During his appointment last August 2022 as Managing Director of SAP in the Philippines, Abrahams said that his focus as the new leader of the tech company is to address the most pressing challenges that the customers, partners, and communities face. Specifically, he mentioned driving business transformation in the cloud, building a resilient supply chain, and working towards a sustainable future.

Two months into the new year, Abrahams shared insights on the Philippines’ industry trends for 2023. Out of the eight industry trends that encompass business, technical, and social developments mentioned by Saueressig, Abrahams iterated some that are also evident in the country.

SAP Philippines: On 2023 Industry Trends

“These are the industry trends that we believe will share the world of business this 2023 and beyond. On our part, SAP remains committed to helping organizations transform into fully digital, resilient, and sustainable enterprises, enabled with data visibility into their business functions and processes to make the most critical strategic and operating decisions,” Abrahams said. 

Circular Economy

In the country, the government and private organizations are championing ESG initiatives in their operations to contribute to a circular economy. 

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the national government regulatory agency charged with supervision over the corporate sector, the capital market participants, and the securities and investment instruments market, had earlier released the Sustainability Reporting Guidelines for Publicly-Listed Companies to promote achieving global sustainability targets such as UNSDGs and national programs such as Ambisyon 2040. In addition, the Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) Act of 2022 (Republic Act no 11898) has also been passed to require large enterprises to recover and manage their plastic packaging waste.

SAP Philippines MD commented:

“A circular economy fosters new business prospects while preserving the environment. The advantages of implementing circular business models will significantly outweigh the existing investments that organizations must invest in.”

“Recovery is a subset of the more significant idea of EPR. This law emphasizes the obligation of organizations to ensure that the resources and waste that is generated can be recycled or decomposed sustainably instead of ending up in landfills,” he added.

Resilient Supply Networks

According to Saueressig, building a resilient supply chain means creating real-time transparency through close collaboration and data exchange among trading partners in an open yet secured digital network. Abrahams shared a similar insight on the impact of having a resilient supply chain for business operations as well as on decarbonization. He stressed:

“As disruptions still happen across various industries, digitalizing supply chains help organizations ensure that they provide consumers consistently with the goods and services they need and reduce their carbon emissions.” 

Business Transformation

Abrahams said that leveraging technology to allow for a business transformation is crucial to the adoption of ESG initiatives. AC Energy (ACEN) and Globe Group are some of the Philippine organizations that have use case scenarios wherein SAP solutions were utilized.

ACEN deployed SAP S/4HANA, which encouraged its workforce to learn new technology, and embraced a digital platform that streamlined business processes, enhanced corporate governance, reduced cybersecurity risks, and lessened paper wastage. Globe Telecom migrated to SAP S/4HANA to overcome fragmented processes and drive automation for data-driven decision making. The telco also deployed SAP Fiori for better user experience and insight gathering. 

The post SAP Philippines Shares 2023 Industry Trends  appeared first on InsideSAP Asia.

In a recent virtual event titled CTO Conversations held by SAP, Juergen Mueller, Chief Technology Officer and Member of the Executive Board at SAP, and Kalyan Kumar, Corporate CTO and Head of Ecosystems at HCL Technologies, explored the two companies’ partnership and discussed how they work together to accelerate digital transformation for businesses amidst the COVID-19 pandemic. Mueller believes SAP’s extensive partner ecosystem is key to customer success. He added that SAP partners play an important role in meeting companies’ needs for flexibility and simplicity as they take on huge transformation programs and begin to scale their IT.

For nearly two decades now, HCL Technologies has served as SAP’s strategic partner on a global scale. Based in Noida, India, the IT firm is an SAP service and license resell partner that collaborates with the German multinational on cutting-edge technologies such as SAP Leonardo, Blockchain, and SAP S4/HANA. With a team of consultants in the Americas, Africa, Europe, Australia and New Zealand (ANZ), and the Asia-Pacific (APAC) region, HCL Technologies intends to help organisations across a wide range of industries in their journey to becoming intelligent enterprises.

During the online discussion, Kumar talked about the company’s commitment to transforming joint customers, partners, and businesses today. He shared:

“If you look at HCL, we’ve got a very multifaceted relationship with SAP, and that’s why it’s called an ecosystem partner. It’s not strategic. It’s beyond that. It’s about creating a 360-degree ecosystem within ourselves and within the marketplace.”

