Verizon has been in the foreground of 5G and mobile edge computing (MEC) adoption enhancing enterprise and consumer applications. In 2020, aside from establishing 5GFF, Verizon has forged partnerships with wireless providers Nokia and LG U Plus to bring the power of 5G closer to enterprises and end-users. The Nokia partnership empowered Verizon to deliver an international private 5G platform for global enterprises in Europe and the Asia Pacific region while the LG U Plus alliance made Verizon the first US operator to complete 5G global roaming trials and have a commercially ready 5G global roaming service in South Korea.

Today, Verizon Business, a division of Verizon Communications Inc., continues to ride the wave of the firm’s 5G and MEC capabilities– this time to bring modernisation to the retail industry. In collaboration with global consulting firm Deloitte and software giant SAP, Verizon has designed a retail platform to drive automation with near real-time monitoring, analytics, and insights within stores, distribution centres, and warehouses.

Sharing about the latest co-innovation, Tami Erwin, CEO at Verizon Business, said:

“It’s an exciting moment to unveil this innovative retail collaboration with Deloitte and SAP.

We are entering a new era of technology-led disruption at the exact same moment that every retailer is looking to accelerate digital transformation, increase productivity and improve customer experiences.”

5G and MEC Integration

The collaboration brings together Deloitte’s retail industry and solution engineering expertise, Verizon’s global 5G and MEC leadership, and SAP’s capabilities in transforming organisations into intelligent enterprises. 

Anthony Stephan, principal, Deloitte Consulting, and US Consulting consumer industry lead, said:

“The opportunity for 5G and MEC to enable frictionless retail experiences and improve asset productivity should have a seismic impact on the retail industry.” 

“Our collaboration with Verizon Business and SAP enables us to efficiently and effectively address the concerns of retailers today, providing a best-in-class digital transformation experience that can respond and deliver at the speed of 5G,” he added.

The retail digital platform integrates Verizon’s 5G network and MEC with SAP Customer Activity Repository and SAP S4/HANA to bring business performance sustainability and accelerate profitability to retailers across key business metrics such as revenue, cost of goods sold, and operating margin. Harnessing these technologies will offer retailers better visibility of in-store data with near real-time analytics and, ultimately, improve customer engagement, inventory efficiency, and staff productivity.

SAP Customer Activity Repository applications bundle is a powerful forecasting engine that provides businesses real-time inventory visibility based on a 360-degree view of customer purchase history and demand across all channels. Having a unified view of customer activity across channels significantly enhances omnichannel order management, boosts planning applications, improves the shopping experience, and increases revenue.

The new retail platform is also foreseen to have various enterprise-wide use cases since it is designed as a reference architecture that amplifies back-office application integration value and a customisable approach to accelerate outcomes and return on investment. One example of its use case is addressing out-of-stock shelf inventory management. The platform can automatically alert and communicate to in-store staff and distribution centres to manage inventory and ensure the availability of stocks.

“We are ready to open the doors to Verizon’s transformative 5G and mobile edge compute platform and look forward to helping our customers reimagine everything from their employee experience and supply chain to end-customer use cases,” Erwin highlighted.

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The ever-changing border restrictions across states and countries and enforcement of other measures in response to the COVID-19 pandemic have made the complex international trade even more complicated and unpredictable. Today more than ever, the disruption in the trade industry has propelled the digital economy underpinned by digital, intelligent technologies.

Acknowledging that the effects of the pandemic in international commerce are far from over, global advisory firm Deloitte is collaborating with SAP Hong Kong to help enterprises thrive and navigate the new world of international trade. As a one-stop end-to-end global trade services provider and an SAP partner, Deloitte offers SAP solutions such as SAP GTS-enabled Smart GTS to help enterprises in the trade industry mitigate the impact of the pandemic and execute global development strategies while ensuring compliance, cost reduction, intelligence, and synergy for global trade management.

Fabian Padilla Crisol, Managing Director, SAP Hong Kong, said:

“Business leaders in high-tech, life sciences, luxury goods, industrial machinery, and other sectors understand the importance of optimising cross-border supply chains. With the support of SAP GTS and Deloitte, these businesses are now well-positioned to navigate an increasingly volatile and complex global trade environment in 2021 and beyond.”

Now on its 175th year, Deloitte boasts of its global network that comprises a mix of multidisciplinary trade specialists with extensive experience in compliance, customs, preferential trade agreements, technology implementation, and unparalleled experience across industries.

Sharing about the Deloitte and SAP Hong Kong collaboration amid the changes in the global trade environment, Deloitte Consulting China SAP Offering Leader Andy Zhou said:

“To prosper in the dynamic global trade environment, enterprises are required to keep up with the cross-border trade policies and regulations, meet new consumer demand and the development needs of complex supply chains. The combination of Deloitte’s services and SAP GTS technology allows deep integration and seamless connection to establish a stable, efficient, and compliant global trade management model and solution.”

SAP GTS Streamlining Import-Export

As SAP’s global trade compliance solution, SAP GTS automates and streamlines complex import and export processes. The solution helps organisations to run worldwide compliance from a single platform that integrates trade services across their entire enterprise. In addition to helping enterprises control costs, SAP GTS enables them to manage global trade operations, ensure ongoing trade compliance, optimise the cross-border supply chain, and reduce non-compliance risk.

