In 2021, Globe Telecom, a provider of integrated telecommunication services, was named The Game Changer in the inaugural SAP Best Run Awards for Southeast Asia for successfully implementing several SAP cloud-based solutions such as SAP Ariba, SAP Concur, SAP Fieldglass and migrating to SAP S4/HANA. Adapting the SDA (Simple, Digital, Agile) principle, the telco was able to streamline processes and embrace a re-architectured scalable system landscape that propelled its transformation journey.

Fast-forward to today, Globe deepens its alliance with longstanding technology partner, SAP, this time to deliver on the company’s commitment to driving sustainability for Philippine enterprises. As one of the leading telecommunications companies in the country, Globe has the opportunity to champion change for a sustainable future as highlighted in the recently held event in collaboration with SAP, Globe Innovtalks.

Simone Pigason, Head of Digital, Resilient, and Sustainable Supply Chain of SAP Southeast Asia, and Ivan Curada, Cloud Engineer at Globe’s Information Systems Group (ISG) discussed the critical role of digital technology in advancing the sustainability efforts of businesses in the country, particularly in supply chain management and workplace innovation.

Sustainability Innovations in Supply Chain and the Workplace

In recent years, enterprises are progressively integrating sustainability as an integral part of their operations, most especially in the supply chain, driven by the increasing awareness of the societal and environmental benefits of sustainable practices. According to a CDP study in 2020, 92% of the whole greenhouse gas (GHG) emitted by a business is attributed to emissions from the supply chain.

During the event, Pigason emphasized how digitalizing supply chains not only significantly reduce businesses’ carbon emissions but also, most importantly, drives an agile, productive, connected, and resilient supply chain. On the unprecedented impact of the pandemic on the global supply chain, Pigason said:

“The global health crisis has shown businesses the importance of having resilient supply chains. And as various disruptions still happen globally, resilient supply chains are a must to provide consumers consistently with the goods and services they need.”

To help enterprises further their environmental measures, Pigason highlighted two SAP solutions– the SAP Sustainability Control Tower and Plastics Warrior – that can help organizations manage their green line.

The SAP Sustainability Control Tower solution allows companies to enhance their environmental, social, and governance (ESG) transparency while improving business performance. It helps businesses record authentic sustainability data, report audit-ready ESG metrics, and embed sustainability in business processes.

On the other hand, SAP’s gamification initiative Plastic Warriors gives the stakes to supermarket consumers to contribute to saving the environment through recycling. It alerts the shoppers of their plastic use as well as the retailers of their plastic waste by leveraging advanced analytics. This sustainability solution is an encouraging tool for the Filipino people to embrace recycling.

As for sustainability innovations in the workplace, Curada shared that Globe digitalized its 4,000 memos (with an average of 5 pages) per month through a company-owned system called memo.ph– significantly cutting paper consumption and allowing faster approval processes. He detailed:

“This serverless application digitalizes our memo approval processes to allow us to save at least two trees every month. It also offers templates to make memo creation as easy as possible while using an open-source library, so you are not paying for any license to make this application possible.”

Commending Globe’s efforts to becoming a sustainable enterprise, Pigason said it is essential to digitalize traditional processes. She added:

“All these solutions and applications prove how technologies can help build a sustainable future in today’s world.”

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Sustainability is becoming an integral part of the business objectives of many Philippine organizations. This shift is driven in part by a need to improve efficiency and reduce costs, but also by a growing awareness of the societal and environmental benefits of sustainable practices. As businesses in the country continue to recalibrate their operations, sustainability will play an increasingly important role in ensuring long-term success.

According to research conducted by PwC Philippines titled “Hindsights, Insights, Foresights: The Future in the Present Tense”, the majority of chief executive officers (CEOs) in the nation have the intention of increasing the amount of money their companies spend on technologies. Meanwhile , more than two-thirds of respondents want the companies they work for to boost their investments in the aspects of environmental, social, and governance (ESG).

In 2015, 193 United Nations member states — including the Philippines — adopted 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to accelerate global progress toward a better future. The 2030 Agenda includes the 17 SDGs, which are organized under the headings of “People,” “Prosperity and Planet,” and “Peace.” With its Chasing Zero initiative, SAP in the Philippines is laying the groundwork for businesses to become intelligent and sustainable in pursuit of a future with zero emissions, zero waste, and zero inequality.

Enabling Globe Telecom’s Transformation with SAP Technology and Solutions

During a recent roundtable discussion headlined “Transform Tomorrow, Today: SAP Philippines CXO Roundtable,” business executives from SAP, Globe Telecom, and Unioil shared insights on how they are reshaping the future through innovation and sustainability to ensure their organizations’ success.

According to Suzelyn Urbano, Vice President of IT Enterprise Services at Globe Telecom, Inc., innovation is both “disruptive and life-changing”. Urbano said that the telecommunications company has constantly innovated over the course of almost 10 years, always keeping the interests of its customers in mind. Since 1999, SAP and Globe have worked together to replace multiple aging legacy systems and automate tedious manual tasks through the use of SAP cloud applications, concluding Globe’s purpose-led digital transformation journey.

Urbano stated that SAP powers 70% of Globe Telecom’s internal systems. The company found that the enterprise resource planning (ERP) platform SAP S/4HANA acted as a catalyst for change, allowing it to quickly adjust to changes in the industry. Because SAP technology and solutions were already in effect across all of its departments, Globe Telecom was able to:

• Improve business processes, reduce manual tasks, enhance decision-making by making the switch to SAP S/4HANA
• Enhance usability and data accessibility with SAP Fiori applications.
• Efficiently executing financial transactions and providing error-free reports with more use of automation in the finance department.
• Gain real-time business insights from the consolidation of accounting processes.

“Empathy lies at the heart of Globe’s innovation. We look at the problems we have now and innovate from there, making sure to solve the real issues. Globe’s vision has always been making families’ dreams come true and empowering businesses to flourish to help achieve an admired nation. As we create our products, we always anchor them in that vision,” Urbano further shared.

Unioil Accelerates Innovation and Sustainability with SAP S/4HANA

Petroleum products company Unioil is another Philippine business that utilizes SAP S4/HANA ERP system to establish better operational system integration and propel the company toward a more sustainable future. Unioil’s Digital Transformation Evangelist Nestor De Guzman has recently made public the company’s groundbreaking efforts to reduce carbon emissions.

Considering the current predicament that the country is going through, De Guzman also indicated that Unioil intends to help the nation in growing its own energy supply rather than depending on the supply of energy that comes from outside the country. He thinks that Unioil is helping to bring forth a more sustainable future with its many green initiatives, such as solar farms, EV charging stations, and Smartlocker technology.

“For us, at Unioil, digital transformation involves combining the appropriate technology, leadership, and culture. Innovation begins when business executives embrace the transformation enabled by smart technologies,” De Guzman noted.

Weighing in on the topic, Gintare Zukauskaite, Innovation Lead at SAP Southeast Asia (SAP SEA), said that “disruptive thinking” is what brings about change in the world right now. She added that in order to innovate, companies need to take into account the present situation while also thinking outside the box to come up with ideas that will better their operations.

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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.

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