In a recent address at the SAP Go Global Summit in Shenzhen, China, Chenhong Huang, Global Executive Vice President of SAP SE and President of SAP Greater China, highlighted the uncertainties and challenges that Chinese enterprises face as they accelerate growth in overseas markets. However, he also shared successful customer stories, including Roborock, Hisense, BYD, Xiaomi, and Lenovo.

SAP Sapphire Virtual in 2022 saw the German tech giant’s Chief Marketing and Solutions Officer and Member of the Executive Board of SAP SE, Julia White, discuss the power of becoming an intelligent, sustainable enterprise with Yang Yuanqing, Chairman and CEO of Lenovo. Yuanqing expressed his delight with the continuous enhancements to Lenovo’s supply chain solutions and emphasized SAP’s role in achieving a world-class supply chain.

Lenovo, a leading global technology company, delivers over 150 million products a year with an on-time delivery rate of 96%. To keep up with customer demands, Lenovo has invested in its digital supply chain to achieve efficiency and accuracy at scale. SAP has also played a crucial role in this transformation, powering Lenovo’s journey toward becoming an intelligent, sustainable enterprise.

“Together with SAP, Lenovo is building new, state-of-the-art smart factories globally. These new smart factories are running SAP S/4HANA on Lenovo infrastructure with end-to-end, order-to-delivery solutions connecting over 2,000 suppliers to billions of customers. That will definitely take Lenovo manufacturing to a whole new level,” said Yuanquing further shared.

Arthur Hu, Senior Vice President, and Chief Information Officer (CIO) at Lenovo and Chief Technology Officer (CTO) of Solutions and Services Group at Lenovo Group Ltd., stressed the importance of incorporating the latest technology into Lenovo’s operations. He stated that digitalization and smart technology allow Lenovo to achieve efficiency and accuracy at scale, with the intelligent enterprise resource planning (ERP) system SAP S/4HANA being a cornerstone investment in Lenovo’s digital core.

Driving Sustainability

Sustainability is a key aspect of Lenovo’s services-led transformation, with device-as-a-service (DaaS) being an example. Lenovo designs sustainability into every step of the offering, from deployment to maximizing utilization during the asset lifecycle and utilizing recovery services for secure and responsible handling at the end of the useful device life.

Additionally, Hu outlined Lenovo’s efforts to discover SAP innovation opportunities, including anticipating the needs of other businesses and translating those expectations into code and functionality that can be used as building blocks in SAP solutions. He believes this increases the value of the whole community and ecosystem.

Lenovo’s transformation is driven by a new services-led business model supported by modern digital infrastructure. SAP has been on this journey with Lenovo, with the company utilizing cloud services from SAP, SAP Ariba solutions, and SAP Concur solutions. Lenovo TruScale, the company’s umbrella for offering everything on its portfolio as a service, is at the forefront of Lenovo’s transformation.

Implementing SAP Digital Supply Chain

Moreover, the company is using SAP Billing and Revenue Innovation Management on RISE with SAP powered by Lenovo TruScale to rapidly bring new business offerings to the market in a scalable way. Hu further shared:

“All this comes together to make an excellent case where we are using the combined power of our technologies to advance our transformation at speed and lead the way with new, compelling value propositions for our customers.”

Meanwhile, SAP Digital Supply Chain is a comprehensive suite of solutions that helps businesses streamline and optimize their end-to-end supply chain operations. It provides real-time visibility into supply chain processes, enables collaboration between stakeholders, and leverages advanced technologies such as AI, machine learning, and IoT to drive efficiency and agility.

SAP Digital Supply Chain has been instrumental in Lenovo’s smart and sustainable transformation towards becoming an intelligent, sustainable enterprise. With the latest technology and digital infrastructure powered by SAP, Lenovo is well-equipped to deliver world-class products and services to customers around the globe.

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In 2019, Open Manufacturing Platform (OMP) was founded under the umbrella of the Linux Foundation to bring together business leaders, manufacturers, system integrators, and software providers to drive innovation and collaboration across the manufacturing community and value chain. OMP is a global alliance that aims to accelerate manufacturing companies’ innovation at scale through platform-agnostic solutions, open standards, and technologies that enable smart manufacturing, break down silos and solve real problems.

In a short period, the collaborative initiative started by Microsoft and BMW has now been gaining more members that share the common goal of supporting the manufacturing sector’s digital transformation through innovative technologies to give them the competitive edge, deliver operational efficiencies, greater factory output, increased net profits and drive agility amid disruptions.

