START-UP SECURES FUTURE WITH SAP S/4HANA PRIVATE CLOUD EDITION

As a pioneer in the aerospace industry, Mynaric also decided to become a first mover in the SAP world and was one of the initial customers to choose SAP S/4HANA Private Cloud Edition (PCE).

Due to the complex requirements and the desire for agility and reliability of the IT system, the decision was made to pursue this path together with NTT DATA Business Solutions and SAP. The initial focus was to find a setup that would allow the complex IT project requirements, international expansion, and production scalability at the same time. SAP S/4HANA was implemented within the framework of SAP Best Practices and could be put live after almost six months. With this step, Mynaric shows that they recognise the added value of future-proof and sustainable IT and also focus on it despite a large investment decision.

TAKING NEW HEIGHTS WITH SAP S/4HANA CLOUD

With the future-oriented system, intelligent technologies and smart services, the course has been successfully set for future growth, strategic decisions and visionary plans at Wingcopter GmbH.

The startup chose a RISE with SAP solution, an intelligent SAP Cloud ERP landscape, which is significantly raising the game for business processes at the innovative start-up. NTT DATA Business Solutions has qualified itself as a powerful IT partner with a high level of expertise and the flexibility to operate in an extremely dynamic project environment.

With the launch of the new fit-to-standard solution after six months, several goals have been achieved: the gradual development of an ERP+ system to meet the business objectives, and the establishment of an IT environment that complies with documentation requirements and enables efficient management of production. At the same time, the cloud and service-only strategy was successfully implemented with NTT DATA Business Solutions. In a competitive market with short innovation cycles, the investment in a future-proof IT system landscape with a modern ERP system offers the ideal preparation for a digital future.

Three questions for Mersun Sezer, Head of Industry Focused Consulting Services

What are the trends for 2023 in the supply chain?

I am firmly convinced that, in addition to the further digitalisation of intralogistics through the introduction of automated warehouse systems and automated transport systems, extralogistics in particular will also become more digitalised. Logistics is becoming more and more technical through vertical and horizontal integration and more transparent across company boundaries in the interaction of all participants in the supply chain. The focus continues to be on the planning of these chains. The supply chain is increasingly becoming the chain to the network and thus, in the next step, the platform. Economic, regulatory and environmental influences will have an even greater impact on this area. Every end user of the software solutions and thus every company will have to pursue and realize the basis and the subsequent expansion stages here.

What does resilient supply chain stand for?

Resilient means reacting more insensitively to external influences and thus being stable in function and reaction to constant changes or “sudden” events. If the supply chain is resilient, this means that the chains or future networks can respond to external influences such as disrupted processes due to war, pandemics or strikes with stability and functionality.

What do you offer customers to fully cover their supply chain processes?

NTT DATA Business Solutions first of all offers its customers the entire range of SAP solutions in the area of supply chain, production and comprehensive planning. In addition, we close “white spots” that are not covered by SAP itself with SAP-based OwnIP solutions. For and with customers, we develop IoT solutions in partnership, which open up new business models and represent their and our innovative strength.

Three questions for Dries Guth, Principal Innovation Manager & Head of Co-Innovation Lab

How can NTT DATA Business Solutions help clients establish sustainable processes?

In order to establish sustainable processes, it is important to include environmental, social and societal indicators in addition to profitability indicators such as time or costs. Two concrete examples from practice: we are currently establishing a logistics platform for a young drone start-up to quickly and safely deliver medicines to remote villages in Africa (see Wincopter case on this page). For another customer, we are currently pursuing the goal of transparently mapping the so-called “productbased carbon footprint” of its products in order to simulate product variants that have better carbon footprints. This covers all information from the entire supply chain from Scope 1 to 3. As it is important to include all parties involved, from suppliers through the company’s own production to sales and operations.

How sustainable can the supply chain be, what is the focus?

This depends on the specific use case and its sustainability goals. There is no one solution for everything. Let me have two examples here: energy-intensive production processes not only attach importance to optimisation due to increased price developments on the energy market, but also aim to drastically reduce CO2-equivalent emissions, especially since the EU-wide climate agreement. Another topic area is, for example, the reuse of raw materials in the sense of a circular economy. Here, goods, services and products that have been decommissioned are returned to the production cycle and thus serve as raw materials for new products in the sense of a cradle-to-cradle supply chain. This goes far beyond the recycling of a PET bottle. Because here, a car can then also be made into a car again.

