Engaging Latino talent who have the skills and experience to inspire and innovate with customers is at the core of the Latinos@SAP group’s year-round mission, and no other time is this Employee Network Group’s impact felt more than Hispanic Heritage Month each year.
For example, in October 2019, Latinos@SAP hosted three very special guests across three of its offices in North America as part of the Professional Journey series launched in 2018. The objective: Provide an opportunity for SAP employees to join a conversation with Latino executives from leading SAP customers to learn from their professional experiences and unique perspectives on leadership, diversity, and inclusion.
As a leader dedicated to supporting and directly investing in diversity and inclusion (D&I), Lloyd Adams, senior vice president and managing director for the East region at SAP North America, sponsored the Hispanic Heritage Month Professional Journey series in Newtown Square, PA, hosting SAP customer and Campbell’s Soup CIO Francisco Fraga. In his opening remarks, Adams highlighted how Employee Network Groups can serve as catalysts for strengthening customer relationships and innovation geared toward achieving customer success.
“The research and business results are clear: Thoughtful investment in diversity and inclusion brings historically underserved and underrepresented voices to the table, adding new perspectives and approaches to innovation that maximize business potential,” Adams said. “Creating a venue for diverse customer leaders to share their perspectives and experiences makes SAP and our customer community that much stronger.”
During his session, Fraga spoke about how transforming to SAP S/4HANA enables real-time analytics and is a goal for Campbell’s IT backbone. “When we have a winning business case, and it’s clear, and we can draw a direct line between that business case and our corporate goals, then it’s a very easy conversation,” Fraga pointed out.
After a six-month enterprise resource planning (ERP) transformation, Campbell’s Soup Company successfully migrated to SAP HANA. Integrating these systems allows the company to have a significant increase in transactional volume. “To be able to absorb that effectively, we needed a dramatic improvement in our system’s performance,” said Fraga.
Campbell’s Soup’s migration worked to mitigate risks of supply chain disruptions and rapid shifts caused by consumer demand that were introduced by the COVID-19 pandemic. Upgrading its systems to support critical business technology is an important step toward large-scale modernization.
The mission of Latinos@SAP as an Employee Network Group is to help SAP meet its business goals by fostering stronger business relationships in the Latino community and advancing inclusion in the company, with a strong focus on talent and innovation.
Read more about Campbell‘s Soup Company’s migration to SAP S/4HANA on CIO Dive and ASUG.
Luis Colmenares is head of Latinos@SAP and a customer success executive at SAP.