Enabling innovation through technology

Peter Moore, vice president of platform & data management, SAP Southeast Asia (left) and Claus Andresen, president and managing director of SAP Southeast Asia (third from right), with SAP customers: David Tan, founder and CEO of CrowdFarmX; Rizza Maniego-Eala, chief financial officer of Globe Telecom; Mira Fitra Soetjipto, human resources director, The Body Shop Indonesia; Ikuo Hayashi, general manager of information systems, Asia Pacific, Mitsui & Co. (Asia Pacific) Pte. Ltd.; and Carlos Santos, chief information officer of JG Summit

With all the buzz surrounding digital transformation of businesses, how exactly does a traditional conglomerate become an “intelligent” enterprise?

According to Carlos Santos, JG Summit Holdings chief information officer, three enablers are needed: top-level management support, the proper company framework and a partnership with the right solutions provider.

“Top-level support means your CEO says, ‘I want to drive digital transformation.’ But that support isn’t enough if you don’t [have] another support structure called a digital transformation office. This is a group headed by a top executive that will drive digital transformation across several business units,” explains Santos.

The second enabler, says Santos, was his responsibility. “I needed to come up with a framework that makes sure the whole conglomerate would follow the same direction [toward digital transformation],” he says. His solution? To manage four main company pillars—suppliers, internal operations, consumers, and employees—using analytics.

“Without analytics, running those four [components]—well, you wouldn’t actually be able to decide on anything,” says Santos. “Any intelligent enterprise would be able to tell you at any given point in time that a machine in its factory [in another country] isn’t working because it hasn’t been maintained, say, in the last six months—from here, on your phone.”

Enter enterprise software application developer SAP, which, says Santos, is JG Summit’s third enabler, as they have found in the company the right partner because of its S/4HANA system.

SAP is currently the market leader in enterprise application software—77 percent of the world’s transaction revenue touches a SAP system. In the past 29 years, SAP has catered to the needs of over 10,000 companies in Southeast Asia by helping them 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,” says Claus Andresen, president and managing director of SAP Southeast Asia.

Tanduay Distillers, Inc., through the use of S/4HANA, expects better tracking of materials, a more streamlined procurement process and more efficient warehouse management for the company, among other things, once they fully implement the software, which the company expects to do so by 2020, says Nestor Mendones, chief finance officer.

“We’re really happy we took S/4HANA into our organization. It really took guts for us to undergo this transformation, as we had already spent on another system. However, we decided to let go of that expense in favor of a better system,” he adds.

Globe Telecom also recently signed a three-year deal with SAP for solutions aimed at digitalizing its finance processes, enabling real-time decision making and supporting an agile environment.

“This initiative will help transform our finance processes into more agile and real-time decision-making tools. More than looking at numbers and transactions, we will further strengthen our capability to add value company-wide by providing insights crucial to making informed decisions,” says Globe chief finance officer Rizza Maniego-Eala. “We expect to improve business productivity and operational efficiencies that will enable our cross-functional teams to deliver a richer internal and external customer experience.”

Other companies across Southeast Asia which employ SAP’s S/4HANA system include The Body Shop Indonesia, Singaporean farming cooperative CrowdFarmX, and Mitsui & Co. Ltd, one of the largest general trading companies in Japan, whose representatives were here in the country recently for a forum on how SAP enables intelligent enterprises.

“The digital ecosystem in Southeast Asia continues to grow and mature, presenting immense opportunities for organizations to harness the power of data,” says Andresen. “We are glad that companies continue to choose SAP as their trusted partner on their journey to become intelligent enterprises.” —ANNELLE TAYAO-JUEGO