For Datuk Seri Mustapa Mohamed, Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department (Economy), businesses must explore opportunities for digital transformation in Malaysia, as they are critical to the country’s economic recovery efforts and can help contribute to its long-term economic resilience. The MyDIGITAL plan intends to make Malaysia a technologically advanced and digitally-driven country, as well as a regional leader in the digital economy by 2030, he added.

Additionally, the digital economy is projected to contribute 22.6{aa282f308afcc222aaa21b0478c79e01a8fedd01972e2180867097bd93930f22} to Malaysia’s GDP and generate 500,000 new jobs by 2025. Cloud services were also highlighted in the MyDIGITAL program, with a focus on a ‘cloud first’ strategy at both the federal and state levels, which will help facilitate the adoption of cloud technologies in the country.

Earlier this year, SAP Malaysia Managing Director Kok Cheong Hong has already expressed support for the initiative and described it as a major “breakthrough yet realistic” digital vision. Hong believes this approach serves as a motivation for local businesses, particularly small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), to embrace dynamic consumption, establish resilient infrastructure, and utilise cloud solutions to boost efficiencies and productivity.

“Public-private plural partnerships are also important to help drive SME readiness, which in turn further encourages innovation and flywheel digitalisation effect for all concerned,” Hong remarked.

SAP Malaysia Emphasises the Need for Digitalisation among SMEs

Furthermore, Hong put the spotlight on the significance of the SME sector today as many businesses are still lagging in terms of technology use. According to the 24th Malaysia Economic Monitor: Weathering the Surge report, SMEs in the Southeast Asian nation have been underperforming both in terms of output and productivity levels when compared against peer countries. It has also been found that the COVID-19 pandemic has widened the productivity gap. With this, SAP Malaysia seeks to raise awareness for SMEs before increasing uptake on digital platforms.

“Businesses that are adopting a ‘wait and see’ attitude towards digitalisation could be left behind – and may even become irrelevant. Many solutions that were once the exclusive domain of large corporates have been scaled in capacity – and price – and are now within reach of local SMEs,” Hong stressed.

The likes of glove maker Aspen Glove Sdn Bhd and renowned spice manufacturer Baba Products Malaysia Sdn Bhd have already embarked on their digital transformation journeys towards becoming intelligent enterprises through SAP upgrade projects centered on automation and innovation to enhance productivity and cost-efficiency.

Aspen Glove’s ​​industry used to be labour-intensive but after implementing SAP solutions, it has now automated the processes end-to-end. It has selected SAP S/4HANA Cloud, Private Edition for its latest glove manufacturing plant that operates 96 production lines. On the other hand, Baba Products had migrated from its previous all-manual, paper-based operations to the SAP S/4HANA platform, which was supported by Direct Store Delivery with CRM, SAP Payroll, and SAP SuccessFactors.

“Hence, Aspen Glove is able to revolutionise the quality, customisation and speed of delivery to meet the customer demands of today,” Hong noted.

The SAP Malaysia MD further explained that businesses can become intelligent enterprises by first digitising processes where they can “do more with less”, create best-in-class customer experiences, establish sustainable supply chains, and innovate new business models and revenue streams.

The post Vision for Digitalisation and Cloud Adoption Reinforced by SAP in Malaysia appeared first on InsideSAP Asia.

The first phase of the migration managed by Singapore-based cloud computing specialist Cloud Comrade involved the implementation of SAP’s enterprise resource planning (ERP) system SAP S/4HANA on AWS, as well as SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for SAP Applications.

Ilaventhan Vijaya, Head of Finance at Baba’s Group of Companies, explained that the company considered moving to the cloud as a “strategic imperative” to support the enterprise’s future growth and customer-centricity objectives. He remarked:

“Not only did we recognise the enormous savings in IT infrastructure and manpower costs, but also the great impact of speed, scale and security on almost every aspect of our business that the cloud offered.”

Expounding on Baba Products’ decision to tap AWS Premier Consulting Partner Cloud Comrade to lead the selection, planning, and execution of the migration, Vijaya further shared:

“In Cloud Comrade, AWS and the foundation of SUSE Linux Enterprise, we found the right collaboration and platform to help us make this pivotal transition and transformation. The cutting-edge features, expertise and support during every step of this process contributed to the ROI (Return on Investment) immediately; well-positioning us to capitalise on new business opportunities.”

According to Baba Products, implementing SAP S/4HANA has helped them reduce processing time, ensure the business spends its resources on strategic growth efforts, and provide real-time decision support to end-users. Using Cloud Comrade’s Well Architected Framework solution, Baba Products was able to deploy this mission-critical application on SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for SAP Applications.

Additionally, Baba Products also employs Amazon Elastic Block Storage (Amazon EBS) to keep up with the performance demands of modern SAP workloads.

Delivering Greater Efficiencies by Moving SAP to the Cloud

Cloud Comrade, which also goes to market as an SAP specialist, moved Baba Products’ SAP Direct Store Delivery mobile app from an on-premises SAP S/4HANA ERP installation to the cloud through AWS. Commenting on the project, Andy Waroma, Co-Founder and Co-Managing Director at Cloud Comrade, said:

“Based on our experience in migration and managed services and a thorough understanding of Baba’s vision and business needs for the future, we were confident that the bespoke cloud-based framework we have developed was the right choice for the company.”

In operating as an AWS Partner Network specialist supported by SAP expertise, Cloud Comrade prioritises cloud migration at the enterprise level through technical and advanced workload capabilities. Waroma further shared:

“It is heartening and immensely fulfilling to make a significant positive impact on an already large and fast-growing organization like BABA’S within a short period of implementation. We will always be driven by and committed to enabling our clients to get the best ROI on their IT deployments.”

Additionally, Baba Products stated that adopting SAP S/4HANA on the AWS cloud has helped the business to reduce its order processing and delivery times by 50{aa282f308afcc222aaa21b0478c79e01a8fedd01972e2180867097bd93930f22}, as well as shorten its order-to-cash cycles by more than 40{aa282f308afcc222aaa21b0478c79e01a8fedd01972e2180867097bd93930f22}.

Moreover, the Malaysian enterprise — with products found in North America, Canada, Europe, South Africa, Australia, and most of Southeast Asia — also selected the end-to-end human capital management and payroll solutions offered by SAP SuccessFactors and SAP Payroll to further comply with local and regional HR regulations.

The automation capabilities of the organisation’s SAP SuccessFactors solution enabled Baba Products’ to ensure security and compliance while increasing operational efficiencies and, at the same time, saving HR staff costs and time.

The post Migrating SAP to the Cloud on AWS Improves Baba Products’ Efficiency appeared first on InsideSAP Asia.