SAP Brochure Jan 2021

SAP

DIGITAL REPORT 2021

SAP: The Jazz of Digital Transformation IN ASSOCIATION WITH

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SAP: The Jazz of Digital Transformation

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SAP’s Lars Friedrich, Andreas Spahn and Maria Fay on the balance between innovation and structure powering its approach to digital transformation

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AP’s regional customer success team - Lars Friedrich, Andreas Spahn and Maria Fay - takes care of innovations in strategic cus-

tomer engagements for middle and eastern Europe.

Friedrich has a musical analogy for what the team set out to achieve: “We act as innovation brokers, and 04

we look upon the incubation and innovation team as a Jazz combo. We help customers to become digital sprinters and build sound innovation capabilities with the power of SAP’s innovation ecosystem “From a Jazz point of view, it’s about bringing the tracks together to build up a full song at the end.

That’s what we encourage our customers to do - finding the right beat to adopt innovation phase by phase and step by step.” That musical metaphor also underlies the philosophy that they believe companies must adopt to achieve digital transformation. “It’s not just about KPIs, but rather the whole symphony. You can’t simply use technology to make every process perfect, but you can make sure that everything that you do inside of the process makes sense. And then, once the process has been properly structured and the people are enabled, the technology can come in.”

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The Business Innovation Framework for SAP S/4HANA is the structure under which such transformation occurs.

Increasingly, companies are digitally transforming their core businesses, but achieving that is highly complex.

“Many customers have built highly customised applications over the years. It’s a very complicated landscape that they have, and then, on top of that, they are considering: ‘how can I get from my old enterprise resource planning (ERP) software to a new ERP like 06

S/4HANA?’ Then there’s the question

E X E C U T I V E P R O FILE :

Lars Friedrich Title: Innovation & Technology Director Industry: Computer Software Lars Friedrich is a business and technology director at SAP, integrating digital into all aspects of the customer strategy from digital organization mindset shift, tech-driven business process innovation, and unleash the power of data and network. Lars supports customers across industries to become digital sprinters, improve their business performance, and to build sound innovation capabilities. He empowers the SAP innovation ecosystem to rethink products and processes for the digital age. With his international experience in Japan, Finland, and South America, he learned the tools to synergize the core competency of the organization and inject speed into the operating model.

of all the new technologies like machine

SAP is not content to simply bring cus-

learning or robotic process automation

tomers up to the modern digital standard,

that everyone is talking about and figur-

but goes further to identify technologies

ing out what that means to the company.”

coming down the track. “What we do

To cut through that fog, SAP has

is help the customer to identify which

developed a systematic and structured

technologies can add additional value

approach to help customers identify

on top of the standard offering, and

which digital technologies in SAP’s vast

technologies that are on the horizon. The

portfolio could add additional value to

next generation of business software

their core businesses. “We have a lot of

that our colleagues from New Ventures

different tools and methodologies from

and Technologies are exploring right

design thinking to SAP Activate, which

now includes brain computer interaction,

is our very own SAP methodology for

gaze control of software or homo-

business transformation in terms of ERP.

morphic encryption and further

We also have a huge portfolio of intel-

emerging technologies.”

ligent technologies, and that is important because when we talk to customers,

While that lies in the future, Fay points to a number of concrete examples

they really want to know what robotic process automation, or machine learning, or even blockchain means to their business.” The innovation ecosystem encompasses a broad range of partners, including its venture arm SAP.iO for new product incubation. “We have many different experts across industries and business units that are all there to support the innovation journey of a customer.

The whole ecosystem is very unique in the market, and really differentiates us from other competitors.”

“ Companies like SAP quite clearly have a full sustainability strategy, but the question is how to reach out to the midsized and older companies” — Lars Friedrich, Innovation & Technology Director, SAP www.s a p . com

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SAP

regarding how technology can help improve business processes. “In the supply chain area it’s possible, based on historical data and machine learning, to predict how long it takes to process and ship the sales order. That, of course, allows customers to better plan their processes and in general improves customer relationships in the supply chain.”

