Here at IgniteSAP we like to keep up to date with the ever-changing world of business and technology and sometimes there is a rush of events so that it is a challenge keeping our community on point with the latest news.
Over the last month we have covered: the SAP financial review of the first quarter of 2021, How Rise with SAP is be received since the introduction in January, the new SAP partnership for the Financial Services Industry, The SAP and Accenture Sustainability Partnership, and the latest developments in the Direct-to-Consumer commerce platform.
Back in March we celebrated the SAP Innovation Awards with an overview of some of our favourite innovators from the shortlist for the awards and mentioned at the time that we would check back on them in April to discuss the innovation projects of the award winners. With all the important news in April this article was delayed and so now is the time to do justice to the award winners with a quick look at some of the winning projects, and how these companies and organisations applied SAP technologies in such an innovative way. It is particularly important that we do so for this year’s awards: as will become clear from the majority of examples we have chosen to highlight.
We encourage our community to go back and review the Pitch Decks which were submitted for the 376 entries in the long-list for examples of projects in their own area of specialism as it constitutes a valuable resource for innovative ideas and inspiration.
Scott Russell, a member of the SAP Executive Board commented: “The SAP Innovation Awards showcase the most remarkable stories of our customers’ and partners’ creativity, ingenuity, teamwork, and their amazing use of technology to solve complex challenges, revolutionise industries, and improve people’s lives. Today we celebrate their boldness, innovative spirit, and determination to make their ambitions a reality.”
We should point out here that every single one of the 376 competition entries qualified for inclusion by being successful and innovative applications of SAP in their own right. In this article we will look our favourite of the winners from each of the 7 award categories: Social Catalyst, Industry Leader, Partner Paragon, Business Innovator, Transformation Champion, Cloud Genius and Adoption Superhero.
So here are our picks from the SAP Innovation Awards 2021 winners:
Social Catalyst: ALGO Consulting Group and the Moroccan Ministry of Health
At the beginning of the pandemic in Morocco the Ministry of Health worked with ALGO to produce an SAP system in just two weeks which enabled the ministry to monitor the development of Covid-19 throughout the country.
This network provided the Moroccan Health Ministry with a clear picture in real-time of the various metrics required in order to limit the spread of the virus. This included the total confirmed cases, critical cases, the outcome of cases and consequently the growth factor of daily new cases across the public health service. The information was then relayed to the public via a daily update on national prime-time television so that the public could adjust their behaviour to the actual situation.
By collecting and interpreting the data through one network, the health ministry provided the public with a reliable source of truth and so reduced the impact of Covid-19 through counter-acting misinformation in the media.
The SAP system produced by ALGO Consulting Group used SAP HANA for data collection and analysis and the SAP Analytics Cloud solution and SAP Digital Boardroom to gave health ministers a real-time overview of the situation.
This solution increased the speed of provision of data by a factor of 4 and as a result of the faster decision time test capacity was increased from 100 to 10,000 per day and the stock of drugs was more efficiently distributed and so made more readily available for those that needed them the most.
Industry Leader: AmerisourceBergen
AmerisourceBergen is a wholesale healthcare distribution company. It makes a positive impact on the health of people around the world through the development and delivery of healthcare products.
In 2013, in order to protect the safety and integrity of the American supply chain against counterfeit drugs which cause thousands of deaths per year, the U.S. Government passed the Drug Supply Chain Security Act (DSCSA). This legislation requires that all drugs are to be traced in their movements through the supply chain, which equates to millions of daily shipments across thousands of companies.
AmerisourceBergen collaborated with SAP and 12 other partners in the pharmaceutical industry on a greenfield development of SAP Advanced Track and Trace for Pharmaceuticals. This solution tracks drugs at the level of batch and unit. AmerisourceBergen also worked with SAP to create the SAP Information Collaboration Hub for Life Sciences to meet the regulations for messaging and information networks between the thousands of pharmaceutical industry partners.
