Inside SAP-Yearbook 2014-Iss 23

Issue 23 | Spring 2013 | AU$8.95

www.insidesap.com.au

The independent magazine for SAP professionals

The changing face of the SAP ecosystem

2014 Yearbook

Building a high performance SAP team What SMEs really want get more from SAP: 11 solutions you need

Your essential Resource Bright sparks Profile: AGL’s Owen Coppage

Case studies NSW Trade & Investment goes live

Find a partner Vendor spotlight and profiles

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IT Services Business Solutions Consulting

CONTENTS 12

24

28

34

40

48

4

Editor’s note

Technology

Case Studies

28 Powering the retail wars

Hot Topics

48 Payroll migration to cloud deemed a success: NSW Trade & Investment

30 Growth opportunities in big data

50 AP process efficiency expanded

and analytics: IDC

7 The changing face of the SAP ecosystem

to process management: Village Roadshow

34 Are SAP systems an easy target for cyber attacks?

12 SMEs: Punching above their

36 Account reconciliation: why

weight

should we care?

16 11 solutions you need to get the

37 Effective security through

most from SAP Get more from SAP Enterprise Support

52 Speeding up approvals with OneList: Allied Mills

54 Operational excellence in customer order processing: Siemens Australia

engagement

19 Building a high performance SAP team

56 Migrating 173 companies on time:

Careers

AyalaLand

40 The death of the training room?

41 TAFE partnership addresses SAP

SAP Leaders

skill shortage Bright sparks: Owen Coppage 24

26 SAUG widens appeal of CIO Council

Events

57 AGL Energy and Lexmark on HANA

59

Company profiles

73 Vendor spotlight: SAP service provider directory

45 SAUG Summit 2013

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hot topics

SME

Punching above their weight Earlier this year, SAP commissioned a major study of how SMEs are using technology to take on much bigger players not only in their home markets, but across the globe. Eleanor Reader shares the findings from the AsiaPacific, and looks at what is driving adoption of various technologies within local SMEs. In April and May 2013 global forecasting and analysis firm, Oxford Economics, undertook a research study sponsored by SAP with the aim of better understanding how small and medium-sized businesses around the world are leveraging technology to boost innovation, strengthen customer relationships, improve agility, and expand their businesses.

Released in July 2013, SMEs: Equipped to Compete, presented a positive outlook for the future of SMEs worldwide, who as a collective are making major changes to their business models, products and go-to-market strategies.

The study included a global online survey of 2100 executives across the world, with 100 respondents from each country, including Australia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, China, Columbia, the Czech Republic, France, Germany, Hungary, India, Indonesia, Italy, Mexico, Poland, Portugal, Russia, South Africa, Spain, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

Increasing globalisation, heavy competition, newly empowered customers in new markets, and fast-changing technologies are factors that not only large multinational corporations but also SMEs have to contend with.

While the study highlighted the common stereotype that smaller companies are local or regional entities which are largely technophobic, the findings revealed that SMEs are thinking and acting globally, competing with rivals of all sizes – including much larger firms – and investing aggressively in technology to improve operations and make themselves more nimble.

“The overarching finding of the study was that successful SMEs are going outside of their home market to accelerate growth. And by doing so, they face fierce competition from large multinational corporations and more empowered customers in new markets,” says Eric Duffaut, president, global ecosystem and channels, SAP AG. “In their new international or even global landscape, business network and latest technology innovations are more and more required by SMEs to evolve their business models and effectively compete.”

The age of SME-friendly cloud computing According to the study, Asia-Pacific SMEs are leading the pack when it comes to cloud adoption, with an expected increase to 44 per cent, compared to the global growth rate of 35 per cent. Asian retail firms will adopt cloud platforms fastest, with consumer firms and wholesalers close behind.

Ben Sebo, managing director, Redback Consulting, agrees that this is true for Asia, but not so much for Australia and New Zealand.

“I believe this is because cloud has finally put functionality at a price point that is within reach to the SME market, and within the APAC market, anything that can give you a competitive advantage or help to drive or improve efficiency will be adopted quickly,” he says.

The executives surveyed said the promise of cost efficiencies and improved product and service development is cloud’s major drawcard.

“From my perspective the greatest benefit of cloud for SMEs, especially in terms of SAP Cloud, is the ability to access and leverage high level, integrated ERP functionality, without the on-premise overheads (infrastructure, network, dedicated support), thus making it within their price point,” says Sebo.

However, a broad range of concerns help to explain why SMEs are slow to leverage the obvious benefits of cloud computing.

Sebo says there are three reasons behind this: the price of initial cloud offerings, perceived security risks and functionality.

“Initial cloud offerings did not really offer true cloud, but were simply single tenant hosted solutions, so the price point was not that much different to that of onpremise, thus most SMEs stuck with their existing, affordable, off-the-shelf packages and products,” he says.

Another reason is that many SMEs don’t believe they need the level of functionality offered to them from, for example, SAP Cloud, says Sebo.

