SAP’s concierge service to the Intelligent Enterprise RISE with SAP has been gaining traction globally since its launch in January 2021. Former SAP APJ President, now SAP Executive Board member and Lead of Customer Success Scott Russell earlier highlighted during a media briefing for SAPPHIRE NOW that Asia is anticipated to drive SAP’s BTaaS offering underpinned by the software giant’s efforts to tap companies across Singapore, Thailand, Malaysia, India, and Vietnam. 

RISE with SAP offers solutions and services in one package on a subscription basis to accelerate organisations’ true business transformation. It delivers a holistic on-your-terms and on-your-timeline transformation to an intelligent enterprise while leveraging SAP’s Global Strategic Partners to help simplify engagement and provide a guided journey throughout the process. Since its launch, over 100 customers have already subscribed to the programme, 80{aa282f308afcc222aaa21b0478c79e01a8fedd01972e2180867097bd93930f22} of which are small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).

In this article, we look into India and Malaysia’s reception to the SAP’s customer-first, partner-centric service offering RISE with SAP that leverages SAP S/4HANA Cloud, offers connectivity to SAP Business Network, access to the SAP Business Technology Platform, and a selection of industry cloud solutions.

Empowering Indian Enterprises’ with SAP Cloud Services

President and Managing Director of SAP Indian Subcontinent Kulmeet Bawa said that as digital transformation becomes more mission-critical today, many organisations have embraced the journey to the cloud. In India, RISE with SAP complements enterprises’ increasing cloud adoption to enable them to experience cloud-based digital transformation.

“It’s a bundle of products, tools, and services that addresses the needs of our customers as they embark on their journey on to the cloud. RISE with SAP is business transformation-as-a-service that serves as an enabler for companies to accelerate and simplify their transformations beyond just a technical migration and advance themselves digitally in their cloud journey,” Bawa stressed.

Indian enterprises across various industries have already adopted RISE with SAP to enable them to adapt and thrive in today’s fast-changing market conditions. Vikran Engineering & Exim, a fast-growing EPC company in the Power Sector, is one of the organisations that have recently deployed the SAP BTaaS offering. 

“In our endeavour to become a leader in EPC industries, it was important for us to streamline and set up our business processes in a way that helped us access all our projects anytime, anywhere. SAP’s cloud ERP solution provides us with that flexibility and enables us to seamlessly access all our business functions and data on a single platform in real-time.” shared Nakul Markhedkar, Director at Vikran Engineering & Exim. 

Venkat Srinivas, CIO at RA Chem Pharma, a vertically integrated pharmaceutical company, said that adopting RISE with SAP demonstrates the organisation’s drive towards digital transformation. Srinivas added:

“This will enable us to build a strong foundation in India’s pharmaceutical industry and support our vision of providing quality, affordable and innovative solutions in medicine and treatment.”

Other Indian enterprises that have adopted RISE with SAP are Ola Electric, Wakefit Innovations, Neogen Chemicals, KLT Automotive and Tubular Products, and Pacific Development Corp.

Supporting Malaysian Enterprises’ Transformation Journey

SAP Malaysia Managing Director Hong Kok Cheong explained that organisations need to adapt to the disruptions and constantly changing economic environment by optimising business and operational models to succeed. He empahasised that transformation, though, is more than a technical migration.

“It requires a redesign of business processes and new technologies that unlock new ways of running the business and staying ahead of competitors. That’s where our industry value advisors come in to develop a joint vision of the future and guide customers on their transformation journeys to achieve maximum business outcomes using this ‘vision-to-value’ method,” said Hong.

He said that SAP is committed to supporting every customer to become a best-run business through offerings like RISE with SAP, which supports enterprises holistic transformation while delivering faster time to premier value and the flexibility that organisations need without a high up-front investment.

Some of the Malaysian enterprises that have embarked on a transformation journey leveraging SAP cloud services include Sarawak Energy and Sabah Electricity, Mah Sing Group, and Bank Islam Malaysia.

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The announcement also shows that the business solutions provider continues to gain momentum with its cloud-first business model. Led by CEO Christian Klein, the company has been working to accelerate efforts to move customers from license-based software to its newer cloud products.

The preliminary financial results show SAP’s cloud revenues rose 7{aa282f308afcc222aaa21b0478c79e01a8fedd01972e2180867097bd93930f22} (non-IFRS basis) to 2.04 billion euros. 