This month, HCL Technologies also announced that it has been named a Leader in the IDC MarketScape: Worldwide Supply Chain SAP Ecosystems Services 2021 Vendor Assessment. The recognition reflects the Indian firm’s capabilities in utilising SAP technologies to empower organisations in accelerating supply chain management (SCM) transformation, improving productivity, enhancing the customer experience, and increasing the global visibility of inventory and financial impacts.

Driving Business Transformation with HCL and SAP

In March 2021, HCL Technologies first expressed its support for RISE with SAP, the German tech giant’s Business Transformation as a Service (BTaaS) cloud offering. Aside from its modern integration and data architecture services, the company aims to enhance the customer journey through transformation and consulting services for SAP Factory+ offerings that facilitate S/4HANA migrations.

“I’m a big believer and I’ve been one of the wildest proponents of RISE with SAP. I strongly believe SAP should control the destiny of where the cloud goes from their perspective,” Kumar emphasised during CTO Conversations.

Leveraging the RISE with SAP offering, HCL and SAP’s alliance takes a step further in exploring go-to-market strategies to assist customers in advancing their cloud capabilities while maintaining scale and security. With an expanded partnership, the two companies aim to provide clients with best-in-class solutions, services, and experiences as they embark on their digital transformation journeys.

“We bet big time on the ecosystem as SAP. So that is just a few aspects of how we help customers and companies get toward the digital age much faster, in a much more controlled way, and in a transformation as a service,” Mueller said.

“I’m grateful to meet partners like HCL Technologies who we’ve been working together with for more than 2 decades. It is this close collaboration that makes the difference when supporting our customers with their transition to the cloud,” Mueller wrote in a LinkedIn post.

The post HCL and SAP Partnership Expands to Accelerate Business Transformation appeared first on InsideSAP Asia.

Founded in 2011, Tune Protect Group provides a variety of specialised non-life insurance coverage options that are tailored to the demands of customers today. The company has built its global footprint in over 60 countries through its general insurance and reinsurance subsidiaries in Malaysia, as well as an associate business in Thailand and a joint venture in the United Arab Emirates.

During last year’s virtual launch of Home Easy and Home Shield — a house owner and householder insurance — Tune Protect Malaysia Chief Executive Officer William Foo stated that the 5.8 million residential properties in the country represent a large portion of the existing market and potential for its products. In response to this optimistic view of the business, Foo referred to the EY 2020 Asia-Pacific Insurance Outlook study, which noted that 94{aa282f308afcc222aaa21b0478c79e01a8fedd01972e2180867097bd93930f22} of millennials in Malaysia plan to buy a house within the next five years. He said that this reflects a significant opportunity for Tune Protect Malaysia to grow its customer base.

Aiming to expand revenue through affinity and digital partnerships, Tune Protect Group CEO Rohit Chandrasekharan Nambiar shared that the Group currently focuses on three key corporate pillars: health, lifestyle, and small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). In order to achieve maximum productivity and cost savings, Nambiar said that technology is a critical enabler to realise automation that would expedite their operational processes.

With the help of Serole Technologies, an SAP preferred partner in the insurance space, Tune Protect Group implemented SAP S/4HANA Insurance system to provide a platform that will help accommodate client demands. The project is aimed at minimising downtime and delivering faster turnaround time through the following solutions:

• SAP Single Sign-On to centralise and simplify the way users log on to applications and systems.
• SAP Access Control to help streamline the management and validation of user access to on-prem apps and data.
• SAP Process Orchestration, a tool for service-oriented processes integration.
• SAP Analytics Cloud which combines business intelligence (BI), augmented and predictive analytics, and planning capabilities into a unified platform in the cloud.
• and SAP Application Studio.

Tune Protect Drives Business Growth with SAP Insurance on S/4HANA

According to Prasanta Roy, Chief Technology Officer at Tune Protect Group, all parties agreed to deliver the project remotely and that they considered the aspect of risk mitigation due to travel constraints imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic. He further explained:

“During the selection process, SAP, and their System Integrator partner, Serole, demonstrated the commitment which is in line with our vision, timelines, as well as the knowledge and experience that they have had with other insurers sharing similar business model as ours.”