Contributing to Manufacturing, Supply Chain Management Advancement

Similarly, enterprise software giant SAP has been supporting organisations to navigate the complexities of manufacturing and supply chain with customer-centric, sustainable supply chain management software. To further drive innovation along the digital supply chain, this time, using open standards and open source, the German company has recently joined the OMP initiative.

Recognising that a networked, sustainable and agile supply chain management requires a more modular, flexible, and transparent production, SAP will be collaborating with OMP to deliver an SAP-supported Platform Industrie 4.0 initiative that would bridge the gap between manufacturers and customers.

Nils Herzberg, SVP and global head of Strategic Partnerships for Digital Supply Chain and Industry 4.0 at SAP shared SAP’s mission of accelerating supply chain innovation at scale harnessing the power of open collaboration. He stressed:

“Not only do we live in the century of shared economies, but we also live in the time of collaborative development. The focus for the future will be stronger, more resilient supply chains coupled with agile production facilities. SAP has the supply chain applications to achieve this. As a member of the OMP, we will work with our customers and partners to create access to these future-oriented applications.“

SAP and OMP aim to:

• Create solutions based on open standards that overcome the complexity of proprietary systems and vendor lock-in
• Safely connect operational technology to the cloud to enable better data-backed decisions and predictions
• Contribute to solutions and standards that drive automation and autonomy into production and logistics systems

Christoph Berlin, Partner Group Program Manager for Azure Industrial IoT & Manufacturing at Microsoft, said that OMP gains from SAP’s industry knowledge and expertise.

“The goal of the consortium is to bring together technology and applications to enable the next frontier of business value in manufacturing. This requires all levels of the stack to embrace open principles, open-source and open standards. We also welcome the extensive knowledge that SAP brings to the table from a supply chain and manufacturing reference architectures perspective. This will further strengthen OMP’s technology partnerships and collaboration across the manufacturing ecosystem,” Berlin explained.

New OMP Members

Other organisations that have recently joined OMP initiative are Teradata, a leading multi-cloud data warehouse platform provider, and Delta Electronics, a leading provider of switching power management solutions. 

Teradata, with offices located across every region including Australia, Europe, Middle East, and Asia, brings to the OMP community its extensive experience, expertise, and solutions in cloud-based data analytics with a specific focus on the “Manufacturing Reference Architecture and “Semantic Data Structuring” working groups. Aside from delivering a blueprint for an industrial IoT architecture, Teradata will also be developing a semantic structuring layer to help manufacturers easily share, reuse, and evaluate heterogeneous data.

Meanwhile, Taipei-headquartered Delta Electronics, which has been listed on the DJSI World Index of Dow Jones Sustainability Indices for 10 consecutive years, brings into the fold decades of rich industrial experience, expertise, and solutions in cloud-based data analytics with a specific focus on the “Manufacturing Reference Architecture” and “ATS Core services” working groups. In collaboration with other members, Delta Electronics, the first Asian member in the OMP community, will develop a standard carbon footprint solution that meets international compliance.

The post SAP Extends Manufacturing, Supply Chain Management Expertise to OMP appeared first on InsideSAP Asia.

Indonesia’s supply chain sector has been strongly hit by the impacts of COVID-19 mainly because the nation still heavily relies on human factors rather than automation. As the lockdown and social distancing measures continue to be implemented, Indonesian organisations are forced to accelerate their supply chain digitalisation and leverage technologies to be able to deliver essential goods and services within and outside the country.

To further the advancement of Indonesian businesses’ supply chain, global IT solutions and services provider YASH Technologies and SAP Platinum Partner Soltius Indonesia joined forces to bring SAP Digital Supply Chain solutions and services in the region. The strategic alliance focuses on key areas such as IBP (Integrated Business Planning), IAM (Integrated Asset Management), DRCM (Digital R C M), Industry 4.0, and EHS (Environmental Health and Safety).

Sharing about the collaboration, Siddhartha Bose, VP Asia Pacific at YASH Technologies said:

“We are delighted to partner with Soltius Indonesia, one of the reputed technology service providers in Indonesia. The partnership will focus on helping our joint customers reimagine and transform their global supply chains and become resilient by taking advantage of the SAP Digital Supply Chain Solution suite.” 

He stressed that, together, YASH technologies and Soltius Indonesia will enable Indonesian organisations to achieve more tangible business value from their SAP DSC deployments. Both companies will be able to amplify their SAP capabilities by integrating their expertise– YASH’s predictive analytics, automation, and IoT and Soltius Indonesia’s strong market footprint in the region.

