Building a Smarter Australia: How SAP is Powering Government and Local IT success

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SAP has been helping Australia and New Zealand’s public sector organisations be the best they can be for more than 35 years.

Using the knowledge gained working with tens of thousands of clients around the world, we ensure agencies – and the citizens they serve – can benefit from the latest in best practice thinking.

Each customer also benefits from close to $10 billion dollars we spend each year on research and development. This investment ensures our software incorporates the latest processes and technologies, implemented in a safe and effective manner, including the rapidly emerging field of generative AI.

This experience means we are very familiar with the pressures that public sector agencies face to transform and improve their service offerings. We have also worked hard to ensure we remain at the forefront of innovation and have evolved with our clients through the different eras of computing, from mainframe and client/server deployments to today’s cloud-based environments, ensuring we can meet demands for agility and cost-effectiveness.

Resetting Perceptions: Solutions for Agencies of all sizes

However, our heritage in delivering large and complex systems for some of the world’s most sophisticated organisations has at times overshadowed the value we can bring to smaller organisations and the speed at which we can deliver it.

We believe it is time to reset thinking when it comes to who we are, what we can do, and who is supported by our business.

Cost Effective for All Sizes

While SAP has found success assisting some of Australia and New Zealand’s largest government departments, we have also helped some smaller agencies achieve remarkable results on limited budgets.

For example, at Fire & Rescue NSW, SAP Analytics Cloud is bringing together data from multiple systems to underpin new financial planning and management reporting processes. The implementation has automated and accelerated numerous processes and shortened the delivery of month-end reports by a whole week. Staff can focus on making strategic decisions rather than crunching numbers, and the agency is well placed to harness AI and predictive analytics to support its role protecting the people of NSW. It’s estimated this has saved them over 20,000 hours of effort each fire season.

And at Australia’s Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (ANSTO), the implementation of SAP Integrated Business Planning (IBP) is delivering more than $1 million in projected savings in the first six months thanks to improvements in product allocation and import scheduling. The solution also uncovered a $500,000 revenue opportunity, showcasing how SAP solutions drive both operational efficiency and growth.

Speed to Value: Rapid Cloud Adoption

Our rapid adoption of cloud-based delivery means organisations can now access the latest technologies at unprecedented speed. This capability has been instrumental in supporting governments during national crises where fast turnarounds are critical.

This was demonstrated repeatedly during the COVID-19 pandemic, where quickly developed government support programs demanded similarly rapid turnarounds to create the systems that would deliver them.

In Germany for instance, the Federal Government quickly realised that COVID-19 lockdowns would have a dramatic negative impact on the country’s cultural industries and responded by allocating 2.5 billion euros in aid. The money was to be distributed by the 16 German states, but some lacked the capability to deliver it efficiently.

A solution was proposed by the Hamburg Ministry of Finance, which offered to develop a platform using SAP’s S/4 HANA and Business Technology Platform (BTP) that could be used by the 15 other states. A comprehensive solution was developed spanning self-registration, screening, application, entitlement, dispute handling, and payment, the platform was up and running in just three weeks.

This same system later evolved to incorporate generative AI, which was critical in helping Hamburg accept and interpret the hundreds of pages of information that applicants supplied when applying for grants, saving between 13,300 and 33,100 hours of manual processing per year.

Another story of SAP’s agility was told in Japan in the wake of the 2024 New Year’s Day earthquake.  SAP Japan stepped up to develop and implement an application on SAP BTP in just 72 hours consolidating and visualising data from a wide range of sources to support the government’s response. This capability underscores SAP ability to deliver rapid solutions in times of need.

Supporting Local IT Growth

No software company knows Australian and New Zealand governments and agencies better than SAP. We have been supporting the Australian Government since 1988 and today we are assisting everyone from the largest departments to regional councils.

SAP’s contribution to the Australian economy is not limited to technology alone. We employ more than 1,400 staff across Australia, and our ecosystem of over 625 partners – half of which are small businesses – helps bring our solutions to life.

Whether it be FAIR Consulting Group’s focus on delivering value for its customers while driven by its values, Dyflex’s support to the growth businesses at the forefront of Australia’s energy transition, or DalRae’s strength in delivering innovation for Government customers, these Australian businesses driving local growth and employment by helping our customers integrate SAP solutions.

In 2023, SAP further strengthened its commitment to Australia by launching an Australian sovereign cloud capability, generating 70 new local jobs. That service is now live for local clients with specific needs for localised data hosting, including commercial organisations such as Toll Group.

Collectively, Oxford Economics has estimated SAP Australia has contributed more than $900 million to the local economy. And that doesn’t include the productivity benefits our solutions have delivered for our customers across various sectors.

Public Sector investment in SAP solutions delivers benefits across the Australian economy, creating jobs while ensuring citizens benefit from systems that embody the latest developments in AI-powered technologies.

A Proven Partner for Public Sector Success

SAP’s systems and processes have been developed from best practices learned through decades of collaboration with Australia’s public sector and organizations around the world.

If you’re looking for cutting-edge solutions, backed by SAP’s nearly $10 billion annual investment in R&D and deep expertise in running public sector agencies cost-effectively, while also contributing to local economic growth, then talk to SAP.