Twelfth Malaysia Plan is the country’s follow-through initiative post-2020 development plan dubbed Vision 2020 and the 11th Malaysia Plan. The five-year strategy is directed towards the transformation of Malaysia into an inclusive, prosperous, and sustainable nation.
In recent years, Malaysia has accelerated its digitalisation efforts for both the public and private sectors to keep pace with the fast-evolving digital economy. Correspondingly, German software multinational SAP has also reinforced its growth strategy in the country following the appointment of Managing Director Kok Cheong Hong in 2019.
Under Hong’s leadership, SAP has continued to be at the forefront of Malaysia’s massive digital adoption supporting government initiatives and creating solutions for businesses and the workforce of the country. During the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, SAP Malaysia has already recognised the need to support SMEs and the future workforce in line with the nation’s economic recovery and digital transformation plans. The tech giant has expressed support to the MyDIGITAL initiative launched in 2021 to propel Malaysia’s digital vision by 2030 underpinned by the “Cloud-First Strategy” among others.
This year, SAP forges ahead on the momentum of the company’s business strategy in Malaysia attuned with the country’s latest national development agenda Twelfth Malaysia Plan (12MP). Focused on shared prosperity, the initiative covers three key dimensions such as economic empowerment, environmental sustainability, and social re-engineering.
SAP Backing Twelfth Malaysia Plan
Globally, SAP has been paving the way for organisations of all sizes across industries to transform into sustainable, intelligent enterprises leveraging the software company’s comprehensive portfolio of cloud-based solutions. SAP has introduced several industry-specific solutions– such as SAP S/4HANA for Waste and Recycling, SAP Intelligent Returns Management, and SAP Responsible Design and Production– to partners and customers to drive sustainability at scale and support a circular economy.
In Malaysia, SAP MD Hong expressed the company’s sustainability measures that align with 12MP. He highlighted that the initiative’s three pillars–social, environmental, and economic activities and performance– are interconnected and have an impact on each. He stated:
“Our efforts focus on helping to create a sustainable future for Malaysia, our customers, and society at large. For us, it is crucial to be a responsible business that holistically manages our performance and steers our business in an integrated way – connecting financial and non-financial performance.”
One of the goals of the prosperity initiative is to make Malaysia carbon neutral by 2050 by introducing carbon pricing and carbon tax. Similarly, SAP has earlier announced that the company is raising its ambition of achieving net-zero emissions across its entire value chain by 2030, 20 years earlier than its original 2050 timeline.
Hong explained that enterprises can embed end-to-end sustainability across their operations through digital solutions–from product designing to tracking materials’ lifecycle– that support the principles of the circular economy such as eliminating waste and pollution, circulating products and materials, and regenerating nature.
“SAP’s data-driven approach lets businesses embed sustainability comprehensively to gain actionable insights across the value chain to enable companies to transition to low-carbon business processes,” Hong added. “We enable businesses to proactively identify the carbon impact at the beginning of the product lifecycle instead of reactively after a product has been produced.