Merging Expertise with SAP Digital Supply Chain Suite

Both known for their best-in-class methodologies and process consulting capabilities, YASH and Soltius Indonesia will be able to help organisations streamline supply chain processes, drive business performance, and cost optimisation by delivering the SAP Digital Supply Chain Suite and services.

SAP’s global Supply Chain Management (SCM) software is an integrated portfolio that includes predictive analytics, automation, and IoT with industry expertise to execute and act.  It offers intelligent solutions and tools for Supply Chain Planning, Supply Chain Logistics, Manufacturing, Product Lifecycle Management, and Enterprise Asset Management.

“We are excited to partner with Yash Technologies, a global SAP service provider with a strong footprint in the digital supply chain area. They bring SAP Qualified pre-configured packaged solutions and rich implementation experiences across the US, Europe, Asia, and the Middle East,” stated Andreas Gunadi, Director of Soltius Indonesia.

YASH Technologies brings into the fold two decades of experience and technical capabilities to deliver successful transformational global IT solutions and services. It is one of the most trusted business transformation partners for global organisations with SAP-centric landscapes. YASH delivers an end-to-end SAP portfolio with the help of its team of over 3,000 consultants worldwide. As a long-time SAP partner and niche player in the environment, health and safety (EHS), and sustainability solution space, YASH’s Safe@Work solution has been recently recognised as an SAP-qualified partner-packaged solution.

Moreover, the strategic partnership will be able to leverage the Soltius Intelligent Enterprise portfolio to enable the rapid transformation of data into insight. Soltius Indonesia offers end-to-end business solutions such as Digital Platform, Digital Supply Chain, Process Automation, IoT integration, and Application Managed services to small and medium enterprises (SME) to large-scale enterprises (LSE) across major industries. The company is recognised as a PLATINUM Certified SAP Channel Partner & Value Added Reseller and a certified SAP Value Added Reseller Support Centre.

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Almost halfway through 2020, the coronavirus pandemic has changed many ways of how we live our lives, conduct businesses, and engage with each other in the New Normal. For SAP, several initiatives have already been implemented globally (mostly at zero cost) to help the SAP community thrive in the time of COVID-19. In the Asia Pacific and Japan region alone, the German company’s 20,000 employees are at the receiving end of the community-based relief efforts done by SAP.

Scott Russell, SAP President, APJ has stated:

“Empathy is what drives us as a company.”

“It’s not just governments that are fighting COVID-19, because every single one of us has to confront the challenge as well,” he added.

Global Initiatives for the SAP Community

On a global scale, SAP has opened free access to select solutions that would be essential for the employees, companies, communities and governments at these challenging times. Specific to COVID-19, EY, SAP, and Qualtrics have released some tools and resources to help governments address the pandemic needs. These are: 

• Healthcare Workforce Pulse
• COVID-19 Dynamic Call Center Script
• COVID-19 Pre-Screening and Routing
• Critical Care Protocol Solution

To ensure business continuity for the SAP community, SAP made the following solutions available at zero cost on a certain period:

• Remote Work Pulse by Qualtrics
• SAP Ariba Discovery
• Massive open online courses (MOOCs) available on the openSAP platform
• TripIt Pro
• SAP Litmos
• Qualtrics Supply Continuity Pulse solution 
• Planning as a service with the SAP Integrated Business Planning for Supply Chain solution 

As for the ASia Pacific and Japan region, SAP APJ President Russell shared with People Matters how his team responded to the outbreak, being the first to be affected by the now global crisis. He emphasised that being proactive, working with the local governments, and understanding SAP’s role as an essential service provider worldwide were the key factors that made SAP APJ operate effectively while safeguarding the health of its employees. He explained:

“And in doing so, we actually protected our customers, because overnight, we were able to move from a workforce that was quite mobile but still had a large number of functions operating from offices, to having 95 percent of our workforce in the Asia Pacific able to work from home.”

“What that meant was that our employees were able to provide a continuity of service to our customers, be they government agencies or businesses, so that they in turn could keep providing necessary services to citizens. Whether in agriculture, healthcare, retail, utilities, or other sectors, we were able to continue supporting that,” he further stressed.

COVID-19 Local Initiatives

SAP APJ’s initiatives in the region are spread across its employees, enterprise customers, governments, and the front line health workers. Russell enumerated the local efforts implemented in the region to aid in these unpredictable times.

Creating a local Pandemic Task Force. The region created a task force that meets daily, then weekly in the early days of the pandemic to come up with a framework that is tailor-fit to a country’s regulations and needs. 

