Times are changing. Last night, I came to a realization.
Can you remember the last time you used a payphone? What about the last time you used a check or a fax machine? I don’t.
Yet, I couldn’t think of even one moment in the last 24 hours where I wasn’t bombarded with a notification, tweet, text, email or blog post informing me about something.
That led me to a realization – I couldn’t imagine living one day without using Google, Amazon, LinkedIn, Paypal, or eBanking.
The world today is a very different place from the one our parents grew up in, and technology is changing everything.
Transforming Lives
It’s changing the way we live. There are officially more mobile devices than people on this planet today. With increasing frequency, we use these devices to manage our lives – to shop, to pay for things, to find restaurants, and to hail taxis. We use them to settle our lives and finances. We even use them to keep in touch with our friends and family.
Transforming Business
It’s changing the way we do business. Many of these same technologies have made their way into the enterprise. Business networks, for instance, are changing the way we discover, connect and collaborate with our trading partners. They are giving us access to insights and intelligence that allow us to make better, and more informed decisions. They are, in essence, transforming finance and procurement, as we know it.
Transforming Workforces
It’s changing the way we work. Think about it, the troves of people entering the workforce today will be completely connected and unaware of the hurdles behind paper-based workflows, let alone stamping a form for approval to pay. They’re part of the hyper-connected world around us, just as we all are today. The Internet of Things (IoT) has now evolved into The Internet of Everything (IoE).
Are you connected enough with your business processes to act and react in within this new environment? Do you know what needs to change to interact commercially at this speed?
Our need for technology is forever growing. The internet has become an indispensable tool for billions of people around the world today, enabling them to connect in ways they never could before. By 2020, it’s expected that 50 billion objects around the world will be connected to the internet – that means each person will have at least six objects connected to the internet.
This unique moment of hyper-connectivity marks an immense opportunity for business growth, but how do you do it? Consider these questions:
1. How do we grow our business amidst so much disruption?
2. How do we identify what we need to know in order to act quickly?
3. How do we harness disruption’s benefits and continue to run simple?
4. How do we embrace IoT/IoE to create value?
5. How do we leverage SAP Ariba to navigate this environment and scale for sustainable ongoing growth?
SAP Ariba Approach
You can accomplish this using the collaborative process we call “Success Planning” and conducting a “Discovery Workshop,” where we work with you to define your organizational view of value.
It’s only then that we can start to reimagine the potential growth opportunities within your business or enterprise. You can expect benefits like:
• Increasing your processing efficiency by 3.5X
• Driving a 27% lower procurement cost
However, this varies from business to business, as Success Planning Methodology is designed to define your individual business needs. It’s your narrative; SAP Ariba provides the business metrics, capability and enablement to Run Simple and Run Live through the SAP Digital Procurement Framework.
Identifying Value
In a world where many ERP transitions have failed due to costs, speed to value is critical in establishing credibility, adoption, and momentum for change.
To achieve this, value needs to be based on the client’s current state, desired future state, and an analysis of the gap in between those two states in order to properly roadmap the journey.
That’s why our Value Engineering (VE) operating model is focused on the long-term, sustainable health of our customers as they embark upon change. Thereby, working with procurement to drive benefits including:
• 8.9 % lower procurement cost as a percentage of revenue
• 9.8% lower procurement function ‘cost as a percentage of total spend’
In a growing e-world, harnessing benefits early on can mean the difference between being viable and non-viable long-term, especially with commodities.
Imagine real-time risk analysis based on price, supply risk, reputational risk and size-up climatic disasters that can seize the supply chain – sounds like sorcery, right? Actually, we call it SAP Ariba Risk Insights.
Enabling Value
We have many functions within SAP Ariba designed to enable you to grow and achieve successful metrics in this super highway of e-commerce.
In establishing value, Value Engineering (VE) works with the Solutions Consultants (SCs) to map and define your current state & desired future state processes. Coupled with our implementation consultant and the Ariba Customer Organization, you have an Organizational ecosystem that exists to define, drive and grow with you.
There is a huge amount of insight, networking, and information sharing available at the end of this month at Ariba Live in Singapore. This is where customers, suppliers, and organizations are invited to share their experience, learn of new developments, and see the power of intuitive and collaborative solutions.
Come and join the debate and find the answer to the question that is holding you back from adopting the cloud and leaping into the future of business.
Times are changing, and we should change with it. See you at Ariba Live!
Lorraine Longato is a seasoned Procurement Practitioner, having worked in both Private & Public sector as a strategic advisor regionally and globally, having also held positions as a GM and Board Director. She is currently the Director of Value Engineering in ANZ, working with clients to both establish business benefits and drive digital transformation
- SAP Managed Tags:
