SAP and China’s partnership remains solid and unaffected despite the bitter trade battle between the US and China as shown in the recent data gathered by Thinknum, a web platform that tracks companies websites and creates data sets measuring factors such as hiring, revenue, and foot traffic.

In Bill McDermott’s CNBC interview earlier this year, the CEO shared that SAP continues to invest in China in the same manner that China continues to invest in the German software company.

McDermott’s assertion proves to be true as shown in the data gathered by the web platform. According to the data, SAP increased its workforce in China by nearly 50{aa282f308afcc222aaa21b0478c79e01a8fedd01972e2180867097bd93930f22} from 2018 until today at a time when most major American technology companies are stepping back from production and supply chain development in the country. The data also showed that SAP reduced the total number of global job postings it had online over the same period. The numbers considered were from the 27 July 2107 to 16 July 2019.

The German tech giant’s valiant investment in China is deemed contrasting to the American technology industry strategy of slashing more than 25 percent job postings there.

On an analyst call made by Thinknum, Luka Mucic, a member of the Executive Board and Chief Financial Officer of SAP, said that SAP managed to grow cloud and software revenue in China for its prior earnings deadline. It has to be noted that the commendable revenue growth materialized at an uncertain time when companies, including Apple, are withdrawing from China and when other technology companies that are being pushed by party officials to maintain their operations in the country.

Thinknum has also covered SAP’s Software Engineers’ Job postings. In the data gathered from 16 October 2016 to 16 July 2019, the company appears to be boosting its Software Engineer all over, rising more than threefold. Job postings this year went up to 32{aa282f308afcc222aaa21b0478c79e01a8fedd01972e2180867097bd93930f22}. Over the last few years, the company’s postings have been relatively even ranging from a low of 1,800 to a high of around 3,500.

This year, in just seven months, SAP has substantially increased global job postings for Developers rising to 69{aa282f308afcc222aaa21b0478c79e01a8fedd01972e2180867097bd93930f22}. 

As of July 17, SAP is up 36{aa282f308afcc222aaa21b0478c79e01a8fedd01972e2180867097bd93930f22} with expected 1.09 a share increase of EPS as tracked by Zacks Investment Research Analysts.

Bill McDermott previously stated in the CNBC interview that SAP expects a stronger 2019, emphasizing the company’s ambitious strategy in China as SAP’s Crown Jewel. As the company’s fastest-growing market with an investment that doubles every year, China is expected to receive the German company’s support steadily as a business partner. The data shown by Thinknum aligns with that objective.

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Mental challenges of the youth have been recognized in the recent studies from Europe, the U.S., and China were a fifth of all young people between 10 and 20 years old showed mental health issues. This data aligns with the experts’ account on the alarming increase in mental health problems globally among people under the age of 20.

The most common conditions such as substance-abuse related, developmental, or behavioral, if left unrecognized or untreated, can be life-threatening. As simple as feeling down can lead to anxiety or depression, or worst, thoughts of suicide. These problems can also impair students’ ability to learn.

Like many Asian cultures, the concept of the family remains very strong in China where parents are revered for their wisdom and at the same time provide utmost support to their children. Much as a lot of support is given to the children, much is expected in return in terms of academic achievement.

In China, children are exposed to the pressure of academic excellence early in life since the Chinese school system is very competitive, focused largely on results. The competitive environment that leaves the children spending many hours of schoolwork plus the pressure to excel placed by the family and society can affect one’s mental and behavioral development.

SAP Collaborates

SAP Labs China and SAP Co-Innovation Lab in Shanghai recognize these challenges and are now working together with the Beijing-based startup MIITTECH and psychologists from Institute of Developmental Psychology at Beijing Normal University. The goal is to help teachers and parents discover developmental health problems early on so that the special needs of primary and middle school students can be better met.

Dr. Xiaoyi Fang, a Family Therapist and Director of the Institute of Developmental Psychology at Beijing Normal University said,

“We currently see three main kinds of mental health problems: learning problems, emotional problems, and social relationship problems.”

Dr. Fang added that the youth in China face new kinds of challenges in the form of bullying and Internet addiction. Dr. Fang is known to have devoted his career to mental health education in schools throughout China.

SAP Innovates

The role of MIITTECH in this pilot project financed by China’s Ministry of Education, with guidance from Dr. Fang, is to develop a solution that evaluates physiological data from schoolchildren. The cloud-based solution based on SAP Technology will be gathering data from three sources: online surveys, cognitive computer games, and wearable devices. Heart rate, skin conductance, and brainwaves will be measured by the devices.

