The whole purpose of the business is to serve customer happily and profitably, delivering value for their investment. The customer is at the center of any need for transformation. I have heard many experts speaking on this subject and they talk of implementing the digital tools and technology as the purpose of digital transformation. This is completely wrong, the purpose and reason for digital transformation is because Customer is demanding, they are changing and they are looking for innovative, faster and better solutions hence the need for digital transformation.

The companies now have various digital tools and technologies for enabling and satisfying the customer demands for this transformation.

1. Business model disruption (you can be the biggest transportation company without owning a vehicle eg Uber)
2. Business is generating a huge volume of data. Data is the new oil. Business needs to find, extract, refine, distribute and monetize it.
3. New & changing consumer requirements, behaviour and digital-savvy millennials
4. Delighting customer experience

1. How a company can fund and implement these innovations for the future and still running existing operations?
2. Who will fund these programs? ( Actually finally customer funds it ! Think over)
3. How can I use tons of data for actionable business intelligence, forecasting and planning?
4. How to use and deploy the cutting edge user experience like social media Apps in business applications?
5. How to map customer journey and delivering value and experience at each touch points ……?

From technology points of view, the costs of computing, storage, network and automation has decreased substantially in last decade hence makes it affordable and feasible to implement.

To implement any digital transformation program, it is a journey and not one time activity. One need to map the complete digital journey and accordingly implement various digital program based on the existing status, priorities and target goals. With each step companies needs to move from current stage of digital-ness to the target mature Digital state.

This involves following steps: –

1. Assessment of current state of Digital readiness
2. Putting Digital intelligence & Analytics to data for better and faster decision making using digital tools
3. Digitalization of the cross functional business process and automations
4. Using advance technology like cloud, AI, ML for building intelligent enterprise
5. Digitally maturing the organization once, the core business process are covered and delivering the value to the end customer and thereon continuous innovations.

For digital transformation program, companies can start with the priorities of approach. It could be from inside out (Operations to customer touch points) or can start from customer facing processes and then moving to the core operational processes.

The existing business models are changing and every company needs to become a digital business to stay competitive and relevant else they will be Kodaked!

SAP has come up in the recent months this initiative called “Rise with SAP” . This is a business transformation as a service offerings from SAP with simplified contract on subscription pricing model, at customers terms (they can use any of the hyperscaler for cloud infrastructure) , preferences and timelines.

The whole construct of the program is to enable & implement faster acceleration for digital transformation using S/4HANA modern ERP and intelligent technologies.

This will help customers in modernizing, standardizing and digitizing the business processes.

The various components of “Rise with SAP” included in one contract are :-

1. Infrastructure choice (Any of the Hyper scalers)
2. S/4HANA cloud ERP licenses (Private of public cloud)
3. Business process intelligence reports
4. Various tools and services for readiness, migration, learning
5. Business technology platform ( earlier called SAP cloud) credits
6. Business network starter pack ( Ariba, Assets intelligence, Logistics network)

The advisory and implementation services are covered in a separate contract with the authorized implementation and service partner who is providing the same.

The process of implementation starts with process discovery tool (business process intelligence) that gives an assessment of current processes and comparison with the industry benchmarks.

The complete implementation process follows SAP ACTIVATE methodology.

The steps involved in implementation are :-

1. Value discovery
2.  Setup and enablement
3. Fit-to-Standard Analysis
4. Scope and configure
5. Migrate, integrate and test
6. Extend (using InApp or Side by Side development using SAP BTP)
7. Onboard and deploy
8. Innovate, operate and support

The best part of Rise with SAP is that it is comprehensive, simplified bundle, defined investment & outcomes and tools based implementation in comparison to benchmarks and best business practices of industry. It is truly a gamechanger as industry has not witnessed anything like this before.

As a part of long-term plans and in alignment with SAP and as our customer plans to become intelligent enterprise, we have migrated some of these digital assets & products on SAP cloud platform and will be available on subscription pricing and SaaS model. The collection of these Apps is called “IVL cloud Apps” and will be available on SAP Apps Center.