Rapidly evolving tech countering supply chain disruptions

Through the Covid crisis, companies are defining and focusing on their core competencies, driving deeper customer relationships, developing new business models, adapting their supply chains, says Rahul Baheti, Chief Operating Officer, SAP Indian Subcontinent.

How has ERP managed to ensure business continuity planning in the time of the Covid-19 crisis/lockdown?

As the world navigates through the ongoing Covid-19 crisis, it is essential for organizations to adopt quality solutions as part of their business continuity strategies. Companies are being predictive and proactive in their decision-making to stay relevant and build enterprise resilience. To survive, companies are defining and focusing on their core competencies, driving deeper customer relationships, developing new business models, adapting their supply chains, streamlining their operations, and managing their finances. Those that have an intelligent Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) as their backbone to support their business functions will be able to do this quickly and will emerge stronger. To help businesses, SAP is offering numerous tools, reports, and services through our SAP S/4HANA Movement program, enabling our customers to map their way to an intelligent ERP foundation at their pace and convenience. We are working together with our customers recognizing those needs and meet them with SAP S/4HANA, our Intelligent ERP by providing real-time insights, real-time planning, forecasting, and simulation, as well as embedded analytics at each step, ensuring business continuity.

What about the supply chain? How can the supply chain—local, national & global—be maintained during such crises? What about the role of AI and blockchain in the same?

Supply chain being the lifeline of humanity, it is critical to maintain for businesses to maintain operations especially during these times. Enterprises have been taking considerable precautions while interacting with various stakeholders to maintain business continuity at a local, national and global level. SAP has a responsibility to help maintain reliable and transparent supply chains to ensure critical supplies reach the people and places where they are needed. That is why SAP has opened access to SAP Ariba Discovery – so any buyer can post immediate sourcing needs and any of the four million suppliers on Ariba Network can respond with their ability to deliver the goods and services required with no fees through the end of this year. With digitisation and automation at its best, SAP is helping build a resilient network for its customers all over the globe. The use of intelligent technologies such as Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Robotic Process Automation (RPA) and blockchain is rapidly evolving, allowing organizations to run supply chains smoothly.

Will the cloud now play a greater role in businesses and what about threats, both security and otherwise?

Cloud technologies are placed at the centre of events, and their usage in companies of all industries are growing as we speak. Large enterprises as well all small and medium businesses are taking the cloud route in this current pandemic as it provides more agility and security. SAP and its partners are offering industry cloud solutions that extend the end-to-end processes of SAP’s intelligent suite to help drive customer’s core business in their industries. SAP’s industry cloud strategy will deliver innovative, vertical solutions enabling rapid development, deployment and integration. Customers can also enhance and extend the business capabilities while maintaining process integrity and compliance thus enabling them to respond to changing business requirements while minimizing integration and support costs.

When it comes to ERP, what does the New Normal look like? What further changes can we expect in the 2020s? What role will Big Data and IoT play?

SAP is committed to helping businesses persevere tremendous disruption today and strengthen their digital foundation to tackle the next normal that lies ahead. SAP has enabled a series of innovation to S/4HANA to make it easier for businesses to add AI and robotics to improve business results, automate business processes and make accurate predictions for better decisions. Companies can now re-imagine their global businesses and utilize AI to gather more insights and stay relevant in these times. Companies are now leveraging technologies such as the Internet of Things (IoT), Big Data, AI, Blockchain, and augmented or Virtual Reality – in order to automate manual activities, mitigate potential risks early on, and stay two steps ahead in this New Normal.

What further changes can we expect as WFH is drastically scaled up, remote working is the key and also an increasing mobile workforce?

At SAP, we remain focused on supporting our customers, employees and communities during the COVID-19 pandemic. SAP already had a strong infrastructure to enable remote work, we were able to quickly adopt a virtual sales and remote implementation strategy to enable our employees to work productively from home. Majority of our employees have been working from home, but we continue to operate efficiently due to various skill building & development sessions and workshops being conducted, helping our employees to stay productive and ahead of the curve. We have also opened up access to technologies that can help employees, companies, communities, and governments continue to move forward. We managed to ensure seamless functioning through our preparedness and are seeing employees being productive while they work from the comforts of their homes while taking care of their families. We are also helping other organizations to understand their employee’s requirements and how they can help their employees feel supported and productive.

Rahul Baheti, Chief Operating Officer, SAP Indian Subcontinent

This temporary working condition that we are living in is now turning into a long-term change, with many companies planning to move majority of their on-site workforce to a remote working position permanently post this pandemic. However, to make this a reality, businesses will need to consider the challenges and take action in overcoming them to ensure employees are not overworked and can continue functioning safely and productively.