The MIITTECH Mental Health Platform is deployed on SAP Cloud Platform, an open platform that stores data in the in-memory SAP HANA database.

Tao Feng, vice president of Technology at MIITTECH, believes that SAP is the best-fit software provider that would help them build and roll out the type of solution they specifically need. He said,

“We chose SAP HANA because it supports us in storing and analyzing large amounts of data.”

MIITTECH’s goal is to reach 5 million students in 20 of China’s provinces by the end of 2019 alongside with its plan of applying machine learning to improve survey data evaluation for teachers to address students’ needs more precisely.

“With more research, I’m convinced the technology can identify developmental problems more accurately than paper-based surveys can today,” Dr. Fang stressed.

He trusts that the solution will achieve its goal in helping teachers recognize and address developmental problems the youth are facing today.

This co-innovation project reinforces SAP’s commitment to the United Nations (UN) Global Goal #3 “Good Health and Well-Being.”

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In recent years, China’s Software Industry has evolved rapidly fostering a vigorous tech ecosystem among local players and foreign software enterprises.

According to Xie Shaofeng, Head of the Information and Software Services Division at the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, local companies adopting foreign software services, such as cloud services and software, in their effort to fast-track digitalization is one of the key contributors in the rapid development of the software industry in China.

The indisputable presence of foreign software enterprises echoed to a combined revenue of $194.6 billion in China last year as estimated by The China Industrial Control Systems Cyber Emergency Response Team, a research institute affiliated to the ministry.

At a news conference in Beijing, Xie said:

“Regardless of how the international situation changes, China’s software industry will become more open to the global community.”

He stressed that as software technologies enter a new era, welcoming the foreign software enterprises will benefit the country in tapping into its growth opportunities. According to him, globally, industrial and manufacturing companies are attaching greater importance to building up their technological presence in software.

Xie emphasized the importance of international collaboration at this critical time highlighting that China’s favorable policies, including tax cuts, apply to foreign-funded software and semiconductor companies that comply with the nation’s laws and regulations.

As a testimony to the country’s openness to international collaboration, Xie mentioned that two of the five biggest contributors to the three most-applied open-source cloud projects are Chinese companies, which emphasizes China’s contribution in the global open-source software community.

According to Chen Zuoning, Vice-President of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, international cooperation is needed now more than ever to adapt to digital trends such as the commercialization of 5G, which will reshape how software is applied to different industries. Cloud computing is also expected to play a bigger role in boosting efficiency in corporate governance and factory production.

In an earlier interview, Bill McDermott, CEO of SAP, described the Chinese market as “Jewel in the Crown for SAP”. This aligns with the company’s effort in doubling down on its presence in China.

McDermott said,

“I will not be surprised if China becomes our largest market by 2025, with local companies scrambling to upgrade their corporate management methods and factories with digital technologies.”

In a CNBC interview earlier this year, McDermott said that for decades now, China has been considered SAP’s “second home”. He shared that SAP and China have collaborative investments despite the concerns over trade relations between the USA and China citing SAP’s strategic partnership with several firms such as the AliBaba Group, partnering with Jack Ma and Daniel Zhang and the Ali Cloud.

With the rapid growth for SAP Greater China, the German tech giant continues to invest in expanding its presence in the market for small and medium-sized enterprises, building up the local talent and infrastructure in China.

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“China has been SAP’s second home for more than two decades,” said SAP chief executive officer Bill McDermott, who announced the move alongside Alibaba CEO Daniel Zhang. “Alibaba and SAP’s growing partnership expands our ability to empower digital China by building intelligent enterprises. SAP embraces the China Dream as we prepare for substantial expansion here in the years ahead.”

Established in 2009, Alibaba Cloud is China’s largest provider of public cloud services, and according to Gartner figures, the company is also among the world’s top three IaaS providers. The partnership makes S/4HANA Cloud and SAP Cloud Platform available via all top public clouds globally. As part of the agreement, SAP will continue to employ Alibaba Cloud’s technology, while Alibaba will adopt S/4HANA for its own innovation and new business model.

“We are pleased our partnership with SAP reached new heights today,” said Zhang. “The availablility of SAP’s globally renowned ERP system S/4HANA Cloud on Alibaba Cloud is yet another milestone in our globalisation strategy, and exemplary of our mission to make it easy to do business anywhere. We have formed a close collaboration with SAP in the part, and it is exciting for us to expand our partnership.”