Tune Protect Group plans to integrate an end-to-end ERP system with built-in technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), and advanced analytics in order to benefit from its data. According to the company, the centralised and comprehensive insurance core system is also intended to support all of Tune Protect Group’s businesses, including its 17 offices across Malaysia, which employ more than 300 people.

“With this new SAP system in place, our goal is to have an integrated centralised platform that helps us attain better cohesion on products, sales, operations, financials and reporting,” CEO Nambiar added.

Meanwhile, SAP Malaysia Managing Director Kok Cheong Hong, who has consistently emphasised the need for digitalisation and cloud adoption, believes Tune Protect Group is already an ‘intelligent enterprise’ with a solid foundation to reimagine the business, as well as create new market and revenue means. Following its implementation of SAP S/4HANA Insurance system, Hong added that the company will be able to maximise the value of its data assets, converting them into meaningful insights that will help its workforce operate more efficiently. 

“SAP is humbled to be part of Tune Protect’s ambitious digital transformation program and heartened that the Group continues to ‘innovate with purpose’,” Hong expressed.

The post SAP Insurance on S/4HANA Backs Tune Protect Group’s Transformation appeared first on InsideSAP Asia.

The vast majority of organisations that have implemented a GRC or access control solution are not seeing the value they should from their GRC investment.

Why is This?

By their nature, GRC solutions are very complex and technical solutions. They have been developed to analyse transaction codes, authorization objects and fields available in an SAP user’s ‘user-buffer’. Many of these solutions were developed from a technical audit perspective with very little consideration for its use by business users.

Generally, the more complex the solution, the less uptake from business users. Business users are at full capacity performing their daily jobs, and therefore asking them to perform onerous or cumbersome compliance tasks with complex solutions often leads to business resistance. Business users will keep pushing these activities back onto IT, with the end result being that the GRC solution will be used predominantly as a back-end solution by the security and GRC teams, with minimal business involvement.

It is important to note that access risk is business risk. An organisation cannot manage their access risk effectively without significant business involvement. Therefore, organisations need to ensure that they implement a business-centric GRC solution if they are serious about managing their SAP access risk.

What Is Business-Centric GRC?

Business-centric GRC is putting the business user at the centre of the process. It is all about enhancing business-accountability of access risk through a business-first approach to all SAP security and GRC activities.

By enhancing business accountability of risk, an organisation will become more risk-aware and more effective in their risk management activities. This can be illustrated by using the audit principle covering the three lines of defence.

The first line of defence is your business or operational user. The second line of defence is your risk and compliance department, and the third line of defence is the audit and assurance department.

The first line of defence should be the strongest. These are people who have been in your organisation for 15 – 20 years and understand your business better than anyone else. Yet, this is often the organisation’s weakest line of defence – not because users do not know the risks or the processes involved, but because the current solutions and processes do not lend themselves for the business users to take ownership and become accountable.

As mentioned, to facilitate business buy-in, it is important that the solution is business-centric. Business-centric GRC converts technical GRC language into business-friendly language, allowing the business users to not only understand the risks in their area of responsibility, but also facilitate quicker decision making. More informed and quicker decisions reduce the business downtime of SAP users waiting for SAP access requests to be approved and assigned.

Soterion is a leader in business-centric GRC solutions. All features and functionality has been developed from the perspective of the business user. Soterion also recommends that the access risk management processes are practical for the business users to execute/perform. 

To illustrate this, consider the User Access Review process. This is where business users review their users’ SAP access to determine whether this access is still relevant for their job function. The process typically takes the reviewers many hours to perform the review. In addition to the effort required by the business to carry out the user access review, it is often the case that the effort does not justify the value of the exercise.

Challenges such as non-descriptive SAP role names make it difficult for the reviewers to know exactly what access/functionality the role users are entitled to. Soterion enables the User Access Review to be performed by business process, thus eliminating any deficiencies in the SAP role naming convention. Business users are able to perform a more effective review that has a desirable business outcome. A review will take far less time and will have a significant cost savings to the organisation.

Enhancing business accountability of access risk with the use of a business-centric GRC solution will improve the organisation’s overall risk awareness and their ability to manage their risk. Every organisation should therefore be looking to improve their first line of defence by embracing elements of business-centric GRC.

