ERP Today Q4 2024

THE ERP TODAY AWARDS 2024

MASTERING ERP HIGHLIGHTS

I NSIDE DATA MANAGEMENT

AGENTIC AI

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CEO Mark Vigoroso mark.vigoroso@wispubs.com

EXECUTIVE EDITOR & PUBLISHER Stephen Wellman stephen.wellman@wispubs.com

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Giacomo Lee giacomo@erp.today

DESIGN DIRECTOR Ceci Perriard ceci@erp.today

SENIOR SALES DIRECTOR Richard McEvoy rich@erp.today

HEAD OF MARKETING Andrew Rolland andrew@erp.today

COMMERCIAL EDITOR Charles Whitmore charles@erp.today

CHIEF STAFF WRITER Yoana Cholteeva yoana@erp.today

EDITORIAL ASSISTANT Melissa Evatt melissa@erp.today

NEWS ANALYSTS Ekaterina Dudakova ekaterina@erp.today Radhika Ojha radhika.ojha@wispubs.com

TECHNOLOGY EDITOR Adrian Bridgwater adrian@erp.today

PHOTOGRAPHY Joel Chant Rob Kennard

Enterprise Technology

Vendors who are looking to reimagine their marketing playbook and captivate their customers. Contact Rich at rich@erp.today

ERP.TODAY

20-22 Wenlock Road, London, N1 7GU. Company No. 11642743

A WELLESLEY INFORMATION SERVICES COMPANY

ERP TODAY LIMITED erp_today @erp_today erp-today

EDITOR’S WORDS

Greetings from the new CEO of ERP Today!

Fresh off the plane from the Mastering ERP Summit and 2024 ERP Today Awards celebration in London, I am full of gratitude and optimism about the road ahead for ERP Today, for the companies and markets we serve, and for all the brands representing Wellesley Information Services. I had the distinct honor of accepting the role of CEO of ERP Today in November 2024, and I wanted to officially introduce myself to this vibrant and innovative community! I have spent the last two and a half years as Chief Content Officer at SAPinsider – the leading provider of independent actionable intelligence and connections for SAP users, vendors and partners – where I lead all digital content and research strategy, programs and operations, and drove market awareness, demand creation, and stakeholder engagement for the world’s most influential technology companies in the SAP ecosystem. I also lead our research, thought leadership, client relationships and market presence in Supply Chain Management, Enterprise Asset Management, Data Management, Business Intelligence & Analytics, and Artificial Intelligence & Business Process Automation.

It’s still early days in my journey as your CEO, but I wanted to share a few thoughts about where I will be focused in the weeks and months ahead. Firstly, we are and will continue to be THE source for trusted, fact-based and actionable multi-media intelligence for the enterprise technology market that educates and empowers business and IT end users to make better business decisions, while providing software and services vendors an unmatched platform to grow their top lines, reimagine their marketing playbooks and captivate their customers.

Secondly, we will be broad AND deep. That is, we will cover the ubiquitous rising tides AND facilitate decisions, connections, and commerce within each major ERP ecosystem. We will continue to operate as a global business and a global community, serving all geographies and all industries, including business and IT leaders.

My first priority in my first couple quarters is to LISTEN to and LEARN from our end-users, vendors, partners, clients, and advisors. What’s working? What’s not working? I want to get to the essence of our “WHY.”

We will also be dramatically expanding the size of the end-user population in our community. Furthermore, we will establish Mastering ERP and The ERP Today Awards as the preeminent global cross-industry in-person events for enterprise technology knowledge, connections, and innovation.

So where did I come from? I have spent the last 28 years in enterprise technology and services primarily in marketing, product and solution management, and business strategy leadership roles, with stints at Fortune 500 firms like Oracle, Qualcomm, Verizon Wireless, Reed Elsevier and NCR as well as early- and mid-stage B2B software shops, two of which resulted in successful exits. I have a passion for harnessing emerging technologies like IoT, Data Analytics, AI and Intelligent Automation to drive lasting business transformation.

I earned an MBA from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, with concentrations in Marketing, Finance and Strategy. I am based in Atlanta, Georgia, USA where I live with my wife and three children. And I want to hear from you! Please contact me at mark.vigoroso@wispubs.com and I will respond to you within 48 hours. And let’s connect on LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/markvigoroso.

Excited to be on this journey with you all!

All my best, Mark

ARTICLES

THE ERP TODAY AWARDS 2024

The ERP Today Awards 2024 took place on December 12 at The Park Plaza London Riverbank hotel, as hosted in style by Annette Slunjski, global chief events officer for Wellesley Information Services (WIS).

BY GIACOMO LEE

As always, the awards celebrate those who are not only meeting the demands of today’s global enterprise technology sector, but setting the standards for tomorrow’s success. The ERP Today Awards 2024 very much continued its tradition in venerating both the industry’s global leaders and its emerging innovators and disruptors.

Moving away from previous venues and formats,

the evening was a new, more intimate way for ERP Insiders to network and recognize their achievements over the last year, coming together amidst the Park Plaza’s classy environs within the heart of London.

A hearty congratulations is warranted for Codestone in winning the Transformation Project of the Year Award 2024 for its work with a leading e-liquid company. The London-headquartered digital transformation

The ERP Today Awards 2024 very much continued its tradition in venerating both the industry’s global leaders and emerging innovators and disruptors.

consultancy is led by CEO Darryl Sackett, and has been going strong for almost 30 years.

For our esteemed judges, Codestone’s award-winning ERP transformation project for a retail customer exemplified how strategic digital transformation can revolutionize business

operations. Through innovative implementation strategies and deep technical expertise, Codestone delivered a solution that achieved significant operational improvements and measurable ROI, setting new benchmarks in ERP transformation excellence.

Highly commended in the Transformation Project of the Year category included Wipro for its work with a leading Middle Eastern hospital aiming to redefine healthcare excellence by providing world-class care to its community and leading in clinical innovation. SAP UK was also recognized for its outstanding transformation

initiative for BT Group, which completed a go-live on RISE with SAP S/4HANA in 2023 to transform its finance operations in the cloud. This has enabled BT to retire almost a dozen of its original legacy finance platforms, including subledgers, procurement and sourcing.

In addition, SAP won Vendor of the Year, with Epicor and Workday garnering highlycommended nods from our esteemed judging panel.

The Customer Experience Solution of the Year award went to Infor for its work with Combilift, the largest global manufacturer of multi-directional forklifts.

SugarCRM, Vertilocity, and Wipro also received highly commended recognition for their contributions to improving customer experiences.

ERP AI and Innovation of the Year was awarded to KPS APG for an innovative AI-based product recommendation engine developed for Globus SB-Warenhaus Holding, leveraging Google Cloud’s Vertex AI and SAP Customer Activity Repository data.

The same category saw Celonis and Infor highly commended for their groundbreaking work in integrating AI with ERP solutions

Next up IBM won the

ESG Excellence of the Year award, having developed GreenHR in partnership with the University of Greenwich, a tool that helps the uni’s employees understand sustainability and how they can make a positive impact.

In the same category, judges deemed IFS highly commended for its impressive efforts in environmental, social, and governance (ESG) initiatives.

For Finance Solution of the Year, Kyriba took home

the award. The treasury disruptor announced in 2024 new AI features within its platform designed to improve cash forecasting, bank connectivity-as-aservice and custom report generation. It now also allows customers to create new cash forecasts from historical cash flows; use GenAI to update current Kyriba payment formats; while its reporting solution integrates with Microsoft Office Copilot.

This year Kyriba also

joined forces with Workday and U.S. Bank; introduced digital currency and blockchain for cross-border payments; and became the white label provider for RBC, Bank of America, Societe Generale, and HSBC, while extending its partnership with the Lion Bank to crossborder payments.

After Kyriba, EY, insightsoftware, and Rossum were highly commended for their innovative solutions in the finance technology space.

The HR Tech Solution of the Year was awarded to Strada and its project for NEC Corporation, developing a digital HR transformation strategy and HCM solution for the electronics and technology giant. In second place Zalaris received high commendation for its contributions to HR technology.

Axiamatic won the Operational Innovation of the Year award for its exceptional work in improving operations for a

G2000 Steel Manufacturer embarking on a critical Microsoft Dynamics365 implementation. Finally, Inetum and Infor came highly commended for their innovative operational solutions in ERP.

The nominees for Operational Innovation of the Year also considered for the award were IBM, Original Software, and Turnkey.

Transformation Project of the Year nominees in full, excluding the winner and commendations: Accelalpha, Agilyx Group, Deloitte, G3G, Boomi, Kaizens Group, Snowflake, Syniti, and Boss Consulting.

The Best ERP Vendor

shortlist included Enterpryze, Forterro, Infor, QAD, and Rootstock Software.

Customer Experience Solution of the Year nominees were represented by IFS, Kaizens, NTT DATA Business Solutions, and Opkey.

The ERP AI and Innovation of the Year shortlist was: Automation Anywhere, Axiamatic, Deloitte, Embridge Consulting, Epicor, IFS, NTT Data Business Solutions, SAP, and Wipro.

Also up for ESG Excellence of the Year were Data Migration International, eKal Solutions, SAP, and SUSE.

For Finance Solution of the Year, the nominees included Innovate Tax, Inoapps, LTIMindtree, and SplashBI.

The HR Tech Solution of the Year nominees were IBM, iCIMS, Inoapps, and Workday.

This year’s judges were made up of some of ERP’s leading experts: Stijn Stabel, vice president of Data, TVH; Kathryn Gulifa, GM Data & Analytics, HBF Health; Rizal Ahmed, president & chief research officer, SAPinsider; Kari Jones, chief data officer,Te Whatu Ora Health New Zealand; Steve Birgfeld, VP, IT and Services, Blue Diamond Growers; Hema Prasad, chief data officer, Manulife Asia; Marty Menard, chief information officer, Pacific Coast Companies, and Mark Fried, CFO, WIS.

A big thank you to all our judges, entrants and guests. We also wish to thank our sponsors for this year’s installment of The ERP Today Awards and Mastering ERP: NTT Data Business Solutions, IFS, Inetum, QAD, SplashBI, and Cooper Software. We look forward to seeing you all at next year’s award ceremony and summit.

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Building an AI business case and getting started on your unique AI journey has never been simpler.

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FINANCE SOLUTION OF THE YEAR

HR TECH SOLUTION OF THE YEAR

CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE SOLUTION OF THE YEAR

Kyriba

Strada

HIGHLY COMMENDED

ESG Excellence of the Year Award: IFS

HR Tech Solution of the Year Award: Zalaris

Best ERP Vendor: Epicor

CX Solution of the Year Award: Wipro

Finance Solution of the Year Award: EY

ERP AI and Innovation of the Year Award: Infor

Project of the Year

Wipro

Operational Innovation of the Year Award: Inetum

Operational

MASTERING ERP

The inaugural Mastering ERP conference on December 12 saw ERP and AI professionals join with top experts at the Park Plaza London Riverbank hotel, collaborating together on best practices for innovating core ERP applications using artificial intelligence.

As a companion event to the ERP Today Awards 2024 celebration, this learning and discussionbased summit delivered the critical information and key connections ERP Insiders need to plan and execute their AI in ERP projects next year and beyond. ERP Today CEO Mark Vigoroso was both host and a keynote speaker, introducing recent Wellesley Information Services research

BY GIACOMO LEE

suggesting that while AI adoption is progressing, organizations are cautious toward its application in core operational areas, emphasizing the need for continued development and validation of AI technologies to meet these specialized demands.

The research report showed 27% of organizations are currently using or have used AI for customer service, but outside of this function, AI adoption is extremely low for other business

functions. The data suggests that a significant number of organizations are still in the evaluation phase for integrating AI into core business functions.

Outside of the research, Mark dropped a great tidbit from one academic who reports that if AI development stopped at this moment, it would take 5-10 years to fully absorb the impact of models and everything else developed so far as has already

2 billion people a day use elevators and walkways maintained and serviced with

happened for every industry in the world today.

Other keynote highlights included Maria Axente, head of AI public policy and ethics, PwC UK, who discussed the critical role of technical expertise when it comes to “engineering” trust in AI. Axente brought up the fable of Icarus with our wings as dreams, on the precipice of unfurling through the potential of AI. But like Icarus, ERP Insiders must beware the solar heat of bias damaging both trust and ethical safeguards.

The PwC leader also highlighted a fundamental question from engineers:

Who are we to decide when it comes to Ethical AI? In other words, architects on the back end shouldn’t be relied upon to define and mitigate biases in AIorganizations must instead define this, especially as engineers can inadvertently bring their own biases to the table, such is human nature.

Ultimately, effective AI deployment requires transparency, fairness, and security. Strong governance frameworks and proactive risk management are essential to mitigate security exposures and ensure compliance with regulations, enabling businesses to

deploy AI responsibly and securely.

Mark Wheeler, chief product & IP officer, NTT Data Business Solutions, meanwhile gave a funny, sparkling talk that avoided the hype and discussed AI in practical terms. Attendees

EFFECTIVE AI DEPLOYMENT REQUIRES TRANSPARENCY, FAIRNESS, AND SECURITY.

knew they were in for a treat when he asked what song he should have used as an intro for his keynote; Livin’ On A Prayer and Drop It Like It’s Hot were some of the suggestions reflecting the AI hopes and dreams of ERP Insiders.

In his talk, Wheeler conceded AI is only delivering marginal gains at the moment, but that we are still on track when it comes to the exponential curve of AI development. He also dives into the critical KPIs Insiders need to establish and the investments they need to make in people, processes, and platforms

to realize the benefits of improved decisionmaking, reduced costs, and streamlined operations. Attendees discovered how to deliver a competitive edge by strategically aligning AI investments with their organizational goals, and the crucial steps and strategies they need to leverage when building a compelling business case for AI integration.

A panel discussion on AI ethics, governance, and security in business systems saw Axente return with our friend Abigail Allman, host of the Women in ERP podcast, ERP Solutions

Leader, Resulting IT and UN Women UK Delegate - talk about a triple threat! Abigail chaired the debate with her guests Maria, Emma Chambers, head of Apps & Platforms, Calor, and Richard Hunt, CEO and founder, Turnkey. A lively debate and discussion on the critical issues of Responsible AI, Governance, and Security ensued. Examined was how the three intertwine to deliver AI capabilities that are unbiased, compliant, and secure. Delegates discovered why transparency, fairness, and accountability are key to responsible AI deployment and how data,

algorithms, design, and training contribute to proper governance. The panel also navigated the multitude of critical security exposures that AI can introduce and the key guardrails Insiders need to put in place.

Nadja Andersen VP, Solution Strategy & Innovation, Kelly Services reminded ERP Insiders that before they can embark on the journey to enable AI in their ERP landscape, it’s critical to understand the road ahead. Andersen dove into key AI concepts, emerging trends, and essential terms ERP Insiders need to know for

a successful adoption into their organization – in other words, how to set the stage so they’re prepared before going too far down the automation road.

Stijn Stabel, vice president of Data for TVH, examined strategies for modernizing ERP landscapes to prepare for AI integration, ensuring enhanced efficiency, data utilization, and decisionmaking capabilities. Shanthi Nachiappan, director, Statsdatamining Limited, meanwhile gave a deep insight into RetrievalAugmented Generation (RAG), drawing from her

extensive experience at BT Group.

Building effective data foundations that are resilient, scalable, and AIready was the focus from Philip White, managing director, Audacia. In his talk - which gave the metaphor of building a Caterham vehicle - AI was presented as fundamentally contingent upon the robustness of an organization’s data foundations. White thus explored the essential strategies for building effective data foundations that are not only AI-ready but also resilient and scalable. Following White was Pete McDermott, founder & enterprise systems architect, Lunacon, who spoke about IFS and AI in relation to clean core. The

advent of AI, he argued, necessitates a streamlined and efficient ERP system to fully harness AI’s potential. His session discussed the importance of achieving a clean ERP core and minimizing customizations as a preparatory step for AI integration, highlighting the benefits of standardization, improved data quality, and enhanced system performance.

Wrapping up the day was a panel hosted by Mark Vigoroso with Stijn Stabel, Nadja Andersen and Emma Chambers. The experts shared the impact of AI on the workforce and IT departments, and what this new reality means for Insiders and their businesses. Brought up were novel concepts such as

gamification in recruitment and “Co-coding”, where dev experts work alongside citizen developers. Salesforce was also mentioned as an AI ‘winner’ out of the various software players - but the biggest takeaway was that in ERP, the vendor who keeps customers’ cores cleanest will lead the way.

As a whole, Mastering ERP provided valuable insights into the successful adoption of AI in organizations,

EXPERTS ARE ESSENTIAL IN MAKING AI SOLUTIONS RELIABLE, TRANSPARENT, AND ETHICAL

focusing on the foundational steps required for integration. A key takeaway was the importance of understanding AI’s core concepts and how it fits within the broader business landscape. Before diving into AI, organizations must grasp essential terms, trends, and the critical context of AI to ensure successful implementation.

The role of technical expertise in building trust in AI systems was also emphasized. Experts are essential in making AI solutions reliable, transparent, and ethical. Their involvement in testing and ensuring AI systems meet ethical standards is crucial for fostering trust among stakeholders and ensuring long-term success.

