RISE with SAP in the UK has been adopted by many organisations, both from the private and public sectors, since its launch in January 2021 to accelerate their move to the cloud and scale business transformation according to their own terms and timelines.
SAP continues to witness the increasing global traction of its concierge, Business Transformation as a Service (BTaaS) offering RISE with SAP, with organisations of all sizes across various industries and sectors adopting the solution. In the UK, multinational logistics company Unipart and government agency Gloucestershire County Council (GCC) have recently selected the subscription-based cloud solution from SAP to significantly enhance systems integration and upgrade their legacy ERP system, respectively.
Public Sector Adopting RISE with SAP in the UK
Over a year from RISE with SAP’s global launch, SAP has officially expanded the offering to the UK public sector earlier this month. The virtual event hosted by SAP UK & Ireland demonstrated the tech giant’s commitment to delivering best of breed and best in class technology to the country’s public sector.
During the event, several SAP UK & Ireland executives talked about hot topics relating to the public sector’s modernisation journey and how SAP can be a reliable transformation partner. For instance, Michiel Verhoeven, Managing Director, discussed SAP’s investment in the country’s public sector and Satpal Biant, Head of Public Sector, talked about thriving in the new digital era with RISE with SAP.
The online event also featured Steve Mawson, Deputy Chief Executive and Executive Director of Corporate Resources at Gloucestershire County Council (GCC) to discuss the Council’s latest RISE with SAP journey centred on future-proofing their core technology and business systems to enhance service to its citizens. GCC, a public authority in the west county of England has sealed a £7.3m contract with SAP to leverage RISE with SAP to propel its ERP modernisation strategy. As one of the first public organisations in the UK to adopt SAP’s holistic business transformation solution, Mawson explained:
“We want to share our experience with the public sector. We are we want to learn what others can do as well as what SAP partners can do, using all our information on best-of-breed applications such as finance, HR procurement, and trying to link those better, in a better way for a modern workforce.”
He further stressed that GCC has extensively evaluated products in the market and found SAP as the best fit for the organisation considering value for money and scalability in the future. Based on a Council document from 2021, GCC has been utilising SAP for HR, payroll, finance, procurement, and employee and manager self-service for more than a decade, which need to be upgraded to support the Council’s digital strategy. The go-live date of the new system is slated for 2024.
Reinventing Business Model with SAP
Oxford-headquartered logistics company Unipart has partnered with SAP leveraging the RISE with SAP S/HANA-based offering in a bid to strengthen its position as an SAP Systems Integrator in its logistics services business. Banking on its SAP alliance that spans more than two decades, the international logistics, consulting and manufacturing organisation intends to expand the business to selling IT services that will broaden its customer portfolio, which includes Jaguar Land Rover and NHS Supply Chain.
“Reinvention is part of our DNA. It means our transformation journey is never finished and that we can always better serve and provide innovative solutions to our customers,” said Yiannis Levantis, Group Chief Information Officer at Unipart. “ As we look to shift our business model towards being an IT services company first, with deep expertise in logistics, manufacturing, and supply chain, expanding our capabilities alongside SAP has been the next step to make this a reality.”
Levantis mentioned that AWS will be the hyperscaler of choice for the RISE with SAP implementation. However, he clarified that being an SAP S/4HANA implementation partner, Unipart can still work with the end customer’s hyperscaler environment preference including Google Cloud Platform and Microsoft Azure.
Further to the latest SAP collaboration, SAP Analytics Cloud will also be adopted by Unipart to deliver enhanced data, reporting, analytics, and financial planning. Unipart is also looking into business process mining software from Signavio, which was acquired by SAP in March 2021.
“Through our S/4 HANA and RISE ramp-up, we are redesigning our tools and method for business transformation and business process re-engineering, as our ambition is to offer a very holistic and competent service to our customers in taking them through their transformation journey,” he added.
SAP UK & Ireland MD Verhoeven expressed:
“We’re proud of our long-standing relationship with an industry heavyweight in Unipart.”
Unipart joins the growing roster of UK companies that have embraced RISE with SAP including Asda, Inchcape, and Twinings Ovaltine.