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Companies in the park will have access to a digital procurement platform and applications which will support efficient spend management in the source-to-settle process across all categories of spend, from indirect goods and services to direct materials.

As well as connecting to the Ariba Network, the People’s Government will utilise SAP Ariba Strategic Sourcing Suite, SAP Ariba Buying and Invoicing, SAP Ariba Commerce Automation, SAP Ariba Spend Analysis and SAP Ariba Supplier Risk.

“We are on a mission to grow the furniture industry in China and become the world’s largest furniture innovation hub,” said People’s Government of Ganzhou Nankang. “Our ability to execute depends directly on a platform to help us expand business globally and to manage the sourcing, procurement and payment of goods and services with maximum efficiency and speed. It is therefore essential that we have a holistic, automated source-to-settle system that is smart, reliable and easy to use. So we chose SAP Ariba.”

With the Belt and Road initiative driving global business in China, there is more focus than ever on establishing seamless, sustainable supply chains. A number of major home furnishing brands such as Huiming Group, Tuantuanyuan Furniture and Huirui Cross-border Commerce have established themselves in Nankang district. The first internet-enabled furniture manufacturing industry cloud platform in China, kj.casicloud.com, has also been established here.

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A joint initiative between companies and research institutions, the alliance is looking to SAP, with customers in more than 190 countries, for international industry leadership, based on its 45 years in business and its development of the SAP Leonardo digital innovation system to seamlessly integrate blockchain technologies with existing business software.

“The Chinese Trusted Blockchain Alliance unifies efforts and underlines the joint desire to advance these technologies and drive adoption across industries,” said Torsten Zube, head of blockchain, SAP.

The alliance was established with support from the Chinese Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) and the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology (CAICT). The CAICT chairs the alliance, as well as China’s Industrial Internet of Things Alliance, of which SAP is also a member organisation.

“Combining SAP’s technical and business expertise with CAICT’s ecosystem, all parties will work closely to unleash new value for companies,” said Zube.

The Chinese Trusted Blockchain Alliance plans to establish working groups to address key issues such as blockchain core technology R&D, industrial applications of blockchain technologies, and blockchain governance and standardisation.

To help accelerate the application of blockchain technologies the alliance is collaborating with the Industrial Internet of Things Alliance to establish the Industrial Internet Blockchain Special Working Group. Ruicheng Li, managing director, SAP Labs China, SAP (China) Co. Ltd., has been appointed as deputy chair of the working group.

Established in 1957, CAICT is a think tank of the China Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, playing a key role in research for China’s national industrial policy and roadmap development, including strategic industrial planning, policy, standardisation, industrial testing and certification.

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Chimelong Group Co., a leading Chinese tourism brand which owns and operates theme parks and leisure entertainment businesses, will use SAP S/4HANA as its foundation platform, and will use SuccessFactors and Hybris solutions to build a modern HR, sales and marketing operation, as well as a digital boardroom solution to provide executives with real-time information across the operation.

KENGEE, a bakery and food brand undergoing rapid regional expansion, will bring together solutions from SucessFactors, Hybris Commerce and Marketing, and SAP Ariba solutions, as well as S/4HANA. The aim is to create an end-to-end HR system, omnichannel marketing platform, centralise group procurement and integrate its financial and operational departments.

In the retail space, MINISO Co. Ltd is a Japanese designer brand with headquarters in China and more than 2400 stores in over 60 countries. The company has also chosen S/4HANA as its core platform, with SuccessFactors solutions to help optimise performance management and enable HR self-service capabilities. MINISO will also implement the SAP Hybris Cloud for Customer to provide customer-specific personalised design, support sales revenue growth and assist in gaining market share. The company plans to establish a new retail model supported by the combined systems.

“It’s exciting to see continued momentum around the globe with companies who recognise the power of SAP for the way we can uniquely address their business transformation needs across all systems,” said SAP SuccessFactors president Greg Tomb.

SAP SuccessFactors now has more than 6400 customers globally.

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The new solution will allow enterprise and employees to effectively monitor and analyse spend, and move companies towards paperless invoice management.

Boothai Hoh, managing director, Concur Greater China, said, “The Concur e-Fapiao solution provides real-time access to an employee’s receipt, streamlining the financial management and travel and expense claims process. It showcases the value of the ecosystem built by Concur, and our network of business suppliers, and helps Chinese users process their expenses in an easy, accurate and paperless way.”

