Leading SAP consultancy and implementation partner for Public Sector and Services organisations invenioLSI has recently introduced a new approach to modernising public sectors’ enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems through GovOne. The new ERP platform offers governments– federal, state, and local– and higher-education customers in the United States the try-before-you-buy approach for their SAP S/4HANA implementations, accelerating digital transformation while reducing costs and common risks associated with ERP change or upgrades.

invenioLSI was formed from the merger of two market-leading SAP specialists Invenio Business Solutions and LSI Consulting in 2021– the former having a solid presence in the Asia Pacific, Europe, and the Middle East and the latter in the utility, healthcare, educational, and government institutions in the United States and Canada. Driven by a shared commitment to deliver SAP technology and innovations to propel customer and employee success, the united brand invenioLSI is positioned to be a premiere global SAP partner for public services.

Explaining the consulting firm’s intention to help public sectors reduce risks when embarking on modernisation projects or upgrading legacy systems, Shyam Jajodia, Executive Vice President at invenioLSI, said that the new platform GovOne eliminates the traditional slide deck presentations and whiteboard diagrams usually used for illustrating concepts and SAP S/4HANA ERP capabilities.

“By presenting a solution that has been fully configured for federal, state, and local government use and tested, we can give our customers confidence that SAP S/4Hana with InvenioLSI, provides a solution that perfectly fits their public sector organisation, its structure, and policies,” he highlighted.

Integrating the SAP Activate Methodology

GovOne reflects invenioLSI’s innovative approach to digital transformation in the public sector, enabling government agencies to achieve efficiency and deliver public service with ease with SAP S/4HANA’s capabilities in cloud services, integrations, real-time analytics, and processing of larger transaction volumes. The solution integrates pre-configured business processes within the context of public sector processes, which includes budget control and grants award management as well project accounting, among many others.

The try-before-you-buy approach allows govenrments to implement ERP transformations at lesser costs and coding demands and shorter integration times. Aside from this practical benefit, GovOne also offers public sector organisations’ better visualisation of SAP S/4HANA including workflows, rules, and policies as it follows the SAP Activate Methodology, a reliable system for SAP S/4HANA implementation and conversion projects.

Built on the Agile methodology, the SAP Activate Methodology enables customers to go through 6 different phases of an SAP project implementation, from discovery to solving business pain points and actual use of the solution.

Discover Phase. This is the initial phase when a customer uncovers a need for a solution for business pain points and explores SAP solutions that match their requirements.

Prepare Phase. In this phase, both customers and partners align their expectations and give their mutual consent for the key activities for the success of the project. Business process owners fill in the Business-Driven Configuration Assessment questionnaire to fasten project delivery.

Explore Phase. In this stage, customers and partners finalise the business process to be followed in the new SAP system through a series of “Fit-to-Standard Analysis” sessions that showcase the SAP Best Practice business process flow. The Explore Phase is also when the “Customer Execution of Standard Processes” is implemented to establish the relationship between the end-users and the SAP system.

Realise Phase. SAP consultants begin configuring the SAP system based on the Backlog document signed off from the Explore Phase in the Realise Phase. During this stage, consultants provide multiple Solution Walkthroughs of the SAP system they are building and are in constant collaboration with the business process owner.

Deploy Phase. In this phase, the new SAP system is deployed and is expected to cause temporary downtime that is why it is usually done on a weekend to ensure it will not cause major operational hiccups.

Run Phase. This phase signals the completion of the customer’s lifecycle– from identifying the right solution to implementing it and running their business process simultaneously.

Pennsylvania State University is one of the early adopters of InvenioLSI’s GovOne, which helped them move their legacy systems to the SAP S4/HANA platform and offered the organisation enhanced efficiency, performance, and cost savings.

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This week, SAP Korea said that it has begun the process to obtain a performance evaluation certification for the SAP Code Vulnerability Analyzer solution with security partners BigSphere and Inspiron.

Seong-yeol Lee, CEO of SAP Korea, comments on the announcement:

“Since the beginning of 2020, we have been conducting business discussions with related organizations for performance evaluation. Although it was delayed due to social issues such as COVID-19, we plan to complete the performance evaluation as soon as possible and prepare for the introduction of a code vulnerability analysis solution for public institutions without disruption in the future.”

According to Lee, cybersecurity weakness analysis implementation is expected to emerge as an important part of the information system security evaluation of SAP ERP solutions, especially for the public sector.

The need for a comprehensive SAP ERP security system

Cybersecurity is no longer considered a luxury for IT systems. The lack of a powerful code testing and analysis tool can lead to the loss of confidential customer and company data, as well as critical information on business processes. A successful cyber attack can ruin business reputations.

SAP Code Vulnerability Analyzer is SAP’s static code scanning tool exclusively for ABAP—a programming language used by SAP for its ERP solutions. The source code security weakness analysis tool helps identify and fix vulnerabilities in a company’s SAP ERP security.

Verifying cybersecurity compliance is a necessary procedure, especially for public institutions. In South Korea, there are various laws, regulations, and guidelines that promote cybersecurity. One of these is the Act on the Promotion of IT Network Use and Information Protection (the Network Act) which requires companies to acquire the Information Security Management System (ISMS) certification granted by the Ministry of Science and ICT (MSIT). The ISMS certification verifies that a company has a comprehensive management system in place that includes administrative, technical, and physical protective measures for ensuring the safety and reliability of its IT system. 

According to SAP Korea, major South Korean public corporations have been operating with SAP ERP solutions since the early 2000s. Through its partnership with BigSphere and Inspiron, SAP Korea plans to expand its support to more public institutions in improving security vulnerabilities for programs by introducing the SAP Code Vulnerability Analyzer.