CATALYST FROM TO INNOVATION

AN EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW WITH SNP GROUP CEO JENS AMAIL

GUEST WRITER AND SAP EXPERT JONAKEE CHANDRA

INTERVIEWS SNP GROUP CEO JENS

AMAIL, WHOM SHE

KNEW AND WORKED WITH WHEN HE WAS A LEADER AT SAP UKI. IN THIS INTERVIEW, AMAIL TALKS TO CHANDRA

ABOUT HIS ROLE AT SNP, AND WHAT’S NEXT FOR THE COMPANY AS IT HEADS INTO 2025.

NP Group has gone from strength to strength under Jens Amail’s leadership but the CEO wears his mantle lightly. With his usual humility, Amail points out to ERP Today that SNP is far from an overnight success story, and that it is founded on a solid combination of category-defining products and a talented team. He also attributes SNP’s reputation to a long history of customer satisfaction and customer loyalty, its own caring culture as an employer where employees are valued and nurturedand a sustained focus on delivering transformation through software.

“OUR FOUNDER WAS BOTH A TECHNICAL AND MARKETING GENIUS”

Jens is amping up emphasis on operational excellence and looks back on 2023 as a “catalyst year”, where those carefully chosen catalysts set in motion a new charter of unbridled growth for SNP. 2024, on the other hand, has been designated as an “elevation year” dominated by three key priorities for SNP – strategic focus on enabling digital transformation and business agility poised to expand the vision of broadening SNP’s market category, create value for customers and partners, and drive international growth through expanded software and partner business in strategic and emerging markets. “The

potential of the company was always there - and now it’s unleashed,” Amail remarks.

Indeed, SNP has displayed ambition in targeting some of the biggest markets in the world including the US and UK (“London is my second home”, Amail jokes).

Bluefield: best of both worlds

When asked about Bluefield, a trademarked name for the selective data migration regime that allows SNP customers to benefit from a lean, new, completely clutter-free system that is still enriched – by virtue of Bluefield technology – with the full historical context of transactional data, Amail says the genesis of this concept goes back to SNP’s founder, Dr. Andreas Schneider-Neureither, “both a technical and a marketing genius” in the CEO’s view. Brownfield, while inheriting transactional data, is often just a glorified “system upgrade” as opposed to being a holistic transformation, in my view. With Greenfield, on the other hand, customers get a clean slate in the way of a brand new system but one that is completely devoid of historical transaction data and therefore the business context that is derived from it. Bluefield is a game changer with its masterly approach that marries up the advantages of both Greenfield and Brownfield whilst doing away with their drawbacks, without compromising on either the cleanliness afforded by the former or the context afforded by the latter.

“It combines the best of both world,” Amail believes. “You can design your application layer, you can design your clean core as you want it. The benefit from a data perspective is you’re not limited to the master data, but you can get all the transaction data, too.”

SNP customers are equally divided between Greenfield, Brownfield and Bluefield with each claiming roughly a third of the market. “Customers with more cohesive estates and cut-and-dried migration pathways have already taken the plunge and moved,” Amail explains. The ones averse to embarking on transformation are the ones confronted with large, more fragmented estates that have evolved organically into a complex collage of heterogenous (and often outdated) systems, some of them even off maintenance. SNP’s Bluefield is often the panacea for this latter group of risk-averse customers as it comes with the gift of modularity and project parallelisation – enabling business to run multiple projects in parallel.

ing that the migration undergoes. Also, because it’s software-based, the cost is not multiplied by multiplying the testing cycles manifold.

SNP is credited by partners with awarding projects with a “boring go-live - boring is the dream of every CIO”, Amail jokes - and SNP is able to deliver that dream because of rigorous and repeated test-

Amail highlighted the benefit of being able to de-couple the system modernisation (ECC to RISE) from data migration. By virtue of its modularity, it can be parallelised, [so customers] gain the flexibility of going live at any point and as many times as they need with smaller de-coupled increments.

Agility is intrinsic in SNP’s solutions, and customers are the biggest beneficiaries here with a drastically reduced ‘time to value’ as Bluefield is capable

“SNP HAS A CULTURE OF TRUST AND TRANSPARENCY”

of axing project durations and consequently reducing time, money, and the change management burden.

Also on the offering front is Kyano, launched at SNP’s flagship Transformation World event in Heidelberg in June 2024, which is the last in a long line of succession from SNP’s original solution ‘T-Bone’ (established 2010) through CrystalBridge and the selective data migration methodology BLUEFIELD. Kyano is equipped with an AI-enabled data discovery model, which allows it to unpack the data model of a non-SAP source system.

The key differentiator from other SNP offerings is that Kyano is designed to cater to both SAP and non-SAP systems, the perfect response to a market trend where customers are increasingly availing themselves of what’s popularly known as ‘composable architecture’, combining SAP and non-SAP systems in their enterprise landscape.

“Kyano is part of our strategy to focus more on software compared to services,” Amail confirms. “And the company, the market, our partnersthey’re all responding extremely fast to the changes we are implementing.”

Test. Transform. Repeat.

According to Amail, transformations are becoming more frequent as an indirect consequence of macro-economic events, climate change, and

the advent of AI to name a few. Businesses often have no choice but to respond by either moving to the Cloud, integrating a new company, divesting a business unit, exiting a region, or carving out a particular country e.g., Russia or China. This is coupled with the ever more urgent push for modernisation from SAP itself. Arguably, Kyano allows businesses to move in step with changing times. What is applaudable is that SNP’s role in this does not end with the transformation. With companies now operating with broader charters, SNP stays tuned through the provision of ongoing analytical services for the transformed customer with a view to assessing how ready they are for the next transformation. That’s why SNP has introduced the ‘SNP Agility Index’, an index derived from insights into customer’s data quality, archiving practices, centralisation etc. which combine to provide a reliable indicator of their overall nimbleness and readiness for the next transformation. Today’s businesses must be forever transformation-ready.

A small company, beloved by the biggest brands

Amail is loath to attribute success to a single factor, so when asked about SNP’s single biggest success story over the last five years, he says he’s most proud of the faith that customers have continued to place in SNP, the confidence that’s demonstrated by those customers coming back

for more and entering into strategic alliances with SNP. And these are some of the biggest brands from around the world in terms of customers and partners, who have the choice of using any company they want.

“We have massive, market-changing success [with clients]. But for me, what’s more important than this success is we develop strategic and sustainable relationships with customers.”

Amail adds that it’s humbling that this “small company in Heidelberg” now counts some of the biggest names in the industry amongst its customers and partners. He mentions a customer who had approached IBM because the customer wasn’t happy with their existing Systems Integrator and Big Blue would only agree to take on the project in partnership with SNP and that’s a huge endorsement.

In terms of the biggest collaborators in the SNP ecosystem as pushing through customer success, IBM and Accenture stand out as perhaps the strongest SI partners and were sponsors at the Transformation World event. Others of note include Deloitte, EY, Delaware, and PwC.

In terms of technology partners, globally the biggest names are Smartshift, whose custom code remediation is fully integrated into SNP scans; CDQ, who contribute to data quality analysis for business partners and vendors; and certainly also Tricentis.

Rising with SNP

Regarding specific clients, SNP has run two projects for Audi simultaneously - one to introduce SAP S/4HANA Finance to establish a central finance system and another to migrate to SAP S/4HANA around maintenance logistics. This was a huge success and it was made possible because SNP’s solution is designed with a degree of modularity that allows a customer’s projects to run in parallel. It is as if in a testament to SNP’s credentials in this space that German automotive manufacturer BMW has entrusted SNP with one of the world’s largest SAP data migration programs as it transforms its entire SAP landscape to S/4HANA by 2030.

“I’VE NOT MET ANY CUSTOMER WHO IS NOT EXCITED ABOUT RISE WITH SAP”

What Amail would like to see is customers embracing the huge transformational value of S/4HANA and RISE - but he understands why they are held back.

“I’ve not met any customer who is not excited about RISE with SAP [...] But some are concerned about the journey to get there,” as he explains.

Customers believe in the destination that RISE offers but are daunted by the toll it will take on their business in terms of the operational impact of a long-running, resource-hungry, expensive project. This, sadly, is often why RISE is relegated in favor of more pressing business priorities. Cus-

tomers are worried about the dependencies that figure on the critical path, dependencies such as needing to consolidate instances, improving business data quality, upgrading systems, all of which are projects in themselves and projects that need to be brought to life or indeed put on hold in order to pave the way for a RISE programme.

SNP’s platform, technology and toolset can come to the rescue and with ex-SAP leaders like Peter Maier on the SNP Supervisory Board, SNP can equip RISE customers with the right toolsets to analyze their systems and provide a predictable timeline which is often the deal-clincher in changing customers mindsets. With SNP providing the guardrails that make transformations fast, reliable and efficient, customers can focus on shaping that end state.

SNP & a sustainable, AI future

Coming away from the interview, it’s clear people and sustainability are close to Jens Amail’s heart. For the CEO, it’s all about “Winning together”. Success is the sum of everyone’s success and that includes employees, customers and partners. There is faith in the leadership, in the executive board, employees feel more valued and everyone has greater visibility.

“There is a culture of trust and transparency,” Amail says, and this is reflected in the Average Commitment Index soaring from 60% to an alltime high of 68% at SNP (the absolute best practice is said to be somewhere around 65%).

Also, for a company that’s increasing its headcount by 33% from its current 1500 to 2000 over the next three years, AI is having anything but an adverse impact on SNP’s workforce. When companies around the world are laying off people from jobs that have been outsourced to AI, Amail jokes “Give them my telephone number”. In fact it’s not just the number of employees on SNP’s payroll that is going up, it’s also the number of locations around the world where SNP exists. SNP continues to expand its reach across the world with new offices in Dubai, Paris and Sao Paulo.

One of the biggest levers for growth is being able to scale up the services organization in order to provide greater heft to partner enablement. SNP currently has a small services footprint in India of around 50 employees and Amail would like to take

this number to somewhere around 400.

SNP also demonstrates a wholehearted commitment to sustainability, something that’s reflected in its internal policies, its general outlook as indeed in its software solutions. For example, SNP internal policies incentivise public transport travel for its employees.

Amail is particularly proud of SNP’s decision to celebrate its 30th anniversary not by gifting each employee a pair of SNP-branded sneakers, which might have been a popular choice, but one that would have involved shipping goods around the world to each employee. Instead, it gave away around 1% of the company by giving each employee the gift of 30 company shares.

Sustainability at SNP is also reflected in the everyday outcomes the company delivers for its customers, the most notable being the staggering reduction in size of Pfizer’s data from its original 75 terabytes to just 5.5 terabytes post-transformation.

A 93% reduction in data storage is not just an eyepopping headline for SNP but also a fabulous gift to the planet, given that data is an expensive commodity to store and one that entails substantive environmental impact in terms of the electricity and water consumption at Cloud data centers.

In ways like this, SNP is preparing a better world for the future. And keeping eyes on the road ahead, there is plenty of evidence that SNP is innovating faster than most with its game-changing software suite CrystalBridge and its selective data migration approach BLUEFIELD and now Kyano. In a rapidly evolving tech world where the next transformation is frequently just around the corner, SNP is responding to that need for speed with its targeted and modular data transformation software.

“Everything is now more relevant than ever as transformation is happening more often,” as Amail concludes. “Look at climate change, the world population, the development of AI. Change has never happened this fast - and will never happen this slowly.”

“WE ARE THANKFUL FOR THE TRUST OUR CUSTOMERS AND PARTNERS PUT IN US”

DATA PROTECTION

THE CTO PERSPECTIVE

PACIFIC COAST COMPANIES CIO MARTY MENARD ON CHALLENGES AND SOLUTIONS RELATED TO CYBERSECURITY AND DATA PROTECTION

BY RIZAL AHMED AND CHARLES WHITMORE

Cybersecurity can unfortunately, be a common afterthought for many organizations. While enterprises often prioritize integrating the latest and greatest SAP tech, maintaining healthy cyber hygiene normally isn’t something that commonly appears in company policy.

A recent report from our sister site SAPinsider gathering the collective expertise and experience of cybersecurity professionals sheds light on exactly what cyber security experts believe needs to be prioritized, and what measures to take to achieve peak protection - for example, empowering, equipping and educating the everyday worker is vital for maintaining robust data protection.

ERP Today sat down with Marty Menard, CIO of West Coast-based, privately-owned construction and manufacturing company, Pacific Coast Companies, and delved into his over two decades of experience and tech expertise to gain some perspective on some of the top cybersecurity issues, challenges and solutions facing tech leaders today.

Data protection is king

SAP software is wide reaching and versatile, with data in SAP systems making up some of the most valuable information for some businesses. Therefore, when considering a shift to a more technologically intensive, potentially cloud-based platform, it’s paramount that crucial SAP data is protected. SAPinsider’s Cybersecurity Priorities re-

PROTECTION CONCERNS

DATA PROTECTION IS THE TOP PRIORITY FOR CYBERSECURITY PROFESSIONALS, WITH

EMPHASIZING ITS CRITICAL IMPORTANCE IN SAFEGUARDING VALUABLE INFORMATION IN SAP SYSTEMS. 57%

port seems to reflect this sentiment: 57 percent of the cybersec professionals surveyed agree that data protection is the most important cybersecurity priority today.

It’s easy to see why. When brand image can make or break a company, it’s integral that customers know their data is completely and utterly inaccessible to nefarious parties while stored in a client firm’s systems. One instance of shoddy security in the form of an easily preventable data breach could be a portent of incoming disaster - mid-scale businesses risk completely unraveling if they don’t have versatile security measures.

“This may be a contrarian view, but I think it’s always been about either money or brand,” says Menard, reflecting on the motivations behind cyber attacks. “Why are people trying to break into your company? They’re trying to take money away from you [...] or they’re trying to impact your brand. Your partners and your customers start to lose confidence in you. I think that’s always been a motivator for nefarious and third-world countries trying to break in.”

HUMAN ERRORS ARE A SIGNIFICANT VULNERABILITY IN CYBERSECURITY, WITH OF HACKS STARTING FROM PHISHING ATTEMPTS DUE TO EMPLOYEE NEGLIGENCE

The dangers of humanengineered cyber attacks

Overall cybersecurity attitudes regarding data protection seem to be the driving motivator behind identifying what aspects of digital security need prioritizing. The focus of data protection has seemingly spread to encompass several other security aspects. For example, after data protection, the next few factors that cybersec experts determined needed to be prioritized were: risk assessment and management in second, followed by identity access management in third, with security awareness training and threat intelligence awareness both taking fourth and fifth spots respectively. All of the above factors can each ultimately be boiled down to needing more robust data security measures, or making workers more aware of simple data protection tips.

Security awareness training, in particular, was something Menard focuses on. “They [cyber attacks] are certainly getting more sophisticated. Statistics recently said that 96 percent of all hacks

start with an email phishing campaign, connected by an employee who wasn’t paying close attention and naively creating a problem for an enterprise.”

Knowing that the genesis of most data breaches allegedly starts with an employee mistake shines a bright light on the biggest weakness of all digital enterprises: humans. While this kind of statement could be alarming when pulled out of context, it is an unfortunate reality that hackers prey on the naive and easily-fooled. With hackers utilizing human engineered approaches to cyber trickery, it’s even harder than ever to spot a sophisticated phishing attempt. Human-engineered attacks are insidious and specifically designed to trick someone into clicking something they shouldn’t.

Any hacker with enough tech savvy only needs to scan a company’s LinkedIn page and website to gather everything they need to craft a targeted phishing attack. The unfortunate reality with phishing attacks is that everyone is a potential victim; from the admin intern in the basement to the board member on the top floor - everyone is vulnerable if they lack the necessary knowledge.

Demonstrated with an example from Menard, it doesn’t matter where an employee falls in the chain of command; if anything, those in higher positions are more at risk of attack, as being higher profile means more potentially-incriminated data can be found online and leveraged by hackers.

“We had one of our presidents recently, as much training as they’ve got, use the same password for their bank account as they did for [other things],” Menard says. “The bank stopped a payment of around $10,000 that was going to go to a credit card that someone had been able to figure out the passwords for. Luckily, the bank caught it, but that’s a perfect example of a high-ranking employee who should know better and still makes the same mistakes.”

The three pillars of data protection

Knowing that data protection is a major priority for cybersecurity experts, and a juicy target for hackers, it’s integral that firms, especially mid-scale enterprises that can’t afford to weather the media outrage or client drop-off of a data breach, make cybersecurity a part of their operating models.

Thankfully, Marty Menard shared with ERP Today what he believed were three aspects all enter-

prises need to consider when weighing up their data security measures, starting with:

1. Have a clear connection to the company board/leadership

“I think the ability to have a connection to your parent board, and having a committee, has been super beneficial for me,” explains Menard. As many who have worked in an office environment know, getting sign off or approval on a project can take a frustrating amount of time as the project is put through several different stages of scrutiny until it potentially finds its way to the board.

At Pacific Coast, however, Menard has a point of contact on the parent board for monthly updates to company leadership.

“It provides me with the cover I need,” Menard says. “It eliminates a lot of the conversation about why we’re spending what we’re spending on cyber and other things. It really gets their attention because, at the end of the day, especially if they’re a public company, they’re accountable to the shareholders.”

By having a direct line of communication with company leadership, it’s far easier to express the importance of data protection measures.

2. External auditors can provide a vital outside perspective

Employing the services of external experts and auditors can be an effective way to help spot any security loopholes, while also providing a trustworthy, expert insight that holds weight when findings are presented to leadership.

