Over the past decade, one of the most prominent objectives of every organisation across the globe was digital transformation. When the pandemic hit, the necessity of this transformation became even more evident. With no signs of it going away anytime soon, organisations need to rethink how they can reinvent the way the business works. Between key challenges, business model revamps and hyper-digitisation, Scott Russell, executive board member, SAP, sheds light on what companies should brace for the next decade.
Digital transformation is increasingly becoming commonplace for businesses of all shapes and sizes, what are the biggest challenges that they are facing?
Our customers’ calls for digital transformation have never been louder. Remote working and supply chain resilience have been some of the most forceful factors in accelerating the economy into a state of hyper-digitisation. Even the most reluctant businesses have come online, while others have accelerated their digitalisation projects. Estimates suggest the industry has condensed five to 10 years of digitalisation into one.
The most common thinking and challenges that our customers face in an ever-changing environment is how they can take advantage of the latest technologies to make their supply chain more robust, improve the quality of their products, hire the best talent and optimise the experience of their customers.
Regardless of industry or geography, this is the common thread in our customer conversations. These are the customer requirements that SAP endeavours to address each day.
What type of support do business leaders need today from technology players?
They need what we call a “voice of the customer” – a digital champion that will listen carefully to the challenges they are facing, make the clear case for how and where support is needed and deliver it. I like to say, I am obsessed with customer lifetime value. A technology provider cannot simply hand over software like a bag full of groceries and wish the customer a good day. It’s a lifetime commitment to ensuring the customer’s success, especially now that we are witnessing a significant paradigm shift to the cloud.
Globally at SAP we have 100,000 people geared up to serve our customers, and we are focused on being a local partner that understands the nuances of specific countries and industries. This means putting global knowledge, skills, and insights in local hands and providing easy access to the best of what SAP has to offer.
Do your conversations with SMEs and big enterprises differ when it comes to their transformation goals?
Every company wants to succeed in their industry – to be competitive, to find that edge, and serve their customers to the best of their ability. That applies to the corner market all the way up to the enormous enterprises. But in conversations with the customers, I take a lot of details into consideration.
Where are they in their digital transformation? What specific challenges in their industry facing? And, for an SME, what are their areas for growth? In the midmarket, the CEO is the CMO, CFO, CIO – they are very astute. They understand the moving parts, how tech will help them, and they want the simplicity and ease of consumption. Our approach is, if you can serve the midmarket with simplicity, it’s the very foundation of what you can do in the upper end, because it’s easy to scale and grow because our customers want the same thing. We treat the midmarket as precious customers no matter their size.
Additionally, in the midmarket we are truly passionate about our partners growth. This is especially valuable for SMEs, who rely on our ecosystem of trusted partners to help them drive these digital initiatives. We can offer a vibrant ecosystem with partners who support our ambitions of crafting game-changing customer outcomes.
If every company moves to the cloud, how can they differentiate themselves from their competitors?
Every company will eventually adopt the Cloud, but they won’t all do it the same way. The journey a company chooses can be a key differentiator against competitors. For example, there are specific challenges depending on industries and where companies are starting from in their journeys. These can be security concerns, complex existing architectures, multiple providers and varying contractual obligations, legacy system investment and amortisations and so on. To maintain that competitive edge, a company should partner with a provider that goes beyond offering software-as-a-service. They need to find a partner that delivers what we call business-transformation-as-a-service, which can help eliminate the most common barriers to the cloud and enable a holistic business transformation.
Through RISE with SAP, we can now take customers by the hand and guide them through the transformation, no matter what their starting point is. But it is more than just a move to the cloud. Nearly all of our customers are in it for the transformation – taking this as an opportunity to reassess their business processes and optimise them in a way that helps them future proof their business.
Process intelligence and data mining are poised to be the next big thing for enterprises. Can you explain how RISE with SAP can help empower companies in their digital journey?
RISE with SAP is a single offering that provides a path to the Intelligent Enterprise for every customer, independent of starting point or complexity. It offers customers at all stages of digital transformation a completely new way to redesign processes for better business outcomes. Offered on a subscription basis, it features one responsible party for service-level agreement, operations, and support. The holistic approach will help companies truly transform their business, going beyond a technical migration to the cloud to enable continual transformation. Along with our partner ecosystem, SAP will deliver fast time to value, and flexibility to thrive amid change — all without high up-front investments
As announced at our SAPPHIRE NOW event, we’re taking RISE even further with RISE with SAP transformation packages for specific industries. RISE provides business-transformation-as-a-service with five initial industry-tailored cloud solutions for retail, consumer products, automotive, utilities and industrial machinery and components.
RISE with SAP for these industries comes with flexible offerings to address specific business needs: cloud applications supporting best practices, business process intelligence to analyse and optimise business processes, and services to design and execute transformation programs. This extension of our RISE with SAP offering will bring together the industry solutions and services needed for true business transformation.