Here are some of the key features of SAP GTS:

• Compliance Management: The system helps ensure enterprises are compliant with international trade regulations in three main areas: Sanctioned Party List Screening, Legal control – export (including embargo checking and license management), Legal control – import (including embargo checking and license management). SAP GTS enables organisations to rationalise their extended logistics chain and automate the complicated processes that are involved with international trade compliance issues.
• Risk Management: The system contains application areas for risk management, which let enterprises minimise the financial risk associated with their global trade activities. 
• Customs Management: The system helps companies automate and standardise import and export processes with the customs authorities. This enables them to use the import and export of goods faster and reduce the total costs for handling customs-relevant transactions.
• Trade Preference Management: The system helps enterprises determine the rules of origin and conduct free-trade agreement planning and management.  
• Global Trade Analytics: SAP GTS integrates directly with SAP S/4HANA, SAP ERP, and other business software systems, allowing efficient export and import management.
• Electronic Compliance Reporting (ECR): ECR in the GTS system supports companies in statistics declarations that they have to submit to the authorities for intra-European trade between two EU member states.
• System Administration: This area contains the functions enterprises need to monitor and control technically in SAP GTS such as archiving, system monitoring, and system communication workflow.

The post Deloitte and SAP GTS Accelerating Today’s Global Trade appeared first on InsideSAP Asia.

51 regional awards for partner excellence in a variety of categories were given to top partners of SAP Asia Pacific Japan during the recent SAP Field Kick-Off Meetings. ABeam Consulting, Accenture, Deloitte, and EY were among the companies that have received the prestigious recognition.

Fujitsu, Hitachi Systems, IBM, Born Group and itelligence were also awarded.

Scott Russell, Regional SAP President stated that 2020 marks the start of SAP’s fourth decade in Asia. 

“To our partners – we couldn’t have done this without your continued support. Your role in helping our customers become the best-run businesses on the planet is more important than ever before. Our deepest appreciation goes to our FKOM (Field Kick-Off Meetings) Platinum sponsors: ABeam, Accenture, Capgemini, Deloitte, Microsoft, and MyWave,” Russell added. 

SAP recognises the contribution of their partners essential to the German ERP giant’s success. The work and value SAP and the partners deliver help customers adopt innovation easily, gain results rapidly, grow sustainably and run better with their solutions.

The winning partners selected from SAP’s wide-ranging partner base and the nominations based on SAP’s internal sales data were determined by a steering committee composed of regional and global SAP representatives. The awardees were chosen for each category per region according to numerous criteria including sales achievement and performance.

The Awardees

Doing a ‘three-peat’, Deloitte Southeast Asia Ltd, a member firm of Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Limited, received the award under the SAP S/4HANA Cloud category. Operating in Brunei, Cambodia, Guam, Indonesia, Lao PDR, Malaysia, Myanmar, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam, Deloitte Southeast Asia Ltd is comprised of 330 partners and over 8,000 professionals in 25 office locations. Meanwhile, the partner excellence award for SAP Ariba Solutions, which was previously received by Deloitte, went to IBM. 

Accenture, a global professional services firm, has received dual awards for SAP S/4HANA Innovation and ISV Solutions. In 2019, the consulting company had received two APJ Partner Excellence awards for SAP Leonardo and S/4HANA Digital Transformation. Accenture ASEAN comprises Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, and Thailand. This year, the consulting firm has purchased Maihiro, a leading provider of SAP-based customer experience (CX) and customer relationship management (CRM) consulting services and an SAP Gold Partner. The acquisition further enhances Accenture’s global SAP capabilities aside from the firm’s recent adoption of SAP Cloud Platform for the latest edition of consumer products platform Newspage 9.

Receiving the partner excellence award for SAP S/4HANA is ABeam Consulting. The Japanese firm provides ABeam Cloud Global Sales & Manufacturing Template and ABeam Cloud Conversion Express Factory for SAP S/4HANA, services that support a smooth conversion to the next-generation business suite SAP S/4HANA at an early stage.

Meanwhile, fellow Japanese companies Fujitsu and Hitachi Systems received the partner awards for Managed Cloud and Marketing Success, respectively. 

Other major category winners were EY, BORN Group, and itelligence.

EY, one of the Big Four firms, was awarded the SAP APJ Award for Partner Excellence 2020 for Intelligent Platforms. BORN Group, a US-based digital brand agency recently acquired by Indian IT consulting and services firm Tech Mahindra, was given the SAP Customer Experience award. While itelligence, an NTT Data Group subsidiary, topped the Platform and Technology category.

Russell has cited several macro trends signaling a gravity shift to Asia. The ERP giant strives to play a strategic role in being Asia’s digital fabric, supporting its vision to become a leading region of the world. He further concluded:

“Asia’s story is about growth, partnering closely with our customers, partners, and employees to better serve the societies we do business in. It’s about having a big dream and delivering it with rigor, perseverance, grit and a never-give-up attitude.” 

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