BUSINESS organizations in Southeast Asia have a strong ally in SAP, a “market leader in enterprise application software.”
To demonstrate its strong support, SAP showcased some of its customers during a briefing for the members of the media held at Shangri-La at the Fort in Bonifacio Global City, Taguig City.
SAP executives Claus Andersen (left), president and managing director, Southeast Asia, and Peter Moore, vice president of Platform and Data Management, Southeast Asia Platform and Management. (EKU)
In the briefing included Globe Telecom and JG Summit Holdings, Inc. from the Philippines; CrowdFarmX of Singapore; The Body Shop of Indonesia; and Mitsui and Co. Asia Pacific.
It means that digital transformation (DX) for these five companies has been a successful journey into the digital world focused on becoming an Intelligent Enterprise that SAP inspired and guided as shown by their testimonies.
Rieza Maniego-Eala, chief finance officer, Globe
“Through SAP S/4HANA business suite platform, as wel ass Concur and Ariba Procure-to-Pay service solutions, we will be able to modernize our business processes to keep up with fast-changing landscape of the business and market. This initiative will help transform our finance processes into more agile and real-time decision-making tools.”
Carlos G. Santos, chief information officer, JG Summit
“We only expect good things to happen moving forward. We know that SAP will help us remain competitive at every step of our journey towards digital transformation through their breed of innovative solutions, specifically SAP S/4HANA, over the coming five years.”
David Tan, founder and CEO, CrowdFarmX
“The global food supply chain needs to be completely re-imagined in order to remain sustainable for future generations. With SAP S/4 HANA Public Cloud, CrowdFarmX will have an intelligent and intuitive digital backbone that supports us to have more complete visibility of the supply chain and supports rapid scalability. This is crucial to pioneering next-generation agriculture by bringing and supporting farmers to gain more benefit from market opportunities. Our ultimate goal is to uplift farmers from poverty, make farming a more lucrative profession, and secure the world’s future food supply.”
Mira Fitria Soetjipto, director, Human resources, Technology and Strategy Management, Body Shop Indonesia
“At The Body Shop Indonesia, we embarked on a digital transformation journey that
encompasses our people, products, processes and platforms. As we prepare for the workforce of the future, we leveraged SAP SuccessFactors to digitize our HR processes and ensure that our organisation’s strategy and goals are aligned to our workforce performance. SAP SuccessFactors technology was an enabler for us to become an intelligent enterprise and sustain a competitive advantage.”
Ikuo Hayashi, general manager, Information Systems Department, Planning Division, Mitsui and Company, Asia Pacific
“We are very satisfied with our IT investment in SAP Concur and are developing further opportunities to improve employee productivity. We now have a platform to deliver our broader aims of migrating IT systems in Asia to the cloud and standardizing operations across the region.”
SAP noted the continued growth of economic stimulus in Southeast Asia, saying this results in the digital economy’s expansion.
Peter Moore, VP of Platform & Data Management, SAP Southeast Asia, and SAP’s guest speakers Mira Fitra Soetjipto, Human Resources director, The Body Shop Indonesia; David Tan, founder and CEO of CrowdFarmX; Rizza Maniego-Eala, chief financial officer of Globe Telecom; Ikuo Hayashi, general manager of Information System, Asia Pacific, Mitsui & Co (Asia Pacific) Pte. Ltd.; and Carlos Santos, chief information officer of JG Summit as they discuss digital transformation with the help of SAP. (Photo: SAP).
But not every country in the region is marching at the same pace and they are also facing different kinds of challenges to their digital maturity.
This is where SAP comes in and have been coming armed with its 45 years of experience, expertise in 25 industries, putting it in a unique position to support customers in the region on their journey to succeed in the digital economy and transform their businesses into an Intelligent Enterprise.
Claus Andersen, president and managing director of SAP Southeast Asia, said it as much.
“The digital ecosystem in Southeast Asia continues to grow and mature, presenting immense opportunities for organizations to harness the power of data.
“For 29 years, SAP has helped more than 10,000 companies in Southeast Asia adopt digital innovations. Today, we continue to expand our innovation portfolio in new ways, allowing our customers and partners to innovate with purpose and confidence. We are glad that companies continues to choose SAP as their trusted partner on their journey to become intelligent enterprises,” he said.
How intelligent enterprises work
SAP said intelligent enterprises operate with visibility, focus, and agility to achieve game-changing outcomes by doing more with less as they empower employees through the process of automation.
Andersen said in the time that SAP has been in the region, they have seen a lot of change.
“For the last 10 years things have changed quite rapidly. There’s a stronger, stronger voice coming through from our customers around what they need; a strong appetite from them around what they need and more about their customers, what their customers need, being able to customize their products in what their customers need.”
He said Intelligent Enterprise has three pillars, such as Intelligent Suite, Data Platform, and Intelligent Technologies.
Organizations that adopt Intelligent Enterprise are able to deliver a best-in-class customer experience by proactively responding to customer expectations. They also invent new business models, and revenue streams,
Backing up SAP are over 3,800 employees as of October 2018 in 11 offices in Southeast Asia; it also drives gender equality with 41.5 percent women in its work force, 34.7 percent of them in management.
The company, as of this part of the year, also won 106 employer awards across the world. (EKU)