In April, SAP and Oxford Economics surveyed 600 people across six Southeast Asian nations — Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines, Vietnam, and Thailand — with 400 coming from SMEs and 200 from larger corporations. Titled “Digital, resilient, and experience-driven: How enterprises in SEA can prepare for the new economy”, the regional study revealed significant challenges in key business areas of enterprises and growth opportunities for them in a post-pandemic environment.

COVID-19 has intensified the need to further digitalise business processes in order to make organisations more resilient, especially for SMEs. Implementing business software has been one of the most popular and effective options companies have taken to empower digital resiliency that is needed to adapt to the “Next Normal”. In particular, SAP and Oxford Economics’ survey showed that SMEs in Thailand are primarily concerned with lowering prices for their goods and services and providing user-friendly digital experiences as a secondary goal for improving customer and employee experiences.

Atul Tuli, Managing Director at SAP Indochina, believes that a large number of organisations are still finding it difficult to fully optimise their approach towards integrating new digital technologies to transform the way they operate and do business. He explained:

“At SAP, 80{aa282f308afcc222aaa21b0478c79e01a8fedd01972e2180867097bd93930f22} of our customers worldwide are SMEs. SAP helps Thai SMEs customers embark on the digital transformation journey and transform their business into an intelligent enterprise across diverse industries such as Retail, Healthcare, and Consumer. We found that they are now facing significant challenges in the areas of talent attraction and retention, cloud adoption, and gaining insights from data.” 

Enabling Digital Transformation in Thailand Through SAP Cloud-Based Solutions

SAP’s cloud business rose by 18{aa282f308afcc222aaa21b0478c79e01a8fedd01972e2180867097bd93930f22} in the Asia-Pacific region in 2020, making it a third of the company’s total revenue. Specifically, the German tech giant’s concierge service to the Intelligent Enterprise RISE with SAP has been gaining traction globally since its introduction in January this year. During a regional media briefing on the sidelines of SAPPHIRE NOW 2021, Scott Russell, former SAP APJ President and is now SAP Executive Board Member and Lead of Customer Success, said that more than 100 customers have already signed up for the Business Transformation-as-a-Service (BTaaS) offering.

Noppadon Chareonthong, SAP Sales Director, Thailand and Emerging Market, stressed that SMEs are the backbone of the Thai economy and that cloud-based services will play a critical role in boosting operational capability as the country adapts to the post-COVID landscape. He then cited two examples of businesses that have already transformed their processes to stay resilient on the cloud: DoHome and Thai Medical Glove.

Leading comprehensive retail and wholesale construction materials and home decoration business DoHome decided to embark on a digital transformation journey and shifted away from its traditional business model in order to expand its operations. The company leveraged SAP solutions to help the management better understand situations in real-time and make more effective decisions during these unprecedented times. Meanwhile, Thai Medical Glove, one of the major rubber glove manufacturers in SEA, also used cloud technologies including RISE with SAP to transform their company into an intelligent enterprise, removing complexity with simplified engagement and guided journeys.

For Chareonthong, SAP cloud-based solutions will boost the competitiveness of SMEs to engage rapidly in digital transformation and empower them to bounce back strongly. He maintained:

“SAP is here to support and ready to be the trusted partner to offer cloud-based solutions like RISE with SAP and other comprehensive solutions that will help business transform holistically by changing the whole culture and mindset and redesigning business processes to unlock new ways of running business.”

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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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