�鶹ԭ�� Sapphire Archives - �鶹ԭ�� Australia & New Zealand News Center

Vital Truths About Business Digitalisation From High-Performers In ANZ

Susan Galer — Mon, 06 Sep 2021 04:24:26 +0000

Having experienced the equivalent of 10 years of digital change in the past 18 months or so, organisations are addressing the realities of transformation as digitalisation becomes the business norm.

Leaders from two high-performing organisations in ANZ recently shared their experiences with digitalisation during a hosted by Des Fisher, innovation principal at �鶹ԭ�� ANZ. Here is a sampling of their far-ranging thoughts on the sustainable business realities behind innovating on cloud-based digital platforms.

Digitalisation is a mindset and tech transformation

For Australian-based Stockland, digitalisation involved transforming people’s mindsets along with systems company-wide. As one of the largest diversified real estate groups in Australia, the company owns, develops, and manages a large portfolio of retail town centres, workplace and logistics assets, residential communities, and retirement living villages. They’ve replaced over 100 disparate, legacy software systems with �鶹ԭ��’s integrated platform, including and , as well as embedded AI and robotics.

“We now have a single source of the truth,” said Tiernan O’Rourke, CFO at Stockland. “I’m absolutely convinced that in time we’ll look back and say that was one of the best things we did in the 70-year history of the company…our digitization journey shows that unless you’re on the journey you’re going to struggle in business, not only in Australia, but globally.”

Stockland began by defining digitalisation on the company’s own terms. The digital platform was designed to strike a balance between achieving three objectives: organisational risk, governance, and business growth.

“We first looked at what digitisation meant to us and came at it by putting the company on the core �鶹ԭ�� platform,” said O’Rourke. “We’re a tactile industry of property, bricks, and mortar. Getting people’s minds away from physical to digital was…one of the biggest obstacles to overcome.”

Digital backbone drives innovation

Oil and gas provider OMV New Zealand recently won an �鶹ԭ�� global Innovation Award for its groundbreaking digitalisation that included digital twins and augmented reality (AR) in onshore and offshore inspections. Replacing paper-heavy processes with digitalised and integrated workflows based on the latest mobile solutions and wearable technologies will help OMV improve decision-making, performance, and efficiencies in inspections and maintenance. Its integrated workflow management relies on �鶹ԭ�� Plant Maintenance (�鶹ԭ�� S/4 HANA), , , and HoloLens 2.

“T�� use of automation and AI-driven technologies for creating intelligent digital twins is a key enabler for global scalability, and accelerates creating the digital backbone of the company during digital transformation. Enhancing this technology with an augmented reality experience including mark-up annotations, provides a solid basis for data insights, data-driven decision making, and performance optimization,” said Farid Akbari, functional lead for digital transformation at OMV New Zealand. “This innovation project will change the way we are working, and enables us to position ourselves among digital frontrunners within our industry.”

Digital platforms are core to supplier relationships

Acknowledging that no business does business alone, Tiernan said that Stockland’s deep supplier relationship management strategy is foundational to customer centricity.

“If you don’t partner with best-in-breed, like-minded companies to help deliver premium services to customers you won’t win,” he said. “We have 14 percent market share in residential business…because we evaluate every step of the customer journey, including supplier choice…you can’t know your suppliers unless you have deep relationships and are collaborating with them at a very granular level…Collaboration is an absolute threshold issue in business today.”

Close gap between DX and business realities

When asked about some of the biggest DX challenges, Akbari discussed the gap between innovation aspirations and reality. He pointed out that while everyone wants simplicity, getting there means answering difficult questions.

“We asked ourselves if we had the right organisation in place to achieve digital maturity,” he recalled. “Other questions were about managing resistance to change, and how to actively support the change management process with tools that were changing the way we work…We asked how to build and retain skills over time as innovations like blockchain, IoT, and cloud computing continue [to emerge].”

Akbari also warned organisations not to neglect core details such as infrastructure capabilities, technology integration, and resultant business process changes.