Which SAP solutions are used?

We currently see enormous potential for the SAP Cloud for Sustainable Enterprises portfolio in conjunction with SAP S/4HANA to meet current environmental and social issues such as the supply chain due diligence act in Germany . Worth highlighting are the solutions SAP Product Footprint Management to track productbased emissions, SAP Responsible Design and Production to support the circular economy and the holistic reporting tool SAP Sustainable Control Tower. Together with our Co-Innovation Partners, we also develop our own innovative and sustainable business solutions.

Once approved as a partner, a business also has the option to use SAP as a sales channel for its own solutions.

“We motivate SAP’s DSC partners to break new ground,” says Sasa, citing the example of businesses being able to package their own intellectual property and services in combination with SAP solutions. “This offers a smart solution and allows us to combine the strength of partners and SAP, which in turn leads to the easier initiation of transformation projects for customers.”

By building up their own knowledge of both customers and partners, Sasa, Anna and Bernd help and enable new partners to demonstrate their organisations’ deep technical expertise. Sasa adds, “Imagine a circumstance where a customer wants to know what is needed to switch from an on-premise solution to the cloud. SAP partners also benefit from early knowledge-sharing, enabling development of new tools such as the recently launched SAP Quality Issue Resolution solution, which enables customers and suppliers to collaborate in a problem-solving process.”

New partners who join SAP’s partner programme gain access to a portfolio of industry-leading solutions that can boost business. “In addition to that, we provide access to SAP demo systems for partners,” says Sasa. The team’s objective is to pursue an efficient approach to partnerships, which enables continuous development of new customers and business. Typically, Anna, Bernd and Sasa plan go-to-market (GTM) activities that align with SAP’s partner network. This helps ensure that they have an in-depth understanding of how they can support each partner and increase the adoption of modern supply chain and manufacturing solutions. This year, the team has already kicked off GTM activities with a central theme of efficiency.

Sharing how they source information and define actions that drive efficient cooperation, Anna, Bernd and Sasa explain that they screen the partner project pipelines, DSC readiness, and utilisation. This could mean sharing recent organisational changes, updating information on strategy to keep partners aligned on key topics such as sustainability solutions, or highlighting how SAP Business Technology Platform can be used in supply chain.

Anna says the team and the partner keep track of the success of a project as it goes live to enable a smooth rollout. Maintaining dialogue between all parties helps ensure that customers are satisfied. Happy customers lead to more referrals by recommendation, which in turn lead to the implementation of similar projects for other customers. Collaboration also opens opportunities to sell new licences, and as demand increases, raises revenue for both SAP and the partner.

Another objective is to motivate partners to develop and deliver solutions that are not already available in SAP’s standard portfolio and the SAP Store online marketplace. In turn, this allows more customers to benefit from partners’ innovation. As support, Sasa, Anna and Bernd stay aware of market demand. This allows the team to suggest training for existing partners, enabling them to satisfy any specific customer interest, requirement, or request. Take the area of sustainability, which is increasingly important to customers, as an example. The trio can also demonstrate how partners can leverage The Factory for customer engagements.

“The annual GTM conversations are crucial and help us to understand the partner perspective. In our experience, we find that the greatest success occurs when both the alignment is good and we have facilitated the incorporation of our partners’ knowledge into SAP’s organisation and portfolio,” says Sasa.

What then, is the most important strategic direction that Sasa, Anna, and Bernd will be sharing with the partner network in 2023?

“We are asking partners to support customers’ big digital transformation projects focusing on the RISE with SAP solution and consider supply chainrelated, and manufacturing-related improvements because these projects are of high interest,” Sasa says.

RISE and Supply Chain Solutions allow customers to improve efficiencies, fund innovation, and transform their mission-critical systems while minimising business risk. The solution can be combined flexibly from:

• Cloud ERP for every business need

• Industry next practices and extensibility

• Analytics and business process transformation

• Outcome-driven services from SAP and our partners.

Big transformations in particular provide a good opportunity to form the foundations for future capabilities and supply chain competitiveness. Such foundations have an impact on the future readiness and success of a company, according to Sasa, Anna and Bernd.

“We rely on partners to use their industry expertise and objective viewpoint to showcase the power of new cloud solutions to customers and help convert them from an onpremise-based architecture,” Sasa explains. “We want partners to help customers with their precious product and industry know-how. They can run innovative and customer-valued sales cycles and successful project delivery approaches that will allow