SAP tech is critical in enabling many of Woolworths Group business processes, including inventory management, order processing, and customer relationship management.
After five years of celebrating excellence in retail technology collaborations, the Woolworths Group Technology Awards have become a beacon for such achievements. The awards acknowledge the importance of technology in driving innovation and creativity in the retail sector, and provide a platform for showcasing some of the best examples of such collaboration.
Honoring the best technology companies in Australia and New Zealand (ANZ), the annual awards ceremony recognized SAP ANZ as Woolworths Group’s Technology Partner of the Year for 2022. The recognition is a testament to the German enterprise software giant’s commitment to providing innovative and transformative technology solutions that enable its customers to run at their best.
Moreover, the award highlights the two firms’ over 15 years of working together successfully as part of a strategic alliance. Woolworths Group has been an integral part of several of SAP’s worldwide advisory boards, which also impact product development and frameworks, in addition to leveraging SAP tech solutions throughout its corporate and retail processes — primarily on a cloud setting since 2013.
Many of Woolworths Group’s crucial business functions are enabled and optimized through the use of SAP systems, which ultimately helps in enhancing the customer experience. This encompasses not just the fundamental business processes of finance, procurement, and employee management but also the ordering of supplies, execution of promotions, and inventory administration.
In 2020, WooliesX was awarded the Chris O’Brien Award — named after SAP’s Social Hero and Customer Officer Chris O’Brien — for their innovative use of SAP technology to advance sustainability and better the lives of many others. WooliesX is Woolworths Group Limited’s digital arm, and it is dedicated to revolutionizing people’s lives through the combination of e-commerce, technology, media, and data.
WooliesX designed an eGift card program called “Kindness Cards” in less than a week to assist in customer identification, triage, and support. SAP Hybris platform and SAP Customer Data Cloud back up the software (used as a validation method). Charity and government agencies receive WooliesX Kindness Cards through the SAP Hybris platform, and then distribute them to disadvantaged customers.
Expediting Cloud Transformation with SAP Tech Solutions
It was in early 2020 that Woolworths began the planning stage of its cloud transformation project, at which time crucial decisions were made regarding which cloud provider to work with and the best approaches to follow throughout the migration. Considering Woolworths’ tremendous reach across the region and the massive volume of sales, inventory, ordering, promotions, and financial operations that required to be managed in a reasonable timeframe, establishing operational stability and flexibility was a top priority for the project.
Laurence Bennett, Woolworths’ Director of Group Technology for Enterprise Systems, has said that the company’s stability has increased dramatically after migrating its SAP systems to Microsoft Azure. According to Bennett, the business gained faith in the preparations and plan implementation as a result of open and honest communication between the teams from SAP, Microsoft, Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), and the Woolworths Group itself.
“Through these endeavors, and others, SAP has demonstrated true strategic partnering in deed as well as in word and we look forward to many years of continued partnership,” Woolworths Group Chief Information Officer (CIO) John Hunt commented.
SAP ANZ’s recent receipt of the Woolworths Group Technology Partner of the Year Award is an acknowledgment of the long-standing strategic partnership between the two companies. The award recognizes the tech giant’s dedication to providing cutting-edge software and solutions that help Woolworths Group optimize its business processes. With SAP’s continued innovation and support, Woolworths Group is able to streamline its operations and improve its overall performance.
Noting that SAP is “thrilled and honored” to be named as Woolworths Group Technology Partner of Year, Evan Mantis, Executive General Manager of Enterprise Industries and Growth Markets at SAP ANZ, further shared:
“To play a part in helping Woolworths serve over 22 million customers each week, and by supporting their nearly 200,000 team members across Australia and New Zealand through our technology, is something that we are incredibly proud of. Helping our customers to run at their best is very important to us, so to be acknowledged through winning this award is testament to the effort put in by so many talented individuals over many years. When our customers succeed, we succeed, so I look forward to many more years of partnership with Woolworths!”