“Often the business comes up with a good idea, but we’re not ready yet,” he said. “For example, AR had to be integrated into the environment…You also have to consider operational maturity…As a global gas and oil company, we have different maturity levels of all assets, and have to map where we are for each asset, and how we will achieve that automation level. “

Sustainability is much more than climate change

While ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) demands tend to emphasize climate change, O’Rourke urged companies to consider all aspects of sustainability, including diversity.

“Everyone talks about climate change, but that’s just about the environment. To do business successfully…you’re going to have to be very balanced in the E, S, and G of ESG,” he said. “Everyone is focused on net zero carbon, and rightly so. But we can’t do that in isolation…We have to jump on [behaviour change] proactively to get suppliers to work with us in a way allows us to operate effectively. On the diversity side, business has been playing lip service for so long, and needs to get serious about focusing on this change.”

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[moved to media coverage]How technology is boosting aged-care outcomes at ARP

�鶹ԭ�� News — Mon, 23 Aug 2021 00:20:33 +0000

We often hear that developing a strategy for digital transformation comes down to how it’s ultimately going to benefit customers. This makes digital innovation in health care an incredibly high-stakes endeavour, as our ‘customers’ are the men, women and children that we treat and care for every day.

This ethos underpins our digital strategy at (ARP), as a longstanding provider of retirement accommodation and aged-care services in Southern Queensland.

�鶹ԭ�� and Health Metric’s joint solution has totally transformed our finance management processes. Our staff can now more quickly and easily find and share relevant information, and we’ve seen a tangible rise in the time our staff can spend with residents as a result.

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ANZ Leaders That Invested Early In Digital Supply Chains Had Tremendous Results

Susan Galer — Sun, 15 Aug 2021 23:32:41 +0000

Growing impatient with the onslaught of undistinguishable post-pandemic supply chain disruption stories, I perked up after watching a replay from the recent broadcast that promised to reveal the “winning formula” for resilience and sustainability.

While these descriptors weren’t immediately unique, the conversation was. I caught up with one of the experts, Aidan Brecknell, who leads the digital supply chain team at �鶹ԭ�� ANZ, for his thoughts on what leading organisations are experiencing right now.

Resilient supply chains pivot with incredible speed

Having worked closely with supply chain leaders in ANZ, Brecknell said that organisations were redefining supply chain resilience for sustainable business.

“T�� pandemic unleashed new challenges far beyond the capabilities of traditional lean supply chains that focused on executing repeatable processes at scale,” he said. “Leaders understand that they need to address a new set of challenges like being able to turn on a dime to find different sources for raw materials, or even design and produce entirely new products. These organizations are modeling different scenarios, building in contingency plans, and executing on those.”

During the broadcast, Brecknell and Martin Barkman, senior vice president and global head of digital supply chain marketing and solutions at �鶹ԭ��, shared the “winning formula” of modern supply chains. Unlike their lean predecessors, resilient supply chains are both customer and employee-centric, built on relationships with sustainable suppliers, and based on product sustainability across the entire lifecycle of an item.

Digitalisation transforms more than supply chains

The pandemic forced companies to understand and act on the difference between digitisation and digitalisation. Having data in digital form has long been the norm. Digitalisation means organizations can both capture intelligent data and change business processes including how supply chains operate. To be clear, this is not taking the same processes and making them digital. This is about creating completely new ways of managing supply chains by connecting information across applications company-wide and partners. During the broadcast, Brecknell summed it up like this:

“Supply chains have been pushed and tested to their limits, and they’ve become so reliant particularly locally on their ecosystem suppliers to access raw materials. It became evident quickly of the importance to digitalize processes within the supply chains, as well as the supply network itself,” he said. “In Australia and New Zealand, we saw some tremendous examples of where customers had invested ahead of the curve, and were able to transition quickly because of that agility in their supply chain.”

One global industrial materials manufacturer digitalised supply chain processes to centrally manage over 200 inventory processes across 60 sites. The objective was to improve forecast accuracy, for on-time delivery, and greater profitability. Another �鶹ԭ�� customer, an energy and natural resources company, digitalised operations to better track freight emissions, providing real-time metrics for compliance with carbon neutral goals.

