SAP have announced the winners of the SAP Innovation Awards 2023. These awards celebrate the contribution of SAP customers and partners towards making the world run better and improving people’s lives.
This week IgniteSAP will take a look at a few of the 30 award winning SAP projects in detail to see how they positively impact the economy, the environment, or society. With Earth Day 2023 approaching on Saturday 22nd of April, we note that many of the Award winners are finding new ways that SAP can reduce the environmental impact of modern enterprise, and ensure businesses are running efficiently and sustainably for the good of everyone.
This year’s competition featured over 220 inspiring and innovative submissions in ten categories which brought about improvements in sustainability, optimization, and data-driven decision-making for companies and organizations across the world.
The 220 Pitch Decks accompanying the submissions demonstrate best practice in SAP in a huge variety of industrial and commercial contexts so they are a valuable resource for businesses and consultants looking for creative ways to apply SAP technology effectively.
BT and Accenture won the 10th Anniversary Superstar award for their collaboration creating a digital colleague experience for a national and international telecommunications company.
Founded in 1846, BT is the oldest telecommunications company in the world and they are continuously developing solutions to help solve some of the world’s biggest challenges, including operating 80% of the UK communications infrastructure.
With 100,000 employees it is crucial that BT maintains a modern and frictionless digital experience so working with Accenture they recently created a digital HR experience so colleagues, managers and HR teams could complete HR lifecycles in a single integrated platform accessible from any device.
Together they replaced an existing HR system consisting of inflexible and expensive legacy components dependent on manual processing by HR teams.
This massive modernization and simplification of BT’s HR processes saved an estimated 1,000,000 hours of colleague productivity by removing more than distributed 30 legacy systems, streamlining 200 HR processes down to 80.
The project integrated existing SAP technologies with SuccessFactors HCM to create a unified HR platform servicing colleague selection, onboarding, performance management, career development and learning, and separation.
Elaine Bergin, BT’s Director of Colleague Experience said: “We are changing the way HR gets done. By putting our colleagues in the driving seat: whether for lifecycle moments or navigating their career, we are bringing to life our ‘simple, personal, brilliant’ values for everyone. SAP SuccessFactors technology is a big part of our roadmap, so it’s an exciting future.”
Nick Hawkes, People Systems & Data Director commented: “Accenture worked in true partnership with the BT & SAP teams to help us deliver one of the most complex HR technology transformations. Their deep technical knowledge coupled with significant market experience enabled us to fully deliver our programme vision and deliver true transformation.”
The resulting cloud-based HR platform called “I Connect” is easy to use and frees up time for colleagues to concentrate on value-added tasks rather than manual processing. It was implemented using a combination of SAP solutions: primarily SAP SuccessFactors HCM Suite, integrated with SAP Qualtrics Employee Engagement, SAP Analytics Cloud, SAP Fieldglass, and Opentext, using SAP Cloud Integration (CPI).
SuccessFactors Subject Matter Experts from SAP also provided support to the BT team and Accenture teams, with guidance on functional design, strategy documents, and Role-Based Permissions (RBP). The SAP Regional Implementation Group (RIG) provided guidance on Product Capabilities, Solutioning, and Technical Feasibility.
BT plans to continue innovating with SAP, implementing SAP SuccessFactors Payroll and Workforce Analytics and other SAP solutions.
The Sustainability Hero category was one by WEConnect International, which is an organisation founded to help women-owned businesses gain access to the global purchasing power of corporations, governments and multilateral organisations.
WEConnect International aims to bring together large organizations and women-owned businesses by recruiting, certifying and training them so that member buyers can quickly identify qualified suppliers for procurement opportunities.
The existing IT systems used by WEConnect International needed to be transformed to meet their requirements for user-friendly, efficient, secure, accessible and scalable processes. Member buyers using the system needed to be able to search for qualified women-owned businesses quickly using keywords and often WEConnect international employees were required to manage the searches.
Due to the global nature of the organization it was also a problem that women-owned businesses could only register using English language (restricting access to the system), and multiple forms and systems which were not secure were necessary for uploading documents during registration.