SAP Code Vulnerability Analyzer has been introduced and implemented by the following South Korean public corporations:

• Korea Hydro & Nuclear Power – a subsidiary of the Korea Electric Power Corporation that operates large nuclear and hydroelectric plants in South Korea, which are responsible for about 30{aa282f308afcc222aaa21b0478c79e01a8fedd01972e2180867097bd93930f22} of the country’s electric power supply.
• Korea District Heating Corporation – promotes energy conservation and improving living standards through the efficient use of district heating in apartments, business and commercial buildings in South Korea.
• Korea Western Power Co. Ltd. – provides electric energy to residential, commercial, and industrial uses. Korea Western Power manages thermal power stations, pumped-storage power plants, and combined cycle power plants in South Korea.

SAP Korea said that since implementing the SAP ERP security solution, these public corporations have made remarkable achievements in improving critical security vulnerabilities.

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Director of Enterprise Resource Planning at CPWD, Satyendra P. Gupta commented during a live streaming session with SiliconANGLE Media on the selection of Tech Mahindra,

“Tech Mahindra has started the implementation process we are in. More than four months have passed since then, and we have covered a lot. The whole objective of this implementation is all our activities will be done on this [new] ERP system.”

He adds that he is expecting the workflow efficiency of the CPWD unit to improve significantly with the implementation of the new ERP cloud system. He adds,

“By the click of the button, we will be able to get all the inputs, all the reports with what is going on across the country. So, it is going to be really a transformation to the working of the department, and, as a whole, the entire public work center of the country. Everybody is going to benefit, not only the Central Public Works Department but all of our stakeholders.”

The government of India has been actively working on the country’s growth and development through digital transformation. Several upgrades in the digital infrastructure, the introduction of online services for citizens, and developing a business-friendly ecosystem have been implemented recently—highlighting the country’s dedication to setting an example for other developing countries in leveraging technology.

To aid the country’s goals and vision, the CPWD put forward this project to implement an ERP cloud system in October last year. As India’s principal engineering organization, the government unit is set to execute construction, maintenance, and beautification work for the central government across the country. According to a report, the ERP cloud system project has an estimated cost of Rs 180 crore.

Tech Mahindra’s ERP Cloud System Implementation Plans

According to Gautam Chatterje, Sales Leader for India Public Sector at Tech Mahindra, the CPWD wanted to automate multiple applications and processes to streamline the government unit’s workflow across the country. To do this, the systems integrator brought in SAP for the SAP HANA implementation. He said SAP HANA will be the primary business application for the CPWD’s new ERP cloud system.

This, along with several other database applications such as eTendering, third-party tools for performance testing, management and monitoring, as well as the complete infrastructure and platform will be hosted to the cloud on the AWS platform.

Chatterje explains,

“We engaged AWS from the beginning itself—the AWS team and the SAP team. And we had multiple interactions with the customer. We understood the challenges. We understood the number of users, number of iterations, number of redundancy, number of high availability they will require. Along with AWS and SAP, all three of us together have the complete solutions, architecture so that overall impact comes to CPWD as the customer—the ultimate results and the business output they deserve.”

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The survey, which gathered responses from more than 500 people from 45 countries, found that public organisations can increase value and drive the adoption of services by providing a more convenient, retail-like environment for their citizens and that they can increase the use of online services by improving the mobile user experience of their services.

These findings dovetailed with the recent release of the SAP Hybris citizen engagement accelerator solution, which is optimised for mobile use and presents consistent user-friendly interfaces regardless of the back-end system in use.

“Smart citizens expect smart governments to know who they are and how best to connect with them consistently across channels,” said head of SAP Hybris industries Matthias Goehler. “SAP provides a solution that allows government agencies to provide their citizens with convenient access to information and the means to engage with them so civic services are provided quickly and most efficiently.”

Asked what areas were most critical to them when it comes to smart cities and digital government services, respondents of all ages reported that data privacy was high on their list. Members of Generation Z in particular are not willing to adopt new technologies unless they see a clear benefit and their data is protected. The study found that none of the respondents is willing to share their data if they do not believe it is secure or fear that it could be reused.

SAP’s customer data management products from Gigya are designed to alleviate some of these concerns by helping organisations to provide citizens with transparent online experiences and control over their data, while also reducing security risks.

All respondents ranked as very important the ability to access public information and city services easily, in real time using any device, as well as the ability to pay for services using contactless payment options.

SAP is helping public organisations address these concerns with an integrated web form in its citizen engagement accelerator solution, which enables users to report an issue or submit a request instantly. In addition, a dashboard in SAP’s solution for the public sector allows citizens to view their personal information and that of their family, while a relationship “permission” model enables them to delegate authority to individuals to act on their behalf.

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Together the public sectors of Australia, the People’s Republic of China, India, Singapore, and South Korea are expected to spend over US$1 billion on IT in 2016. This represents 82 per cent of the entire APEJ public sector IT spending.

This year will also see overall hardware spending surpassed by overall IT services spending – a transition being led by countries such as Malaysia, the Philippines and Thailand.

Across the whole region, the overall year-over-year IT spending growth in 2015 for the APEJ is anticipated to grow at 5.9 per cent, which indicates both a more cautious as well as maturing spending landscape, according to IDC.

“This is because the APEJ public sector will be increasingly focus on consolidating and streamlining of scarce ICT resources, attaining better manageability tools for effective decision-making, and addressing the urgent need to increase cybersecurity priorities of digital assets,” a report by IDC said.

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