Interconnected data for supply chain resilience

Brecknell said there’s been significant customer uptake of �鶹ԭ��’s Business Network solution that brings together information from sourcing and production through finance, transportation logistics and delivery, including the entire product life cycle. With immediate, connected insights, companies can more profitably sense and respond to disruptions in a strategic, synchronised manner. Organisations can create more individualised, high-quality products in response to changing customer demands. They can prove their sustainability commitment as reflected in their choice of suppliers and operations. They can even attract and keep top talent who increasingly expect employer goals and actions to mirror personal sustainability values.

“T�� allows organisations to connect all of their business partners on one central platform,” said Brecknell. “With complete visibility into the entire supply chain, companies can collaborate with suppliers to source, track, and trace materials faster for shorter product delivery time frames as well.”

As Barkman said during the broadcast, “by capturing all the information about how the supply chain is operating, we preserve the digital thread of the supply chain. We have the information of how a product is being used, how assets are performing, and feed that back not just to the supply chain and manufacturing, but all the way to how products are designed.”

Making a business case for supply chain networks

The elephant in the room is that interconnected business networks aren’t the reality in most organisations. Brecknell agreed that while connecting all this data and changing mindsets about how business operates is a huge undertaking, it’s well worth it.

“Organisations are getting on board with supply chain resiliency and sustainability because it’s good for business. With an extended collaborative network, organisations can mitigate supply chain risk even in the face of unexpected disruption,” said Brecknell. “If an organisation really wants to build resiliency and sustainability into supply chain, they have to have the data, and that has to be aligned across the entire supply chain.”

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Our Decade of Delivery for Climate

Thomas Saueressig — Tue, 14 Jul 2020 03:51:01 +0000

Although the impact of COVID-19 will reduce global emissions in 2020, we clearly remain on an unsustainable path, as .

I’ve said it before, but it can’t be said too often: We cannot continue to live and work as we are doing today. To truly accelerate the pace of change that is needed to make an immediate and positive impact on a sustainable path, we must partner on all levels and across organizations, industries, and regions. We need tangible action now.

There are several positive aspects to consider. The energy technologies that the world needs to cope with the environmental challenges are widely available in the developed countries, and their costs continue to fall. These include producing renewable wind and solar power, bio fuels, and potentially carbon capture and storage and hydrogen power.

Local governments incentivise technologies that use natural resources wisely or have programs in place to encourage organizations to change their behaviour through emissions trading schemes or carbon taxes. In addition, there are many non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that continue to push for a change in our mindset. Like other companies, �鶹ԭ�� engages in many of these initiatives because we are in the unique position to take a role as an orchestrator in enterprise networks. �鶹ԭ�� joined the World Economic Forum’s Global Plastic Action Partnership community, which provides tools, solutions, and insights for organizations to eliminate or at least reduce waste by 2030. We are also a member of the Ellen MacArthur Foundation to help companies enhance their resource productivity and realise a circular economy. These initiatives and partnerships are crucial as one company or organisation alone cannot address these global challenges.

When it comes to climate change, we have a convenient measurable performance unit in the form of CO₂ to drive and track performance at a global, national, and industrial levels. It is encouraging to see that we have the technologies to act, the support from local and global authorities, and a unit of measurement to know how we are doing. However, the central challenge is that we all need to move faster, together. We must move faster and at much greater scale than any industrial transition in the history of civilisation in order to stop global warming and other environmental degradation and pollution, which already has a measurable impact across ecosystems as diverse as the Arctic, rain forests, and oceans.

I strongly believe that technology is an enabler, but people make it happen. To go faster, I see two essential levers, both of which �鶹ԭ�� can play a pivotal role in supporting.

The first, and hopefully a very powerful lever, is an economic incentive for companies. Together with our customers, we can accelerate action through the financial instrument of carbon pricing. With the that there are currently more than 50 carbon pricing schemes being implemented or scheduled, this is a new business reality for the 2020s. Carbon pricing is complex. While governments and regulators are responsible for setting carbon pricing, it is in our DNA to build software that helps companies measure, account, and take the right action in dynamic and heterogeneous regulatory environments.