“There is a belief that as they are smaller they can get by with using single function, non-integrated systems with manual processes. Part of any scoping exercise

2100 SMEs surveyed 129% Growth in SMEs doing business in at least six countries

32%

Say increasing competition from tech-savvy firms is a key challenge

50% Say business management software is their top investment priority

51% Cite innovation as a top growth strategy

46% Are hiring actively to support growth strategy

39% Find it increasingly hard to hire

skilled workers to match business needs

64% Call transformation a competitive necessity

with a SME for cloud is to show them the automation, integration and information melding benefits that they can get through leveraging cloud solutions.”

Chris O’Brien, head of application management services at Harms Consulting, says when they look at moving a client onto the cloud versus co-locating infrastructure – giving them a mini private cloud in a data centre – the co-location option remains 40 per cent cheaper in at least three out of four of the proposals.

“I think for SMEs we might still find that we’re two to three years away from that true cloud computing model being the right price point for them. But it doesn’t mean in the meantime they can keep everything in house – they can still find a partner who will co-locate and manage everything for them in another data centre,” he says.

Business analytics are the future Australian SMEs are investing more dollars in business analytics than any other technology area, the study states. Because transformation is a focus for SMEs globally, the use of analytics to understand business performance makes it a prized addition to the SME toolkit.

Cost efficiencies are stated as the top benefit of analytics (27 per cent), followed by improved product and service development (26 per cent) and better customer service (20 per cent).

Asia-Pacific SMEs are, again, expected to see the

greatest increase in adoption at 40 per cent, compared to the global average of 33 per cent, with consumer goods firms leading the growth at 69 per cent.

It’s not all good news though. According to the study, many SMEs still struggle with a core competency of analytics: ensuring information is accurate and reliable.

Aside from this challenge, which is cited as a top concern across all industries, other challenges include collecting data (37 per cent) – an especially large problem for Asia-Pacific firms at 46 per cent – and obtaining data rights (32 per cent).

O’Brien says the feedback he has been getting is that people in the SME marketplace are perhaps getting a little sick of hearing about SAP HANA. “Obviously at this stage it’s an expensive technology, and probably beyond the budgets of a local SME to invest in for the purposes of analysing data, and they may not have the amounts of data that require HANA anyway,” he says.

“For analytics it’s more about making sure it’s fit for purpose, and for an SME, a huge big data solution is not really going to be fit for purpose.”

Business management software still going strong Over half of Asia-Pacific SMEs already use business management software (BMS), and in the future it will be most aggressively adopted in retail (with growth of

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Top tips for recruiting and retaining the right people in SAP Recruiting, then retaining the right people in SAP can be a daunting and challenging experience in a candidate-scarce, competitive SAP market.

SAP-run organisations all seek people who have the right SAP skills, fit within their culture and contribute to maximising the benefits of their SAP investment. If it wasn’t hard enough to find them, then the challenge is to keep them!

Finding, then keeping, the best SAP people, is possible. Read on for the top tips from the Director of Australia’s leading SAP Resource Provider.

3 Don’t hire at the last minute The future can’t be predicted, but planning your SAP resourcing for the next twelve months will prepare you for the challenges you see coming and those you don’t! Involve your SAP resource provider early – they have visibility of contractor end dates and those seeking opportunities in the permanent market with the skills you require. Prior planning is the key to securing the right SAP resource at the right time, so partner and be prepared.

Leanne O’Connor Director – Systems and People

1 Find an SAP specialist As an SAP specialist focuses exclusively on the SAP marketplace, they are best placed to find you the right people. Premium candidates engage an SAP resource provider who understands the SAP product suite, the SAP industry, their individual capabilities and how to match them with the right role. An SAP specialist has access to the right SAP people for your business.

Partner with your service providers, investing more time in fewer supplier relationships to get the best recruitment outcomes. Preferred supplier agreements (PSA) provide a platform for mutually beneficial relationships. The benefits are numerous including, costs savings, transparency, single point of contact, efficiencies and management reporting.

2 You can try yourself, but...

Only twenty percent of candidates are actively seeking opportunities, so this means that eighty percent will not see your vacancy!

The best SAP candidates are often working for someone else (including your competitors!) and may not be looking for a new role. With an extensive network of active and passive SAP candidates, an SAP specialist can source the best SAP people, not just those looking now. In addition, the time spent internally on recruitment tasks is considerable and often fruitless, distracting you from your core business.

An SAP resource provider will streamline the process, saving you frustration, time and money.

4 Clearly define your SAP requirements Having a comprehensive job specification (yes, even for contract roles!) demonstrates professionalism and will always attract greater interest and commitment from prospective candidates. Clearly articulate your company vision, current and future SAP landscape, salary and start date. Having a clear recruitment process and timeframe allows management of candidate expectations. When competing in the market for SAP resources, it’s crucial to give candidates a great impression of your organisation from the outset.

5 Move quickly when you need to To secure your desired candidate, be prepared to make decisions quickly. In a scarce market, SAP candidates have multiple opportunities.