“The external assessments that we bring in and have somebody come in and dig through our environment, really help us provide an understanding about the progress we’re making and where threats have changed, because threats are changing constantly. Doing those annually is a big part of a necessary and sufficient step that people should do,” says Menard.

For Pacific Coast, Menard formed a cybersecurity committee that consisted of an internal COO, CFO, a family member from the board and three external IT professionals (CIOs or CTOs). The committee reports directly to the board and meets up six times a year to review recent tech and discuss any new developments.

3. Employee knowledge

Hackers will worm their way into enterprise networks wherever they can, but some of their attacks are only effective if a workforce is clueless. Many humanengineered attacks start by masquerading as an existing member of a company and may request something that doesn’t seem too out of the ordinary. Several messages could be exchanged in the attempt to lull a victim into a false sense of security before a dangerous link is finally presented to the victim.

“Make sure you’re on top of your employees, that they understand exactly their role in keeping the company safe, “ says Menard. Regularly testing, providing feedback and reinforcing common cybersec knowledge could be the factor that determines whether a hacker decides to stick around and try their luck or move on to much easier prey.

IMPLEMENTSTRUCTURED APPROACHES SUCH AS DIRECT COMMUNICATION WITH LEADERSHIP, UTILIZING EXTERNAL AUDITS FOR THREAT ASSESSMENT, AND EDUCATING EMPLOYEES ON CYBERSECURITY

If enterprises don’t take their data protection seriously, they run the risk of irreparably damaging a brand while also inviting legal issues from incensed former clients. Taking a proactive step towards cybersecurity and data protection can enable companies to save themselves time, resources and money.

Rizal Ahmed is CIO Leader, Wellesley Information Services and Charles Whitmore, Cybersecurity Editor, ERP Today

Marty Menard

AN EYE ON IFS

IFS UNLEASHED ‘24 SAW MARK MOFFAT REITERATE SIX-SECTOR COMMITMENT, UNVEILING INDUSTRIAL AI AND PARTNERSHIPS.

BY STEPHANIE BALL

At its flagship Unleashed event in Orlando, IFS stood firm on its six-sector focus, with CEO Mark Moffat promising in the opening keynote: “We are steadfast on these six industries and we are not wavering on that”. Those special six being aerospace and defense, construction and engineering, energy, utilities and resources, manufacturing, service industries and telecommunications.

It’s a bold stand - especially given that IFS’ biggest competitors are instead diversifying to cover an increasing number of industry specialisms and broaden their market wins. With Moffat pledging in the same breath to make IFS “the undisputed category leader” for industrial software, you’d be sharp to question how he looks to make the lofty goal a reality.

Accompanying that pledge came a flurry of software announcements and partnership grabs:

The AI bandwagon

Industrial AI was the Belle of this ball, with over 60 new “deep industrial” IFS.

ai features introduced in the IFS Cloud 24R2 release and 100+ promised by 2025.

A new AI-powered homepage, ‘Home’ for IFS Cloud will now offer live project status visibility, along with autodetection of anomalies, corrective action suggestions, and an expanding list of interactive widgets for users to build and service their assets more quickly and safely.

Twinned with Home, the IFS.ai Copliot has been fueled with additional preconfigured industry capabilities across generative and predictive AI and is now context-aware, providing relevant insights to where users are in the IFS cloud platform. A new prompt library can store each user’s set of pre-approved prompts to speed up LLM queries.

For the Asset Applications module, the new IFS. ai Copilot for FMECA (Failure Modes, Effects, Criticality Analysis) feature looks to optimize asset availability, reduce maintenance costs and mitigate risks. It claims to provide detailed analysis of the probability of asset

failures, and the consequences of making or adjusting maintenance strategies. Further features seek to unlock insights from unstructured information such as manuals and maintenance reports to support and refine the analysis. Plus, with a Manufacturing Scheduling Optimization (MSO) Simulation capability, users can model the impact on new orders on the shop floor and asset managers can also use the simulation capabilities to more accurately predict and plan essential asset maintenance.

Integrating Industrial AI features into IFS Ultimo aims to enhance troubleshooting abilities and reduce the mean time to repair (MTTR) of organizations’ assets. With an estimated 80 percent of user time spent diagnosing a problem, IFS hopes to help companies gain back this lost resource, reducing admin and improving communication, especially given the sector’s shortage of skilled workers.

INDUSTRIAL AI WAS THE BELLE OF THIS BALL, WITH OVER 60 NEW “DEEP INDUSTRIAL” IFS.AI FEATURES INTRODUCED

For the oil and gas industry, the latest iteration of IFS’ accounting solu -

tion - IFS BOLBO 15 - integrates IFS.ai for more efficiency and sustainability gains, offering a new interface, security enhancements at code, networking and data levels, and open data access and analysis through integration with Microsoft Power BI.

Purple

partnerships

Building up its industrial specialism ever further after its Poka acquisition last year, IFS has been carefully consolidating partners relevant to its target industrial and service-led sectors, seeing the vendor win customers including Rolls-Royce Power Systems.

Fresh partnership news came with the announcement of a collaboration with PwC in a new IFS sustainability management module, released with this 24R2 IFS Cloud and built with PwC to support customer ESG disclosure challenges. Customers can manage sustainability data collection and performance tracking, helping companies comply with CSRD from 2025, offered with the promise that the standardized features will allow interoperability with future ESG directives too.

As part of the deal, the option is also

IFS PROMISES AI CAPABILITIES WITHOUT THE NEED FOR EXPENSIVE ADDITIONAL INVESTMENTS IN TOOLKITS OR RESOURCES.

there for IFS Cloud customers to use PwC’s ESG advisory services, including entity scoping, double materiality assessments, gap assessments, and implementation planning - a move fitting well with IFS’ nurtured ESG-conscious approach.

Elsewhere, a smooth move with a Boomi partnership, the integration platform provider, and a (slightly wooly on the details) deal with Microsoft were also announced at IFS Unleashed. In a video call from Satya Nadella, broadcast on the Unleashed keynote stage, the Microsoft CEO chatted to IFS’ Moffat on the scaling blocks of industrial AI, and Nadella touted AI for helping us all “find patterns between people places and things”, and that with “the abundance of apps now available, you have a natural way to talk to the power of computers.”

Boomi CEO, Steve Lucas, also spoke of the opportunity ahead: “We’re excited about the partnership with IFS. I see an

incredible opportunity across a range of capabilities, and more importantly, it’s about you.”

In all these deals, IFS is moving to make it ever easier for enterprises to compose their stacks and connect their software, understanding that it takes many assets to make a working ecosystem.

Is it enough to lead the industrial pack?

It was certainly an Unleashed filled with capabilities, but is it enough to lead the charge for the industrial and service sectors?

With IFS’ ongoing trajectory to target the big six industrial and service sectors, the firm is betting on its industry specialty in an otherwise ‘big-vendor-doesall-specialisms’ landscape.

The AI tools are nothing too revolutionary, with IFS Industrial AI moves similar to what’s playing out already across the big tech sphere, and it does beg the question of whether the enhancements are offering enough fresh innovation to win customers over from the other big software names.

It’s a good offering - by embedding AI tools deep in the workings of its platform offering and making it “the backbone” of its ERP, EAM, FSM and ITSM tools, it presents a prepackaged way for IFS users to get their slice of the new technology and box tick their innovation

THERE IS POTENTIAL TO UNCOVER $16BN ACROSS IFS TARGET MARKETS

targets, with IFS (amongst other vendors offering the same) doing the “heavy lifting”. Plus, in the case of IFS, it promises AI capabilities without the need for expensive additional investments in toolkits or resources.

However, with a more deft customer touch than many IFS competitors, Moffat brings an empathic approach to big tech. We know the story from our last issue of ERP Today - in his first 200 days as CEO, Moffat met over 200 customers in person to hear about their business needs directly.

Moreover, Unleashed also shared a way to actually chart a path for customer success with its Industrial AI capabilities. Teaming up with Celonis and Deloitte, IFS is offering an AI-powered value engineering service, allowing companies to use AI, digital twin and process mining technologies to discover hidden business outcomes and realize greater value, faster.

With this technology, IFS is claiming that there is potential to uncover $16bn across IFS target markets in terms of potential savings to be reaped.

What came across in the keynote

was a level of understanding that certain sectors need to take it steady with fresh innovations, with not all customers wanting to be the test subjects for technology.

Luigi Sidoli, head of digital programs at BAE Systems, was clear that when it comes to inviting innovation, “it’s an evolution, not a revolution” and spoke of the business “needing the foundations in place first” for AI in an industry with no room for error. In this sense, BAE was a perfect use case for this tried and tested technology.

This comes alongside IFS’ Pioneer program, offering the chance for companies to take faster steps to adopt current innovations. Connecting IFS customers, such as Morgan Motor Company, directly with the product designers and builders,

Mark Vigoroso, ERP Today CEO and the author helm the ERP Today TV News Desk - check out their video interviews at erp.today

THERE’S A SPECIAL UNDERSTANDING OF ITS CORE TARGET INDUSTRY FOCUSES.

the program offers early access and enhanced technical support.

While other vendors are pushing for clean cores in a cross-market monopoly, there’s no doubt that the strength of IFS has for a while been this special understanding of its core target industry focuses.

Plus, this doesn’t mean to say Mark isn’t well aware of the market share up for grabs, saying: “We’re a $1.5bn dollar revenue company or thereabouts. And that needs to be five, six, seven, eight billion. The size of the market is that big.”

In a game of Monopoly where the big tech players are looking to spread out an empire, IFS is placing its bets on sticking tightly to its purple set of cards and - with a close eye and ear on customer wants - building on up.

https://erp.today/membership-account/membership-checkout/?level=1

IS THE FUTURE AGENTIC FOR ERP?

CASE STUDIES MAY SHOW ERP USERS THE TRUTH BEHIND THE AI AGENT HYPE.

BY GIACOMO LEE

The future is agentic - it’s a phrase ERP Today heard time and time again in the last quarter, repeated almost like a mantra of sorts by vendor chiefs across the enterprise tech spectrum.

Microsoft was one of the latest business software names to get in the act, releasing its own AI agents in October in a move which some outlets framed as a response to Salesforce unveiling its agentic offering in September. I’d say this is slightly misleading, though, when factoring in three elements:

• Microsoft production cycles are not known to be knee-jerk in reactiveness.

• Microsoft has been ahead in the AI stakes with Copilot’s release and other tools.

• SAP, Boomi, Celonis, ServiceNow and more have also all decided that the future is agentic with their own AI agent releases. The market is wider than simply Microsoft and Salesforce.

Reporting from Microsoft’s AI Tour event in London, ERP Today heard Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella expand upon Redmond’s post-ChatGPT Copilot era for enterprise tech as the company unveiled a series of new AI agents for Dynamics 365.

Where GenAI-powered copilots started the conversation in the AI-heavy year that was 2023, as inspired by the popularity of ChatGPT from Microsoft partner OpenAI, smart AI agents look to be the next step of how enterprises employ generative AI. In his keynote to London - which was interestingly light on OpenAI & ChatGPT mentions - Nadella described Microsoft Copilot as the UI for its agentic world, as he unveiled ten new autonomous agents from the vendor tackling sales, supply chain, finance and more, including:

• Sales Qualification Agent: An agent enabling sellers to focus their time on the highest priority sales opportunities while the agent researches leads, helps prioritize opportunities and guides customer outreach with personalized emails and responses.

• Supplier Communications Agent: This agent enables customers to optimize their supply chain and minimize costly disruptions by autonomously tracking supplier performance, detecting delays and responding accordingly.

• Customer Intent and Customer Knowledge Management Agents: Two agents developed for customer care teams facing high call volumes, talent shortages and heightened customer expectations.

The Microsoft CEO was keen to display AI in universal terms, for example underlining low and no-code abilities in Copilot which can allow all of its users to create AI agents of their own. This vision of training and development came as the vendor announced a new partnership with the UK Government’s Crown Commercial Service, which Nadella said was an integral one in upskilling public sector employees in the digital age.

In effect, AI agents can be seen as “super macros” in automating business processes in the post-ChatGPT era. Indeed, in comments touching on Microsoft’s office software history, the Microsoft CEO stressed building an AI agent with Copilot is “no more mystical than creating an Excel spreadsheet”. Ensuring a non-alienating presentation of AI makes for a smart move in showing

potential user adoption which thereby encourages business adoption - here, the use case comes before the technology, to quote a London fireside chat with Charles Lamanna, Microsoft’s Corporate VP, Business & Industry Copilot.

While some of Microsoft’s presentation at the event did show the usual layerheavy graphics more appreciated by tech

MICROSOFT’S CEO STRESSED BUILDING AN AI AGENT WITH COPILOT IS “NO MORE MYSTICAL THAN CREATING AN EXCEL SPREADSHEET”

insiders, the overall messaging of Copilot as the UI layer for the business power of its agents was a hard one to miss.

In a 1:1 with Bryan Goode, Microsoft Corporate Vice President for Business Applications and Platform, the technology was compared to the advent of smartphones. In this analogy, Microsoft Copilot is the phone, and agents are the

apps which then proliferated our handheld devices.

“Agents are the apps in this AI era, and in that context we’ve got this complete frame for customers,” Goode told ERP Today.

Of course, after the apps came the Wild West of social media to dominate our smartphone-led lives, but Microsoft is confident its AI comes with no regulatory worries for customers. In fact, tech from OpenAI wasn’t immediately obvious in the keynotes as witnessed by ERP Today, perhaps as part of a deliberate decision to steer away from some of the data safety concerns around ChatGPT.

Nadella and company are naturally aware that if businesses feel confident about AI security, then its copilots and agents will indeed become as commonplace as Excel and Macros did during the 1990s.

Is the present agentic?

To delve into the hype around AI agents warrants looking at case studies of agents being used by companies in the here and now. In other words, is the present agentic? At Microsoft’s AI Tour in London, Charles Lamanna gave an ex-

ample of a large energy provider in the US whose IT service desk was “transformed” by using conversational experiences combined with AI agents working in the background. Imagine ChatGPT on top of an ERP layer where agents mimic human actions, automating complex business processes.

Lamanna also reported that Microsoft AI agents are seeing significant activity in customer engagement centers, alongside back-office processes such as financial and operational.

“In areas such as procurement [for example] where if you don’t have the right inventory and assets at hand, you can’t

blew our socks off as the speed that this comes through at is really quite powerful.”

Speed is the word, considering also it took 10 working days for Pets at Home to build the agent. As Bryan Goode explains to me, ERP users can enter a prompt to make an agent, just like they would for an action using Copilot and ChatGPT (on the latter, Goode reminded ERP Today that OpenAI is a “super strategic partner” for Microsoft, in a fine counterbalance to recent discussions of the relationship between Redmond and ChatGPT’s owner company).

“It’s very obviously no-code, if you will; you can then configure it [...] even

make your products if you’re a manufacturing company,” he adds.

ERP Today also heard the story of British pet care company Pets at Home, an early adopter of Microsoft Copilot Studio. Using the platform, an AI agent was created to help Pets at Home’s retail fraud detection team investigate any fishy transactions.

“The power of it is on a different level - it’s a different level to RPA altogether,” attests William Hewish, CIO at Pets at Home, who explains the agent pulls information from various databases to make a report with rankings for the benefit of his human team, who then make a decision if a transaction merits dogged investigation. Hu-man’s best friend, one might say.

“Speed’s very important in this area of business and this has really sped it up - it

extend it with Azure.

“We don’t want you to have to hire professional developers to build thesewe want users to be able to get started and get value as quickly as possible,” Goode elaborates.

This ties in with what ERP Today heard at the recent Celosphere event from process mining leader Celonis. Mamta Lamba, SVP - Global Transformation and Process Excellence at PepsiCo, attested that no digital upskilling was needed for use of agentic Celonis tool AgentC, giving way to a vision of it being used by all 150,000 PepsiCo employees.

Other tech leaders such as Kyle Hill,

MICROSOFT SEEMED TO BE STEERING AWAY FROM OPENAI MESSAGING DUE TO DATA SAFETY CONCERNS AROUND CHATGPT

CTO at SI company ANS, meanwhile attest: “These agents can drive organizational wide optimization and automation, a seismic shift from the AI assistants that have traditionally been used to help with personal time saving and efficiency.”

“Leveraging AI tools enables professionals to focus on strategic and high value tasks, and empowers teams to perform more efficiently at a higher standard.”

At the end of the day, AI in ERP relies on user adoption and assistance, and if AI agents make it as easy as possible for implementation while augmenting current work processes, then it might not be too soon to say the future is agentic.

Additional reporting by Yoana Cholteeva

SAP HCM Data Success with WalkMe and AI

Exploring the latest updates to SAP SuccessFactors

BY GIACOMO LEE

SuccessConnect is the annual flagship event for SAP SuccessFactors, this year pitching up in Lisbon, Portugal to share the latest updates to the SAP HCM suite. Surprisingly, currently en vogue AI agents weren’t under the spotlight. Unsurprisingly, AI still heavily dominated the conversation at SuccessConnect 2024 - but this was part of a more technology-first approach to SuccessFactors than perhaps seen in previous years.

The new stratagem can be put down to the year-long and counting leadership of Dan Beck, SAP SuccessFactors president & chief product officer.

Speaking with C-suite SuccessFactors execs such as global vice president of product marketing Lara Albert, Beck was described as “a technology guy and enthusiast, and he brings a lot of passion to the product in the engineering organization.”