The second lever is choice both for consumers and companies. We are inevitably going to see more CO₂ labelling for goods and services in society, creating more transparency and, consequently, awareness. Consumers will demand more transparency into the CO₂ footprint associated with products and services they consume in the future – in the same way that we have had more visibility in recent years into calorie content of the food we consume. This will be true for both individual consumer choice, as well as companies buying through their supply chains. I also believe that there will be a mindset shift resulting in a willingness to pay a premium for the low or lowest carbon alternative. This is already a reality in some markets for renewable energy. Preferential low carbon purchasing behaviour will shape markets and company strategies. Carbon pricing will help effectively allocate capital to the most cost-effective options to de-carbonise, and the choice of customers will define who not only survives but thrives in a carbon constrained and sustainable business world. Every organisation and every individual needs to move into the same direction.

�鶹ԭ�� provides a starting point to help companies preparing for a change driven by incentive and choice, with the Climate 21 initiative in 2020. I couldn’t be happier to announce �鶹ԭ�� Product Carbon Footprint Analytics, the first solution available to the market. Our customer Doehler is the first to go live.

Embedding an enterprise-wide approach to CO₂ will help businesses gain transparency and awareness, provide an economic incentive to companies to act now, and can be a starting point for action at scale. Adding a for measuring a company’s performance symbolises our ability to change for the better of our global community. It is a decade of delivery, and �鶹ԭ�� is ready to support.

Thomas Saueressig is a member of the Executive Board of �鶹ԭ�� SE for �鶹ԭ�� Product Engineering.

This article first appeared on the Global �鶹ԭ�� News Centre.

Join our second forum in the virtual series on August 6^th, and hear from Industry experts on the risk and opportunity impact our core industries now face.

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Innovation at the Vertical Edge: New Business Models for a Digital Economy

Peter Maier — Fri, 10 Jul 2020 03:00:42 +0000

All industries feature well established business models — that’s just a more sophisticated way to say they have “proven ways to make money.” These business models are supported by integrated end-to-end processes modelled on best practices in enterprise systems.

We at �鶹ԭ�� know this because we have developed the best practices over decades with our customers in all industries. And we drive continuous innovation to deliver next practices that make business processes more efficient and transparent.

So far so good. Or is it?

Startup Spirit

I have observed a few trends affecting many industries that give me pause. Startups aggressively investigate how they can give incumbents a hard time by competing on different terms. They are not burdened by a customer base with expectations, there is no legacy — or treasure — of business relationships and commitments. There is nothing to break, nothing to protect.

Innovative big players are tuning into this spirit and looking along their value chains to directly engage with the customers of their customers, or to capture the revenue and margin their suppliers make today. Digital technologies and abundant – but still hardly exploited – data are the key ingredients to power the next wave of innovation and disruption for business models, business best practices, and the way businesses operate.

Crisis as a Catalyst

I have viewed the current crisis initially from the humanitarian perspective; after all, the pictures we have seen are hard to digest. But there is also the gigantic economic impact, and we expect a mix of V, L, and U shapes for the recovery and restart. But we can also observe how very large enterprise super tankers turn on a dime, innovate in days and weeks, and break established rules and habits.

New industries are shaping a public health sector that will look different as research institutes, life science companies, healthcare providers, technology companies, and the public sector work on keeping the world population safe and healthy. I have the opportunity to see this firsthand. �鶹ԭ�� plays an instrumental role in developing a COVID-19 tracking app for Germany and beyond in close collaboration with public health institutions (Robert Koch Institute), government, and tech companies, including T-Systems, Google, and Apple (for the smartphone APIs). It is quite an experience to see how tech giants and government fall into a collaborative innovation mode rather quickly.

New Business Models, New Speed of Innovation?

Many �鶹ԭ�� customers in their industries feel a similar sense of urgency as business practices are redefined by market pressure and by digital technologies that enable new, data-driven business models – innovative ways to generate revenue streams from knowledge, data, and customer insights.