You might be perfect for each other, but more often than not, timing is everything. By having formal approval to recruit before you commence the process and by tightly managing timeframes from shortlist to hire, will ensure the one you want doesn’t get away.

6 Build a diverse and challenging SAP landscape

Implementing the latest SAP tools and technologies will attract and retain great SAP people to your organisation. Not only would you keep pace with your competitors, meet the demands of your business and gain continuous improvement benefits, you will also keep your people challenged and retained. Do you have the capability to evaluate, champion and then invest in emerging technologies?

7 Look inside and out It’s great to look outside for SAP talent. You get to choose from a broad pool of SAP skills and experience, then select the best person to bring a fresh perspective, new skills and industry experience to the team.

As good, is to promote from within. This contributes to a great company culture, boosts morale and builds employee loyalty. Importantly, it gives the opportunity for employees to further their SAP career without leaving your organisation. Is there a SAP super user that could become your next SAP super star?

8 Consider the inexperienced With a shortage of SAP talent in the market, consider hiring IT graduates with the right motivations and attitude, and develop their SAP skills. Many universities now offer SAP studies as part of their curriculum and in conjunction with SAP, participate in the SAP University Alliances Program. This program develops highly qualified graduates who will contribute to the core SAP competencies of their future employers.

Recruit for attitude. Train for results.

9 Look abroad The challenge now and in the future for all SAP-run organisations is a skills shortage within Australia, particularly in emerging technologies.

The first SAP offshore installation was in 1972, the first in Australia was 1987, so the global market had a 15 year head start! There are highly skilled candidates in more mature markets, so be open to sponsoring them into permanent positions, and for contract positions, engage SAP resource providers holding a DIAC labour on-hire agreement.

For more information on recruiting and retaining the SAP talent you need – contact Leanne O’Connor on 1300 897 820 Systems and People Pty Ltd t 1300 897 820 f 1300 897 920 leanne.oconnor@systemsandpeople.com.au www.systemsandpeople.com.au

melbourne • sydney

recruitment

consulting

contractor management

melbourne • sydney

hot topics SME

32 per cent). Unsurprisingly, 71 per cent of discrete manufacturing is already using BMS, expected to rise to 79 per cent in three years’ time.

Sebo says the main trend he has noticed among Australian SMEs is system consolidation.

“SMEs are looking to move from multiple single function/process systems, to a single system that can provide all functionality. Without SAP Cloud, the ability to achieve that would still have meant multiple integrated systems, or an on-premise ERP that was outside the SME price point.”

The study didn’t specify whether SAP, Oracle or another software provider was the most popular choice for SMEs across the globe. It did state, however, that the reason behind SMEs investing in BMS is because “they understand the need to build a technology foundation that can support long-term growth in a global marketplace”.

Reported benefits include cost efficiencies and improved product and service development (both 25 per cent), supply chain optimisation and better customer service (both 20 per cent).

Leading challenges for companies interested in BMS are the cost of new platforms, cited by more than one-third of respondents (especially those in the Latin Americas and Asia-Pacific), determining the best solutions (33 per cent), integrating new software with existing systems (32 per cent), determining ROI (29 per cent), and achieving senior-level buy-in (26 per cent).

The biggest challenge for SMEs when implementing BMS is specifying requirements and time, says Sebo.

“The introduction of SAP BMS usually requires settling on a set of business rules and processes, where in many cases there is greater flexibility in existing simpler systems or manual processes,” he says.

“With fewer resources, and often key resources being responsible for multiple tasks, access to those resources at key points in the implementation can be challenging. This is where choosing an implementer experienced in your business and the product can help.”

Steps for SME success The successful SME will take meaningful action across four fronts, the study concluded, with technology deeply embedded across all of them: 1. Adopt a global mindset, whether preparing to grow in to new markets or defend its home turf from international competitors. This requires changes in technology, culture, and strategy.

2. Focus on transformation, with a holistic view of change across the enterprise and strategy, including technology. For many firms, transformation is essential not just to growth but survival.

3. Deal with human factors of skills, hiring, and culture, which touch on nearly every part of the business. Technology offers some important ways to manage and optimise global people issues.

4. Plan for innovation and differentiation, keys to reaching the empowered customers and rising markets that define the new global economy. The winners will be those who stand out in the world of competitors.

Mobility is on the rise The promise of better customer service and improved product and service development are the key reasons why SMEs have, or would, consider mobility.

In the Asia-Pacific region, 60 per cent of SMEs

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expect that mobile will be widely used in their firms in three years, compared with 54 per cent of global respondents. Retail leads the pack, with companies in the sector expecting to see the biggest increase in mobile adoption.

For SMEs looking to mobility, O’Brien says it’s about finding tools that don’t require a significant mobile device management solution.

“For the smaller, common tasks they’re interested in, such as purchase order approvals or request approvals, are there any applications on the SAP Store, for instance, that are available to link directly in to web services, or do they have to go through the Sybase Unwired Platform?”