Leveraging the global solutions of Qualtrics. The region uncovered that its customers’ priority is the safety and well being of its employees. Qualtrics tools are then made available for free to the customers.

SAP APJ in partnership with Qualtrics has broken new ground with Bridge-IT, an app that would provide employees and customers accurate real-time facts on COVID-19 and personalised guidance on how to cope with the virus. 

Providing an uninterrupted supply chain. COVID-19 has disrupted the supply chain of goods most especially the medical supplies for front liners and patients. 

SAP Malaysia together and EY Malaysia in cooperation with the Government-Linked Companies (“GLC”) and Government-Linked Investment Companies (“GLIC”) Disaster Response Network (“GDRN”), came up with a cloud solution, delivered within a week to GDRN, to provide optimum logistical support and response to organisations assisting the Ministry of Health in Malaysia. EY Malaysia implemented SAP Customer Experience solutions, including SAP Sales & Service Cloud for the supply of ventilators and protective equipment to hospitals and other health-related organisations in the country.

In India, facing the same concern on dwindling supply of healthcare essentials including high-quality ventilators needed in treating COVID-19 patients, SAP collaborated with NASSCOM Foundation, United Nations Development Program (UNDP) and HelpAge India.

Collaborating with local authorities and organisations. Aside from keeping close coordination with local governments, SAP APJ also collaborated with global organisations, nonprofit and social enterprises to support COVID-19 initiatives.

In Japan, SAP partnered with Operation Blessing Japan to supply over 50,000 masks and 6,000 liters of disinfectant to 300 care facilities including hospitals and homes for the elderly.

In South-East Asia, SAP volunteers are assisting UNICEF using social media to amplify COVID-19 response efforts, while 60 SAP volunteers are virtually mentoring underserved youth for Head Held High in India.

Russell shared how he foresees the future for SAP:

“The silver lining, at least to me personally, of the way we run our business is to be able to stay connected, on a more timely basis, to all parts of the region. We’re running 30-plus offices in 20-plus countries and they have diverse expectations and needs.”

“And I think that companies like ours will really embrace that going forward, because we’ve proved that we can understand the needs of our customers in a timely manner and accelerate some activities, whereas before we may have been artificially constrained by the need for face to face connections,” he added.

The post COVID-19 Response Round-up for the SAP Community in APJ Region appeared first on InsideSAP Asia.

In today’s COVID-19 environment, SAP Labs India remains unfazed implementing initiatives for its team and customers to help them thrive in these challenging times. Programmes such as SAP Transformation Demo webinar session, All-Hands Meeting with Thomas Saueressig, COVID-19 City Scale Epidemic simulator, and the CSR initiatives of the company keep SAP’s community together.

In a recent interview with Business Line, SAP Labs India’s SVP and Managing Director Sindhu Gangadharan talked about the company’s plans and outlook during and after the coronavirus pandemic. An SAP Veteran who has been with the company for about 20 years, Sindhu has deep technical expertise, business knowledge, and leadership skills that led her to manage several global teams.

Explaining what she foresees after COVID-19, Sindhu shared that COVID-19 has forced companies and employees to adapt to the ‘new normal’, which includes remote working. Before, working from home is not widely accepted in India. She exclaimed:

“…overnight, customers and companies had to get comfortable with online communication, collaboration and delivery. “

“In doing so, companies will realise that a digital transformation is no longer an option, but essential to their survival. They will also realise that only by transforming into an intelligent enterprise can they future-proof their operations against disruptions,” Sindhu stressed.

In Keeping Businesses Running

The SAP Labs India MD shared that business continuity plans developed by SAP business, support, and cloud delivery teams have always been in place in case disruptive incidents such as the coronavirus pandemic happen. This ensures that there will be minimal impact on the delivery of services to customers while also safeguarding the health of its employees. 

“We have been entrusted by our customers to run their mission-critical business processes,” she emphasized.

Some of the company initiatives and plans in place to help employees and businesses going are:

Working from home as an option. SAP Labs India was one of the first companies to introduce flexible working hours and work-from-home options so transitioning to it as needed during the pandemic was seamless. Rotating schedules were also implemented for onsite business-critical work.

Prioritising employees’ well-being. Virtual platforms, applications for communication, group work, and data backup were set up to ensure employees’ health and safety while working remotely. SAP Come Alive initiative, which delivers online fun, wellness, and motivational programmes, was launched to keep employees’ spirits up.

Constant contact with suppliers. To ensure SAP maintains its service levels and manage supply operational resources, the company is focused on scheduling and in-office practices to reduce the impact of any potential event. SAP also maintains a database of updates and feedback from suppliers concerning COVID-19.