For more information, please contact us on info@soterion.com

Soterion SOD Risk Trends Graph

Soterion SOD Risk Detail Business-Friendly Reporting

Soterion SAP Access Change Request Simulation

Soterion Dashboard

This article is sponsored by Soterion

The post Business-Centric GRC – The Future of Effective Access Risk Management appeared first on InsideSAP Asia.

Globe’s continuous business growth, innovation, and social responsibility can be attributed to the robust transformation of the telecom’s internal processes in the area of finance, supply chain, and employee experience. The collaborative partnership with SAP, which dates back to 1999, has enabled Globe to achieve a purpose-led digital transformation journey harnessing various SAP cloud applications to replace several legacy systems and automate manual processes.

Winning against two equally competent contenders the National University of Singapore and Singapore Power Ltd., Globe was named The Game Changer in the inaugural SAP Best Run Awards 2021 for SEA. Globe migrated to SAP HANA DB and SAP S/4HANA as well as implemented SAP Ariba, SAP Concur, SAP IBP, SAP Fieldglass, SAP Jam, and additional modules in SAP S/4HANA and SAP Fiori to enable its internal systems and processes to cope with the growing transactions and complex business requirements. The digital event recognised Globe and other leading organisations that successfully transformed their businesses and championed innovation amidst a disruptive economy by leveraging SAP products and services.

SAP Philippines Managing Director Edler Panlilio commended Globe’s business transformation efforts in his letter to Globe President and CEO Ernest Cu. He said:

“Globe’s powerful story of transformation, agility, and resilience will continue to inspire and influence businesses across Southeast Asia, and we can’t wait to see what other opportunities await you next year. I look forward to building on our partnership, and am confident we can innovate and excel together as a stronger Southeast Asia.” 

Transforming with SAP Cloud-Based Solutions

With the company’s rapid business growth, Globe faced several challenges in some of its internal business processes such as the limited availability of accurate and timely data; inefficient and non-value-adding repetitive processes in the sourcing, procurement, and invoice payment processing areas; poor employee experience from manual processes in reimbursement, liquidation, and revolving fund operational expenses; and stock shortage due to non-system assisted forecasting and planning, among others.

Adapting the SDA principle (Simple, Digital, Agile) principle and harnessing SAP cloud-based solutions, Globe was able to streamline processes and embrace a re-architectured scalable system landscape that propelled its transformation journey. 

“Our migration resulted in savings of 14,200 hours and 99.99{aa282f308afcc222aaa21b0478c79e01a8fedd01972e2180867097bd93930f22} uptime. More importantly, it allowed us to not drop the ball on our enterprise-wide financial tracking and allowed full work-from-home when the pandemic surprised the whole world,” said Globe Chief Finance Officer Rizza Maniego-Eala.

Here are some of the outstanding results achieved by Globe:

• Decommissioned 7 legacy systems into SAP as the digital core: 5 on-premise procurement systems, a travel request web application, and an inventory system.
• Minimised management of infrastructure due to implementation of cloud-based Software-as-a-Service platforms.
• 57{aa282f308afcc222aaa21b0478c79e01a8fedd01972e2180867097bd93930f22} reduced processing time was achieved with Ariba Invoice Management 
• 250{aa282f308afcc222aaa21b0478c79e01a8fedd01972e2180867097bd93930f22} increase of auto invoice utilisation with 30-60 days SLA improvement with SAP Fieldglass 
• ~33k hours/year saved across different groups with an average of 48,000/year expense reports with Concur (Pre-Quarantine Period) and 88{aa282f308afcc222aaa21b0478c79e01a8fedd01972e2180867097bd93930f22} of employees were satisfied with Concur Travel and Expense
• Simplified asset acquisition, valuation, and reporting through new asset accounting in SAP S/4HANA 
• Better inventory visibility, targeted 70{aa282f308afcc222aaa21b0478c79e01a8fedd01972e2180867097bd93930f22} improved processing time with SAP Fiori
• eSignature Management’s environmental savings- 78 trees, 270k litres of water, 26k kg of carbon, and 1.8k kg of waste

“S/4HANA migration paved the way for the Globe Finance Transformation Journey. Along with implementing quick wins and standard solutions such as Investment Management, the business process reviews conducted during the implementation helped us identify other opportunities where we can do further automation to achieve Touchless Finance Operations. Globe Telecom’s implementation of S/4HANA was very timely because we were able to sustain our operations even during a 100{aa282f308afcc222aaa21b0478c79e01a8fedd01972e2180867097bd93930f22} work-from-home set-up without any major hiccups.” said Menchit Briones, Finance and Control Division Head.