Challenges that arise from mobile are mainly human factors connected to both customers and employees.

Security and privacy issues, along with the proliferation of platforms and devices, are the biggest challenges, according to the study (both 34 per cent). Although mobile culture is continuing to grow rapidly around the world, almost one-third of SMEs face difficulties encouraging employees to use mobile technology and solutions.

SAP and SMEs SAP wasn’t specifically mentioned in the study, however O’Brien stated that when he speaks to SAP SME clients, the biggest concern remains cost.

“It’s changed from ‘how can I save cost’ – there’s not a lot of scope left for anyone trying to cut any more cost out – into ‘how can I get more out of what I’m already spending’,” he says.

This means ensuring SMEs update their systems using Enhancement Packs regularly, so they don’t have all the costs associated with upgrade projects.

Recently, SAP has been speaking with partners about new licensing models, which will be much more aligned to the structures and processes of an SME than the current models are.

“The changes would allow consulting companies to pull together a solution and really sell an SAP softwareas-a-service type product. It won’t be the traditional SaaS, but it will give them a lot more flexibility to use a tier one system without necessarily getting stuck in traditional tier one contractual obligations,” says O’Brien.

The reality, O’Brien added, is that the saturation in the Australian SAP tier one market has often forced SMEs into the background. However, this may be changing very soon.

“Given that there’s been limited growth for all of those big players over the foreseeable future, the SMEs will probably be seeing more love over the coming years, which will be a positive thing for them,” he says.

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Bright sparks AGL chief information officer Owen Coppage has led the organisation’s technology framework through an extraordinary transformation over the last seven years, with the company becoming a leading global example of what the utilities industry can achieve using SAP and tapping into the increasing tsunami of data. He shared the journey with Freya Purnell.

AGL’s transformative journey with SAP began back in 2007, when the company commenced a program to consolidate all its customer information into a single SAP environment. The four-year Project Phoenix saw three million customer accounts transferred from legacy systems to the SAP system, which included CRM IS-U as the billing engine, XI and BW on a Microsoft platform. At the time, it was – and still is – the largest utility billing system in SAP on Microsoft.

Project Phoenix resulted in considerable operating expense savings, including a reduction in the ratio of bad debts to revenue by a third over the period 2009 to 2012, and a reduction in its number of overdue invoices.

However, most importantly it positioned AGL for the future.

“We were looking to the future of being a very capable competitor in the energy market. We wanted to be in the top quartile of the competition, and SAP was a very

important component of that,” Coppage says.

AGL completed this consolidation phase in 2010, and since then, has focused on maturing its SAP capability and fine-tuning processes.

“That was the simple things like getting bills out on time, making sure that we are delivering on the promise that we make to our customers, and to have that SAP environment operating at what I consider to be a worldclass level of performance,” Coppage says. “We have certainly achieved that.”

Having reached the point where AGL’s SAP environment and competitiveness were meeting market expectations, it was time to move to the next level. Project Spectrum, completed in 2012, involved moving 22,000 commercial and industrial (C&I) customer accounts onto the same SAP instance as its consumer market. It was a unique move in the utilities market.

“It simply recognises the convergence of our processes and that the data you’re dealing with in the consumer and the C&I market is just getting a little closer, as a result of smart meters being introduced into the consumer market,” Coppage says.

Project Spectrum resulted in a reduction in the time required to bill all C&I customers from 10 days to a single day.

“So it’s quite a step change in capability and how we can better engage with our market,” Coppage says.

Betting on HANA The rapidly increasing number of smart meters in Victoria

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SAP LEADERS Owen Coppage

and South Australia meant that AGL was being inundated with more data, which needed to be more effectively analysed, in the most part to provide better information to its trading and forecasting business.

The obvious SAP solution for this challenge was inmemory platform HANA, but it was still quite early days for the technology. Having completed a proof of concept to determine whether it could deliver value and set some benchmarks, AGL purchased HANA, and together with SAP and partner Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), implemented the platform over a 14-month period using an Agile methodology.

“From our merchant energy business, we identified approximately 92 use cases, and broke that up into 14 sprints and delivered these over time,” Coppage says.

One of the issues was the shifting sands of the HANA platform itself – still at that point undergoing regular revisions.

“It would be fair to say it was quite challenging – it was new technology, not a whole lot of resource available that understood that technology, so the partnership and way that we worked with TCS, SAP and our internal business people from merchant energy really made that successful.”

The Agile approach has also become a standard choice within AGL’s delivery methodologies, and employed for other projects.

“Of course, Agile isn’t necessarily any cheaper, and it’s tougher on the organisation as a whole, because there’s no real contingency within the schedule, you’re doing things at a much faster pace, and it requires usually the best people from the business to be involved through those sprints,” Coppage says.

Data driving utilities further The utilities sector is often highlighted as a prime beneficiary for the benefits of merging and analysing different data domains. AGL is not only using big data to inform its forecasting business, but to help customers better manage their energy usage.