This was clear to ERP Today at SuccessConnect, in which a post-keynote Q&A with Beck, alongside 1:1 interviews with Albert and the C-suite brought up some takeaways which will be of interest to HR leaders keen to understand where SuccessFactors and the SAP HCM offering stands both today and tomorrow:

AI in SAP SuccessFactors HCM Suite

SuccessConnect 2024 introduced and teased new GenAI capabilities that will probably take away a lot of HR headaches for people managers, and, to quote, Maryann Abbajay, chief revenue officer for SAP SuccessFactors, “free them up to do a little bit more strategic thinking”:

• Prompts able to spice up employee reviews and bring up just how much an employee can realistically expect in a raise.

• One product demo also saw an artificial change management consultant described as a “like a personal trainer” in aiding people managers on the very human problem of conflict resolution.

new of batch of agents in one’s HCM and ERP system. The experience, as it were, is simply Joule.

With his technologist hat on, Beck also stressed that as LLMs become more attuned, SuccessFactors will follow. This ties in with how Beck and SAP think about globalization, a “vast investment” in his words, to avoid generalization, nodding to how countless teams work on tax calculations daily across 104 nations - and acknowledging one Portuguese journalist’s funny warning that a European worker not used to overt praise of the sort found in overtly-American-style generated text may instantly assume a promotion is on the way.

WE WERE TOLD ‘YOU WON’T SEE SAP MARKETING A HOST OF DIFFERENT AI AGENTS’

• SAP’s GenAI copilot Joule meanwhile will soon be able to give you text summaries of training videos - bane of sorts for any new starter in a company - alongside the ability to ask and have answered payslip questions using a SuccessFactors conversation bot.

Presumably in-house videos will be used for the former, with such content easily funneled into Joule; for anything else, you’d probably need to play a video in a separate screen for an AI-aided audio interface to record, transcribe and summarize the content. Talk about a headache...

On a broader front, Dan Beck was keen to remind all at SuccessConnect that AI was more than just large language models (LLMs), but also small language models and agentic AI.

AI agents have been all the rage in ERP lately, but in the post-keynote session, Beck said “you won’t see SAP marketing a host of different AI agents.” This was both a refreshing and logical statement, with the SuccessFactors chief pointing out that AI agents are by nature simply a day-to-day element of what defines an AI copilot. Simply put, they will be working away under the hood of Joule, with no need for a marketing campaign naming and trumpeting a

Also mentioned by Beck was an SAP engineering team in Singapore stripping out biases from AI, responding to a need to remove any prejudice and discrimination from automated procedures in HR. It’s hard not to notice SAP’s regulatory backbone when it comes to artificial intelligence - an area where shortcomings can perhaps be felt more acutely on the HR front - especially considering the vendor has had a dedicated legal team focused on AI in Governance, Risk, and Compliance (GRC) since 2018. And, of course, on the product level, SAP AI is more discreet, not pointing at a public OpenAI-type model.

Spanish snack company Frit Ravich was cited in the Q&A has benefiting from AI tools in the SAP HCM suite to meet heavy food regulation standards. This insight wasn’t highlighted in the brand’s presentation as part of the SuccessConnect 2024 keynote, but would have been of great interest to the HR leaders in attendance in Lisbon, especially those trying to find the value of AI amidst all the hype in today’s enterprise tech.

Another European customer of interest on the regu-

lation front came up in an exclusive 1:1 with SAP SuccessFactors CRO Maryann Abbajay - retail giant Ahold Delhaize. The client runs “wall to wall” SuccessFactors, with a keen interest in becoming “more of a partner” to the flagship SAP HCM brand.

In response, Abbajay pointed out AI was a “great opportunity” to make that happen: “We’d like you to turn it on and we’d like you to put it in production.”

With the client’s CIO’s power, AI came to Ahold Delhaize and “their legal and security people were very unexpectedly pleased about this, wanting to help and do the right thing” instead of being held back by the fear of risk, which came up when AI was first raised to the brand.

There was also the interesting example of BT Group, which went with not having Joule and then going into production with the copilot in just 10 weeks.

SAP HCM and Integration at SuccessConnect 2024

SuccessConnect 2024 wasn’t all about AI, of course; for example, there have been improvement updates to 88% of every screen in SAP SuccessFactors.

The big news away from GenAI concerned new integration capabilities for SAP SuccessFactors, including a first look at SAP’s newly-acquired WalkMe tool as operating within an SAP platform. With the SAP acquisition of digital adoption platform (DAP) leader WalkMe finalized in September, Dan Beck highlighted the tool in a brief demo in his keynote, describing digital adoption as “the missing link” to improve employee experience and adoption across common workflows.

BT GROUP WENT WITH NOT HAVING JOULE AND THEN GOING INTO PRODUCTION WITH THE COPILOT IN JUST 10 WEEKS.

In the post-keynote Q&A, Beck said a substantial amount of customers were already trialing SAP WalkMe in SuccessFactors, including Nestle, with “compelling” results.

Bringing out WalkMe in SuccessFactors first makes sense to Beck; while it will work with

SAP Ariba and other parts of the SAP Spend Management portfolio, it’s SuccessFactors which is the overarching HCM tool, hence it not coming up in SAP’s recent Spend Connect live event.

WalkMe remains in the engineering side with Beck’s product team, as explorations continue into how data from WalkMe makes its way into examples such as SAP Datasphere, LeanIX and SAP Analytics Cloud.

SAP SuccessFactors CRO Maryann Abbajay also reveals that on the commercial front, WalkMe models are being created for HCM, spend management in Ariba and more.

“So we are enabled to sell an HCM WalkMe model that has content predelivered in it [...] I mentioned that to a customer and they’re excited about what could be a real productivity boost for them rather than having to recreate the wheel every time.

“But the real value beyond pre-delivered content is the fact customers can customize content for their own use

cases for their own company, for their people.”

A Walkthrough with WalkMe

A brief demo in Dan Beck’s keynote showed a potential user journey regarding WalkMe when it comes to SuccessFactors: the latter’s homepage with a custom card leading to a custom BTP app created in a low-code environment using WalkMe, which “takes over” from SuccessFactors.

ERP Today asked Beck whether there’ll be customer confusion regarding AI copilots: WalkMe has its WalkMeX copilot, while SAP has Joule. How many copilots can feasibly exist in one system for a seamless experience and equally seamless branding?

For now, engineering is rationalizing the product set with WalkMe, Beck explains, before rationalizing having two co-exist-

ing copilots within SAP.

“We absolutely need to rationalize that [status] including the language we use” he says as a consideration for customers, as part of the overall commercial messaging.

Pre-built WalkMe content will be coming to SAP SuccessFactors solutions in the first half of 2025, and Lara Albert, global VP, product marketing, SAP SuccessFactors highlighted the future of WalkMe in an exclusive 1:1 in regards to business transformation suite SAP Signavio:

A SUBSTANTIAL AMOUNT OF CUSTOMERS WERE ALREADY TRIALING SAP WALKME IN SUCCESSFACTORS, INCLUDING NESTLE

“We think there’s a unique opportunity as we position WalkMe with Signavio [...] As you’re rolling out or pre-imagining the entire business process that’s related to HCM, Signavio can help you do that. And then from a WalkMe standpoint of actually then prompting people along the way

to give them the insights to then know where were the follow up points, or where there were things that were absolutely seamless versus where there was friction.”

And for those wondering about SAP’s own DAP Enable Now: remember that platform works on SAP software, while WalkMe opens up the SuccessFactors ecosystem to pretty much everything else.

HOW MANY COPILOTS CAN FEASIBLY EXIST IN ONE SYSTEM FOR A SEAMLESS EXPERIENCE?

Degreed, WeChat and beyond SuccessConnect also revealed updates to the SuccessFactors talent intelligence hub, with users now able to aggregate and harmonize data from third-party solutions in the hub to ensure a single view of skills for each employee and for the organization. The first partners to integrate with the talent intelligence hub will include Beamery, IMOCHA INC, Korn Ferry, Lightcast, Phenom, TalenTeam and TechWolf. Together

they help form an open skills ecosystem made up of skills architecture, inferred skills and validated skills.

Notable edtech platform Degreed is also on the partner list - a decision partly driven by BT Group, who wished to buy its services alongside SAP’s, as revealed by Maryann Abbajay.

A roadmap session held for press and analysts by Josh Goslinger, SuccessFactors vice president of product strategy, also spoke on the stronger ability to build regional specific apps, such as the chat app WeChat which has been requested to be on the front end of SuccessFactors by Chinese customers.

Goslinger also spoke of stronger Microsoft Teams integration in SuccessFactors, with an “industry-first” bidirectional integration planned for Joule and Microsoft’s Copilot. It seems copilots can

co-exist in the ecosystem (and as a reminder, WalkMe has a copilot of its own).

How they work bidirectionally in a seamless manner is currently being worked on by engineers; for example, somebody currently using Microsoft Copilot to work on data from Joule has to include an “Add Joule” prompt in the interface.

As Dan Beck told ERP Today: “Joule will be the entry point for WalkMe [and its copilot] and other products down the road – that’s part of the fun.”

And SuccessFactors itself is arguably the entry point for GenAI in SAP, being the first platform to debut Joule. As Autumn Krauss, chief scientist, Growth & Insights for SuccessFactors, tells ERP Today:

“If you think about how much - specifically for HR - our technology touches so many employees, we have such an opportunity,” Krauss continues. It’s not just users of more niche technologies but all employees who [...] engage with SuccessFactors. There’s a bigger footprint there with which we really get to have an impact.”

THE EXPERT VIEW

SAP NOW EUROPE’S TECH MVP

SAP’s strong Q3 performance saw it grab the top spot as Europe’s most valuable tech company.

BY ROBERT HOLLAND

SAP announced a strong third quarter performance and raised its annual revenue and earnings guidance performance, gaining $26bn in market value and grabbing the top spot as Europe’s most valuable tech firm from Dutch chipmaker ASML.

Current cloud backlog for the ERP giant increased 27% at constant currencies to €15.4bn while total revenue was up 10% at constant currencies to €8.5bn. Once again cloud revenue, which increased by 27% at constant currencies to nearly €4.4bn, accounted for more than half of SAP’s total revenue and 59% of cloud and software revenue.

This performance was strong enough for SAP to raise their full year outlook for 2024 for cloud and software revenue, operating profit, and free cash flow. Cloud and software revenue is now expected to be between €29.5 and €29.8bn, raising the midpoint by €400m. Non-IFRS operating profit is now expected to be between €7.8 and €8.0bn, up from €7.6 to €7.9bn. And free cash flow is expected to be between €3.5 and €4.0bn, with the previous outlook expected to be €3.5bn.

As was the case in the second quarter, CEO Christian Klein stated that deals including premium AI use cases were a significant proportion of all deals this quarter. While much of the AI discussion at TechEd was focused on Joule, this is not the only way that SAP customers can access premium AI use cases. Europe’s most valuable tech company has focused on delivering Joule uses cases, which are only available in SAP’s cloud applications and through RISE with SAP or GROW with SAP premium packages, but users can also leverage the AI Foundation as part of SAP Business Technology Platform (BTP) to access AI models from many premium AI partners.

Transformation to SAP S/4HANA

As has been the case for several quarters, there were no specific adoption numbers mentioned in the third quarter earnings call. However, Klein did mention on multiple occasions that only

Current cloud backlog was up 25% to €15.4 billion while total revenue was up 9%.

total

a quarter of customers have started their transformation journey to SAP S/4HANA. Taking into consideration that around half of all SAP S/4HANA customers are net new and that there are approximately 25,000 customers who have licensed the offering, this means that over 35,000 customers are still to make any move off their existing SAP ECC, SAP Business Suite, or even SAP R/3 deployment.

What Klein and CFO Dominik Asam focused on during the call were the benefits of a cloud ERP bundle in general and RISE with SAP specifically. Klein also mentioned that RISE with SAP has finally become the methodology offering

that he had always aspired for it to be. This methodology, based on the SAP Activate deployment and implementation methodology, includes best practices from customer implementations and a new generative AI-powered assistant that can help manage projects. The RISE with SAP methodology includes guided onboarding, partner competency requirements, an integrated tool chain that supports different phases of the methodology, and the ability to accurately define target architectures.

While there has recently been coverage that speculates that RISE with SAP adoption is extremely poor, the topic was not addressed during this quarter’s earnings call. What Asam did highlight was that deals exceeding €5m made up more than 60% of the order entry for the quarter. SAP needs this growth in large deals in order to continue to ramp up cloud revenue and current cloud backlog. But what this may mask is that an equivalent, or smaller, number of deals are being closed even while they are providing additional revenue. Given that SAP is focused on a “land and expand” sales policy where they start off with small deals that can then grow significantly, deals to large customers with complex environments can have a significant revenue impact - thus the vendor now becoming Europe’s most valuable software name.

Can SAP remain Europe’s most valuable tech firm?

The day after the earnings call SAP hosted a virtual event titled “Rise into the Future” which focused on the benefits of moving to cloud ERP and some of the latest features in SAP S/4HANA Cloud. The three topics covered at the event were new AI innovations, the RISE with SAP methodology, and an easier path to clean core with SAP Build. While none of this information is new, the packaging and push reflects that SAP still has much work to do to bring the bulk of its legacy ERP customers to cloud ERP.

Although it was not discussed during the virtual event, the question-andanswer section made it clear that all new Joule announcements were only available to customers running SAP cloud applications or via RISE with SAP and GROW with SAP. While Joule is not yet

Cloud ERP Suite revenue increased 34% to €3.6 billion and is now more than 80% of all cloud revenue.

embedded in every SAP solution, it is currently available in SAP SuccessFactors, SAP Start, SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition and SAP S/4HANA Cloud Private Edition, SAP Customer Data Platform, SAP BTP Cockpit, SAP Build Code, SAP Product Lifecycle Management, SAP Asset Performance Management, SAP Digital Manufacturing, and SAP Integrated Business Planning. Another answer response stated that there is no paid license associated with Joule itself. This means that to access Joule customers will need to license a no-cost SAP SKU which will then trigger the provisioning of Joule and the creation of the terms and conditions. These conditions must be accepted in order to use the generative AI co-pilot. Whether this provides just an initial level of usage was not stated.

SAP is at a crossroads. Although Klein thanked both former Executive Board members Julia White and Scott Russell for their contributions to SAP’s success (and perhaps understandably, only them and not other recent departees) it is clear that the needle has not yet moved sufficiently when it comes to converting the €11bn of maintenance revenue from on-premise ERP solutions to SAP S/4HANA let alone RISE with SAP. 2027 is fast approaching and given the size, cost, and complexity of transformation projects many customers will still be running existing ERP systems after 2030. However, to achieve their cloud ambitions SAP needs these customers to move. How many will do so and when that will happen is the challenge.

Robert Holland, Cloud Leader, Wellesley Information Services

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What synergies will IBM’s recent acquisition of Accelalpha bring to clients and the Oracle ecosystem?

BY RADHIKA OJHA

In September 2024, IBM acquired global Oracle consultancy Accelalpha to enhance its capabilities across sectors. As ERP Today learned, the core of this three-way partnership is client success: “Our IBM-Oracle service vision is centered around building business vitality for our clients. Clearly successful companies are those that can thrive through periods of stability and uncertainty as they’ve invested in building a healthy business foundation that drives enterprise longevity,” said Corinne Koppel, Global Oracle Practice Leader, IBM during a roundtable on our platform featuring speakers from Oracle, Accelalpha and other IBM leaders.

Paul Pessutti, Senior Vice President, Finance & Supply Chain Cloud, Oracle, who sees the acquisition as a “tremendous opportunity for customers,” concurred: “[The acquisition] is the coming together of two exceptional firms where we already have strong, deep relationships and trust built up within Oracle and with our clients.”

Why the acquisition matters

With Accelalpha’s deal closing in Q4 2024, IBM has added finance and supply chain to its growing software portfolio. Moreover, the company has grown its geographic reach with Accelalpha’s team of consultants across North America, Europe, Asia, the Middle East and South America, onboarding at IBM on the completion of the deal.

Koppel noted, “We’re focused on four key geographies for growth: the Americas, the UK & Ireland, and Japan. Now, with Accelalpha, we’re able to enhance that reach across all these regions while adding focus to our key markets.”

Dan Haller, Group Vice President, Oracle, added that customers, especially in the supply chain space, who need enterprise transformations, could really benefit from the Big Blue-Big Red partnership through Accelalpha. “[We have] some strong functional supply chain capabilities, and IBM is well known as a global systems invitation partner that works with customers

strategically in the industries it is focused on,” he said.

For Joe Spear, Partner at Accelalpha, the coming together of his firm and IBM is a “logical marriage of two organizations” and the capabilities they bring to each other and their commonalities.

Capabilities at the forefront

Accelalpha’s sizeable Oracle implementation capabilities include core ERP, Enterprise Performance Management (EPM), Supply Chain Management (SCM), logistics and CX suites, components that “really solve core fundamental business problems for organizations we are working with around the world,” according to Spear.

He added that being at the cutting edge of the solutions it provides has always been critical to Accelalpha’s success. Now, with IBM’s capabilities added to the mix, geographies are also at the forefront.

Speaking of IBM’s capabilities, Haller noted that Big Blue’s strong managed services business was an exciting addition to the partnership. “IBM and Accelalpha can also put in the software now and implement it while managing the life cycle of that software. We’re driving AI into the applications, and we want our customers to adopt that innovation quickly, and IBM’s managed services can help do that,” he said.