Klein comments:

“The world’s leading companies are turning to SAP to become intelligent enterprises. We are reinventing how businesses run by accelerating our customers’ transformation in the cloud. Our strong finish to the year and the upcoming launch of our new holistic business transformation offering position us well to meet our new outlook targets.”

Q4 and Full-Year SAP Business Performance

The German multinational company merits its cloud business’ strong finish for the fourth quarter to:

• continued high demand for e-commerce, Business Technology Platform, and Qualtrics XM (experience management) solutions
• several competitive wins for SAP SuccessFactors Human Experience Management
• strong early take-up of its new holistic business transformation offering among pilot customers (SAP will hold a virtual event to launch the new offering on January 27)
• better-than-expected business performance at SAP North America and SAP Europe in cloud order entry and software licenses revenue
• significant competitive wins in SAP ERP

In addition, SAP’s operating profit rose 3{aa282f308afcc222aaa21b0478c79e01a8fedd01972e2180867097bd93930f22} in constant currency and operating margin increased by 1.5 percentage points—leading to a full-year operating profit that hit the high end of the company’s revised outlook range.

SAP expects its operating cash flow for the full year to be at around 7.0 billion euros (8.4 billion USD), approximately doubling year-over-year. SAP’s free cash flow is also expected to land around 5.9 billion euros (7.1 billion USD)—significantly above the raised outlook of above 4.5 billion euros (5.4 billion USD). Per SAP’s report, cash flow was positively impacted by lower tax and restructuring payments and a successful working capital management.

SAP CFO, Luka Mucic, said:

“Our better-than-anticipated top-line performance combined with our quick response on the cost side drove strong operating profit. SAP’s expedited shift to the cloud will drive long-term, sustainable growth while significantly increasing the resiliency and predictability of our business.”

2021 Outlook

The SAP business outlook for 2021 assumes that the current COVID-19 global crisis will begin to recede as global vaccine programs roll out, which is presumed to improve business demand in the second half of the year. 

According to the company’s business outlook statement, the company is guiding to 9.1 to 9.5 billion euros (10.9 to 11.4 billion USD) in cloud revenue (up 13-18{aa282f308afcc222aaa21b0478c79e01a8fedd01972e2180867097bd93930f22} in constant currency). Meanwhile, 2021 total cloud and software revenue is expected to be as much as 23.8 billion euros (28.7 billion USD) at constant currencies. 

Hours following SAP’s pre-announcement of its fourth quarter and full-year financial results on Thursday, January 14, SAP has risen 2.7{aa282f308afcc222aaa21b0478c79e01a8fedd01972e2180867097bd93930f22} in early trading.

According to SAP, the company’s Q4 2020 financial statement will be published on January 29, 2021.

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SAP specialist Delaware Consulting in Singapore beefs up its business plan in the city-state by enforcing an enhanced go-to-market strategy, going beyond core enterprise resource planning (ERP) and SAP S/4HANA Cloud implementations. 

In an interview with Channel Asia, Delaware shared that the new strategy brings the enterprise cloud migration as the firm’s core offering that would transform the company as a leading SAP partner. Furthermore, the firm intends to leverage internal coaching and training for more robust delivery excellence, considering that the firm recently recruited around 20 new consultants dubbed as “young Singaporean talent”.

Yeo Pei Lin, partner at Delaware Singapore said:

“We are a purpose-led organisation, we believe in doing the right thing for our customers and we understand that success is something you can only create together.”

“We have a heavy focus on long-term collaboration and sustainability vs. short-term gain – this is also why we focus on strong relations with our customers which last,” the partner added.

Pei Lin emphasised that the company’s approach is simple and that is to be a “trusted advisor”. Speaking to Channel Asia, she said:

“It is our ambition to be the trusted advisor of our customer, someone that can be consulted without qualms for true insights and understanding. Over time, we want to increase the services we offer to our customers since customer intimacy allows us to better cater to specific needs”

“We aspire to be the partner of choice on a journey with our customers and in that, jointly invest. Thanks to our company construct, we can move quickly in critical decision making while ensuring a broad regional and global reach,” the Delaware partner further explained.

