their sustainability practices. “As part of their sustainability ambitions, this brand wanted to make their coffee supply chain more transparent, both to themselves and their consumers,” explains Davis. “The goal was to achieve greater consumer trust and engagement, and also to be recognised as a sustainable brand by having full traceability on the coffee value chain.” This coffee producer uses SAP solutions to trace materials end-toend across their supply chain, and this is seamlessly integrated with the company’s IT landscape. “At the farm level, they source highquality coffee from smallholder farmers

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via their own smartphone app,” says Davis, who adds that each transaction is geo-tagged and time stamped, and that data is uploaded into SAP “so they can now capture and analyse the batch genealogy, from farm to roaster.” Sustainability and ESG requirements now touch on every aspect of a company’s operations, including how it manages and optimises the performance of its assets. “On this front, it’s all about revolutionising equipment ROI, says Davis. “Every business trying to reduce environmental impact wants to run their equipment at optimal performance to minimise energy consumption and extend their lifespan, as well as minimise environmental risk.” She adds: “We help customers reduce costs by using artificial intelligence (AI), analytics and insight, to pinpoint what needs to be done, before there’s a problem. We then mobilise a focused service-response for sustainable service delivery.

We help customers reduce costs by using artificial intelligence, analytics and insight, to pinpoint what needs to be done, before there’s a problem

“Workforce scheduling and dispatching is also optimised and carried out in real time, using AI tools. Analytics, reports and dashboards help to recognise issues, and this allows businesses to resolve issues quickly.” SAP also assists with the provision of a mobile field service, which manages existing workloads “whether you’re online, offline, or only occasionally connected.” One of the reasons SAP has an allencompassing view of sustainability issues is because it works with companies across 25 industries around the world. One is mining. One mining customer, based in Phoenix, Arizona, has more than 500 technicians across its supply chain, and sap.com

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The goal is to find the shortest route using real-time information SAP has helped them both improve and increase equipment availability, as well as increase the efficiency of its maintenance plan by 25%. And then there’s discrete manufacturing – whereby equipment manufacturers can increase service efficiency and transform the customer experience through automation and AI, says Davis. She continues: “This increases service revenue and customer satisfaction through targeted, modularised service offerings, as well as improving manufacturing up-time and great on-time delivery. “Plus, we can enable a collaborative platform for sharing performance analytics with manufacturers, operators and service providers to increase operational visibility and more-agile decision making.” REVOLUTIONISE EQUIPMENT PERFORMANCE TO MINIMISE EMISSIONS Using Industry 4.0 best practices, together with SAP solutions, enables operators to not only optimise equipment performance but also to extend their useful life, by helping to improve design and service, which reduces the assets’ carbon footprint. Davis is a big Formula One racing fan, and she is thrilled to see SAP solutions 30

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help a certain F1 team master extreme cornering skills. “In F1 racing, cars make hairpin turns at high speed, turns that must be executed perfectly for the car to minimise its total race time, and the distance travelled. You can map such a turn onto a network flow on a grid, where the nodes represent the positions along the turn, and the path that needs to be taken to reach the next node. “The goal is to find the shortest route using real-time information. It’s really energising to see our customers use SAP solutions to connect with remote experts on the race track in real-time, using peer-to-peer augmented reality.” She adds: “Our customers can improve knowledge transfer and boost performance, while optimising technician travel-time, in order to reduce vehicle CO2 emissions. While I’m not a professional car racer, with our solutions, I can guide our customers

DELIVER & OPERATE

closer toward reaching their CO2 emission mandates.” HOW SMART TECHNOLOGY IS DRIVING INNOVATION IN LAST-MILE DELIVERY Continuing the F1 analogy, Davis says: “In Formula 1, it’s the last minutes and seconds of the race that get your adrenaline going. Continuous optimisation is the key to winning, and it’s the same in supply chain. “Supply chain optimisation can be very effective in last-mile delivery. It might be the shortest leg of the supply chain by far, but it’s often the most complex, expensive and energy inefficient.” With last mile, there is no greater enemy to customer loyalty and satisfaction than orders not arriving when expected, arriving wrong, or not at all. And with so many disruptions, many traditional supply chain strategies continue to endure excess shipping charges due to changes in last-minute deliveries - all of which increases their carbon footprint.

Today, the last mile link in the supply chain is under enormous pressure to adapt at a lightning pace. But it’s important to remember that a company’s last mile solutions are only as strong as its supply chain planning infrastructure, and the ability to deliver visibility and connectivity across the entire supply chain journey. More than first- and middle-mile logistics, last mile has seen the greatest amount of change, thanks in large part to omnichannel. Last mile is also the most publicly visible link in the supply chain, and as such is most likely to be blamed by customers if anything goes wrong. But like a cog in a machine, last mile logistics can only function as efficiently as the other moving parts across the supply chain. In conclusion, Davis says she is “inspired” by how much digital supply chains can help SAP customers deliver sustainability initiatives, and is “optimistic” about the future on this front. “It’s been exciting, challenging and ultimately fulfilling to see our customers use digitalisation across their supply chains to fuel fast, agile, and sustainable responses across the value chain,” she says.

Continuous optimisation is the key to winning in F1, and it’s the same in supply chain sap.com