Kevin Beyer, Managing Partner at Accelalpha, was also excited about bringing IBM’s managed services to Accelalpha customers for end-to-end support. “IBM is ranked as a global leader in the managed service offering, and we’re able to bring that to our customers now,” he said. “Once they’re live with the application and need it, we can bring that continuous evolution model to bear for them.”

According to Chacko Thomas, Americas Oracle Practice Leader, IBM, the acquisition builds on IBM’s existing assets such as industry benchmarks and KPIs by process area for each industry. IBM also has Smart Tools that run against a client’s Oracle database, “whether it’s IBM Business Institute (IBV), eBusiness Suite, PeopleSoft or JD Edwards, which can compare between what the industry benchmark is, where you are today, and help you analyze where you can get with Oracle,” he said.

GenAI: An exciting frontier

Generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) is

These are exceptional firms with strong, deep relationships and trust built up with Oracle and clients.

Paul Pessutti, Oracle

another aspect that the three organizations are excited to collaborate on. “We see the introduction of AI agents and the capabilities that are continually being released,” Spear said. “So, for us to be able to take advantage of that from a core Oracle solution perspective and then to continue to enhance that with IBM’s legacy of being on the leading edge of AI and GenAI for as long as they have, is critical.”

Giving a use case for GenAI collaboration, Thomas said that IBM’s intelligent workflows as business processes powered by emerging AI technologies come augmented on top of Oracle’s business processes, which effectively makes a quick assessment of the process. “So within 20 days, we can build out a business space and ROI,” he said. “We also have a light version that we can do in under two weeks. We are very excited to announce this because it cuts across the entire spectrum and helps customers get to the Oracle Cloud while giving them a business case with ROI.”

Beyer noted that many Accelalpha clients were looking for GenAI capabilities. Leveraging IBM’s leadership in the area while “bringing both the Oracle and IBM toolsets to our clients,” especially in the Human Capital Management (HCM) space that makes up about a third of Accelalpha’s clients, would provide additional depth and perspective.

An integrated portfolio

Still, a top-of-mind question for almost all clients of the three organizations is: Will this acquisition increase costs? Koppel pointed out: “We are keeping the teams and business models, which includes pricing and are continually striving to drive down price and deliver value.”

The acquisition also aims to strengthen and integrate the product portfolio that IBM, Accelalpha, and Oracle clients can enjoy. Whether an IBM client wants to work with Accelalpha experts on a supply chain project, or an Accelalpha client wants to add IBM’s depth of managed services capabilities to its Oracle platform, end-to-end solutions are now more integrated than ever.

Our IBMOracle service vision is centered around building business vitality for our clients.

Corinne Koppel, IBM

IBM is ranked as a global leader in the managed service offering, and we’re able to bring that to our customers now Kevin Beyer, Accelalpha

As Thomas noted, “We’ve been very clear about this right from our announcement of the acquisition. We are committed to keeping the Oracle channels whole. We have committed to keeping the business model, which includes pricing and other things. In fact, Accelalpha will now have access to all of IBM’s enterprise bands, so it will only get better in terms of scale and depth.”

HOW PROCESS INTELLIGENCE IMPACTS LIVES

HOW PROCESS INTELLIGENCE HAS MOVED THE NEEDLE FOR PUBLIC ORGANIZATIONS IN THE US AND UK.

BY YOANA CHOLTEEVA

While process mining and process intelligence are establishing themselves as practices that improve key business metrics, in other scenarios, they can focus entirely on the human element. Here, outcomes surpass efficiency metrics like cost-savings and profit margins, and can directly impact human lives through government systems in healthcare, justice and mental health.

Shedding light on how process intelligence can be used to facilitate better research and potentially justice reform, researchers open up about the opportunities to improve the disconnect between key systems in a large US state, working with data intelligence leader Celonis. Additionally, Celonis VP and leader for the UKI, Rupal Karia shares more about the progress of the UK’s National Health Service (NHS) process mining project which has already reaped quantifiable benefits.

NGO keeping Texas’ juvenile justice in check

Sharing her first-hand experience of working as a juvenile probation officer in the town of San Angelo, Texas in the late 1990s, Erin Espinosa explains to ERP Today about one of the many such cases where a tenyear-old boy, Chris, was entangled in the fragmented state of the juvenile justice and mental health systems that don’t always lead to the best outcomes.

Espinosa, now a director of research at Evident Change, shares the story of how despite being just a minor, the child was arrested several times and would come to her probation department for misbehavior, and later assault in the classroom, which happened routinely over three years. “What we didn’t know was the other half of the story, that he was diagnosed at age eight with an early onset of Bipolar 2 disorder.” Chris’ mother also could not afford to fill in his medication prescription, so he would be weaned off his medication over the summer break and restart it when school started in autumn, further complicating the case.

This is where the disconnect between the

PROCESS

INTELLIGENCE CAN HELP DETERMINE HOW SYSTEMS PERFORM WHERE A CHILD WITH HISTORY OF ARREST ALSO HAS MENTAL HEALTH ISSUES

PROCESS INTELLIGENCE CAN BE USED TO FACILITATE BETTER RESEARCH AND POTENTIALLY JUSTICE REFORM

two systems, as playing an important role in treating, rehabilitating and reintegrating youth into the community, became obvious.

“When I learned all of that information, I was finally able to intervene differently,” Espinosa says. “Chris, at 13 years old, was on his way to be committed to state prison for five years [...] So that’s the scene.”

While pointing out several underlying issues and systematic inefficiencies, this case also exposed the reality of the ever-increasing ratio of children to caseworkers and managers. “Imagine if we’re able to process mental health and juvenile justice data to know sooner from a system’s approach instead of [blaming] a kid,” she adds.

This is one example of a niche where having an end-to-end view of the process can make a huge difference to human lives. This means a change from systems thinking, with separate systems (juvenile justice and mental health) that work in silos, and instead integrating the children’s information from said systems to understand what’s happening and offer better support.

To act on these particular issues, a team of researchers explored the opportunities by adding a temporal component - tracking children over time - and applying process mining into the system. “So by applying process mining and an object-centric approach, we are able to retrace the journey of these children through both the juvenile justice and the mental health care system, and combining these two, we can also see how the two systems are interacting with each other and how the handover is happening,” Arturo Castellanos, assistant professor at William & Mary, says regarding the research.

But the ultimate goal of such efforts is how to scale from one child to many more by recognizing the trajectories of children within these systems. “And by doing that, then we can take a granular level view and say “this is the individual kid, but we can also abstract that to a more general view. These are all the kids in the systems, and notice how many deviations from a typical process there are. This is where you can start enacting change by saying, ‘There’s got to be a better way, right?’” Castellanos explains, while adding that these insights

Erin Espinosa, Evident Change Arturo Castellanos, William & Mary

can provide ideas about what needs to change in either system and the need to connect the two systems “so that we can look at the reality of each of the children in the general system”.

Castellanos describes how the teams have used process mining in partnership with Celonis to help determine how the two systems perform in those cases where a child with a history of arrest also has mental health problems - suggesting that there is a good chance that the reason for the arrest could have been mental illness that was never originally diagnosed.

For this reason, the team has come up with two KPIs. “Firstly is what we call the detention spiral. The detention is a flag which shows whether a child is more likely to come back into the system through reoffending, compared to their peers. The second is the rate of treatment accuracy. This is simply a percentage of time a child was provided the right level of healthcare for their needs,” Castellanos explains.

By combining these two indicators, the team can then gather a good idea of what

1,800 APPOINTMENT CANCELLATIONS WERE AVOIDED EACH WEEK AT ONE TRUST

can happen to these children in the long term, fully exposing that in a lot of cases where the children are not provided the right level of treatment, they go back into the system for subsequent, and potentially bigger, crimes.

Evolving mining strides in UK’s National Health Service

In another use case which has already seen some progress, Celonis’ VP and leader for the UKI, Rupal Karia, recently discussed the process mining efforts within the UK’s National Health Service (NHS), as the work has significantly reduced waiting times for patients.

“Unlike most of the use cases where the impact is financial, that’s not what we’re about - it’s about patient care. So it’s a completely different measurement to what naturally businesses look at,” Karia says. “In this scenario, of course, it saves money to be more efficient, but the drive is all about patients. It sounds corny, but it is improving health and therefore saving lives.”

In the past 12 months, Celonis has been

Rupal Karia, Celonis

working with five trusts across the UK, having reduced the waiting list from 73,000 to 67,000 patients over eight weeks in one trust alone, as well as avoiding 1,800 appointment cancellations each week, and this alongside other improvement areas resulted in an estimated £2.8m saving over the first year.

The team is now looking for the next focus of this venture, aiming to expand its work in chunks of 10-20 further trusts, especially in light of the new UK government’s target to slash healthcare waiting times with sustainable solutions.

Planning the next steps for the Celonis team, Karia shares more about the trajectory of the project: “We’re now quite embedded in all five trusts and that gives me more confidence, because when you get one right, and you start seeing it work in four or five trusts, then once we get another five or ten going, we will have critical mass. It’s proven that we can do it at scale,” he says.

While the repeatability of good practice has made scalability in this sector easier, it’s also about going deeper and finding additional use cases. “There are some really complex things, like in cancer research, pharmaceuticals around vaccine deployments, as we do things around research, and we think about a different marker altogether. So where do we go next? There’s so many opportunities. We’ve got to work out where the highest impact is.”

In another step forward, the team is exploring ways Celonis can help them to be more proactive by letting them identify and address small problems before they become major issues. In this way, the approach has a good potential for being used to prevent challenges by examining a process and predicting how it can impose constraints before they materialize, something that healthcare systems in the country can greatly benefit from.

The impact of acting on process intelligence’s potential

The power of process intelligence in these cases lies in the ability to identify historical issues, clearly understand their correlation and identify potential solutions while continuously monitoring processes. This helps to track how process changes are working and make future adjustments. “We have a

CELONIS HAS BEEN WORKING WITH FIVE TRUSTS ACROSS THE UK, HAVING REDUCED THE WAITING LIST FROM 73,000 TO 67,000 PATIENTS OVER EIGHT WEEKS IN ONE TRUST ALONE

way to look at it from a process perspective in juvenile justice - what does that reoffender look like? Why are they getting stuck in this endless loop of reoffending? Is there a way for us to intervene before this happens?” Monica Chiarini Tremblay, professor of business at William & Mary, says, while adding “also, changing out KPIs like treatment accuracy can help us look at this object-oriented approach because there’s many ways for us to cut and slice the data.”

Approaching it from a taxpayer’s perspective, “What if we were to embed process intelligence into our government processes? As taxpayers, we have the right to know if our processes are working right,” Tremblay says. “We believe that we have a real opportunity to use process engineering and process intelligence to improve government processes.”

Using the opportunities of this pilot project in partnership with Celonis, the research team is analyzing more data from government agencies and is already demonstrating the power of using this set of data to make an impact.

When it comes to Karia and his team’s process mining journey in the public healthcare industry, they are seeing much more interest from CEOs of trusts and heads of departments seeking involvement in similar projects - a serious shift from just tech-department interest in the past.

CELONIS IS LOOKING TO NOTICE CHALLENGES BEFORE THEY BECOME SUBSTANTIALNOT JUST FIXING BAKED-IN ISSUES

Celonis has also recently won a contract with the UK Cabinet Office, which ensures the effective running of government. More details are to be released soon, marking the company’s entry into the UK central government, with Karia seeing the potential for more departments to benefit from the new approach at local and national levels.

As Brexit has evidently added more complexity to government structures in the UK, “there’s so much we’ve got to work out, because the reality is, we can mine any process. At the moment, we’ve started on a journey with a pretty simple use case, but I think the potential is much, much broader,” Karia says.

Going beyond the markers of traditional business wins, process intelligence is surely making its mark in public and private organizations, showing a potential for advancing business processes as we know them.

Monica Chiarini, Tremblay

“Complexity goes against my gut”

In conversation with Enterpryze’s CEO on the future of ERP for SMEs

BY GIACOMO LEE

The world is moving on, and so is technology. With the latest innovations surfacing across the ERP landscape, the inevitable question rises: Is there a need for reform? Many experts, be it researchers, vendors or users, enthusiastically agree, and propose a novel approach to enterprise management – and that is Composable ERP and SaaS, including within the small and medium enterprises (SMEs) space.

To learn why concepts of a Composable ERP and SaaS are not just hype-driven movements, but a step forward into more efficient and convenient ways of using enterprise technology, ERP Today sat down with Morgan Browne, CEO of Enterpryze, provider of business management solutions to SMEs with its own custom-built ERP solution.

Giacomo Lee (GL): You’ve been in the industry for around 25 years now. What’s changed in ERP technology since you started out?

Morgan Browne (MB): The first wave [back then] was to bring ERP to smaller businesses. [...] Soon after SAP bought Business One and made it fit the SME space, we decided to build Enterpryze, which initially was an add-on for SAP Business One, to create a hybrid environment where you could have the power of the software and add on a cloud solution.

GL: How does the solution evolve on a regular basis? And how do you listen to your customers’ needs when it comes to updates?

MB: If I go back and look at what I call traditional ERP solutions, you get an upgrade maybe every year, maybe twice a year where somebody has to come along - a partner or a consultant - to do that upgrade for you. And not only is it expensive to do those upgrades, it’s disruptive to your business and it’s a real challenge.

We grew out of the global financial crisis to become the biggest SAP Business One partner in UK&I

Now, it’s evolved to become its own ERP, which is built to enable smaller businesses to have that power that we’ve seen in SAP Business One. Bringing down the total cost of ownership, the cost of implementation, the cost of services to deploy, the cost of even running the thing has completely and utterly changed - and that to me is pretty exciting.

Cloud has enabled us to deliver that monthly with no disruption. So, literally on the fourth of every month, we deliver an update that includes new features, security patches and engineering enhancements to improve speed and data management. We don’t even have to discuss [the update] and the beauty is that the customers directly feed into that roadmap. [...] It’s being built as a community rather than as a vendor thinking or assuming what the customer needs next. And that’s very powerful.

One of the other things we looked at is, okay, there’s the ERP, right? And ERP is great, if you need it all. But what if you just wanted expenses or purchase scanning or invoice scanning or warehouse management? You can pick bits of your ERP and use those. You don’t have to go and replace everything. Now you can treat our ERP like any other platform rather than it being an all-encompassing ERP. So, I’m not calling it modular, but I’m saying that you can actually just use elements. You don’t have to use it all.

GL: How about the company itself? Where does it stand today size-wise - how large is your customer base?

Morgan Browne

MB: We have two and a half thousand customers and are growing at a significant rate. We grew out of the global financial crisis to become the biggest SAP Business One partner in the UK and Ireland, and we did that with innovation.

By innovating around SAP, we evolved into Enterpryze, which then evolved into an ERP solution. [...] In terms of SAP Business One, we have a sister company called Milner Browne which is a SAP Business One partner that supports hundreds of customers throughout the UK already.

GL: You’ve mentioned your global reach. Are there particular regions where Enterpryze has more presence than others?

MB: South America and Southeast Asia have been very strong for us. We have offices in Malaysia and Vancouver that look after those two markets. [The product] is available in a multitude of languages: Spanish, Portuguese, Thai, Bahasa, Mandarin and with them, we [usually] look after retail, manufac-

turing, distribution and services as key areas.

GL: Let’s talk about those areas. What are SMEs’ needs right now? What’s changing in those different verticals?

MB: They’re obviously keen to build integrations into thirdparty logistics but really, there’s a huge appetite for simplicity and standardized processes. [...] We’re changing on a more regular basis than ever before. How do we onboard users faster? How do we give them an experience that they’re familiar with? We don’t want big complex interfaces. I want something that steps that user through the process as efficiently as possible. Because historically, you bought these solutions and it was your responsibility to run and own them. Even if you had support, you still had to manage it, run it, upgrade it, put your time into it and host it.

[Today, users] don’t want to have to pay 10 grand every year for an upgrade. So what we did was we bundled everything into one simple SaaS price, and it’s whatever it is per user per month. Support, upgrades, hosting, security, the whole batch, all in one simple platform, and all I do is pay that money and consume the solution as I need it, just like I do with Apple TV.

GL: What’s your vision for Enterpryze’s future in five to ten years?

MB: There’s a huge opportunity for Enterpryze to democratize ERP. [...] The market’s going to change massively in the next couple of years [because] there’s an enormous opportunity to help SMBs become more efficient, and I’d love to play a significant part in doing that.

We’re just beginning that journey now and I really see a scaling story happening here over the next number of years and beyond. [...] The question is, how do we capitalize on that opportunity that’s been presented to us as the architecture, the technology and the customers’ requirements evolve and change?

The beauty is that the customers directly feed into that roadmap

As highlighted by Browne, this is an exciting time for SMEs. One way to uncover the much-needed treasure trove within the ERP world is to seek composable solutions that could be added to your ERP in the form of SaaS. If as an SME you’re finding yourself at the point of continuous complexity, perhaps it is time to consider how integration and composability could enhance your business’s efficiency and profitability.

ServiceNow Spurring AI-fueled productivity

Examining ServiceNow’s Workflow Data Fabric

BY MARK VIGOROSO

This quarter saw ServiceNow introduce Workflow Data Fabric, targeting new levels of AI‑fueled productivity for the enterprise. Workflow Data Fabric is an enhanced integrated data layer that uni fies business and technology data across the en terprise, powering all workflows and AI agents with real‑time, secure access to data from any source. ServiceNow also announced Zero Copy connectors to optimize the company’s integra tion capabilities so customers can turn data into instant, AI‑powered action. Additionally, Servi ceNow announced a strategic partnership with systems integrator Cognizant as the first partner to bring Workflow Data Fabric to market for cus tomers. Workflow Data Fabric is available now in the controlled go‑to‑market.

