What are the most essential building blocks of an intelligent Enterprise? Without doubt, a future-proof digital foundation that comprises a number of technology building blocks, each dependent on having the right data at the right time.
For enterprises that are willing to think big, embrace change, move quickly, and organize differently, there are countless opportunities to reap the rewards of the digital economy. However, for lasting success, the building of a digital platform is a prerequisite. Only by seamlessly integrating front-end and back-end operations of your organization you can fully harness the power of digital.
Why is it so important? Based on my experience from working with clients across the globe, competitiveness boils down to three important areas that can be realized through a strong digital backbone:
• Reimagining the customer experience (CX). Many of our clients are transferring from a traditional B2B model into a D2C model where they manufacture and ship their products directly to buyers without relying on traditional stores or other middlemen. This customer-centric transformation is dependent on data that can flow in real-time between customer touchpoints, providing new insights. SAP helps you achieve this.
As a global SAP partner, Cognizant’s CX practice includes an accelerated CX transformation path, covering everything from strategy to deployment. We recently helped a leading Swedish home appliance manufacturer simplify its end-to-end marketing and sales process for its four million end-consumers across 40 countries. This enabled a “One Consumer” view, with improved insights of consumers and increased monetization opportunities. The streamlining of processes was realized through SAP C/4 HANA with rollout for each market averaging six weeks. The program resulted in an average order value of €242 and a Net Promoter Score (NPS) increase by 58+ basis points.
• Unlocking valuable insights. To drive better business outcomes, you need to transform your data silos into an integrated, intelligent data ecosystem. This helps you unlock valuable insights hidden in your data. Platforms such as SAP BW/4 HANA and SAC Analytics Cloud (SAC) allow you to make better fact-based decisions thereby improving business performance. An automated reporting solution built leveraging HANA and SAC resulted in savings of USD ~500K/Year & ~17,000 FTE hours/year.
Cognizant offers a complete portfolio of services around SAP and analytics with a dedicated SAP Data & Analytics practice with 2,650+ resources across the globe. Among other things, we helped a world-leading influenza vaccine manufacturing company to implement a multi-site cloud platform that combines planning, predictive analytics, and business intelligence in a single intuitive and powerful cloud-based BI solution connecting both SAP and non-SAP data sources.
• Cutting costs with cloud. Many CXO’s are faced with challenges linked to the traditional SAP infrastructure, such as high CapEx for hosting infrastructure, slow deployments, a high cost of technical migrations, and unavailability of real-time data.
Cloud is one of the key drivers of digital transformation, and several of our major clients in Sweden are currently moving their applications from data centers to the cloud. The SAP Cloud Platform holds many advantages: it is a one-stop solution for innovation needs providing the latest technologies, open interfaces, and built-in support for extensibility and integration with existing solutions. This agile, scalable, and secure approach enables faster time to market for innovations while reducing the total cost of ownership.
Cognizant can help you achieve enterprise-grade cloud transformation across multiple public cloud platforms to secure greater business and operational agility, flexibility and scalability while reducing your IT operating costs. Among other things, we helped a large Swiss-based reinsurance company drive business agility with SAP on Cloud. With a ”Cloud First” approach using Azure for a scalable, compliant and flexible SAP/non-SAP platform we migrated 43 SAP systems with the help of Cognizant’s accelerators. The client now enjoys a beneficial pay-per-usage pricing model. Learn more in this post about SAP cloud migration.
Migrating to S/4 HANA or not?
Right now, many SAP users are considering the upcoming migration; the ERP vendor plans to phase out support for existing systems by 2027. Even though it is not a mandatory migration as of now, a total of 73% of SAP customers plan to deploy S/4 HANA in the coming years. Though concerns about the complex business environment, constraints in budget and/or resources, lack of immediate business cases may be a concern, Cognizant recommends that Organizations who want to stay competitive in an ever-changing world, should start planning a move to S/4 HANA.
From a Cognizant perspective, the migration is not so much about technology as it is about modernizing the very core foundation for a company’s future digital journey. Earlier this spring, we helped this Nordic maker of pumps and water management equipment perform a migration, the client’s largest IT project ever. The conversion succeeded within the scope of the 96-hours schedule thanks to thorough planning, extensive testing and hard work from the combined Cognizant/client team. You can learn more about SAP Hana and the journey to intelligent ERP in this whitepaper.
For further information, also read about Cognizant’s SAP services in the dedicated web section.