German software enterprise giant SAP saw a double-digit revenue growth in NZ business in 2021–attributed to the strong customer uptake of SAP cloud offerings, including software, RISE with SAP as well as support and services.
Reflective of SAP’s strong global cloud business in 2021, SAP New Zealand has reported a stellar year-end financial report ending 31 December 2021. Owing to NZ companies’ strong cloud adoption underpinned by the pandemic recovery, SAP has witnessed a 28 per cent revenue growth from $143.2 million to $184 million last year.
Adrian Griffin, SAP veteran and newly appointed SAP New Zealand Managing Director, commented that the tech multinational is witnessing an increased momentum on digitalisation specifically with transformation leveraging cloud technology. He said:
“I think a lot of customers got caught out during COVID. Not just the corporate, but all the lines of business are asking about their response to automation and to digitising and being connected to customers.”
In a recent study on New Zealand businesses’ cloud strategy, the COVID-19 pandemic has markedly accelerated organisations’ cloud adoption and investment. The 425 surveyed participants agreed that the cloud is fundamental to company success and is anticipated to boost modernisation in both private and government organisations. In addition, the survey reported that aside from having confidence in utilising the cloud, leading cloud adopters have achieved a greater return on investment– which includes leveraging the cloud to support flexible working– and are highly possible to adopt a public or hybrid cloud model.
Customer Cloud Adoption Boosting SAP NZ Business
SAP ANZ President and Managing Director Damien Bueno earlier highlighted the significant contribution of SAP New Zealand to the total business of the German company’s ANZ unit. He said the country has been at the forefront of cloud adoption, with innovative, forward-thinking customers that are focussed on achieving greater flexibility and faster innovation cycles.
SAP New Zealand’s remarkable 2021 financials is attributed to growth areas such as cloud, software licenses, and support– including Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) and Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS). The tech firm’s operating profit increased by almost 10 per cent, from $14.9 million to $16.3 million.
Griffin emphasised that SAP’s Business Transformation as a Service (BTaaS) offering, RISE with SAP has also contributed to the company’s outstanding NZ business and is still gaining traction and momentum. The subscription-based solution is forecasted to reach a global performance of US$22 billion in 2025 and have similar growth effect in the local market.
“In New Zealand, we signed 13 of those last year, both transformation and technical migrations. That message is really resonating with customers,” he shared.
Griffin also acknowledged SAP’s local partner network support amidst the border challenges, especially the global systems integrators that enabled customers’ extremely large transformations. He detailed:
“When you go through the Deloittes, Accentures, EYs, all are very well engaged across our customer base and it’s good to see some of the Indian systems integrators come back as well, engaged in different projects, and even the smaller side of our partner base.”
The SAP NZ MD mentioned Vodafone’s success story supported by systems integrator partner Infosys. In just eight months, Vodafone was able to migrate off Vodafone Group’s SAP system onto one of its own, which includes greenfield deployments of HR and procurement, among other SAP functionalities.
Explaining how digital transformation should be value-driven, Griffin said:
“Inside of our core products, things like automation and innovation are just built into the platforms. At the moment you see automation and innovation almost as side carts. If we can build those things within SAP that’s great, but for every customer, it has to be at the right moment.”