Now the system tracks the entire supply chain at batch level for over 100 customers and will be able to trace shipments at a unit level by 2023. 18 of the top 20 big pharma companies and two U.S. wholesalers, who together make up 65% of the total volume in distribution use SAP Advanced Track and Trace for Pharmaceuticals.
By meeting the new regulatory requirements as defined by the U.S. Government AmerisourceBergen and their partners are now able to block transactions and quarantine illegitimate products, and also notify the FDA of contaminated products: saving the thousands of lives which had previously been lost to the use of counterfeit and substandard pharmaceuticals.
Partner Paragon: EY Proximity Monitor by EY AgilityWorks
Many organisations and events now face challenges around creating safer places to meet and do business. Both in the workplace and at leisure we have to be more careful that we do not inadvertently cause the further spread of the Coronavirus.
EY AgilityWorks have responded to this challenge by creating the EY Proximity Monitor which gives insight into the social distancing capabilities of a venue or workplace. It allows companies to manage their spaces: emphasising “dwell spots” where transmissions could occur and giving the ability for organisers to proactively monitor and contact trace when necessary.
The technology can be used with phones or wearable tags, and has been tested by large organisations like the European Golf Tour as a means to protect the health of their customers and staff. The solution has been developed with pre-packaged components so that it can be set up and tested within a week prior to an event.
Dr. Andrew Murray, the chief medical officer of the European (Golf) Tour has said: “We recognise the proximity and duration of contact increase risk of transmission of COVID-19. On the European Tour, we are doing all we can to decrease social contacts that could lead to transmission. The proximity tracking we are working on with EY is giving us invaluable insights, further decreasing the risk at our events, and having worked previously in health policy could be a great solution at events, in offices, to understand and positively influence human behaviours.”
EY Proximity Monitor gives organisations the ability to maintain productivity and public health at times when these could be in opposition: by making venues and work spaces safer through collecting information about how they are used and where the points of proximity actually are. While technologically complex the solution is simple to implement anywhere, and at scale.
Sensor data is collected in the workplace or at the event site via bluetooth enabled apps and wearables by a SAP Cloud network and hosted within SAP Integration Suite, enabled by an SAP HANA database. The resulting information is presented for interpretation through SAP Analytics Cloud and SAP Digital Boardroom to give a real-time overview of the entire site. This allows site managers to make agile decisions regarding the management and flow of people through the venue in a way that best promotes public health, and in light of potential Covid-19 transmission.
The solution can contribute to an overarching strategy for businesses and organisations for promoting the recommencement of collective activity while maintaining public health procedures, and also contribute to public confidence in the safe use of public sites.
Business Innovator: Smart Press Shop GmbH & Co. KG
Porsche and Schuler, launched a joint venture to produce car bodywork parts in an entirely new manufacturing facility in Halle an der Saale which aims to imbed flexibility in the manufacturing process by digitalising the complete workflow.
Starting operation this year, the manufacturing plant, staffed by 150 employees will operate independently of its well-known partners. The SAP system will be completely in SAP Public Cloud so that no in-house IT team will be necessary. The operation of the IT components of the plant will be run by Syntax Systems GmbH & Co. KG as a Software-as-a-Service implementation and should be up and running at the time of writing.
The development strategy of the Smart Press Shop, which runs on 100% renewable energy sources, included horizontal and vertical integration as well as networking. Each process at the plant maps to the IT platform so that all KPIs can be monitored in real-time, and continuous component tracking enables new AI techniques and cross-process data analysis. Mobile apps specific to production, logistics, maintenance and quality assessment complement the cloud implementation as end-points, providing a paperless and fully autonomous set up: resulting in the most competitive rates of production. This system is built on SAP S/4HANA Cloud Essentials edition and SAP Digital Manufacturing Cloud for Execution in discrete manufacturing.