Over decades, �鶹ԭ�� has earned a reputation for being possibly the most reliable partner to solve the most difficult business problems with best practice solutions that service many customers. But when fast-paced innovation is a critical success factor not all innovative solutions can be added into the large applications of our intelligent suite. The upgrade effort would be too high to allow for a rapid adoption of innovations. What’s more, the clear path to the cloud for enterprise software disrupts our partners’ business model of adding new capabilities to �鶹ԭ�� Business Suite by modifying and extending code in our joint customers’ systems.

The obvious consequence is that we need a new innovation model and extension model for our intelligent suite and our business network.

Industry Cloud: A New Response to a New Challenge

Our new industry cloud is an open yet integrated innovation space for �鶹ԭ��, partners, and customers, which provides both best-practice business processes and advanced digital technologies to create next business practices and innovate at the vertical edge.

The processes and data domains of the intelligent suite are a key asset for our customers. Many developer years and significant brainpower have gone into creating business best practices for all industries that take care of the business essentials. We make those capabilities available through open APIs and expose the business process and domain models.

This open integration layer gives us, our partners, and customers a structured access to build next practice solutions that optimise the end-to-end processes supporting our customers’ current business models with “next practices.”

The industry cloud is also the innovation space for experiment and exploration. All digital technologies of the Business Technology Platform are available, including machine learning, the Internet of Things (IoT), analytics, and blockchain to drive innovation at the “vertical edge” — trying out ideas that may fail or enable our customers’ breakthrough to develop successful data-driven or ecosystem-driven business models.

The industry cloud also makes development of new solutions easy, with business services that provide common functionality like currency conversion but also subscription management, billing, and other services that create a simple and unified user and customer experience. For more information, see the .

Starting the New Ecosystem for Innovation

To jump-start the wide adoption of the industry cloud as an innovation space, we have selected an initial set of four industries that span a wide spectrum of processes and business priorities.

companies are currently balancing their classical, sophisticated business models with the disruptive forces of new mobility. are managing the transition to renewable energies and the new opportunities from a redefined relationship with their commercial and retail customers. businesses have long been at the leading edge of digital innovation, and is catching up rapidly with digital twins of buildings and capital assets for intelligent operations and new service offerings (read the partnership announcement we made with Honeywell last week).

Industry 4.Now

Many industries are looking forward to capitalising on the promise of integration operational data from the shop floor with the data coming from business IT. This convergence benefits both the manufacturers of vehicles, industrial machinery, or buildings as well as the industries that use this equipment to make chemicals or mill products, operate buildings, drive logistics services, or run mining and oil and gas operations.

Our Industry 4.Now initiative is an integral part of the industry cloud strategy and we are already on our way.

Beginning of a Journey

We are starting a multi-year journey to write a new chapter how we drive innovation with our partners for the core business of our customers in their industries.

More industries will join this initiative every quarter and I look forward to the innovations and to the vibrant ecosystem of customers and partners that the industry cloud will foster and shape.

Peter Maier is president of Industries and Customer Advisory at �鶹ԭ��.

This article first appeared on the Global �鶹ԭ�� Newsroom.

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�鶹ԭ�� CEO Christian Klein: When People and Technology Meet, Amazing Things Happen

Susan Galer — Wed, 01 Jul 2020 00:38:17 +0000

�鶹ԭ�� CEO Christian Klein kicked off �鶹ԭ��PHIRE NOW Reimagined with a sweeping vision for a safer, healthier, and more prosperous future driven by the intelligent enterprise.

“I’m asking you and all of us to become resilient, sustainable, and profitable companies,” he said. “Together, as intelligent enterprises, we can turn the world’s biggest challenges into our greatest opportunities. The recent pandemic is a crisis that will drastically impact societies and business for months and probably years. Digital transformation is no longer an option, but a must.”

Klein brilliantly brought the intelligent enterprise to life, spotlighting �鶹ԭ��’s newly launched Climate 21 program for sustainable and profitable business, as well as the company’s . Joined by customers and experts during the virtual broadcast, Klein reaffirmed �鶹ԭ��’s commitment to customer success, as well as partnerships with customers like Porsche for business adaptability and growth.