The procurement and supply chain management consultancy Premikati worked with WEConnect International to provide the technical knowledge and management resources to implement a procurement system using variety of SAP solutions.
Teams from Premikati and SAP deployed SAP Ariba Supplier Lifecycle and Performance (SLP) to manage the registration of women-owned businesses in conjunction with a selection of SAP BTP solutions.
These included SAP Intelligent Robotic Process Automation to automate aspects of the registration process so that it is now much more efficient. SAP HANA Cloud database stores registration information submitted using SAP Fiori forms and the process is orchestrated using SAP Integration Suite.
This system was designed and prototyped according to requirements using the SAP BTP no-code/low-code tools and implemented after customer approval. The team also enabled cloud subscriptions, as well as configuring and developing the solution components before testing and go-live. The project also involved onboarding suppliers to SAP Ariba and provided training.
Member buyers now have an intuitive and unified experience, making it easier to find suppliers among women-owned businesses. The system is supported for ten languages, meaning that access to the supplier network is extended globally.
As a result of the improvements to the WEConnect International network registered businesses have experienced revenue growth and provided more employment in their respective countries. Buyers from 12 new countries have now been added to the procurement network and women-owned businesses from a further 15 countries. Since 2019 until today member buyer purchasing power has increased to a massive 3 trillion US dollars.
CEO and CO-Founder Elizabeth A. Vazquez said: “WEConnect International is proud to partner with SAP Ariba to deliver the WECommunity solution for busy buyers seeking an easy way to find and do business with women-owned suppliers based in over 135 countries. WECommunity is also a powerful multilingual tool for women-owned businesses ready to compete and grow and is a world-class model for inclusive trade and procurement for a purpose.”
The winner of the Partner Paragon category is a project by PwC Germany designed to help German businesses meet a new legal requirement to identify and assess human rights violations and environmental risks in their business partner portfolio.
The German Supply Chain Due Diligence Act affects not only German companies but anyone who trades with a German company. The law demands that companies assess and monitor large amounts of data from their partners. This can be as much as 10,000 suppliers per business.
The cost to German businesses in time and resources to ensure compliance with the SCDDA has been reduced substantially by PwC Germany with the introduction of their Check Your Value Chain App.
The App (built on PwC’s best practice end-to-end risk analysis approach) automatically identifies risk and creates full supply chain transparency in this regard, ensuring compliance. 14 categories of human rights violations such as child labour and slavery are covered and the solution is scalable to any size enterprise.
It also includes verified media analysis through cooperation with the Business & Human Rights Resource Centre (BHRCC), as well as connection through an API to various databanks (like the ISO for example) to check for supplier-specific certificates. Along with the ability to track human rights compliance among business partners, the CYVC App recommends measures for risk mitigation and facilitates reporting submissions.
Andrea Opp, Head of Supply Chain for the German textile services company MEWA said: “Check Your Value Chain is our tool of choice to meet the requirements of the Supply Chain Due Diligence Act in the area of risk analysis. The combination of technology and transformation consulting from one source is the success factor for an efficient implementation of the requirements and our future ambitions in the area of sustainability”
A directive is in planning in the EU government for the SCDDA to be applied in all EU states and other countries are considering similar legislation so the CYVC App will be relevant outside of Germany as well.
More important than meeting compliance is the need to optimize supply chains to ensure sustainability and propagate a culture of zero-tolerance for human rights violations in the value-chain. The benefits to society as a whole will be substantial.
The software is provided as SaaS built on SAP HANA Cloud and uses SAP Fiori UI and components from the SAP Business Technology Platform (SAP BTP) for data visualization and AI automation.
For those working in the technology sector it is necessary to innovate as a matter of course, but the winners of the SAP Innovation Awards 2023 should be congratulated for thinking outside of the box to bring genuine improvements to the quality of life of thousands, if not millions of people.
As can be seen from the few examples we have shown, the considered application of SAP technology can bring about the society we want to live in and reminds us that with a little ingenuity and innovation, anything is possible.
If you are an SAP consultant looking for a new role in the SAP ecosystem our team of expert recruiters can find your ideal employer and a competitive salary to match so join us now at IgniteSAP.
