The Friend of ASEAN award was presented by Mdm Halimah Yacob:

Mdm Halimah Yacob is the President of the Republic of Singapore. The award presentation was at the ASEAN Business Awards 2018 gala dinner, held in Singapore and hosted by the ASEAN-BAC. The Friends of ASEAN award category acknowledges non-ASEAN owned organisations for their continuous and increased commitment to growing their presence in the ASEAN. The awards were introduced in 2007 by ASEAN-BAC to mark ASEAN’s 40^th anniversary and to recognise outstanding ASEAN businesses.

From its initial single office and 16 employees in Singapore in 1989, SAP has steadily grown its ASEAN presence to its current 11 offices in 7 ASEAN member states and more than 3,800 employees.

As an employer, SAP has continuously invested in the development of its people and is recognised as an employer of choice in the region, as demonstrated by the numerous employer-focused awards it has garnered.

In addition, SAP innovations help more than 10,000 ASEAN customers — including 91 of the Top 100 ASEAN companies — work more efficiently and use business insights more effectively.

“SAP has been helping customers in Southeast Asia run better with our software innovations for close to 30 years now, and with our continued expansion, we are focusing on helping even more organisations leapfrog the technology gap to thrive in the fourth industrial revolution. We do so by bringing best practices from our global experience with 25 industries, together with leading technologies such as blockchain, IoT, machine learning and analytics, while building the capacity of local partners to better serve our customers,” said Claus Andresen, president & managing director, SAP Southeast Asia.

SAP Corporate Social Responsibility initiatives help communities:

“Receiving the Friend of ASEAN accolade is an impetus for us to do more to help companies and communities be more successful. We will be successful only when they are successful.”

A major initiative of SAP Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is the SAP Social Sabbatical, enabling SAP employees to donate their skills and expertise to help non-profit organisations and social enterprises to create solutions to major business challenges. Since 2015, 111 SAP employees have volunteered more than 27,000 hours, valued at almost 1.5 million euros in support of 40 social enterprises across Southeast Asia.

“In service to SAP’s CSR mission – powering opportunity through digital inclusion — SAP collaborated with the ASEAN Foundation to establish the ASEAN Data Science Explorers (ASEAN DSE) program in 2017. ASEAN DSE have since trained close to 5000 educators and youths in SAP Analytics Cloud across all 10 ASEAN member states,” said Eugene Ho, head of corporate affairs, SAP Southeast Asia.

The initiative enables participants to visualise and analyse data on UN Sustainable Developments Goals and to develop recommendations to support the ASEAN Socio-Cultural Community Blueprint 2025.

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The initiatives aim to equip young people in ASEA with the skills they need to thrive in the digital economy; build capacity of innovative social enterprise to help youth build successful careers; and to build the skilled workforce that will be required for the IT sector.

Among the successes in 2017 have been the ASEAN Data Science Explorers competition, which saw 804 participants trained in SAP’s Analytics Cloud software and create submissions addressing some of the most pressing social issues in the region. Highlights included a project by Team ‘Omotesando’ from Indonesia, which aimed to accelerate financial inclusion through branchless banking, and a project by Team ‘Tonkar Data’ from Laos, which proposed adoption of smart and vertical farming to improve agriculture productivity.

The Youth Volunteering Innovation Challenge provided 29 young people with access to mentor and capital to start or scale-up social impact and sustainable development projects. SAP also supported nine of the top 50 ASEAN social enterprises through its SAP Social Sabbatical and NUS Crossing the Chasm Challenge, providing mentorship and consulting.

“Through this synergetic collaboration, we have been able to leverage resources from both organizations to inspire ASEAN youths to actively participate in efforts towards driving a sustainable future for ASEAN. With digitisation being the pivotal force in today’s ASEAN economies, both the public and the private sector need to work together to impart digital skills to the young,” said Elaine Tan, executive director, ASEAN Foundation.

“SAP has been a strong supporter in making consistent effort to move the needle in this respect; we hope to continue to collaborate with them to prepare ASEAN’s workforce for the future.”

“2017 has been a special year for the ASEAN community, with ASEAN turning 50 and the ASEAN Foundation celebrating its 20th anniversary. The community has come a long way and through this collaboration, SAP is proud to have been part of this journey to help ASEAN write the next chapter towards a more sustainable future,” said Claus Andresen, president and managing director, SAP Southeast Asia.

“Helping the world run better and improving people’s lives is at the heart of everything we do at SAP and we are pleased with the outcomes of the collaboration in the first year. I am confident that the renewal of this collaboration will help scale our ambitious CSR programs to create even greater positive impact across the region.”

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JSE targets startups developing disruptive technologies to create social impact in diverse sectors from education and healthcare to energy and infrastructure, among others.

The four-month program will provide the startups with access to business and academic mentors as well as subject matter experts through the Centre for Innovation and Entrepreneurship (CIE) at ISB and SAP Labs. In addition to mentorship and training, recipients will benefit from significant networking opportunities with investors as well as academic and industry experts.

The intent of the program is to support 10 early stage and five growth stage social startups as they scale up their technology solutions aimed at creating a large scale and sustainable impact on the lives of the Indian populace.

Early stage registered startups using technology as their core product or service to address a pressing challenge in India are invited to apply and finalists will be invited to a business plan pitch and interview by a panel consisting of business experts, investors, ISB faculty and SAP team members.

Program participants will be selected on the basis of a range of criteria related to their team and organisational structure, innovation, social impact, scalability and stage of operations.

Applications can be found here: www.f6s.com/jumpstartsocialenterprise/apply

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In the program’s second year, five employee-driven ventures were selected to receive seed money of up to €200,000 each. The five wining ventures will be guided by experts, mentored by the SAP.iO Entrepreneurship Accelerator Program and coached by industry specialists.

