Business Trends
SAP and Deloitte: Delivering a blueprint for business transformation success in an ever-evolving world
Over the past year, resiliency, profitability, and sustainability have become the watchwords for businesses wanting to make impactful change, run their businesses better, and become what we call intelligent enterprises. Intelligent enterprises run agile, integrated business processes, and use advanced technologies such as artificial intelligence, machine learning, and the Internet of Things. They are adept at cutting through the complexity of disruption and applying leading-edge industry best practices in a continuous innovation lifecycle. For large enterprises and medium- to small-sized businesses alike, strong partnerships with specialists in the right industry or region, and vibrant partner ecosystems can play a fundamental role in determining and forging the right route to becoming an intelligent enterprise.
Across industries and for companies of all sizes, we rely on our partner ecosystem to help you buy, build, implement, service, support and run the SAP® solution that best fits your unique needs. Deloitte and SAP have co-innovated solutions for more than 30 years. Our joint reference architecture is a framework we have recently developed together to provide businesses with a comprehensive blueprint for building an innovation-ready enterprise. The joint reference architecture is built on SAP Business Technology Platform (SAP BTP). SAP BTP is the platform and foundation for the intelligent enterprise. It combines intelligent enterprise applications with database and data management, analytics, integration and extension capabilities for both cloud and hybrid environments. The joint reference architecture we’ve built with Deloitte is designed to take advantage of these capabilities. It also enables the Kinetic Enterprise™, Deloitte’s approach to helping customers become intelligent enterprises, and supports successful RISE with SAP transformation projects.
A comprehensive, holistic joint reference architecture
With the SAP and Deloitte joint reference architecture, businesses can transform at their own pace, adopt industry-specific solutions, select a best-fit cloud infrastructure, and incorporate enabling solutions beyond SAP. As a comprehensive, holistic architecture, it provides a cohesive framework that dramatically reduces the effort required to enable end-to-end business processes that connect seamlessly to data and systems. It also facilitates enterprise analytics and extensibility, all with a consistent user experience.
Built to support ever-evolving enterprises The SAP and Deloitte joint reference architecture has been designed to help businesses thrive in the multi-cloud, multiplatform reality. In our experience, the businesses that succeed through disruption are those that embrace simplicity. Simplicity means bringing a multitude of pieces together to create one integrated ecosystem for accomplishing all the initiatives you have planned. The interoperability between cloud platforms that the joint reference architecture supports can help simplify a complex landscape and bring the flexibility and agility needed to accelerate innovation.
Adopting a full SAP-first cloud enabled architecture is another way of achieving this simplicity. Take Australian mining contractor, Macmahon Holdings Limited. Operating in a fast-moving, volatile market, the company’s leaders saw an opportunity to improve business agility by increasing operational visibility, streamlining, and standardizing processes, and optimizing employee lifecycle management.
The team worked with SAP, Deloitte Australia, and Full Circle Partners to establish a unified business operations platform based on SAP S/4HANA® Cloud and SAP SuccessFactors. SAP BTP provided the integration layer for new and legacy systems. The solution provides a single source of truth across all of Macmahon’s markets, meaning every team can make decisions based on real-time information.
The results speak for themselves. Macmahon has achieved a $5 million AUS reduction in working capital expenses, a 15% reduction in IT maintenance time, and saved another $2 million AUS by reducing duplicate purchase orders. Macmahon is also equipped to respond quickly to changes in the market, move faster to initiate new projects that meet customer needs, and create a safe and inclusive workplace that provides opportunities for all employees to develop professionally.
Transforming outcomes with technology
For United Kingdom-based Protecht, SAP and Keytree, a Deloitte business, helped develop an intelligent mouthguard. Part of its mission to make impact sports safer, the mouthguard enables Protecht to measure on-field impacts in real time. Data from the mouthguard feeds into an app, which pitch-side coaches and medical staff can use for in-play and post-play impact analytics. With SAP BTP as the integration layer, Protecht was able to seamlessly blend the right combination of integrated solutions, extensions, data and analytics.
Not only is this information valuable in the moment to decide whether a player should stay on the pitch, but Protecht technology also reports on player head impact over a week, a season, or a career. It sets a new benchmark for safety in impact sports, providing access to this kind of information for the first time.
Developing solutions that are optimized for future growth
Brakes, a leading foodservice company located in the United Kingdom, provides another example of leveraging SAP BTP and our relationship with Deloitte to overcome complexity and optimize growth opportunities for our joint customers. Vendors are the lifeblood of the Brakes business and iSupply was developed as a portal to manage all purchasing activities. The problem was it couldn’t keep up with growing demand, leading to critical errors like lost communication with the vendor network. Motivated to gain a 360° view of customers, increase operations agility, and deliver intelligent spend, Brakes embarked on a transformation program with SAP and Keytree.
The relaunched iSupply is a one-stop-shop for placing, reviewing, and accepting purchase orders. The portal also provides users with a range of downstream supply chain activities, including goods receipt, inventory, and consignment stock management. Keytree delivered a data cleanse, along with the front-end build and integration, allowing data to flow directly from its existing ERP and data warehousing systems.
The impact of the changes has been felt in numerous ways: a real-time communications platform acting as a single point of contact provides tracking and monitoring capabilities for receipts and returns, including full analysis and KPI tracking; access to a real-time inventory of all products in stock supports the management of warehouse inventory; and stock level sales and forecasting data is available for notifying suppliers when there is a shortfall. With the new iSupply portal, Brakes has a solution that can expand and grow as its business continues to scale.
Collaboration cuts through complexity
An inclusive ecosystem has the power to cut through complexity and power SAP-enabled transformations. The SAP and Deloitte joint reference architecture is the latest innovation resulting from decades of collaboration and co-innovation, and an acute understanding of what businesses need to be resilient, profitable and sustainable in today’s rapidly evolving world.
Find out more:
Deloitte involvement in RISE with SAP
Deloitte apps on the SAP Store
Deloitte missions in the SAP Discovery Center
SAP Business Technology Platform
RISE with SAP eBook for more information on partner offers.