HANA was implemented at AGL as part of an overall data intelligence program, which included smart metering analytics and the development of My AGL IQ, a consumer-facing energy usage benchmarking tool.

AGL had to decide whether to buy or build this capability, but the option closest to the company’s requirements would only cater for customers with a certain type of meter.

“When you’re dealing with the consumer market, it was really important to us that AGL was seen to be providing

a competitive experience that covered the whole market,” he says.

Together with Accenture and using SAP technology, AGL developed My AGL IQ, which caters for gas, electricity and solar customers across all states.

Combining existing AGL customer data with information provided by the customer though an online Home Profile, My AGL IQ places customers into a cohort of similar households within a defined geographic region. The application also brings in weather data from Weatherzone to overlay on the customer’s profile.

Having the tool run on an in-memory platform means customers can not only compare their usage with similar consumers, but can also look at how they have used their energy over different time periods, from 24 hours up to a year. Combined with the weather data, consumers can see how temperature fluctuations and seasonal changes affect their energy demand profile.

Coppage says HANA has been a critical piece of technology within AGL’s suite.

“We might not have used it in a way that everybody thought we should use it, but we’ve used it in a way that creates a competitive advantage for us. We want to improve productivity, drive out cost, and create new capability that we can apply to other parts of our business – that’s all part of the HANA story.

“You always face the choice about buying or building, and this is one of those things where you should build.

The analytics capability needs to sit within our business, to support our understanding of how we operate in this market against our other competitors.”

Next on the agenda for AGL’s SAP program are projects for the merchant energy business, looking at how to bring to market new services, and expose more data and information for better and faster decision-making.

“Each one of those things is probably not big in its own right, but they’re incremental and they add to our competitive posture in the market,” Coppage says.

An example is the introduction of flexible billing, which would enable customers to move to monthly billing and choose online the due date for their bill.

Sticking close to SAP Throughout this journey, AGL has fostered its relationship with SAP by being part of the Global SAP Customer Advisory Council for Utilities, for which it holds the position of co-chair. As a major player in a highly competitive deregulated energy market, AGL can help to set the future agenda and influence SAP’s solutions on

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SAP LEADERS

Owen Coppage

utilities on a global scale.

This close relationship has allowed them to stay ahead of the market in implementing new technologies, such as NetWeaver Gateway, which is playing a key role in AGL’s newly implemented digital channel platform.

“That’s a relatively new piece of technology, and we are using Gateway in a way that SAP hasn’t quite thought about. Their original reference architecture for our whole digital channel platform came out of a piece of work that we did within the Customer Advisory Council and alongside the key SAP architects,” Coppage says.

As well as the relationship with SAP, internal relationships have also been key to Coppage’s success as CIO of AGL. In particular, he works closely with the group general managers of the retail and merchant energy businesses.

“I need to be absolutely alongside [the head of retail], because all of the things he wants to do invariably need to be delivered using some form of the technology that we already have. He’s not really successful without me, I’m not really successful without him,” Coppage says.

“The merchant energy side of our business is just as

important but in a slightly different way. The other important element is the relationship with the head of people and culture – that goes to the internal capability of our business, and IT as a function working hand in glove with the people function.”

Having achieved a leading position through its business transformation program, Coppage says AGL’s guiding principle for application decisions is starting from a ‘why not SAP?’ standpoint.

“We’ve really followed a pragmatic approach and that’s about simplification and reuse,” he says. “We’re always, as part of our discovery phase through building up a scope of design, looking to reuse what we already have in the SAP environment.”

And this approach has certainly paid off.

“I’d be quite comfortable in saying we are two years ahead of our competitors in that market,” Coppage says.

“When I sit on that customer council, on which there are 20 members from across the world, and we’re sharing ideas and plans about what we have completed and what we’re doing, it’s clear to me that we are well-positioned.”

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RETAIL

Powering the retail wars Remember a time when the most advanced piece of technology in the retail industry was the cash register? Big data, analytics and real-time are the new playthings of retail magnates, and as a result the rules of the industry have been completely rewritten. Eleanor Reader reports.

In 2013 retailers are using data generated from RFID tags, mobile devices, GPS-enabled tablets, web transactions and embedded sensors to learn more about their customers than ever before. Add SAP HANA real-time capabilities to that mix and you have an industry that will, quite simply, never be the same again.

SAP introduced HANA to the retail technology fray in October 2012 with a new solution based on NetWeaver Cloud, SAP Precision Retailing. The cloudbased application uses the consumer’s location, social profile, needs and the time at which they are conducting their transactions to generate relevant content (including discounts and special deals) designed to get that particular consumer to make the purchases the retailer desires.

The extreme edge of retail Capgemini is the latest SAP partner in the retail space to take advantage of what it refers to as the ‘extreme’ capabilities of HANA. The company has run with this theme and created Extreme Applications for Retail, built on SAP’s in-memory HANA platform.

The IT services supplier is no stranger to the opportunities presented when big data, analytics and retail come together.