Workflow Data Fabric enhances enterprise productivity by providing a unified, real-time data layer

For most organizations, enterprise data sits in hundreds of different systems. Employees have to swivel between these applications to get work done. To get value from AI, organi zations need a single, scalable platform to manage and act on data across teams and departments, which is why many businesses are investing in data enhancements today.

“AI is only as powerful as the platform it’s built into and the data it has access to,” said Jon Sigler, senior vice president of Platform and AI at ServiceNow. “With Workflow Data Fabric, we’re making it easier for customers to connect, understand, and act on business data from any source so they can maxi mize efficiency and solve bigger, industry‑specific problems. ServiceNow is the AI platform for business transformation, delivering the winning combination of AI, data, and workflow orchestration and automation.”

Our recent research shows that companies are placing greater importance on process automation. The research re port SAPinsider: Process Productivity and Efficiency Through Process Automation and Intelligence 2024 uncovered that the perception of process automation as “Extremely Impor

tant” has notably increased, jumping from 40% in 2023 to 54% in 2024. This is in keeping with related research that shows companies striving for greater productivity, better expense control, fewer manual touchpoints, and improved prof itability in an increasingly global marketplace.

Workflow Data Fabric expands customers’ ability to connect, understand, and act on any structured, unstructured, semi‑structured, and streaming data from across the enterprise—both inside and outside of ServiceNow—for maxi mum scalability and efficiency. Extending the capabilities of Automation Engine and newly introduced database RaptorDB Pro, Workflow Data Fabric can access and update data from any system, allowing ServiceNow to not only read from these data repositories, but also take action. For example, retailers can use Workflow Data Fabric to access data from various systems including their Customer Data Platform, core ERP, order management systems, POS sys tems, merchant trade rebates in Excel, and marketing re ceipts for co‑op and trade spend—for a single, integrated view of their business that allows them to take action on customer inquiries, orders, and returns.

Workflow Data Fabric is powered by ServiceNow’s Auto mation Engine, which includes pre‑built integrations and automation tools, real‑time data streaming, RPA, and pro cess mining capabilities, to put data to work and unlock value with orchestration and automation at ultra‑speed and scale. This speed and scale is made possible with Service Now’s high‑performance database, RaptorDB Pro, with early use cases demonstrating up to 53% improvement in overall transaction times, 27X faster pulling of reports, analytics, and list views, and 3X more transactional throughput.

The recent acquisition of Raytion also provides unified, real‑time access to business‑critical data across multiple en terprise sources, including sources that contain unstructured

data, via connectors to Atlassian Confluence, Box, Google Drive, and Microsoft SharePoint and OneDrive. Combined with the company’s 500+ connectors for structured data, Ser viceNow is uniting all forms of enterprise data to fuel auto mation and innovation.

Workflow Data Fabric includes augmented workflow au tomation to speed real‑time data processing and reduce delays associated with legacy data management. For exam ple, Workflow Data Fabric can integrate telco data across multiple systems, including retail, network, and customer care, providing agents with a complete view of customer experiences and streamlining support for ultra‑fast de tection and resolution of network outages and events. By consolidating enriched data from alerts, it streamlines no tifications and assigns incidents to the right field agents with the tools to fix the issue, enabling quick action on a single platform.

“As a major US wireless provider generating over two petabytes of data daily, being able to process and act on that data in real‑time is es sential for our network operations,” said Ste phen Bingemer, senior solutions architect, Dish. “Stream Connect allows us to ingest much of this data in real‑time and automate mission‑critical telecom workflows, resulting in a 97% improve ment in our mean time to repair vs our legacy processes. This improvement is crucial given that telecom outages can cost around $6,000 per minute.”

information, delivering personalized, AI‑driven experiences at scale.

The new Workflow Data Fabric capabilities are under pinned by strategic partnerships and integrations, ena bling ServiceNow to offer data solutions that support the AI‑driven transformation of enterprise workflows. Through partnerships with leading data platforms, customers can ac tivate ServiceNow workflows directly within these ecosys tems. This helps customers bridge the gap between insights and action and ensures they can harness the full potential of their data ecosystems.

“At Cognizant, we’re empowering companies across in dustries to use data and AI to help stay ahead of the com petition and anticipate change in their businesses and industries,” said Jason Wojahn, global head of Cognizant’s ServiceNow Business Group. “We are proud to be the first partner to bring Workflow Data Fabric to market, giving our joint customers the capabilities they need to understand and act on real‑time data across the enterprise.”

The introduction of Zero Copy connectors greatly improves integration capabilities

Workflow Data Fabric will also include Ser viceNow Knowledge Graph to connect and harmonize enterprise data at scale. Knowledge Graph transforms raw data into contextual insights—con necting a company’s people, processes, operations, and systems, so AI agents can work more effectively and autono mously across the enterprise. This helps organizations move beyond simple data access to unlocking true value from their

Zero Copy integration capabilities with Work flow Data Fabric allow businesses to securely connect to their data sources without moving or duplicating data. This launch, alongside Zero Copy partnerships with established data lead ers like Databricks and Snowflake, dramatically boost ServiceNow’s integration capabilities, so customers can act on data‑powered insights.

Whether powering AI agents for autonomous issue resolution or streamlining traditional work flows like customer operations and employee ex perience, Workflow Data Fabric turns data into real‑time, actionable insights. Businesses can use their data to drive transformative outcomes, no matter the complexity or type of use case.

Mark Vigoroso, CEO, ERP Today

Twenty years of fortitude

In 2025, Cooper Software and IFS complete two decades of collaboration that has endured the test of time.

BY GIACOMO

LEE

AND RADHIKA OJHA

It takes strength and common attributes to build a relationship, but trust to keep it going for 20 years. Cooper Software and IFS, which will complete two decades of collaboration in 2025, can vouch for this. But the story of IFS and Frank Cooper, founder and CEO of Cooper Software, began long before he founded the firm in 2005.

As a software engineer, Cooper spent his early career developing radar systems for Eurofighter. He eventually landed a job with marine company Babcock, where he was responsible for helping the company migrate to IFS.

“It was daunting for a software engineer like me to migrate around $5bn worth of transactions to a new platform, but it helped me open my eyes to the IFS universe,” he says in an interview with ERP Today.

Seeing IFS’ platform from the viewpoint of a software engineer, Cooper saw how the platform was “architected from the ground up,” which piqued his interest in exploring it further. “I began working on the Babcock project in the early 2000s, and though I was relatively new at that time, the project was a success for the company,” Cooper says. The other upside of the project was that he and IFS built a good working relationship that has strengthened over time.

Soon after, Cooper deployed ERP systems for a company that developed chips for the iPod in Europe and the UK. As it grew from around 50 people to a workforce of thousands, IFS was again the solution of choice for this project, further cementing the bond that he had forged with the EAM leader.

Growth phase

Aside from Babcock, Interconnector, which runs a gas pipeline between Europe and the UK, became one of Cooper Software’s first customers. In such cases, the company was clesrly working with serious businesses, implementing the IFS platform to enable them with better processes.

“We must have been doing something right all that time ago,” Cooper says, noting that what really struck him in those early days was the range of different types of customers signing up. “Automotive was there, but we were also looking at food and beverage, heavy engineering, manufacturing and complex manufacturing.”

People have had to adapt and change their mindset in terms of how they rely on and use technology day-to-day.

The projects got Cooper thinking: “How can I add more software engineers, more capability to what I do, what I offer customers and then look at running the business?” These ideas led him to start Cooper Software in 2005 in the base of Fife, Scotland.

These were also sectors where IFS was becoming a provider of choice in the UK and Europe. Fast forward to today, and Cooper Software has grown to become one of Europe’s largest independent providers of products, consulting services and support for ERP solutions, with headquarters in Dalgety Bay, Scotland and offices in Germany. The company has worked with over 130 customers in the past three years alone and has, over the years, provided 1,500 enterprise solutions for more than 300 clients globally.

These are impressive strides, and adaptability has played a big role in the Cooper success story.

An evolving ecosystem

Cooper Software has seen the ERP ecosystem evolve from on-premises systems to the Cloud and beyond. In fact, the firm has been involved with the IFS Cloud platform since its launch and has worked with different versions of the offering, fostering a culture of adaptability for its customers too.

Frank Cooper

“On the front end, you can see how [IFS] can enable things like the Internet of Things for any device anywhere; you’ve got this kind of cloud SaaS capability around hosting software delivery,” Cooper says.

As a result of this, he believes, “people have had to adapt and change their mindset in terms of how they rely on and use technology, and how they manage it day to day. So, from our standpoint, we’ve had to change hugely.”

The firm has also adapted architecturally to IFS Cloud’s evolution over this period, understanding different hosting database updates and how new configurations and customizations work. This has also enabled the company to look at the process from the bottom up rather than the top down, allowing Cooper Software to quickly understand how it can help its customers migrate their platforms.

“At its heart, Cooper Software is an IFS services company that delivers end-to-end products and services to our clients,” Cooper attests.

Customer-centric approach

No client need is too small for Cooper Software, which works with a range of different customers and industries. “We work with clients from major projects to ‘we’ve just got a technical issue, or we want something specific,’” Cooper explains, answering a question on what makes Cooper Software a ‘onestop shop’ sort of IFS support company.

Years of working across a wide spectrum of industries and customers have also given the firm an edge when it comes to understanding the specific needs and challenges of a vertical or industry. Moreover, the company has continued to work with individuals who may be involved in any upcoming implementations for IFS and “want to stay in that world.”

“The role of the partner in this whole ecosystem has also evolved to where we are that trusted advisor who is responsible for helping customers deliver success and achieve value,” Cooper says, adding that his firm’s sights are firmly trained on the mid-market segment, which remains the IFS focus area.

The CEO strongly believes that whether a company has a $10m turnover or a $200m one, its “complexities don’t really change, and they can really benefit from IFS and its solutions.”

Cooper gives an example of Making Tax Digital (MTD), a product developed by Cooper Software for IFS customers to highlight the synergies between the two companies for the mid-market segment: “[MTD] helps enhance the IFS fit within the UK. That’s something we’ve made for the IFS platform to be more applicable in certain circumstances.”

Looking ahead

The customers that Cooper Software mainly serves are “oldworld,” according to Frank, and a significant challenge is now making them find value in technology that is always changing. “Many of our customers still consider traditional enterprise implementations fraught with risk, which keeps them awake at night.”

Cooper believes that the Cloud is the answer to bridging this gap, as new technologies are much more accessible for cloud customers than on-premise ones, and “you can deliver more value faster.”

He adds, “Our role is to be ahead of the curve on that and work with IFS. Though implementations are more costly from a technical standpoint, these technological advances can aid the customers that we’re working with by practically implementing them.”

For Frank Cooper, the next big thing on the horizon is harnessing the power of generative AI and machine learning for traditional industries as they can allow end users “to make decisions more quickly, deliver value swiftly, and vastly reduce the manual activities in our day-to-day work life.” Interconnectivity and EDI are also high on his list of technologies that are crucial for suppliers and supply chains to adopt.

“And I have no doubt that IFS are at the forefront of that, and so we’re investing in it too,” Cooper concludes.

av0id data disasters at y0ur d00r

BY DEBRA LILLEY

I’m traveling a lot in 2025 for a pseudo gap year of sorts, and thought it was a good idea to check my vaccination status. I made an appointment with a well-known high street pharmacist in London and one of the prerequisites was that I brought a record of all my vaccinations. I did fill in a form online with my GP but getting information out of them is almost as impossible as getting a doctor’s appointment nowadays in the UK, so I did not have a reliable or complete data source.

I’m quite organized at home and any vaccination cards that I have were in one place, so I gathered up that data and took it with me for my travel consultation. The pharmacist - who was very helpful - said we can use this data to build up a vaccine profile and work out what you need.

As she entered the data manually into her sys-

As we’ve done more with data we have tried to be better custodians of that data.

tem there were obvious gaps; once she had completed the data that she had and assumptions that we made together, we were able to discuss what I needed for my planned travels. Her system even made suggestions using AI against the data entered. Generated were more than simple suggestions - I am traveling to a country where Malaria is a risk, but because I had stated I was a scuba diver, the recommendation was for a specific malaria prevention medication, as others react badly under pressure.

I then asked if I could have a copy of this vaccination data she had created as it was now much more thorough than anything I had. She was not allowed to share that data with me then but advised that I could request it through their head office.

I discussed my thoughts with Abi Giles-Haigh, a Data Scientist, fellow ACE Director and great

friend and thank her for making sense of them. In my vaccine story, AI took relevant data, enriched with timelines and assumptions from a subject matter expert, the novelty of me being a scuba diver, and provided clarity on the vaccines I require.

Together we discussed the missing data. Between us, the pharmacist and I made a good attempt at filling in the gaps, but often missing data tells us more. This story is quite like our ERP data, as over time data is collected in many ways and in many different systems. Even within a single system we may categorize that data differently, for example if we change the values or even the segments in our chart of accounts. Some data points may be duplicated such as two versions of the same supplier. This has always caused challenges for reporting, but general reporting has accounted for a short historic period, a year or perhaps a few years for supplier data, and we’ve made allowances for that data integrity that is quite easy to spot.

As we’ve done more with data we have tried to be better custodians of that data. We brought in master data management so that data was described the same way across our systems. As data warehouses evolved we collected data from multiple systems translating them into a single view as we populated them. We introduced data scientists who could analyze the data that we had and how we could use that data to improve understanding of our organizations and perhaps even use what we know from our data to provide that ‘actionable insight’ we talk so much about.

The AI Conundrum

This data conundrum will get even more important now we have AI. AI in our ERP systems is using our data against a large language model to determine the outcome for each prompt, so it is important that we understand that we have the data required. For example, if you ask AI to explain what has happened to an organization between two years of accounts and there was no data for the first year, the answer may not be representative. For example, the data could say it has grown from the previous year (which in effect is zero). You need the data for each of the data points the LLM requires, and it may not tell you when data is missing causing an unintentional data hallucination.

Most ERP vendors are embedding AI and looking after security, legal constraints, avoiding hallucinations where possible, providing the guardrails. I work with Oracle and generative AI embedded in their ERP is referred to as AI Assist, which provides data you can accept, amend or delete.

Where the AI is embedded in your ERP then you probably understand your data enough to identify which generative AI makes sense for your organization. But if you are building or consuming AI natively against your data then this understanding is even more fundamental.

AI may not tell you when data is missing, causing an unintentional data hallucination.

As ERP systems evolved and people moved from on-premise highly customized ERP systems to more modern flexible cloud systems, one of the biggest decisions is how much data to take into the new system. It is very rare to be in the position of not needing any historic data. The quality of that data is important. Does it just have to be translated into a new set of attributes so that we can continue to process live data as we transition to those new systems? Your data migration strategy is one of the most important decisions that you will make when moving your ERP system and one of the most common areas where people come unstuck. It is complicated enough when moving from one system to another but often this is magnified by combining multiple systems after reorganization or acquisition strategies.

Typically, we take data needed for operations into the new system and archive more historic data. That said, many organizations fail to archive effectively and are keeping data in old, unsupported, read-only systems – hoarding it, just in case.

Think about that public AI where your data is shared, and this is one of the scariest aspects for data privacy. I never asked but assumed that my vaccine data is just for the pharmacist’s organization. I am sure that in the small print of what I signed or at least I hope it told me where that data was going. I know it wasn’t being deleted because I was told I could apply for it.

We hear a lot about using AI ethically and using it responsibly, but we need to do more to ensure the quality of what we generate and that depends on the quality of the data we use.

As what we could do with data exploded, the term ‘data is the new oil’ attributed to Clive Humby in 2006 became common parlance. Data needs to be handled with care, understood, refined and can be used for much good in the right hands. But be aware that without that careful handling it can bring its own disasters to your door.

Debra Lilley is VP customer success, Inoapps

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Spinnaker Support & VMware Freedom

How third-party support can help organizations avoid costly vendor lock-ins

BY GIACOMO LEE & CHARLES WHITMORE

In November of 2023, infrastructure software specialist Broadcom completed the acquisition of virtualization firm, VMware. While tech acquisitions are a dime-a-dozen in the enterprise landscape, this acquisition in particular caused a great deal of controversy when the new owners forcefully instated a mandatory subscription model for all customers, including legacy clients.

While the subscription model can be a suitable avenue for some services and platforms, it can be an inefficient and overlycosted solution for some businesses. To fully understand how to manage a potential vendor lock-in, ERP Today reached out to third-party support specialist Spinnaker Support, with Spinnaker’s Chief Customer Officer, Mark Ritacco, and VP of AI and & Transformation, Chad Stewart, sharing their thoughts on what firms can do to dodge any forced subscriptions while also maintaining operational resilience, robust risk management and efficient time-to-value.

The restriction of subscription

The acquisition of VMware by Broadcom ushered in a new age of subscription models for previous VMware customers. Broadcom’s leadership removed the now-paradoxically-labeled perpetual licenses and instated a subscription model. No longer could some enterprises pick and choose exactly what virtualization solution they needed - which allowed for easy cost management - but now users had to pay subscription fees for bundled software packs, packs they would potentially only use a small portion of.

low them to stay the course until a future time where on their timeline they can determine whether to stay with VMware or move elsewhere,” Ritacco explains.

