The credentials of SAP speak for themselves:
€31 billion in total revenue (2023);
The number one software company in the Dow Jones Sustainability Index for 16 years;
And over 180 million subscribers to its cloud user base.
However, one of the most impressive milestones for the software firm is its transition from an “on-premise solution company to a fully cloud based business”, highlighted Mike Wade, EMEA Leader – Digital Supply Chain Customer Advisory at SAP.
But why is the enterprise application software company, which was established in 1972, garnering such success from its customers?
Underpinning its pivot into a fully cloud based business, SAP has a clear understanding of the impact digital technologies have and will have in redefining traditional supply chain management.
Its key focus now is to support its customers in moving beyond what Mike described as the “foundational layer of a digital supply chain”, into a realm where a business can empower its people through autonomous supply chains.
“By definition, autonomous supply chains enable self-governing decision making while reducing manual intervention. This truly empowers the people who run the supply chain,” explained Mike, “So, over time, digitalisation is enabling the people who run supply chains to do their job even better and with more data insights,” he said.
Design to Operate
Mike believes that one of the key reasons customers choose SAP to digitally transform their supply chain, is because its offering has the broadest process coverage across the supply chain.
SAP’s Design to Operate (D2O) portfolio is based on six core pillars: design; manufacturing; logistics; asset operation and maintenance; planning; and best of suite.
“Design for us is where the supply chain begins,” said Mike, “This is the world of new product introduction and development – the ideation of a new product through to launching it into the market. We enable our customers to manage the development and launch of new products into the market, shortening the time to market, which offers a real competitive advantage and for most organisations today,”.
The integration of its manufacturing pillar brings its customers crucial visibility for both process manufacturing and discrete manufacturing.
“D2O enables efficient and effective manufacturing operations so that manufacturing companies and organisations can deliver the expected plan,” continued Mike.
Logistics, Mike highlighted, has become more visible across the world, after the challenges faced during the Covid pandemic and the socio-political landscape of the last five years
“People who don’t work in supply chains learned a lot about the word logistics over that period,” he added.
SAP’s D2O solution enables companies in both simple and complex warehouse and fulfilment operations to embrace the “network of networks” for global logistics freight capacity
“This is really the area where I’ve seen many, many customers who digitally innovated through the foundation layer moving up to the autonomous layer in recent years,” Mike explained.
Its asset operations and maintenance pillar enables customers to get a better return on the investments made in physical assets.
“Take oil and gas or utility companies, for example. They often invest billions in their equipment and facilities. If they can improve the return on that investment, it’s a huge advantage for them,” he added.
This also involves managing maintenance—both inside customer’s facilities and for assets that are spread out across different locations.
“Our solution supports field maintenance as part of this asset operations and maintenance process,” Mike continued.
SAP’s D2O solution also supports its customers in supply chain planning across all dimensions, in what mike described as the “central nervous system of any supply chain”.
The software helps SAP’s customers to forecast accuracy, inventory, optimisation, and reductions, and reduce working capital, ultimately building risk resilience.
Finally, SAP’s best of suite approach is integrated into all of the five preceding D2O pillars which is fully integrated into SAP’s core Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems.
“Importantly, our customers know how important the native integration with our SAP core ERP software is. This data integrity is crucial, and only SAP can deliver this across that portfolio,” added Mike.
The D2O solution, which infuses both AI and Generative AI, has supported worldwide clients such as Equate Petroleum, Coca Cola Europacific Partners, and R. Twinings to drive business outcomes via digital transformation.
“In addition, our customers know that we consider it crucial to invest significantly into our solution roadmap and development. We are continually evolving our service offering with new functionality and new capability,” Mike said.
An Ecosystem Vital To Success
Whilst SAP’s D2O solution’s popularity is a clear “no-brainer”, Mike also shared the importance of its partner ecosystem in its value proposition to clients.
“Our ecosystem of partners are hugely important for SAP in order for us to be successful and our customers to be successful,” he explained. “The ecosystem allows us to scale across industries and geographies. We have a different range of ecosystem partners, some focused on implementation and some who are reselling and implementing our technology which helps to give our customers valuable choice,”.
An SAP Platinum partner with entities in the UK, Belgium, Netherlands and France, Delaware helps SAP’s customers to understand how best to adopt and consume its digital supply chain solutions.
“Adoption and consumption is absolutely crucial to our customer’s growth, our growth, and our technology’s growth,” shared Mike.
Additionally, Delaware is an innovator which has partnered with SAP in the co-development of its digital manufacturing solution for the mills industry, delivering SAP’s technology with a specific functionality for the sector.
“This is a great example of how our partner ecosystem can help with things like solution development, which has played an important role in our success”.
Considering the future of digital supply chains management, Mike foresees it to be “predictably unpredictable”.
To overcome this unpredictability, SAP has partnered with Everstream to develop risk resilience.
Everstream enables SAP to incorporate crucial supply chain planning information into its software, such as customer, supply, and demand signals. This helps to drive insight and efficiency for customers, increasing the ability for businesses to mitigate risk to its supply chain.
A Change to Embrace
In Mike’s conversation with Business Enquirer he noted how younger generations moving into the realm of supply chain management is supporting the adoption of digitalised supply chains.
It is clear that those who choose not to adopt technology into their business’ supply chain will simply be left behind.
“When you consider the impact that technology can have in supply chain practitioners’ worlds, it will mean less manual intervention. It will drive the need for new skills and an understanding of how to set up supply chains, which may be different from the traditional way that chains have been set up, governed, and operated. I’m seeing the technology actually driving the change in people, driving skills requirements, and driving how businesses model and set up those supply chains,” Mike explained.
Mike made it clear that people will always remain valuable in the world of supply chain, and whilst technology adoption is becoming crucial to the transformation of a business, he highlighted that “it doesn’t mean anything unless we have the right team to bring that to life for our customers”.
“I believe we have the best team in the industry. They’re passionate about helping our customers drive the maximum business benefit from SAP solutions. I have confidence and I know we have the best people in the industry in front of our customers,” he shared.