JOHANNESBURG, South Africa — SAP Africa has concluded its latest Hack2Build Africa partner event, with consulting firm Bayajula Services emerging as the overall winner.
The Hack2Build Africa event was held in May and saw eight partner teams from South Africa and West Africa spend seven days building compelling solution prototypes using SAP Build, a low-code app development and automation platform. A team of SAP solution architects and product management experts provided technical support to ensure the success of the partner solutions.
SAP Africa Chief Operating Officer Tracy Bolton says: “Innovation lies at the heart of everything we do at SAP. It is only through collaboration with our valued partner ecosystem that we can revitalise and revolutionise the way we support the digital transformation aspirations of organisations across the continent.”
Winning innovation enhances procurement planning
Bayajula Services’ winning concept is a cloud-based automated procurement planning solution that enables organisations to plan and manage their procurement spend, allowing integration with strategic sourcing and operational procurement systems. The solution is built on the SAP Business Technology Platform using SAP Build.
“We are thrilled to be recognised by SAP as the leading solution in the recent Hack2Build Event and look forward to adding transparency across critical procurement processes in Africa,” says Busisiwe Sibanyoni, Executive Director at Bayajula.
Runners-up included EPI-USE Africa for its case management tool, and EY Nigeria for a business partner authentication solution.
Tshepo Mahloko, Head of SAP Co-Innovation Lab: Africa at SAP, notes the potential of low-code solutions to accelerate innovation. “Low-code solutions such as SAP Build provide easy, intuitive ways of developing new applications without the need for extensive coding proficiency. This can accelerate time-to-value, enhance ROI, reduce total cost of development through the rapid development of minimum viable products, and unify development experiences for application and process innovation.”
Partners leverage Build for innovation
A previous Hack2Build event held in February saw 20 partner organisations from 11 countries in EMEA South participate in a two-day Demo Jam to build solution prototypes using SAP Build.
The winner of this event was Merlynn, who developed a prototype Digital Fraud Review Panel which aims to prevent payment fraud within procurement and payment systems. Merlynn’s Decisioning Digital Twin Technology enables organisations to deploy a digital team of fraud experts within their SAP payment system to enhance existing controls.
The Digital Fraud Review Panel acts as a second set of eyes that monitors payment activity in real-time, identifies potential fraud and stops the payment before money flows out of the organisation, all integrated into SAP via API. Merlynn’s Digital Fraud review panel solution is now listed on the SAP Store.
Mahloko says the Hack2Build events serve as a powerful platform for African partner organisations to showcase their capabilities, harness the potential of the SAP Business Technology Platform, and drive innovation throughout the region. “The SAP Co-Innovation Lab will continue to work in close collaboration with our valued partners to support the development of their solutions and take their innovations to market.”
The SAP Co-Innovation Lab is hosting a Hack2Build event for African partner organisations in Q4 of 2023 and will provide an opportunity for partners to turn their innovative solution ideas into real customer solutions. For more information, please visit https://coil.sap.com