In a video released on 18 June 2013, Capgemini India’s VP, business information management, Venkat Iyler, explains that it’s about connecting the dots between existing customer data with other customer data that’s available – such as consumer behaviour, buying patterns and social media analysis – to be able to gain a 360-degree view of the customer.

“There is a science behind it. It’s based on your buying

patterns, it’s based on your behaviour, not just in that store but over all your behaviours across websites or social media channels or what your friends could have bought,” Iyler says.

“So there’s a whole bunch of data that’s being collected, analysed and offered to you in real-time, which is what makes it very specific to your needs.”

He adds that these capabilities, in conjunction with using big data to combat the $37 billion lost to retailers in fraud and to manage competitor pricing, are making some retailers quite formidable.

Extreme Applications for Retail are pre-built and prepackaged, incorporating Capgemini’s intellectual property (IP) in a core data model, analytics, and predictive algorithms so retailers can “buy, not build”.

The application includes all the usual suspects: intuitive dashboards, mobile integration, real-time analytical information, and instant insight into detailed data.

“When we designed these applications, we asked ourselves, ‘What could we change and improve for retailers if we could – at any point in their business processes – launch a very complex calculation on their data and have the answer in a second?’” says Capgemini’s VP of retail, Mohit Jain.

“With Extreme Applications for Retail, we want to unlock extreme capabilities, like the unlimited ability to exploit volumes of enterprise data along with external data sources to get insights on decisions that need to be made immediately – right when sales teams are in front of customers in the stores, right at the moment customers are navigating the store’s online shop.”

Jain highlighted three business modules included in the

technology

RETAIL

“We are not tied to any technical constraints coming from SAP BW or SAP ERP, which is important considering we want to integrate our customer’s data in a truly business-oriented way .”

Mohit Jain, Capgemini

first release of Extreme Application for Retail: 1. M arket Basket Analysis module, which will take into account buying patterns to analyse in real time, as transactions happen in the stores, such as which articles are purchased together.

2. N ext Best Action module, that will allow, in real time, personalised purchase or promotion recommendations for a specific customer identified on any interaction channel.

3. M arkdown Management module, which will use current and past sales trends to determine the best promotion strategy so that the state of the inventory at the end of the season is optimal from a profitability point of view.

Capgemini is currently in discussions with Australian customers about potential pilot projects. The company didn’t name names, but did say the applications can benefit retailers from smaller national operators to large, global players.

“Harnessing the wealth of information available at retailers’ fingertips has been very challenging, and most of them have had little choice but to implement crosssell and retention strategies that are static, with limited efficiency, considering predictions are based on historical purchase behaviors and are updated very infrequently – on a monthly basis, for example,” Jain says.

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SAP and Capgemini have forged a strong, strategic partnership over the past 20 years. But how do these applications differ from SAP’s retail industry solutions?

Jain says that the main differentiator is that Extreme Applications for Retail are packaged products with periodic new releases that can support other, non-SAP back-end systems.

“We are not tied to any technical constraints coming from SAP BW or SAP ERP, which is important considering we want to truly integrate our customer’s data in a business-oriented way, whether their data is included in SAP or non-SAP applications,” he says.

For the Market Basket Analysis module, differentiators include the fact that it’s a native SAP HANA application and includes stock data. The Next Best Action module is different because it’s a combined application for clientele and customer-targeted promotions that can be used for smartphone apps, email campaigns, the web store, and store clerk apps (for supporting customer advice).

The real hero of the applications, though, is HANA – which has been the driver of one of Capgemini’s key growth initiatives since 2011.

“Because we believe the capabilities of the SAP HANA platforms are really game-changing, we want to bring the value of these capabilities to all data and all retailers, whether or not they have a pre-installed SAP landscape,” Jain says.

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CAREERS

TRAINING

The death of the training room?

SAP’s Duncan Williamson looks at how cloud and mobility will drive a radical shift in learning technology, offering huge gains in IT education.

When I first started working in the corporate world, workforce training involved traditional instructor-led classes with textbooks and poster boards. Everyone had to be in the training at the same time and the material was standardised throughout the company. What worked 20 years ago, and even five years ago, is now just a part of what training can look like in our social, mobile and networked business environment.

Thanks to cloud computing and mobile technology, teaching and learning processes are changing dramatically to fit the way people work today.

Modern corporate learning challenges Learning is a complex process, and despite what our school teachers wanted us to believe, it isn’t always fun. That’s why training organisations are developing new types of training programs – programs that are engaging, relevant and convenient and deliver immediate as well as long-term rewards.

Training organisations know that if they can engage employees in productive training, there will be a strong benefit to their bottom line. US companies alone made investments of more than $156 billion in employee learning in 2011. In addition, every dollar spent on training yields an approximate 15 per cent gain in productivity. Still, a growing number of companies cite an IT skills gap as negatively impacting productivity, indicating more work needs to be done.

Learning with cloud and mobile technology Some of the new gains in IT education are coming in the form of cloud- and mobile-based learning. These offer greater flexibility for busy employees, with round-the-clock access to courses from any location, no buying or installing of software or hardware, and a large space to store data that makes it easier for workers to actively engage in training.