“1BLives exemplifies our role as an organisation to improve the lives of the people in the communities we operate in. It is a unique space where SAP employees can act as entrepreneurs and develop sustainable social impact at scale around a cause they are personally passionate about,” said Scott Russell, president, SAP Asia Pacific Japan.

“This is only the beginning and a catalyst for innovative ideas. We will support these teams with a robust framework, mentorship and technology as they engage with non-governmental organisations, partners and the broader ecosystem to validate and realise these ventures.”

The five ventures, which are part of an early stage social-impact incubation arm at SAP.iO who mission is to grow the next generation of disruptive new businesses for SAP, include:

• Digital Aged Care: This venture looks to leverage the Internet of Things platform that connects wearable devices and smart household devices to monitor an elderly’s condition to provide better efficiency for aged care givers. The aim is to increase quality of health care, and enable a better functioning of the aged nursing workforce.
• Accessible Eyecare: With preventable blindness common and set to rise in rural parts of India, people are dissuaded from visiting the eye clinic due to travel time. This venture hopes to leverage SAP Leonardo to provide an intelligent mobile platform for ocular diagnosis, helping victims make earlier corrective action remotely.
• Food Waste Management: Kicking off in Thailand, this venture aims to create a supply chain management platform to salvage unwanted food and connect it to a demand, stemming hunger crisis for those in need.
• Water Management: Non-revenue water is the water lost in cities through water supply systems between source and end user, which contributes to waste totalling $14 billion a year. This venture aims to minimise this loss in India through the use of SAP IS Utilities to attain real-time information from measuring sensors on water loss, combating the issue of water scarcity.
• Disaster Relief Network: Using SAP Ariba and SAP Hybris, this venture aims to leverage a consolidated platform to enable collaboration between all disaster relief parties increasing the effort to impact ratio, helping more people in the long run.

The venture teams are now working in the accelerate phase, where they apply lean start-up methods to challenge ideas through iterations and strong mentorship. The ventures are expected to test their ideas and go live with minimum viable product (MVP) by the end of the year.

“1BLives is a combination of the best SAP has to offer – our values, innovation, culture and ecosystem to deliver on a better Asia Pacific Japan for tomorrow. It is a key part of our strategy to realise SAP’s full potential in this promising region,” said Russell.

Grace Sai, judge for the 1BLives initiative and co-founder and CEO of Impact Hub and partner at Hub Ventures Fund, said, “The 1BLives initiatives is a great benchmark for big corporates like SAP and others to follow. The exploration on how to use a corporate’s own talent, capital and technology to better the world and attack some of the world’s most stubborn problems, is an admirable cause.”

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The SAP employees, from across the Americas, Europe and Asia, acted as consultants to help two social enterprises, a non-profit organisation and a registered charity address operational challenges and propose solutions in areas such as strategy, marketing, IT, HR, finance and consulting to sustain their social mandate. At the end of the program, the employees delivered a sustainable business plan to each organisation that would help them improve their operating models.

The education organisations selected for the project included Saigon Children’s Charity, a UK-registered charity that aims to eliminate poverty through education; Teach for Vietnam, a non-profit organisation under the umbrella of Teach for All; and G.A.P. Institute, a social enterprise founded by trainers who had 10 years experience in youth development.

SAP employees also worked with XanhShop, a social enterprise that helps farmers and producers develop eco-friendly products and encourages them to practice natural farming, to bring clean and chemical-free local products to every household to enhance their health and quality of life.

With the challenge of managing a perishable food supply chain, XanhShop looked at the SAP team to deliver recommendations on how they can better manage their limited resources to optimise their supply chain.

“With agriculture being one of the key sectors driving the Vietnamese economy, there is a pressing need for the industry to transform and give farmers the means to access technology that can help manage their trade and harvests; and also predict in terms of products and income,” said Maria Soledad Petrucci, finance specialist, SAP Argentina. “XanhShop delivers an innovative business model for farmers to connect with their ecosystem, and with SAP solutions, the organization is better in improving its operations, processes and communication with the supplier farms to cope with the demands of the local market.”

The SAP Social Sabbatical program allows SAP talent around the world to contribute time and expertise to assist in empowering organisations in the education or entrepreneurship sector in emerging markets, including assistance in strengthening leadership competencies, cross industry sector know-how and intercultural sensitivity.

“As a company, SAP understands the value of education in supporting the advancement of society and we are constantly looking for opportunities to partner with organizations that has this mission at the core of its purpose. We hope that the mentorship that we have provided to these organizations have enabled them to sustain their operations as they continue to bridge the gap and provide youths in Vietnam with access to education,” said Nadine Elsham, customer engagement executive, SAP UK, one of the SAP employee participants.

“SAP is committed to helping the world run better and improving peoples’ lives by making strategic social investments that have a lasting and sustainable impact on society. We are pleased to see the organizations that we have collaborated in this program benefiting from the knowledge and insights shared by our top talents. With this program, SAP wants to help social entrepreneurs and expanding educational organisations unlock their potential to create sustainable economic growth and social impact,” explains Liher Urbizu, managing director, SAP Indochina.

“Through this SAP Social Sabbatical program, our aim is to empower our best talents in skills-based volunteering. SAP is a place where the next generation of leaders can apply their talents to make people’s lives simpler and improve their future well-being. This is an important part of our social investment strategy, especially as we identify ASEAN as a growth frontier region. Giving back to our community to make this a better place to live, work and play is part of our SAP focus, here in Vietnam and around the world.”

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