Unfortunately, the subscription model meant some firms could face a potential price increase of 100 - 500 percent. In an industry where IT budgets are typically set in stone, the VMware subscription changes have forced many companies to scramble for more cash just so they could maintain business operations.

Upgrading on their own terms

Spinnaker Support’s previous experience with a Nordic company that was facing a potential vendor lock-in demonstrates how many firms actually have more options than they might initially believe. The Scandinavian firm in question was given a choice by its on-premise software vendor, who applied pressure to upgrade to the latest Oracle version despite the firm’s IT roadmap and strategy moving away from on-premise ERP tech.

Third-party support could be the solution some VMware customers didn’t know existed

“They came to us many years ago, on their Oracle estate, and felt the pressure of upgrading and continuing on a journey with Oracle that they weren’t quite comfortable with because they knew they wanted to migrate to the cloud,” Ritacco explains, reflecting on what is a common sentiment for many Spinnaker users looking for more flexibility. Once the firm reached out to Spinnaker, however, the decision was made to step out of the Oracle contract and maintain course on the current, soon-to-be-outdated platform.

The forced subscription is something Mark Ritacco wanted to focus on in our conversation, highlighting where third-party support could be the solution some enterprises didn’t know existed.

“They’re not ready to be forced to make a decision that’s so important to them, both from timing and budget, so we al -

Expertise from Spinnaker Support is what helped provide the confidence needed to regain control of IT strategy. By helping maintain potentially out-dated software, companies can decide exactly when they want to implement new technology, rather than being dictated on when to upgrade based on vendor decisions.

“When they moved to Spinnaker, [their Oracle system] was absolutely under control and it was a stable version. They [the client], all of a sudden, were able to focus their dollars and their priorities on other areas of their IT strategy and roadmap that needed attending, care and feeding,” says Ritacco.

Spinnaker Support helped maintain the Oracle environment while the business in question could focus on more innovative work and reinforcing resilience. Eventually, after a few years of Spinnaker maintenance, the Nordic company was comfortable enough to transition to the cloud and the next step of its digital evolution - all at its own pace.

Regaining control of IT with the aid of AI

Spinnaker Support has a track record of being able to demonstrate exactly where third-party support can be most effective. That said, there’s still an aspect that can be utilized to help enhance decision making when it comes to IT strategy: AI.

Companies can decide exactly when they want to implement new tech, rather than being dictated

sensitive data. AI can churn through and process gigabytes of customer and business data in seconds - it’s vital this kind of critical business information is kept secure from any nefarious actors. Effective third-party support will assess the ERP environment for any security loopholes that might appear during AI integration. With Spinnaker Support, VMware users can continuously monitor and maintain security measures so any issue may be promptly addressed.

While artificial intelligence is a common buzzword with every new tech announcement, the reality is that ERP capabilities can be greatly enhanced with the addition of AI to common business practices and processes, and third-party support that can provide AI advisory services, like Spinnaker’s, could help businesses reach success with their AI projects. VP of AI & Transformation, Chad Stewart, explains a common question that needs to be asked by all IT leadership regarding implementing artificial intelligence:

“Are the solutions you’re building going to be a strategic asset for the company? Or are these things commonplace in the market? You’re not going to hire a team of AI experts to build something you could easily buy from Salesforce, Microsoft etc.”

“I think it really starts with understanding the propriety data [...] where do they [the customer] see the most value?” Stewart continues, addressing what aspects of AI integration clients should focus on. “How does that align to AI’s true capabilities that can be applied to businesses today?” With Spinnaker Support, businesses can gain access to real-time data access and analysis that better help integrate AI tools and platforms, thus achieving quicker value-to-time.

Leveraging the power of AI requires robust protection of

To truly take advantage of AI capabilities, data has to be optimized. Before integration and protection, optimization must take priority - that means cleaning, preparing and structuring data so it’s ready for immediate AI analysis. Organizations can achieve AI apotheosis by implementing data quality management practices, and firms like Spinnaker Support can help enterprises attain accurate outcomes by making sure data is of the highest quality. In the end, effective utilization of AI capabilities can help streamline maintenance of a business while internal IT teams focus on more pressing business issues.

Sidestepping lock-ins by leveraging third parties Should any vendor out there expect existing customers to adhere to new, inefficient subscription models, rest assured that organizations shouldn’t feel beholden to their original software vendors.

Retaking control of IT strategy means assessing the big risk: can an organization afford to sink money into an expensive subscription model where more than half the software won’t be used? Or is it better for IT strategy altogether to tread water, take a moment, examine the surroundings and decide what’s best for the organization’s future while a third-party helps maintain the background noise?

The answer to that question is completely reliant on a business’ unique needs. Reaching out to third-party support can be the first step towards regaining a position in the driver’s seat. Instead of relying on a software package that leadership may not fully understand, firms like Spinnaker Support can provide the advisory and maintenance services necessary to properly prepare organizations for the future, in their own time.

UIPATH INTEGRATES AI AGENTS, ROBOTS, AND HUMANS TO ENHANCE PRODUCTIVITY

EXPANDING

THE BOUNDARIES OF AI WITH AGENTIC AUTOMATION EXPANDING

BY MARK VIGOROSO

UiPath announced this quarter its new vision and strategic direction centered on the next evolution of enterprise automation – agentic automation.

UiPath, best known for its industry-leading robotic process automation (RPA) technology, is innovating customer automation journeys with agentic automation – a progressive leap from RPA that combines AI agents, robots, people, and models to deliver AI transformation enterprise wide for end-to-end processes. The value of agentic lies in its potential to efficiently tackle the long tail of complex and differentiated use cases across industries, while offering previously unseen potential for customization, adaptability, and cost-savings.

Our recent research shows that companies are placing greater importance on process automation. The research report SAPinsider: Process Productivity and Efficiency Through Process Automation and Intelligence 2024 uncovered that the perception of process automation as “Extremely Important” has notably increased, jumping from 40% in 2023 to 54% in 2024. This is in keeping with related research that shows companies striving for greater productivity, better expense control, fewer manual touchpoints, and improved profitability in an increasingly global marketplace. Agentic automation will use both robots and agents to complete work tasks. Robots are best for automating repetitive and rule-based tasks, improving efficiency, and reducing

manual effort, while agents are best at adapting to changes, making intelligent decisions, and handling complex and dynamic processes. The combination of robots and agents extends the scope and impact of automation, unlocking business growth and empowering employees to focus on higher-value work. Agents complete critical business processes and tasks that were not previously possible to automate due to their ability to act independently and make dynamic decisions.

Daniel Dines, Founder and CEO at UiPath, said, “Agentic automation is the natural evolution of RPA. Since our inception, we have helped our customers revolutionize their businesses by emulating humans through robotic process automation. Now, we’re advancing enterprise automation with agents, allowing customers to automate entire end-toend processes and orchestrate workflows seamlessly. The result is more substantial business outcomes, greater productivity, and more customer-facing direct benefits from automation.”

Agents can make use of the millions of automations developed by UiPath customers and leverage the same ecosystem of tools that enables these automations to integrate reliably with thousands of enterprise business applications. Agents benefit from the governance and control provided by the UiPath Platform and the precision-oriented robots that perform with high reliability as well as human-in-the-loop capabilities for critical decisions.

Tools like Agent Builder allow users to easily create and manage agents that work alongside robots

Maximizing the value of agentic workflows requires orchestration between agents, robots, humans, and models, but the complexity of integrating often-unpredictable models into business-critical workflows can be challenging. UiPath will address these challenges with agentic orchestration: a process that enables the design, implementation, operation, monitoring, and optimization of complex business processes from start to finish. Customers can manage the endto-end process lifecycle—automation, intelligent process insights, modeling, monitoring, and management—all in one platform, allowing automation, AI agents, and humans to work together for better outcomes. By understanding all roles and responsibilities in workflows, agentic orchestration can ensure compliance and deterministic outcomes with the dynamic adaptability allowed by agents.

New agentic capabilities in the UiPath Platform At its annual FORWARD user conference in Las Vegas, UiPath announced a preview of Agent Builder™, a tool for automation developers to build, evaluate, and publish enterprise agents that work cooperatively with robots on UiPath’s automation platform. Agent Builder is part of the UiPath Studio family of developer tools, meaning developers can use Studio to develop and deploy workflows and apps that work with agents.

Agent Builder will allow users to build agents, either from scratch or from a pre-built agent in the UiPath Agent Catalog, that work in tandem with robots and humans. Customers will also be able to include third-party agents in their agentic workflows if they choose.

Graham Sheldon, Chief Product Officer at UiPath, said, “Agents allow anyone to handle more complex tasks and brand-new scenarios, which provides tremendous value to our customers. Providing customers with the ability to build their own specialized agents in a simple, low-code integrated development environment or a pre-built template makes it easy for them to automate new use cases, avoid costs, and stay ahead of competitors.”

Agent Builder is expected to be available for preview across the UiPath community in December 2024. UiPath also announced the launch of Autopilot for everyone - a cross-platform, GenAI conversational agent that helps every employee enhance productivity at work. Autopilot for everyone allows end users to take full advantage of UiPath’s agents and workflow automations, enabling any employee, regardless of technical ability, to complete complex tasks ranging from getting answers grounded with their own organization’s data, analyzing documents, automating copy-paste into apps, and running automations. Autopilot for everyone provides an intuitive LLM-based conversational experience, customizable prompts, vast automation libraries, and leverages specialized AI models for specific tasks such as document understanding and semantic copy-paste.

Customers also benefit from UiPath security and governance: Autopilot is built on the UiPath AI Trust Layer that enables organizations to easily manage and govern the rollout and data usage of AI models. It is a cross-platform solution that works on both Windows and Mac. Sheldon said, “At UiPath, we believe strongly in the democratization of this type of technology because we’ve seen firsthand how valuable it is for our customers. We’re excited to help break down barriers to widespread agentic automation adoption so that everyone can take advantage of the numerous benefits that Autopilot brings to everyday work.”

What this means for ERP Insiders

Determine task suitability. Identify which tasks are suitable for automation. Agentic systems are ideal for repetitive tasks but can also handle complex decision-making processes if they are properly programmed or trained with AI/ ML techniques. Consider whether the process follows strict rules (ideal for rule-based automation) or requires adaptive learning (better suited for AI-based agents).

Understand unique roles of robots and agents. Agents are capable of making autonomous decisions based on real-time data, complex algorithms, and goals set by the user. It can respond to unpredictable changes and adjust its behavior accordingly. Robots execute tasks based on pre-programmed rules without the ability to make decisions beyond what is explicitly coded. If conditions change outside the predefined script, robotic process automation (RPA) may fail or produce errors. Generally speaking, agents are best suited for adaptive, decision-making environments such as customer service chatbots, autonomous systems, fraud detection, dynamic pricing, or supply chain management. These systems can optimize over time and adjust to new business challenges. Robots are best for repeatable tasks like data entry, invoice processing, payroll, and IT infrastructure management. It works well for linear processes with consistent inputs and well-defined outputs.

Plan for differences in deployment complexity. Agents are more complex to deploy and maintain due to the integration of AI and machine learning models, along with the need for higher computing power and data management. The deployment process may require collaboration with data scientists and developers. Robots are easier and faster to deploy, especially for businesses with straightforward rule-based tasks. RPA can be implemented by business users with less technical expertise through low-code or no-code platforms.

Mark Vigoroso, CEO, ERP Today

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Finding Zen with Data Management

Wasantha

Kumara, CEO of Kaizens Group talks data management and AI

BY GIACOMO LEE AND RADHIKA OJHA

Kai is the Japanese word for change, and zen means good. In the 1980s, Japanese carmaker Toyota combined the two words to give the world Kaizen, a business philosophy based on five principles for continuous improvement. In many ways, its namesake, Kaizens Group, embodies this philosophy in its products and services. Headquartered in the UK, Kaizens specializes in IFS applications, with the mission of providing seamless upgrades and driving successful implementations for end users of the enterprise software.

“Our company was founded to address the pressing need for integrated solutions that unify diverse legacy applications, connect multiple platforms and automate labor-intensive processes during ERP implementation,” says Wasantha Kumara, chief executive officer of Kaizens.

And like the business philosophy it was named after, Kaizens’ solutions and partnership with ERP vendors, partners and customers are based on five tenets that have helped improve its solutions continuously:

Principle 1: Know your customer Vendors for any ERP system, including IFS, generally provide typical solutions that don’t always extend to further integration, especially for data. So, the question facing Kaizens when it embarked on its journey to develop its automated data migration ETL tool, KaiMig, was how it could help customers, especially large organizations, streamline and smoothen their data integration journey.

He adds that KaiMig was born out of his team’s deep expertise and experience across various industries and its foundational knowledge of IFS ERP. This positioned them to understand and address customers’ recurring challenges in their data migration journey. These include:

• A lack of integrated solutions to unify diverse legacy applications, connect multiple platforms, and automate laborintensive processes

• Costly extensions for critical tasks such as data migration ETL, SharePoint integration, security migrations, and establishing data lakes for advanced analytics

• A smooth transition to IFS or other ERP platforms.

With KaiMig, we aimed to develop a one-stop solution for a company’s data migration needs

The answer lay in analyzing all the problems the Kaizens team - consisting of leaders, directors, and developers with 20+ years’ experience in this field - saw customers repeatedly facing over the past decade. “With KaiMig, we aimed to develop a one-stop solution for a company’s data migration needs,” Kumara says.

Principle 2: Analyze the problem

Kumara gives an example to illustrate the issues customers face with transitioning their data to new ERP systems: During the initial planning stage for a new ERP system, a customer might believe that the project will not take more than one to two years. However, it can drag on for four to five years due to data migration issues for legacy applications, especially in large, complex organizations. “Some customers have 20-25 different legacy applications that the new ERP does not support. Thus, they must call in different vendors for these applications, and even then, the extensions may or may not provide the “unique solution” that customers seek.”

Kaizens also realized that almost all ERP customers face this challenge. “We know some industry-leading tools are out there, but none of them includes data cleansing and transformation options like KaiMig does,” Kumara notes.

Principle 3: Develop the solutions

This solution’s basis was automating the data migration ETL

tool to help clients achieve efficient, secure, and accurate data transfers. Additionally, the goal was to minimize operational disruptions, enhance project timelines and yield significant cost savings that could be redirected to other strategic initiatives.

“With KaiMig, we achieved all these goals,” says Kumara. Today, the solution is part of the Kaizens Toolset, which, apart from KaiMig, consists of:

KaiSec – a security migration tool designed for upgrade projects;

KaiShare – a tool that facilitates SharePoint document migration to IFS DocMan

KaiLake – a comprehensive data archive and reporting data warehouse.

KaiMig itself helps companies seamlessly migrate data from legacy applications whilst minimizing use of Excel files. It directly connects to the legacy application and extracts data into the KaiMig database, which is located and deployed in the cloud or onpremises in the customer environment. Moreover, the solution helps customers cleanse thousands of data duplications.

Principle 4: Measure progress

Today, the solution set is utilized by global giants like Maersk, which collaborated with Kaizens for a large and complex data migration project that enabled a seamless rollout across multiple regions. “Our expertise ensured the migration was efficient, accurate, and aligned with their operational needs,” says Kumara.

Given the company’s size, Maersk had initially set aside five years for the data migration project. But, thanks to KaiMig, Kumara says, the company completed the project within 14 months. “They had over 30 legacy applications, and many regions used different modules. Some had the IFS app, some had SAP modules, and some used the plant’s Data Basin. Through KaiMig, we integrated the data from all these systems,” he mentions.

Kumara mentions property care and preservation company Timberwise as another success story. He says the Kaizens Group was instrumental in Timberwise’s IFS Cloud implementation. It provided data migration, configuration and customization, reporting, IFS Mobile Work Order (MWO), and process improvements during the company’s ERP implementation journey.

According to Kumara, Kaizens has continued supporting Timberwise post-go-live to ensure smooth operations and ongoing success.

Principle 5: Empower people

KaiMig was born out of Kaizens Group’s deep expertise and experience across various industries and its foundational knowledge of IFS ERP.

“While using Excel, users need to find the data manually, but with KaiMig, the user can define the criteria for duplication, and then the solution automatically finds it,” Kumara notes.

The solutions developed by the company are helping customers automate their processes at every step. “KaiMig not only reduces the duplication of data but also streamlines and secures data as the solution uses its own securities and lets the project team handle the ETL process in one system instead of multiple files on their laptop,” Kumara says.

Kumara gives an example of KaiMig’s people-empowering abilities: “If an IFS legacy application has to be upgraded to IFS Cloud, the customer will want to re-implement the data [from the legacy application]. In this case, the typical ETL process can be very hard if it is done in the traditional manner,” Kumara says. “[Through KaiMig], we automatically connect to the legacy system to get the legacy template and the data structure. We then connect to the system and map that data, automatically allowing users to adjust or modify the data if they want a change.”

Now, Kaizens Group is working on developing AIdriven features for KaiMig, with a targeted release in early 2025. “These enhancements will help Kaizens consumers with AI-powered duplication detection and removal, improved automated field mapping, AI-driven transformation applications, pre-validation improvements, and automation of customer data migration’” Kumara concludes.

Wasantha Kumara

HAVE WE JUMPED FROM BIG DATA TO AI TOO QUICKLY?