Significant improvements in technology, explosive growth in smartphone adoption, the lowering total cost of ownership, and the emergence of strong cloud- and mobile-based learning tools, as well as success stories from early adopters, make this an opportune time for any company to add cloud- and mobilebased learning strategies to the mix.

Studies show flexible learning options pay off According to a 2011 survey of US companies by Unisfair, 60 per cent of respondents said they plan to increase spending on ‘virtual events and environments’, and 42 per cent of the companies surveyed use virtual environments for employee training. Additionally, nearly 70 per cent of the respondents in a recent survey by E-Learning 24/7 cited mobile learning as an essential component for their learning management system (LMS) platforms.

SAP has experienced this through projects involving cloud

and mobile technology in the SAP Learn Now mobile app, SAP eLearning, Virtual Live Classrooms, and SAP E-Academy. Of particular significance in this area has been SAP Learning Hub, our cloud offering which lets companies give their workforce 24x7 access to the latest training materials for all SAP solutions.

These mobile and online courses complement tried-andtested classroom-based training, allowing users to improve or maintain their skills by building online and mobile learning into their schedules. From my own personal experiences in learning, I can tell you that having this flexibility to determine what, where and when you want to learn is incredibly helpful.

It also significantly lowers the overall cost of learning, with the opportunity cost being much lower, if not zero.

Future of learning technology Looking to the future, we see a couple of trends taking shape. While still very popular, the growth rate of eLearning is slowing (9.2 per cent), while the growth rate for mobile learning is speeding up (22.7 per cent). In addition, we predict an increase of contextual and social learning – programs that will, for example, integrate just-in-time learning and education into applications as people use them, bringing the power of education and understanding to employees at each phase of an application’s lifecycle, not just at the time of implementation.

Changes in learning technology will reflect the way the IT landscape is shifting. Organisations now widely use social tools, video platforms, and knowledge-sharing as a major part of their training infrastructure, as they do in other areas of their business. Additionally, out-of-the-box learning techniques such as gamification are emerging in training and are drastically transforming training models.

Gamification refers to the application of game design and game mechanics to non-game scenarios. The introduction of gaming concepts into business, and in particular learning, can drive commitment, engagement and enthusiasm from employees, improving retention and performance. I’m a huge fan of this trend since it gives workers a great understanding of solutions while also being fun, and believe it will continue to be adopted as a training strategy in more businesses. This active approach to learning will continue to shape corporate education, and companies adopting next-generation learning methods stand to reap significant benefits.

Although gamified programs and mobile and cloud-based learning will not completely replace traditional classroom education any time soon, these methods can have an instant impact on companies by providing training in flexible, easy-touse formats for today’s dynamic workforce.

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Duncan Williamson is vice president and head of education, SAP Asia Pacific Japan.

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case study

NSW Trade & Investment

Payroll migration to cloud deemed a success It’s the largest deployment of Business By Design in the world, SAP Australia’s first cloud platform win in the NSW public sector and has piqued the interest of techies the world over. The results are finally in for phase one of NSW Trade & Investment’s much talked-about cloud ERP consolidation project, with the finance, procurement and payroll component going live successfully. Eleanor Reader reports.

The NSW Department of Trade and Investment, Regional Infrastructure and Services (known as NSW Trade & Investment) drives sustainable economic growth in NSW. It unites the key NSW Government economic development agencies, offices and authorities to provide maximum benefit to the state.

In 2011 the NSW state government restructured its agencies, forming NSW Trade & Investment, which comprises the former Industry and Investment NSW, Office of Water, Marine Parks, Crown Lands, Soil Conservation Service, Food Authority, Arts NSW, Destination NSW and the Office of Liquor, Gaming and Racing.

Because of this consolidation, the department was running six different finance systems, six different payroll systems and six different human resources and document record management systems that did not integrate and had no common accounts, which resulted in inefficiencies and operational risk.

In late April 2012, NSW Trade & Investment tendered for a cloud-based enterprise resource planning (ERP) platform.

SAP and The CN Group won the deal with a joint proposal, signing a three-year, $14.5 million agreement with the department in July 2012.

“We were the first ByDesign partner in Australia, so we’re probably the most mature when it comes to skill-set in ByDesign and SAP’s cloud offerings sitting on that platform,” says Brian Pereira, CEO, The CN Group.

CN Group also has considerable HR/payroll experience,

and was one of SAP’s first and largest local hosting Platformas-a-Service partners.

“We’ve been involved with both NSW government and the private sector in Australia delivering similar complexities of solutions very successfully, so we had all three skills in one place,” he says.

The project was planned in three stages that involved the transition and consolidation of NSW Trade & Investment’s legacy ERP system including 16 agencies – totalling over 8500 employees – onto a single, consolidated SAP cloud platform.

The solution Business ByDesign was used in conjunction with a cloudenabled, Enterprise SAP platform to deliver a full cloud solution to NSW Trade & Investment.

