In this exclusive interview, Eva Zauke, senior vice president and global head of SAP Enterprise Adoption at SAP, shares how leading-edge organizations are achieving brilliant productivity gains, helping employees fully understand how to use innovative technologies to transform business processes and meet objectives for resilient, sustainable business performance at local and global levels.
Q: How are SAP customers digitalizing to address their biggest business challenges?
A: As the pandemic continues to speed up digitalization across organizations worldwide, our customers are realizing the tremendous business benefits of moving to the cloud. In one of the latest surveys, 77% of CEOs reported accelerating their company’s digital transformation plans. Between fast-changing supply chain disruptions, government policies, and regulations – and ongoing pandemic-related challenges – leaders are doubling down on business resiliency, reskilling and upskilling their people, and sustainability.
Working together to help our customers incorporate advanced technologies across the business to become part of a network of intelligent enterprises is at the heart of SAP Enterprise Adoption. It’s not enough to select new technology. Companies need to make sure they operate successfully locally and globally, and that their people will actually use new technologies to digitally transform the business.
How has the SAP Enterprise Adoption team responded to these challenges to help customers?
It comes down to digitalization of the business, localization, and user enablement. Over 80% of our customers are global, operating multiple sites across numerous countries. SAP Enterprise Adoption helps customers meet e-reporting and e-invoicing requirements for digital reporting and data transparency. We localize business processes in every application, including finance, human resources, procurement, travel, customer experience, and supply chain management for compliance with local regulations. Our team translates applications into local languages for use in the language of choice.
At the same time, we create digital learning materials that help employees understand how to use the company’s new business processes and technologies. Eighty-seven percent of recently surveyed executives said that their organization already faced skill gaps or expected to within the next five years. Upskilled, enabled employees are, on average, 50% more satisfied and productive.
When companies work with software that adheres to local business practices, this provides leaders with peace of mind. They know their people have the tools to innovate faster than the competition while the company meets evolving governmental policy and regulatory mandates worldwide.
Can you provide examples of customers that have benefitted from SAP Enterprise Adoption?
We worked with a global services provider that reduced the implementation costs of e-invoicing per customer by over 75%. This is significant because companies are under strong governmental pressures to adopt electronic invoices for tax reporting on purchase orders, payment terms, credit notes, and other transactional documents. E-invoicing provides companies and regulators with centralized data, something that’s particularly important for companies doing business in multiple countries and locations. Being able to quickly roll out new digitalized business processes like e-invoicing allows our customers to respond faster and more cost-effectively as regulations change.
We helped a global food and beverage company localize its centralized tax management processes using SAP Document and Reporting Compliance for its operations in Brazil. With improved data accuracy, automated tax filing transactions, and streamlined reporting, the company gained over 60% in efficiencies in meeting thousands of tax obligations and running millions of invoices each year.
An Australian-based water supplier has relied on us throughout its digital transformation journey to increase the productivity of over 1,000 employees by migrating to SAP S/4HANA. SAP Enable Now developed multimedia learning materials to train employees before the system went live. This strategy reflected the company’s employee engagement culture of continuous learning so customers never experience service gaps.
We help customers in many industries with digital learning enablement tailored to someone’s specific role and location. Learning might be embedded in new technologies or delivered on-site at a kiosk or through another channel, showing someone how to get the most out of the software in the context of their new business processes. When people fully understand how to use technologies like SAP S/4HANA and their positive impact, they become more productive for faster company innovation.
What should leaders keep in mind as they continue on their digital transformation journey?
Make sure you realize business value that’s measurable in resiliency, performance, and sustainability. Digital transformation is not just implementing new software. It’s embracing new capabilities so your employees can unlock the value of transformed processes and connected networks, making the Intelligent Enterprise a reality for your business.
Looking ahead, what can customers expect from SAP Enterprise Adoption?
We are staying on top of evolving government mandates, along with the impact of the pandemic and other up-to-the-minute world events by country, region, and industry. Organizations can continue to count on us for localized versions and user enablement across the lifespan of their SAP software. As companies increasingly digitalize operations, we will be there to help them adopt innovations for a more resilient, high-performing, and sustainable business future.