The CEO of Syntax for Europe, Ralf Sürken gave his assessment of the partnership: “It really is a great honour to be involved in one of the world’s first implementations of SAP Digital Manufacturing Cloud for Execution in a joint venture between two such well-known manufacturers. We are very pleased that Smart Press Shop has put its faith in us and that we are providing an application maintenance service which will keep the public-cloud-based system running after it enters production. SAP’s cloud solutions clearly demonstrate the way forward for manufacturing companies in terms of digitalisation in general and the public cloud in particular.”
Transformation Champion: Costain and Deloitte
Costain Group plc is one of the UK’s leading engineering solutions providers. They were asked to work with Keytree (who have recently been integrated into Deloitte), and SAP to improve data usage across the £600 billion spend portfolio of the UK Department of Transport relating to UK infrastructure projects. The removal of data silos was expected to vastly increase the efficiency of infrastructure projects. In response the cloud-based Intelligent Infrastructure Control Centre (IICC) was developed as the interface for end-users in UK Governmental Departments to make data-driven decisions across previously siloed data in a virtualised environment.
The Intelligent Infrastructure Control Centre was delivered in six modules which represent different areas of departmental activity. “Telematics”: collected data from multiple sources on construction machinery, “Commercial”: department spend, “Program of Works”: project planning, “Productivity Engine”: predictive analytics taking account of weather, environmental factors, supplier performance records and more, and “Carbon wrt Social Assets” or materials.
The Telematics module alone, measured by machine idle time demonstrated a 30% increase in productivity, a decrease in project planning time and the carbon footprint of this sector of departmental activity. Overall the project aims to reduce the current spend by as much as £180 billion over five years. The accurate carbon accounting system will drive major infrastructure providers to comply with Net Zero Carbon by 2050.
With data virtualisation the IT infrastructure costs per SAP HANA Cloud-based implementation are reduced by 66%, and the elimination or reduction of data warehouses will also massively reduce the carbon cost of department IT.
Full data transparency enables all levels of decision makers across the department to make better informed choices on a daily basis, reducing waste and ultimately the cost to the UK tax-payer.
The system is primarily powered by a combination of SAP HANA Cloud, SAP Analytics Cloud, and SAP Integration Suite.
Cloud Genius: GENYOUth, Clockwork and Intel
During the early stages of the pandemic, with supermarkets and other stores temporarily closed down, food insecurity became a major issue for some families because of their location or economic background, even in developed countries like the U.S.A.
An American nonprofit organisation called GENYOUth, which is dedicated to creating healthier communities worked to adapt local resources to the provision of food to those that needed it. They worked with a group of 250 SAP employees and used SAP technologies such as SAP Extension Suite, SAP HANA and others to create the SAP4Kids initiative. This allowed families to find free meals locally using their mobile devices.
Before the crisis, an estimated 1 in 7 children lived in food insecurity with 51.8% of students being eligible for free or reduced price lunches at school, but with more than 100,000 public schools shut and more than 30 million unemployment claims during lockdown, this number of 1 in 7 rose to be an estimated 1 in 4. Though schools and other local community organisations created initiatives to create meals for those that did not have them available at home, it was hard for families to find information. GENYOUth worked with SAP to create a centralised online information centre called SAP4Kids where families could find out about local free food resources and other locally organised help programs like workforce assistance and telemedicine.
The site functioned using SAP Extension Suite and surveys enabled by Experience Management Solutions from Qualtrics and SAP. Clockwork Inc. provided an iOS mobile app to ensure the widest possible access to the SAP4Kids site for which maintenance work was funded by Intel. The system used a web application built on SAPUI5. An assistance entry form for which available aid details could be quickly updated, and a resource locator app using geolocation technology so people could find help as close as possible.
Over the course of five weeks the SAP4Kids initiative became fully functional, offering volunteered assistance from across 50 states, and families affected by Covid-19 were given access where needed to food and other help such as advice on legal, financial and medical issues.