NSW Trade & Investment chose this model as it allowed them to cater for the complexities that existed in its payroll solution.

“At the time of Business ByDesign’s initial release there was no HR/payroll solution that would actually suit their needs,” says Pereira.

CN Group had developed a solution for NSW government with the appropriate award structures and pay rates that met Trade & Investment’s requirements.

The solution is on CN Group’s platform in their commercial grade data centre and delivered as a software-as-a-service offering, in conjunction with a finance and procurement solution delivered through Business ByDesign.

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The implementation Phase one was delivered on time and on budget, successfully migrating 10 NSW Trade & Investment agencies across to the new hosted SAP payroll and human resources platform.

The project began in September, with finance going live in early December and HR/payroll in February.

“The whole project was started and completed in a three to four month timeframe, which for an SAP project in the public sector, I think is the first ever in Australia,” says Pereira.

According to Mark Paterson AO, director-general at NSW Trade & Investment, phase one of the project will provide a payback on the investment inside 12 months. The savings target for the project was set at $12.5 million.

“It was, without question, the most cost-effective, most efficient choice that we could have made to deliver those services and it has been done extremely cost-effectively with high levels of security and certainty,” he told a Budget Estimates Committee hearing.

The joint team, comprising representatives of SAP, CN Group and NSW Trade & Investment, worked very well together, contributing to the smooth implementation. There were project leaders from all three sides and a separate project team just focusing on HR and payroll.

“We had all the right skills at the right time and teams working to deliver value quickly – it was like conducting an orchestra,” says Pereira.

He credits SAP’s methodology, CN Group’s combined know-how and NSW Trade & Investment’s enthusiasm and commitment to get the solution in as quickly as possible as contributing factors to the project coming in within time and on budget.

David Kennedy, chief information officer, NSW Trade & Investment said in a recent press release: “The department is charged with driving innovation and productivity in key sectors of the NSW economy, and moving to a software-as-a-service model illustrates how NSW Trade & Investment is embracing new technology and leading by example.

“Working with Consulting Networks [CN Group’s consulting business] on the implementation of the hosted payroll has gone exceptionally well. It’s a credit to the project team who ensured a seamless transition,” he added.

Challenges The timeframe of the project and a lack of available skills presented some challenges for NSW Trade & Investment, SAP and CN Group during phase one of the implementation.

“I think the short timeframe of this project made it even more of a challenge and that required a lot of effort from both teams to actually make it work,” says Pereira.

Because the solution was so innovative, there was also a lack of suitable skills available locally.

“We were heavily reliant on SAP’s capability to reach out globally and touch people who knew how the solution worked to complement our team,” Pereira says.

Pereira also added that data conversion, data manipulation

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case study

NSW Trade & Investment

and data transfer and transformation are always challenging on any project, and this one was no different.

From the department’s perspective, the change management process required with an implementation like this will continue to present some work for NSW Trade & Investment, says Paterson.

“It is a very significant change process because we have not bought a finance system, we have not bought a payroll system and we have not bought a human resources system, we have bought a service,” says Paterson.

“The change process means that we need to change the way we do things inside the department. It means that individuals need to change their approach and any change management process is a challenging task.”

Business benefits NSW Trade & Investment’s first payroll run following the rollout saw all staff paid on time and correctly.

More than 5000 users have been migrated across to date, with an additional 3500 to be migrated this quarter.

According to Pereira, there are three major long-term business benefits for the department.

The first is scalability; thanks to their software-as-a-service model, NSW Trade & Investment only pays for what it uses.

“If their total end-game is to support 10,000 employees at the Department of Trade & Investment, they don’t have to make a commitment for that 10,000 upfront,” says Pereira.

The department will also benefit from having the cloud solution accessible from any device – from desktop PCs to mobile iOS and Android devices – offering users the

opportunity to be productive anywhere; and in maintaining security.

“Having the security aspects of your solution handled from one place with people who do this on a daily basis means that you don’t have to worry about it,” Pereira says. “If your remit is, as Trade & Investment’s is, to provide services to the public, you don’t have to have a huge team of IT staff sorting out your IT platforms.”

What to expect from phase two and three Phase two and three of the project are currently underway, and will basically be taking the phase one project and rolling it out to other departments.

Phase two will see the cultural institutions such as NSW Art Gallery, the State Library, Museum of Sydney and the Powerhouse Museum, migrated to the new platform, and is planned for go-live in October.

Phase three will roll out the solution to Local Land Services, which is a combination of all of the Catchment Management Authorities, all the Livestock Health and Pest Authorities and the extension services from the Department of Primary Industries. It is planned to commence on 1 January 2014.

The next two phases will also see the addition of some extra functionality that NSW Trade & Investment requested, but which couldn’t be included in the phase one timeline.

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NSW Trade and Investment CIO David Kennedy agreed to comment for the case study, however his comments were not approved in time for publication. We will be publishing his insights from phase one on our website, so stay tuned.

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TRAINING

Online courses

3912: Aug 2013

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