Delaware, a fast-growing global company, has SAP and Microsoft as its key business partners in delivering sustainable advanced solutions and services to its customers worldwide. Founded in Belgium in 2003, Delaware now has over 2,400 professionals with 26 offices including the one in Singapore where it is recognised as the only SAP partner with competence in S/4HANA Public Cloud deployments. This competitive advantage brought forth many enterprise projects for the company in the past 12 months.

Pei Lin stated:

“A number of challenging and very large engagements have been brought on track to ensure a timely and correct delivery.” 

“Some already closed in 2019 while the remainder are being concluded in early 2020,” she disclosed.

One example of a massive engagement was SAP’s collaboration with SingEx Holdings that helped drive the transformation of its global finance operations in Southeast Asia, China, India, and the UK through SAP S/4HANA Cloud deployment. SingEx, wholly owned by Temasek Holdings, leverages SAP’s capabilities in providing an end-to-end view of the customer lifecycle and enterprise processes through its best in class software solutions in building a robust, adaptable and scalable Global Finance System. This resulted in the first S/4HANA Cloud deployment in Singapore in August 2019 with Delaware as the implementation partner.

Pei Lin stressed:

 “We aided a number of organisations in Singapore recently to simplify IT landscapes and make operations more predictable through supporting them in adopting the SAP Cloud ERP.”

 “Even if the principles are sound and appear obvious, the transition is a challenging one. This is because many organisations are used to the ‘on-premises paradigm’ and working with cloud solutions requires a very different mindset, which requires a lot of skill and support to enable,” she said.

Delaware was recognised as a “niche player” in the recent Gartner magic quadrant, assessing “SAP S/4HANA Application Services” at a global level.

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Philippine enterprises have contributed to the double-digit growth of SAP Cloud Services catering to migration according to GMA News Online’s interview with Claus Andresen, SAP Southeast Asia President and Managing Director. SAP has recognized the digital transformation efforts of the companies in the country, which includes shifting their databases into the cloud.

“In the Philippines, we are seeing very significant double-digit growth digits in the cloud space,” Andersen said.

He explained that the country is like any other SAP market around the world. Philippines’ customers are focused on the outcome, which is essentially what benefits the organisation. He further said:

“The Philippines is obsessed about how to get to that outcome as possible and with the lowest possible risk, and cloud will often give you that answer.”

SAP Cloud Services offerings include Cloud Application Services, Cloud Peering, Customer Experience Services, Digital Interconnect, HANA Enterprise Cloud, Learning Hub, and Preferred Success, which can be customized based on clients’ needs.

In the process of cloud migration, data, information technology services, applications, and other digital resources are shifted to a cloud-computing server.

SAP and Philippine Telcos

Globe Telecom Inc. and PLDT Inc., two of the country’s major telco enterprises, have been working with SAP in their digital transformation. The SAP SeA President shared that the German software giant hosts most of the telecommunication companies worldwide, including the two.

Earlier this year, Ayala-led Globe Telecom, one of the largest mobile, fixed-line, and broadband networks in the Philippines, has announced its plan to shift to the cloud and go 100{aa282f308afcc222aaa21b0478c79e01a8fedd01972e2180867097bd93930f22} paperless by 2020 from the current level of 80{aa282f308afcc222aaa21b0478c79e01a8fedd01972e2180867097bd93930f22}. Mid 2018, Globe signed a three-year deal with SAP for business suite platform and service solutions to digitize its finance processes. The digital transformation will enable real-time decision-making and support the company’s agile environment.

Also in 2018, the German multinational software company has announced the completion of the SAP Revenue Accounting and Reporting (RAR) solution implementation for PLDT, Inc, the first in the Philippines to use RAR as a step in addressing the International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) compliance requirements. The project was part of the telco giant’s digital finance transformation efforts to continuously improve business processes to adapt to the changing market and regulatory requirements. 

With 77{aa282f308afcc222aaa21b0478c79e01a8fedd01972e2180867097bd93930f22} of the world’s transactions revenue being tapped by an SAP system, Andersen said that the company is driven to invest heavily in software solutions wherein most of the SAP’s revenues are derived from. He stated:

“Over the last 10 years, we have invested in a new innovation, organically or inorganically. Every year, we invest more than €3 billion, in basically an organic growth of our solutions.” He stressed:

“We are quite committed to the Philippines. There’s other tech players out there which have not invested as heavily in the Philippines as we have over the years.” 

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