Seizing the Digital Supply Chain Solutions. Recognising the growing digital supply chain management, Sindhu indicated that SAP’s supply chain software would be an area of growth for the company as well as of significant assistance to customers in terms of operational visibility and intelligence in managing their entire supply chain digitally, future-proofing their business with flawless execution. In a report from Transparency Market Research, the global supply chain management solutions market to grow at a CAGR of 11.2 percent within 2018-2026 and anticipated to reach a value of $32.9 billion by 2026.

Sindhu shared a bit about her recent blog on the future of work that encourages agility, flexibility, and security. She explained:

“At SAP, agility and flexibility have always been a part of the work culture. SAP has consistently been identified as an employer of choice due to the forward-looking and innovative policies that we have introduced in our journey towards becoming the workplace of the future.”

“We have created a workplace where our employees can do meaningful and rewarding work. We understand that advances in artificial intelligence, Internet of Things, and big data are making a profound impact on how we work, learn, communicate and collaborate, thus we are leveraging the power of these technologies to make our workplace more agile, flexible, and secure,” Sindhu stressed.

SAP Labs India was recognised as the number 1 company in the list of India’s Best Companies to Work for 2019 by the Great Place to Work Institute. The same recognition was given to the company in 2018.

The post SAP Labs India:Post COVID-19 Outlook appeared first on InsideSAP Asia.

Two weeks after the announcement of SAP’s free offerings to help businesses and the SAP community mitigate the impact of the novel coronavirus pandemic that has caused sourcing challenges, business travel disruption and shifting to remote work environments, once again, SAP has announced additional offerings and access to its select software solutions at zero cost. This time, the focus of the offerings is to address the global supply chain challenges that the company’s partners and customers are now up against.

The German company’s initiative aims to help businesses better manage and adjust to the changes that are happening inside their companies, with their customers, and with their supply chains through SAP Digital Supply Chain, SAP Ariba and Qualtrics solutions. Aside from helping companies easily identify and address potential supply chain disruptions even before they occur, these solutions also help identify alternative sources of supply and move goods efficiently and cost-effectively.

SAP’s new offerings at no cost include:

Planning as a service with the SAP Integrated Business Planning for Supply Chain solution 

Offered free for 90 days, this offering allows SAP partners to help customers leverage cloud to quickly load critical data and provide instant visibility to how demand is matched across a supply network. SAP will enable scenario planning to evaluate the supply chain impact, supply options and financial implications in cooperation with qualified channel partners. The supply chain solution allows customers to simulate demand shifts and the impact of production rate changes to eliminate bottlenecks and build stronger resilience.

This offer must be accepted on or before May 15, 2020.

Qualtrics Supply Continuity Pulse solution 

This is a new solution that is available and free for all companies. Qualtrics Supply Continuity Pulse, a combination of the procurement and experience management expertise of SAP Ariba and Qualtrics solutions, enables buyers to efficiently check-in with their suppliers, gain visibility into their and proactively analyse the overall risk associated with potential disruptions in their supply chains. It is an automated experience management solution (“XM Solution”) for soliciting and reporting on supplier feedback. This supplier feedback can be used to help identify:

· Potential supply constraints and jeopardised delivery timelines

 · Areas to optimise business continuity and recovery plans

 · Ways to collaborate with and assist suppliers to help them meet demand

This offer is valid for any Qualtrics account for up to three months. For those who do not yet have an account, opening one is offered at zero cost.

Last March, the co-CEOs Jennifer Morgan and Christian Klein addressed a heartfelt letter to the SAP Community shedding light on the uncertainties caused by the pandemic. They emphasised SAP’s commitment to ensuring its members, partners and customers’ health, safety, and livelihood as the company’s priorities.  Morgan and Klein said:

“Together we will persevere.”

This powerful statement was backed up by SAP’s free offerings and access to select solutions to ensure business continuity amid the global pandemic. Previously offered free solutions are:

Remote Work Pulse by Qualtrics

SAP Ariba Discovery

COVID-19 Pre-Screen & Routing by Qualtrics

TripIt Pro

SAP Litmos

Ruum by SAP

Aside from extending support to its business partners and customers, SAP has also increased its support to Social Sector partners globally. The ERP company established a €3 million COVID-19 Emergency Fund to support the urgent needs of the World Health Organisation (WHO), the CDC Foundation, and smaller nonprofits and social enterprises that work on the front lines serving local communities in crisis. 

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