SAP’s Industry Cloud: Let’s talk value with SAP partner Accenture

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Given the depth of expertise cultivated over a decades-long partnership with SAP and the extraordinary resources Accenture brings to bear, it’s no surprise that the firm’s work with SAP Industry Cloud ranges wide and runs deep. Accenture is harnessing SAP Industry Cloud and the Business Technology platform to help its clients win faster time to value, get more from investments in SAP by moving beyond the core, and address top priorities, industry by industry.

Big-picture, Accenture does this by combining its precise understanding of how SAP solves industry-specific challenges across the 39 industries the firm serves and then providing the technology enablers that underpin industry transformation, says Andrew Partington, an Accenture Managing Director and SAP Industries Global Lead. Key among those enablers is the curation of SAP building blocks based on reference architectures attuned to the specific needs of each industry, he adds.

“SAP Industry Cloud and the Business Technology Platform are essential to this approach, both through the industry-specific solutions available through SAP Industry Cloud and also through the role that the Business Technology Platform plays in enabling innovation and extensibility alongside the clean core,” Partington says.

Drilling down a bit, Partington describes three ways Accenture delivers value to its customers. The first is through combinations of SAP Intelligent Suite, the Business Technology Platform, and SAP Industry Cloud applications to provide industry-tailored solutions through Accenture’s MyConcerto platform as well as the Rise with SAP, SOAR with Accenture offerings. He cites Accenture Chemicals Direct and Accenture Utilities direct as examples.

“With our colleagues at SAP, we’ve created integrated delivery frameworks to help align the work of our services organizations, so that we can de-risk and accelerate each and every client project,” Partington says.

Second, together with industry consortia, Accenture has codeveloped SAP Industry Cloud solutions to align with a given industry’s top priorities. Among the new solutions here include intelligent asset management for asset-intensive industries and responsible design and production to support companies in the creation of consumer packaging that’s friendly to extended producer responsibilities.

The third key value driver for Accenture customers are the more than 100 applications Accenture had developed for SAP Industry Cloud and the Business Technology Platform, each focused on a specific industry challenge or area of opportunity, Partington says. As an example, he cites Accenture’s NewsPage solution, which helps consumer goods companies in emerging markets manage their supply chains across vast numbers of mom-and-pop stores.

Taken together, Partington says, “With SAP, we’ve created a unique joint offering to accelerate industry transformation and amplify the cost, speed, and agility benefits of the move to the cloud.”