BY THOMAS GAVAGHAN

The corporate world often jumps from one buzzword to the next, but the leap from “Big Data” to artificial intelligence (AI) feels particularly rushed. It’s like building the next floor of innovation before ensuring the foundation beneath it is complete. In the excitement to embrace AI, we risk overlooking the critical groundwork that makes these transformative technologies truly effective: strategic data management.

For finance and treasury organizations, the real value lies not in the buzzwords but in understanding the deeper potential of data. It’s about understanding not only what these technologies can do, but why they matter fundamentally to strategic decision making. Financial leaders navigating digital transformation must go beyond merely implementing tools. Success relies upon a comprehensive approach to leveraging technology that connects, protects, forecasts, and optimizes critical resources.

There are five essential dimensions of data management: Streaming, Searching, Data Lakes, Machine Learning, and Generative AI. Mastering these pillars are key to unlocking the future of liquidity performance.

1Streaming: Why Real-Time Data Flow Matters

In our hyper-connected and growing financial ecosystem, data isn’t just information – it’s the lifeblood of strategic decision-making. Real-time data streaming has become the critical infrastructure that separates adaptive organizations from those destined to remain reactive.

At its core, real-time streaming enables seamless communication across systems, breaking down the silos that have historically fragmented data. Finance and treasury teams no longer operate as isolated units; instead, they are part of a unified ecosystem where information flows effortlessly and on demand.

APIs (application programming interfaces) play a key role in this transformation. These tools do more than just connect systems – they empower finance professionals to link various platforms and create tailored solutions, offering greater flexibility and control. While many legacy TMS providers offer basic data integration, forward-thinking liquidity platforms are investing in underlying technologies that can fundamentally transform capabilities so seamlessly that most end-users will never see it. Technologies like event streaming platforms, for example, are creating a new age of data responsiveness.

By accelerating the delivery of accurate, real-time data, organizations can make liquidity decisions that are not just faster but smarter. For example, real-time connections with banks and ERP systems allow treasury teams to optimize cash positioning or manage risk more dynamically. In today’s volatile markets, this responsiveness is especially critical. Those who view technology as merely a cost center will remain trapped in legacy systems, while innovators are building and leveraging adaptive streaming infrastructures to address increasingly complex business demands.

2

Searching: Finding the Needle in the Evergrowing Data Haystack

As data centralization progresses, another challenge arises: searchability. A centralized repository of financial data is only as useful as the ability to extract meaningful insights from it.

Traditional search tools are like using a candle to explore a massive warehouse: slow, inefficient, and likely to miss critical details. It’s the same as trying to find a specific payment reference amongst a bank statement with a million records in it; this inefficiency can lead to missed insights and delayed decisions.

data, making them highly versatile for a variety of use cases.

For treasury and finance teams, data lakes provide the infrastructure needed to handle today’s increasingly complex liquidity demands. They enable centralized access to data from banks, ERPs, market providers, and internal systems, creating a single source of truth for analysis.

With data lakes, organizations can create real-time dashboards that aggregate liquidity metrics across subsidiaries and geographies, turning data into a living, actionable asset. By breaking down barriers to data accessibility, treasury teams can better anticipate market trends and make informed decisions

TRADITIONAL SEARCH TOOLS ARE LIKE USING A CANDLE TO EXPLORE A MASSIVE WAREHOUSE

The liquidity platforms of tomorrow are investing in modern day cloud-native search engines to support high-speed data querying across massive datasets, enabling treasury teams to pinpoint information in seconds. These advancements are particularly valuable for scenarios where time and accuracy are critical, such as compliance audits, fraud investigations, and cash flow reconciliations.

By empowering finance teams to move from manual searching to realtime discovery, organizations can shift from reactive problem-solving to proactive intelligence gathering – ultimately enhancing liquidity performance.

3 Data Lakes: Centralizing for Scalability

Often misunderstood, data lakes represent more than just storage. Unlike traditional data warehouses, data lakes can house both structured and unstructured

with confidence.

SaaS providers have an opportunity to be more nimble in investing in advanced data platforms to optimize their data lake architectures, ensuring seamless integration with APIs and business intelligence platforms. This centralization enhances the aforementioned searching and streaming capabilities while supporting advanced analytics and AI applications.

4 Machine Learning: Unlocking Insights From Patterns

Machine learning has evolved from a theoretical concept to a highly practical tool for strategic decision-making in virtually every aspect of business and life. In the world of treasury and finance, ML excels at identifying patterns in historical data, making it an invaluable asset in areas like fraud detection, cash forecasting, and reconciliation.

Thomas Gavaghan

Consider fraud prevention: ML algorithms can analyze transactional data to detect anomalies, whether it’s a payment made outside usual business hours or an unusual recipient account. Such insights allow organizations to take corrective action before fraud occurs, protecting liquidity and reputation.

Another example lies in reconciliation processes. ML can automate the identification of discrepancies between accounts, reducing manual effort and expediting month-end closes. These efficiencies directly enhance liquidity management, freeing up resources from manual processes that can be better used toward strategic initiatives.

The true power of ML, however, depends on the integrity and accessibility of the data feeding it. Without the centralized, high-quality inputs provided by data lakes, the outputs of even the most sophisticated ML algorithms can be flawed or incomplete.

5

Generative AI: Transforming Decision-Making

Generative AI is more than just the latest buzzword — it’s transforming the way businesses can make decisions. By turning complex data into clear, actionable insights, it opens up new opportunities to rethink and elevate liquidity management.

For example, generative AI can automate report generation, summarizing liquidity metrics and cash flow forecasts in natural language that is tailored to executives. It can also simulate potential scenarios, enabling finance teams to stress-test their strategies under various market conditions.

In liquidity management, generative AI delivers its full potential when built on strong data foundations. Imagine a CFO leveraging an AI-powered assistant to forecast liquidity needs for the next quarter, incorporating historical data, market trends, and real-time cash positions. The accuracy and value of these predictions hinge entirely on the quality of the underlying data. Taking that a step further, this technology can not only predict, but also execute liquidity decisions for your investment policies or working capital programs based on its predictive modeling. What once seemed like science fiction is now becoming a practical reality for optimizing liquidity performance

To harness the full potential of generative AI, organizations must partner with technology providers that prioritize investments in streaming, searching, and data lakes. Only then can they move from static analytics to dynamic, AI-driven decision-making.

IMAGINE A CFO LEVERAGING AN AI-POWERED

ASSISTANT

TO FORECAST LIQUIDITY

NEEDS FOR THE NEXT QUARTER

Building the Bridge Between Data and AI

The AI era isn’t about adopting technology for technology’s sake. It’s about bridging the gap between raw data and strategic decision-making. To fully realize this potential, organizations must first address the critical foundations of effective data management.

For CFOs, this means adopting a liquidity strategy that connects, protects, forecasts, and optimizes through purposeful technological innovation. From real-time streaming and intelligent searching to centralized data lakes and transformative AI applications, the journey toward data-driven liquidity management offers both challenges and opportunities.

Those who understand the ‘why’ behind these technologies, not just the ‘what’, won’t just navigate the AI revolution – they’ll lead it. By transforming data from a passive resource into an active strategic advantage, financial leaders can position their organizations for long-term success in an increasingly complex world.

Thomas Gavaghan, Vice President, Kyriba

Oracle CloudWorld ‘24

Richard Pepper gives ERP Today the Oracle Insider view on CloudWorld 2024, live and on the ground from Las Vegas, USA.

BY RICHARD PEPPER

The last quarter saw one of the best and most invigorating Oracle CloudWorld conferences in years. Old timers like myself still debate on whether San Francisco or Vegas is a better location; I’m old fashioned and so is my wallet when it comes to $19 for a can of beer. However, the feel was different at this year’s CloudWorld.

It’s a big investment for customers to travel to Las Vegas and the location alone doesn’t sit well with management who have to pre-approve a potentially $6k trip when so many more mediums of education and engagement now ex-

ist. The investment IS worth it, though. There is some great quality content to take back to the office and implement, be that from a technical point of view or simply how to “work better”.

It’s very easy to attend a conference and drive in the middle of the road, attend sessions that tick the ERP/HCM/ SCM and Tech boxes - but there is so much more value to be uncovered at CloudWorld. Take for example the Global Industry Unit offerings (recently known as GBU), a favorite being the depth and breadth of specialist coverage for Financial Services. I sat down with Mark Atherton (Global Head of Oracle

Trumpets Data Security

Financial Services Analytical Applications) and speaking with him it became clear to me that other ERP vendors stick in the middle lane when it comes to true value add in areas such as core banking. Similar areas worth looking at are construction and retail, very popular specific core solutions used by millions daily but often overlooked.

Data Security in the Cloud Oracle meant serious business this year. Yes there was plenty of party atmosphere at the evening celebration event, but there was one very clear message: that of security of your data. I lost count of

how many Oracle presenters had prior careers with the CIA or FBI. One impressive presentation hosted by Agnieszka Bruyère (VP EMEA Public Sector and Defence) focussed on the investment Oracle have made in securing data centers for use in government. Meanwhile, Rob Duhart (SVP, Cloud Security), and ex-US government security leader, manages a team of nearly 800 with the remit of maintaining walls around what you need protecting the most. But keeping the lights on is only half of the story, with the future threat and the potential of “unregulated external GenAI” keeping Rob and his team on 24/7 alert.

Another underlooked complimentary suite from Oracle is Analytics. Visitors of the Wonderwall Analytics area at CloudWorld got to hear about two noteworthy developments:

People Leader Workbench and Supply Chain Command Center: Two new intelligent applications have been added. The People Leader Workbench aims to assist HR and finance teams in aligning talent strategies with business goals. Some serious value add here allowing for strategic people control and planning alongside the already well established Strategic Workforce Management.

The Supply Chain Command Center helps organizations respond to dynamic supply chain conditions with intelligent recommendations. Also of particular interest is the Developer Assistant with Generative AI, a new AI-powered Developer Assistant introduced to streamline the configuration of Oracle Fusion Data Intelligence services. It guides developers through adding third-party data sources and configuring analytics setups, leveraging generative AI to simplify these processes.

Multicloud Partnerships. If you haven’t already heard, Oracle announced a significant expansion of its multicloud

THE CLOUD HAS BEEN OVERHYPED IN GENERAL TERMS WHERE IT’S JUST SOFTWARE STORED ON SOMEONE ELSE’S COMPUTER

strategy, highlighting new partnerships with AWS, Google, and Microsoft. The partnership with AWS includes Oracle Exadata Database Service running on AWS and new seamless data movement capabilities. This underscores Oracle’s commitment to making multicloud solutions more integrated and efficient for its customers. After all, it wasn’t that long ago when Larry Ellison infamously stated: “The computer industry is the only industry that is more fashiondriven than women’s fashion. Maybe I’m an idiot, but I have no idea what anyone is talking about. What is it? It’s complete gibberish. It’s insane. When is this idiocy going to stop?”

Let’s be clear, Larry is no idiot. He was right; the cloud has been overhyped in general terms where it’s just software stored on someone else’s computer. However the purest skill of Oracle is developing and maintaining SaaS and OnPremises applications and a tech tool kit to make other vendors weep.

The Oracle roadmap is clear; where once competitive, the future is multicloud. Larry discussed the importance of multicloud interoperability, empha -

ORACLE IS DEVELOPING AND MAINTAINING SAAS AND ON-PREMISES APPLICATIONS AND A TECH TOOL KIT TO MAKE OTHER VENDORS WEEP.

sizing that the future of cloud computing lies in better integration between different cloud providers. He highlighted Oracle’s efforts to create interconnected cloud environments that allow customers to leverage the best services from multiple providers.

The outlook for Oracle as a vendor, its ecosystem, customer success is very strong; the messages are clear and understood. Transformation is a journey and Oracle is there for you.

Richard Pepper is Dalonia MD & Verance Performance director, and former UKOUG president

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Data First, Transformation Forever

The importance of data quality for a successful digital transformation – and how AI can help

BY CODY DAVID

Do you know what kind of data exists in your business? Do you know where it is and what rules govern that data? Many organizations are unable to answer these questions; however, they are essential to every digital transformation.

Quality data is the foundation of any transformation project. If you’re getting ready to go through a significant transformation project, the time to look at your data is now. Leading with a Data First approach can help organizations leverage today’s advanced technologies, like generative AI (GenAI), to ensure successful data transformation and successful business outcomes now and in the future.

Data Work Needs to Begin Now

Resolving data issues can be a significant undertaking, but it’s important to understand just what you’re dealing with early on. It’s better to understand the scope of work early than to delay addressing your data’s health.

No one has ever told us they started cleaning their data too early.

The way to accomplish this is through a Data First approach that starts with cleaning data immediately. In our years of experience working with customers on transformation projects, no one has ever told us they started cleaning their data too early.

Preparing for a transformation project by putting Data First involves not just cleaning but enriching your data and potentially collecting new data. This work must be done from the viewpoint of how business processes will work in your future systems. Solutions such as the Syniti Knowledge Platform (also known by the name SAP Advanced Data Migration & Management by

Syniti) can play a strategic role throughout this process by helping organizations lay a proper data foundation before taking on AI and enabling your organization to reap many business benefits.

Start with Quality in Mind

Data quality is a measurement of how clean, accurate and complete your data is. Too often, the data cleansing process is skipped or planned too late in the project timeline. A common misconception is that if you could transfer over all the records and load them into the target system, that data must be OK. But often, this is when the problems start.

Load-ready data, in that it can be loaded into your new system, doesn’t mean your business processes can be successfully executed. It needs to be business-ready data. However, even with business-ready data, data quality can’t be considered a one-and-done process. You must implement data governance and data quality initiatives to ensure you’re maintaining business-ready data throughout the future. Without this approach, a company’s data will degrade over time.

Common Mistakes to Watch Out For

The initial kneejerk reaction when starting a data quality initiative for data transformation is to focus on preparing data in the source system, but this isn’t the most efficient approach. It is effective for some things, such as writing off open-aging accounts receivable. However, it goes beyond simply cleansing the system of outdated or duplicated information. It’s also about enriching the data you add, collecting data points, or creating new records. It’s a more extensive process than merely finding issues and fixing them.

Too often, when trying to move data into a new system, such as SAP S/4HANA, IT teams will try to hand an Excel sheet to the business users and tell them to fill it out and collect specific data. But this approach falls short as business processes and data are intertwined and dependent on each other. They have parent-child relationships and different hierarchies, which makes data cleansing and enrichment activities challenging to do accurately.

GenAI

does not require standardized inputs or preconfigured templates to execute data analysis and extraction

These difficult tasks can become manageable with the implementation of a solution like ours which facilitates cleaning, enriching and preparing the data before a company’s S/4HANA transformation. Such platforms manage the data dependencies and use target configuration to put guardrails on the enrichment and cleansing — which can assist users in collecting data in a secure, trackable and validated way.

The Role of AI

AI is a significant advancement in the business world, and for good reason. According to an IDC Report, companies that invest in AI realize an average return of $3.50 for every dollar spent. Additionally, GenAI alone could add the equivalent of $2.6 to $4.4 trillion annually to the global economy across the 63 use cases, according to McKinsey and Company.

GenAI can help support your overall data quality initiatives, particularly in cases where your business owners don’t know where the data quality problems are or where to start.

This is where synthetic data generation comes into play. In the AI world, when you hear the term “synthetic data,” that usually means you’re generating data for training purposes.

However, you can repurpose the concept to generate synthetic data quality rules across all business processes. Syniti does this by generating a knowledge graph of the interconnection between all workstreams, business processes, and sub-business processes inside SAP S/4HANA.

From there, you can ask the AI to create data quality rules and reports for every one of these business processes. Once you have your data quality rules, you must post-process and confirm these rules. That leaves thousands of business rules, which can be deployed to a SAP ADMM tenant to immediately start monitoring data quality.

Business Benefits of Using AI

A significant benefit of using AI is the reduction of manual effort. One major contention point with transformation projects can be that they pull the data owners away from their daily activities to assist with the transformation - and it takes a lot of their time to do these projects. By using AI, you can reduce that effort. Since data work is ancillary for them, minimizing this burden is highly beneficial.

“Data is the foundation for AI, whether you’re using data to fine-tune and train your own model or to reduce the manual labor required to change unstructured data into structured data,” said Kevin M. Campbell, CEO at Syniti. “If your goal is to use AI to help solve a business problem, you’ll need to provide it with the proper business context – good data – so it can give you answers specific to that business context. Your competitors aren’t waiting for you to get it right, so there’s no time to waste in getting it wrong.”

Another benefit is cost savings. GenAI solutions can significantly reduce effort while increasing accuracy. Unlike traditional methods, GenAI does not require standardized inputs or preconfigured templates to execute data analysis and extraction, enabling faster implementation and reducing time to benefit. Additionally, it can enhance standard data assessments, uncovering additional business opportunities.

There’s a return on investment for finding data quality issues. Identifying just one of these issues could reveal opportunities to save millions of dollars.

The Data First Strategy

If you’re serious about creating and maintaining a competitive advantage with AI, you’ve got to start with the data. There’s no getting around it: digital transformation requires significant data work. Fortunately, AI’s capabilities bring an alternative to the old approach of numerous Excel sheets and hours upon hours of manual effort. There’s no longer an excuse to ignore data quality until it’s (often) too late. Set your organization up for success by following the guidelines noted above and adopting a data-first strategy.

Cody David is GenAI managing solution architect, Syniti

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