SAP Australia and New Zealand’s (SAP ANZ’s) flagship digital event, e’ffect 2020, kicks off with the theme “The Future of Work.” The winning innovation experience event featured SAP’s very own futurist for its technology & innovation strategy, Martin Wezowski, and National Australia Bank’s (NAB’s) Susan Ferrier. The two talked about the positive effect of technology and the importance of embracing technological advancements for organisations to be able to successfully adapt to new models for managing, growing, and retaining their people—especially in volatile times such as now.
With Australia’s most successful talk show host and one of its biggest producers of entertainment television, Rove McManus, as its host and interviewer, e’ffect 2020’s first episode started off with much fun and excitement—quite different to how business events are usually presented. Together with Damien Bueno, SAP ANZ’s Managing Director, McManus launched the first episode with a note on how SAP’s customers and partners have taken to the recent challenges created by the COVID-19 crisis and turn them into opportunities.
The Effect of Technology in Volatile Times
Bueno explained,
“I think for many of our customers, the matter is being forced on them. the need to still deliver to customers—not in a bricks-and-mortar concept, but in a way that’s digital. It’s really been an interesting challenge, but if you’ve got the right mindset and you’re not daunted by problems but you see them as an opportunity, and you’ve got the right tools in place, well then it becomes an opportunity. And that’s what we’ve been able to experience and what we’ve been able to help our customers with.”
Bueno cited how Sigma Healthcare and NAB, as well as many other SAP customers in the private and public sectors, used digital technologies to adapt—intelligently and emphatically—to the new normal of doing business.
Martin Wezowski, Chief Designer and Futurist at SAP, also discussed how SAP is likewise adapting to the future of work and explains the positive effect of technology. He told McManus about the German multinational company’s strategic perspective on combining human ingenuity and artificial intelligence, what he calls the 4 A’s:
- Automation (automating mundane processes)
- Autonomy (connecting in real-time)
- Augmentation (the human-side)
- Abundance (human and artificial intelligence complementing instead of competing with each other)
He explains how artificial intelligence must be allowed to automate things that are too mundane and insignificant to ease business processes and enhance both employee and customer experiences. He adds that only technology can help with providing businesses the capability to autonomously connect with customers, partners, and vendors in real-time.
Wezowski further asserts that in the future, we humans cannot continue with how we are today and must therefore work with technologies such as artificial intelligence and machine learning. He said,
“We will become superhumans, we are augmented to do stuff and make decisions. We absolutely cannot do as we are today.”
In her interview, Susan Ferrier, NAB’s Group Executive for People and Culture, further drives down this point of making technology and humanity work cohesively. She explains,
“I don’t see technology as something that’s going to damage human life, I see it as something that will enhance the way that we connect. And as humans, I think we need to partner with technology and not be frightened by it and to feel that it helps us connect in new and different ways.”
She mentioned the positive effect of technology, particularly in the banking industry, in making work faster, better, and more accurate. She commented that it is up to us humans to inject humanity into technology through insights on how to better serve both customers and employees for the future.
Shaping the Future of Work
Wezowski further prompted listeners to not just be consumers of the future, but instead become its creators. He mentioned how business owners can practice this through what he called the 3 horizons of innovation:
- the business (products/services)
- the customers
- imagination
He said innovation must not end with building a product or service and satisfying current customer needs and demands, but must include imagination and becoming visionaries:
“[This is] where the beauty of the human mind comes in—the transformative innovation—be playful around it. Playfulness, imagination, and curiosity are business activities. Ask yourself, why are you relevant 10 years from now? Only with the power of imagination can you get to shaping [the future], so get to work.”
He says this is why SAP is building its Business Technology Platform where organisations can access intelligent technologies such as analytics, machine learning, artificial intelligence, database management, and app development.