The post SAP Cloud-Based Solutions Enable Globe’s Business Transformation appeared first on InsideSAP Asia.

Almost a month after the appointment of former SAP APJ President Scott Russell as an SAP Executive Board member and Customer Success Lead to succeed Adaire Fox-Martin, SAP has officially announced the Asia Pacific and Japan’s most anticipated leader.  SAP veteran Paul Marriott has been appointed as SAP APJ President to further propel the software giant’s remarkable growth in the region.

Mariott’s appointment came at an opportune time when SAP launched its banner product in 2021– RISE with SAP. His extensive expertise in the industry that spans for over two decades, including the last 13 years spent in SAP APJ holding various leadership roles, earned him the position to steer SAP through its RISE with SAP journey in Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Korea, the Indian subcontinent and Southeast Asia.

Ushering Marriott to his new role, Russell said:

“SAP has a heritage of over 30 years in Asia, helping over 46,000 enterprises big and small to be successful. I am confident that Paul’s tenure with customers in APJ, as well as his relentless focus on delivering customer value and outcomes, will help enterprises accelerate their next phase of digitisation.”

RISE with SAP to Seize Cloud Business in APJ

Debuted on January 27, 2021,  RISE with SAP had already contributed to SAP’s cloud performance in the fourth quarter of 2020, coming from the strong take-up among its pilot customers. The new holistic business transformation offering promises to offer a simplified pathway for customers to transition their mission-critical systems to the cloud and transform their business under one subscription fee.

In SAP’s 2020 Full-Year Financial Performance report, the APJ region registered an 18{aa282f308afcc222aaa21b0478c79e01a8fedd01972e2180867097bd93930f22} (IFRS) increase in cloud revenue and 21{aa282f308afcc222aaa21b0478c79e01a8fedd01972e2180867097bd93930f22} (non-IFRS at constant currencies) with Japan, South Korea, and Singapore leading the growth. Moreover, Japan, Australia, and India also showed robust performance in software licenses’ revenue.

Sharing his insights about the Business Transformation as a Service offering, the newly appointed SAP APJ President Marriott said:

“Agile organisations that are able to adapt their business processes will thrive. Through RISE with SAP, customers will be able to transform into Intelligent Enterprises in the cloud and take the lead in their industry.”

SAP veteran Brian Duffy was also recently appointed to lead RISE with SAP business unit as president of Cloud. Both Duffy and Marriott will directly report to Scott Russell.

“SAP is the ERP pioneer that customers have trusted for the last 50 years to help them run efficiently and adapt to ever-changing market conditions. RISE with SAP is more than a solution offering; it is a pathway for our customers to transition to and transform in the cloud at a whole new scale,” Russell said.

Focus on Purpose, People, and Partnerships

Marriott has led SAP in the APJ region as Chief Operating Officer, Vice President of Enterprise Information & Middleware, Vice President of SAP HANA, Senior Vice President of Database & Analytics, and Regional President of Digital Core. Today, as SAP’s President of Customer Success in the region, he will lead the organisation to drive development and growth across sales, services, and SAP ecosystem through purpose, people, and partnerships.

“Asia’s next decade of growth will be driven by sustainable cloud growth, anchored by our purpose, people and partnerships, we aim to bring development, growth, and prosperity to the Asia Pacific,” Marriott stressed.

Aside from helping enterprises in APJ achieve their top and bottom line, the new SAP APJ President also aims to drive environmental and sustainable initiatives in the region, which is the world’s major contributor of carbon emissions footprint estimated at 17 billion metric tons per year. He said:

“We aim to onboard the top organizations through 2021 to our Climate 21 initiative in APJ – ‘21 in 21’, to help reduce their carbon footprint.”

Speaking about SAP’s advocacy on diversity and inclusion, Marriott shared:

“We will continue to embrace cultural, gender and generational diversity. SAP will provide an environment for female leaders to succeed, nurture young talent, and promote a culture of lifelong learning to build the workforce of tomorrow in Asia now.”

Based in Singapore, Marriott has been volunteering in the Rugby Coaching team of Tanglin Rugby Club (TRC),  a sport that teaches teamwork, trust, integrity, and respect, for over 15 years now.

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