Other examples in the supply chain space include IoT sensors to monitor products in certain conditions. “You can track temperature, humidity, vibration, 08

“ SAP has a strong internal ecosystem of various teams coming together in the jazz orchestra – from technology foresight to startup scouting” — Dr Maria Fay, Senior Innovation Architect (Middle & Eastern Europe), SAP

impact and so on. That is critical in industries like pharmaceuticals or consumer

One of the elements that sets SAP

products where it’s better to learn as

apart from the crowd is its partner eco-

soon as possible if there is any damage.”

system, which informs and interacts

Such examples cleave closely to

with the business innovation framework.

SAP’s ambition with its customers’ digital

SAP and its partners, together with

transformations, as Spahn explains: “It

customers, accelerate innovation

makes sense to streamline your core

adoption, providing the governance,

processes, but, at the same time, you

methodologies and technologies for the

must identify where advanced technolo-

situation at hand. “SAP is an ecosystem-

gies could add additional value to your

oriented cooperative with over 21,000

business processes. Where do you

industry, technology, start-up partners

need to skill up your people or future

and research institutes. We believe that

proof your workforce in order to not lose

the collaboration with partners is key

ground on your competitors in the race?

for our customers,” says Friedrich. “We

It’s important to address the two worlds

integrate and take advantage of a per-

at once.”

forming ecosystem to solve customers’

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E X E C U T I V E P R O FILE :

Dr Maria Fay Title: Senior Innovation Architect (Middle & Eastern Europe)

Industry: Computer Software

Dr. Maria Fay is a Senior Innovation Architect at SAP, leading engagements with strategic customers in Middle & Eastern Europe to create value and improve processes with next-generation technologies. With over 10 years of international experience in technology and business consulting, she develops new methodologies and services and is a lecturer on digital business models. Having earned her PhD investigating the relationship between big data analytics and business value, Maria is passionate about the future that new technologies from machine learning to quantum computing can bring. www.s a p . com

SAP

digitalization shift. We onboard partners into niche areas to gain trust and once we have identified a backlog of use cases we hand-over delivery to certificated providers.”

Apart from the partner ecosystem, “SAP also has a strong internal ecosystem of various teams coming together in the jazz orchestra – from technology foresight to startup scouting,” as Fay explains. “SAP’s Innovation Center Network is working with visionary startups leveraging 10

SAP’s business cloud platform, one

E X E C U T I V E P R O FILE :

Andreas Spahn Title: Senior Innovation & Technology Manager Industry: Computer Software Andreas Spahn is a business innovation and technology consultant who is passionate about solving business problems using digital technologies. Self-driven strategist and innovation broker who is extremely well connected within SAP’s innovation ecosystem. Andreas supports customers across industries to optimize their business processes and to navigate through the uncertainty of innovation, from ideation to implementation of the innovative (custom) solutions.

He knows how to play the garnet, from Design Thinking, Business Model Development, Lean Startup, agile Project Management (PMI certified), all the way to Scrum. Beyond realizing innovation projects, he set up a strategic partnership with global industry players, like Schaeffler.

“ Reducing the innovation budget in the long term can have a major impact on competitive capabilities in the future” — Andreas Spahn, Senior Innovation & Technology Manager, SAP services and networks. All those elements are crucial to ensure customers are leveraging the latest knowledge data model and technologies to build

and achievements. “

products and support customers on

The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic

their transformations. Another team

has naturally affected SAP, just as it has

has expertise in the context of sustain-

its customers. Consequently, SAP is

ability and developed an Impact Lab for

offering solutions and services to help

Sustainability – a format to apply hori-

out. “One of many examples is called

zon-thinking of environmental, human,

the business operation self-healing

economic and social factors into cus-

service,” says Fay. “It’s a comprehensive

tomer organisation, and identify sweet

out-of-the-box AI platform to support

spots for new business opportunities

automation in the business operations.

and co-innovation. More and more we

In other words, if allows fast deployment

are opening up internal formats for our

of various use cases from restoring

customers, like the SAP One Billion

unplanned outages to interactive sales

Lives program, which empowers social

order issues resolution.” Spahn points

entrepreneurship with SAP products,

out that while the natural instinct in such www.s a p . com

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challenging times is to cut innovation