The e-Fapiao integration, which was built by Pactera, a Concur China platform partner, allows users to transfer fapiao information from their WeChat Wallet into their Concur WeChat official Account, which will automatically feed into Concur’s Expense solution.

Concur is expanding its business travel ecosystem globally and locally, with CTrip, Didi Chuxing, Airbnb and other Chinese and foreign business travel suppliers now part of its network.

The WeChat e-Fapiao Connector is available in the Concur App Center: https://www.concur.com/app-center.

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Among the Chinese companies choosing SuccessFactors this year were:

•    Apparel company Bosideng International Holdings Limited will use SuccessFactors solutions to develop a new HR management platform to decrease manual paperwork, increase employee engagement, and provide greater career and performance capabilities.
•    Leading retailer E-Life Mall will use SuccessFactors solutions with SAP S/4HANA and SAP Ariba to enable an enterprise-wide digital transformation, including the standardisation and centralisation of core processes, for its 340 stores.
•    Private investment bank GF Securities has deployed SuccessFactors Performance and Goals to provide employees with a leading workforce management platform to support talent development and align business targets for cloud-based, strategy-driven systems.
•    Hubei Xin Yang Feng Fertiliser, which has chosen SAP S/4HANA as its digital core, as well as SAP SuccessFactors solutions as its HR platform, to help it continue to attract and retain top talent.
•    Ningbo Economic and Technical Development Zone Holding Co, which operates logistics, real estate, financial investment and environmental protection public utilities businesses, which will adopt SucessFactors solutions together with S/4HANA and SAP Leonardo services. This will enable the company to power a new Smart Manufacturing Innovation Centre in Ningbo to speed development of intelligent manufacturing.
•    Shanghai Qiniu Information Technologies chose the SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central and Performance and Goals solutions to help engage and retain its most talented employees and enable greater efficiency through real-time information and data analysis.
•    Suzhou Anjie Technology, a provider of functional insulting and cushion materials, will pursue an Industry 4.0 strategy using digitally enabled technologies, data tools and analytics across the value chain, powered by SAP SuccessFactors and S/4HANA. The company expects to gain return on investment from employee training, as well as improved productivity and employee satisfaction.

“In today’s global environment, businesses need cloud-based HCM solutions that not only provide a unified and engaging employee experience for the global workforce but also address the unique needs of each operating environment,” said Greg Tomb, president, SAP SuccessFactors. “We’re excited to provide our newest customers and their employees with a world-class HR experience in Greater China and the ability to scale the power of their people internationally.”

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The managed services will open a simple migration path for China customers looking to access SAP HANA offsite in a cloud environment.

Lenovo will build and operate an end-to-end cloud data centre infrastructure for the solution in China, and will also manage and support its SAP HANA database and applications, including customer technical support such as a hotline service. SAP And Lenovo will expand its market presence and offer off-praise solutions to customers in China.

“SAP’s selection of Lenovo to partner in delivering its enterprise cloud for SAP HANA in China – as well as the trust and confidence implied in this decision – serves as compelling proof of our industry leadership capabilities in this rapidly expanding market segment,” said Peter Hortensius, chief technology officer and head of strategy, Data Center Group, Lenovo.

“It is also the latest demonstration of how Lenovo’s open, flexible strategy of partnering with industry leaders delivers valuable co-innovations that address the most critical challenges of our mutual customers.”

Lenovo, which is currently among the largest SAP customers in China and runs one of the largest instances of SAP HANA in the Asia Pacific region, will gain a major new channel for its capabilities in deploying the in-memory platform, using its own infrastructure.

The new offering will be available starting in the first half of 2017.

“This new dimension of our partnership with Lenovo gives China enterprises access to a powerful, highly scalable cloud solution for rapidly and efficiently deploying applications running on SAP HANA off premise,” said Edward Chen, chief business officer, SAP Greater China.

“Also, we anticipate that Lenovo Enterprise Cloud designed for SAP HANA will be a compelling option for customers because it leverages the company’s high-performance server technology, as well as its deep skills and experience in delivering these applications.”

The two companies are one year into an expanded strategic alliance announced in January 2016, which has included developments such as the delivery of a new smart data-tiering solution for SAP Business Warehouse powered by SAP HANA, unveiling of a roadmap for expanded memory support in solutions running HANA, as well as a collaboration with Samsung to outline in-memory systems that can leverage 128GB technology for better performance and scalability.

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