�鶹ԭ��PHIRE NOW Reimagined is a digital program of livestreamed and on-demand broadcast channels featuring senior �鶹ԭ�� executives, customers, solution demonstrations, and experts in 14 languages across regions worldwide.

Building a More Sustainable, Profitable Future

, Klein shared how companies using technology to adapt supply chains and automate for new digital business revenue streams were more competitive before the pandemic. They were also emerging more resilient after the crisis. Pointing out that increasingly companies were measured on both their financial performance and contribution to society, Klein saw business and society at a turning point.

“Just like we cannot ignore the pandemic… we cannot ignore climate change and the major contributions of enterprises,” he said. “Together, we can lead this change and become intelligent enterprises, to make sustainability profitable and profitability sustainable. With our new Climate 21 program, we will support all of our customers to become sustainable companies by building analytical and transactional capabilities [to track greenhouse gas emissions] into our core business applications. It is a huge step in taking climate action.”

�鶹ԭ�� as Trusted Partner

While Klein acknowledged that �鶹ԭ��’s more than 400,000 customers did not question the company’s ability to generate business outcomes, he said what they needed was a trusted partner to help in their digital transformation. He explained how the �鶹ԭ�� solution portfolio reflected the intelligent enterprise vision, based on integration, innovation, agility, and speed. This included how the integrated connected end-to-end business processes — finance, human experience management (HXM), customer experience, spend management, and supply chain — for more informed decisions.

“No other company is more experienced than �鶹ԭ�� to transform your business, because we have been doing this for almost 50 years,” he said. “Our product strategy has one goal: to be the innovative and trusted partner for your holistic business transformation.”

Klein showcased how the open with embedded analytics and real-time reporting was the technical foundation of the intelligent enterprise, allowing an ecosystem of partners and customers to integrate with �鶹ԭ�� and non-�鶹ԭ�� applications and data across hybrid landscapes to extend and create innovative business applications.

Industry Cloud for Vertical Differentiation

Emphasising the importance of partners, Klein explained how the industry cloud supported the development of cloud-native applications for differentiating business capabilities, powering the “fourth industrial revolution.”

“We will partner with our ecosystem to gain broad coverage across all industries… because you know which industry best practices matter most to you… Business processes and steps have many dependencies,” he said. “Only �鶹ԭ�� can bring together all this data of the many stakeholders in one business network, allowing you to manage all these dependencies in real time.”

Partnership with Porsche Drives Results

While it might seem counter intuitive to hold up the automotive industry as an innovation leader during the pandemic, Lutz Meschke, CFO of Porsche, discussed how his company’s partnership with �鶹ԭ�� was instrumental in helping both organizations usher in a new era of digitalisation.

In Porsche’s case, the innovations included electric vehicles, automated driving, new services, and digital sales channels.

“T�� pandemic showed us insistently how important it was to act with a sustainably profitable strategy… and to work with a resilient supply chain,” Meschke shared. “We see a unique opportunity to become a completely digital company… We believe in strong partnerships, like our strategic partnership with �鶹ԭ��, driving forward co-innovations and jointly delivering new solutions for our digital transformation.”

Meschke said that Porsche is putting data at the “heart of everything” for decision-making backed by . Using ��Ի��, Porsche will have one integrated reporting system across its application landscape.

Data Fuels Circular Economy

Meantime, Klein detailed �鶹ԭ��’s vision for the intelligent automotive company, taking viewers on a data-driven electric car buying and ownership experience from customised configuration through delivery and beyond. In this future, data provided an informative window into the customer’s entire driving experience, during a car’s lifetime and even after. Businesses could provide new services to customers, cities could increase road safety, and car manufacturers could make continuous improvements in a perfect rendition of the circular economy.

Amazing Intelligent Enterprise Journey

Klein closed his keynote with a heartfelt pledge of �鶹ԭ��’s commitment to its customers, and a resounding call to act.

“We want to serve you with the best possible business outcomes to help you quickly adopt and get the most value from our solutions to ensure your long-term success,” he said. “Together, we’ve embarked on the journey to become intelligence enterprises. We have come a long way already, making a significant contribution to growth while acting sustainably. Let’s show the world when people and technology meet, amazing things happen.”

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