Sustainability is of ever-increasing

budgets and focus on what is necessary

importance in the business world, and

to survive, this can be self-defeating.

the efficiencies digital transformation

“Reducing the innovation budget in the

unlocks go a long way to helping out. “Big

long term can have a major impact on

companies like SAP quite clearly have

competitive capabilities in the future.

a full sustainability strategy, but the

After all, it’s the digital maturity level

question is how to reach out to the

of a company that is a good indicator of

midsized and older companies,” says

the level of resilience to coping with

Friedrich. “They also need to look into

these situations.”

what sustainability actually is and how

The team emphasises that the key

they could set up their enterprise to

benefits of the digital transformations

achieve it. That’s why we’re setting up

SAP enables are not just monetary.

a framework for sustainability called ‘the

Digital Transformation CLICK TO WATCH

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3:17

13 sustainable enterprise’. That answers

of its USPs, as Rettig explains. “As

the questions of how a company can use

a company in Germany, we have local

digital technologies to operate in a more

SAP experts within a global organisation,

efficient, and more sustainable manner.”

and our mission is to drive the intelligent enterprise. That involves a focus on

NAGARRO ES

SAP and enterprise resource planning

“Nagarro ES is an SAP full service

to build an enterprise architecture that

provider, meaning we implement, and

works for the company involved.”

consult our customers on SAP software.

The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has

We’re also part of a global company

accelerated efforts towards digitalisa-

which focuses on technology not only

tion, specifically cloud solutions, as

with regards to SAP, but beyond,” says

Manuel Sedlak, Teamlead SAP Cloud

Julia Rettig, Director Marketing at

Services, explains. “We’re seeing the

Nagarro ES. The company’s expertise

companies we work with jump into digi-

when it comes to SAP products is one

talisation. Almost every customer we’ve www.s a p . com

SAP

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worked with in the last year has thought

Nagarro works closely with its cus-

about whether it’s now time to jump

tomers and SAP as part of a triangular

to S4/HANA, and whether that should

relationship to get the best out of its

be an on-premise or cloud solution.”

SAP implementations. Sedlak gives as

Nagarro had first hand experience of

an example its work with a customer.

the efficacy of S4/HANA cloud, and the

“We were asked to be the implementa-

flexibility it offers, having used it for the

tion partner, but having a relationship

past four years. “We were one the first

between ourselves, the customer and

customers in the world to use S/4HANA

SAP is really important for the overall

cloud. That’s why we decided to bring

success of the project.” That triangu-

this to market, and with this approach,

lar relationship is reinforced by quick

we were able to find new customers

responses should a problem arise. “We

with whom to discuss the cloud suc-

identified a problem with a sales order

cess story.”

that couldn’t be deleted from within the

“ We look upon the incubation and innovation team as a Jazz combo” — Lars Friedrich, Innovation & Technology Director, SAP

about a new configuration platform, for instance, that is in development and will potentially go live from the begin15

ning of 2021.”

Rettig sees Nagarro’s full service, independent approach as standing it system,” says Sedlak. ”We raised a ticket

in good stead for the future. “Customers

and I was in direct contact with the cus-

want to participate in all the latest

tomer success manager on SAP’s side.

technologies, but they need to do the

Within half an hour, we were able to find

homework. That’s where we come in,

a solution, so it took just 30 minutes from

because we not only have the cloud

reporting that incident to having a resolu-

perspective, but also do on premises

tion from SAP.”

projects. For us as a partner, it’s impor-

The extent of the relationship between

tant to consult our customers with an

SAP and Nagarro has meant the two can

open mind. We don’t want to push them

exchange ideas. “As a partner, it’s really

into a corner where they don’t belong.

great to have a tight connection with

That’s why we’ll continue to take a holis-

SAP,” says Sedlak. “We are currently dis-

tic view with our customers.”

cussing some products with SAP which are coming next year. We are talking www.s a p . com

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