Joining a network of Centres of Excellence (CoE) worldwide, the new SAP Global CoE in Australia focuses on asset intensive industries including oil and gas, manufacturing, mining, chemicals and utilities. By delivering SAP’s cross industry expertise to asset intensive sectors, the CoE aims to facilitate innovation with SAP customers through new collaboration opportunities.
Since its inauguration late last year in Australia, the SAP Global CoE for Asset Intensive Industries has been instrumental in enabling co-innovation between SAP partners and customers. Aiming to tackle complex challenges faced by asset intensive sectors in their digital transformation journey, the CoE — that is based on an established global model — utilises SAP’s innovation capabilities and promotes collaboration within its ecosystem.
Michael Van Kerckhof, Executive General Manager, Energy and Natural Resources, SAP ANZ, has written a blog post to expound his views on how the CoE will help alleviate the difficulties facing asset intensive businesses presently.
He stated that businesses must efficiently integrate technology with people and processes to achieve objectives such as moving up the value chain, delivering new products to customers, maximising profits on commodity pricing, and accomplishing sustainability goals to create a new industry advantage.
Van Kerckhof maintained:
“We believe that by collaborating with our industry leading customers and partner ecosystem across ANZ, SAP can build the capabilities asset intensive industries need to fully embrace digital transformation and their future potential.”
SAP Global CoE to Foster Co-innovation
According to statistics, asset intensive businesses generate more than $500 billion in revenue yearly. Mining and utilities sectors constitute a great proportion of SAP’s customer base, representing 97{8bf2b29f36318f0ac46ab1cc03d7035abce669a1cea16c9ed62389a818fa22fd} and 54{8bf2b29f36318f0ac46ab1cc03d7035abce669a1cea16c9ed62389a818fa22fd} respectively.
Moreover, customers in Australia and New Zealand include some of the most advanced mining and utilities companies globally, making it the ideal location to launch SAP’s global CoE.
ANZ industries will benefit from SAP’s global expertise with solutions developed by the CoE’s dedicated group of designers, architects, and analysts working closely with SAP’s product and engineering teams.
The CoE will enable customers in ANZ — and across the world — to solve key industry problems by implementing smart technology through the latest industry solutions promoted by SAP’s extensive partner ecosystem.
Additionally, the CoE powered by cloud technologies will make it faster and easier for collaboration to take place between SAP and its customers. As clients directly engage with SAP’s engineering teams, the CoE will create new co-innovation opportunities to prioritise shifting customer needs.
Tackling Challenges at the Core of Asset Intensive Sectors
Many asset intensive companies still struggle with digitising their processes despite the significant technological change for businesses in recent years. To help address some of the challenges faced by organisations in the sector, the CoE utilises the latest technologies — such as automation and predictive analytics — to expand industry capabilities while also assisting customers in embedding sustainability across all aspects of their operations.
Two examples of major problems facing asset intensive businesses, which the CoE could help tackle, include:
- Incorporating sustainability across organisations. The CoE will further grow SAP’s initiative to discover new ways for the traditional resource intensive sector to reduce emissions — from extraction to transport — at every phase of the supply chain.
- Efficiently managing assets and a contractor workforce. The CoE will ensure work gets executed in the most efficient way, risks are managed, and everyone is aligned by putting forward the concept of ‘networks’ — enabling service providers, operators, asset owners, and contractors to work closely around a single Work Order.
Van Kerckhof said that SAP’s global CoE has been receiving great feedback from clients since its launch late last year. He remarked:
“Our customers tell us they see the CoE as an opportunity to put their challenges on the table and talk to industry experts who understand how it can effectively help.”
He added:
“We are eager to begin this new phase of collaboration to more rapidly and flexibly address the most challenging problems facing ANZ’s Asset Intensive Industries – producing capable, scalable and efficient solutions that will also support our global customers along the way.”
Furthermore, Van Kerckhof stated that the CoE aims to build on the increasing Asia Pacific market where some of the most progressive and innovative ideas come about.
