Following the release of the German enterprise software giant’s preliminary 2021 Q4 and full-year business results, we take a look at some of the customers that recently selected RISE with SAP for digital transformation projects to help build resilient supply chains and accelerate their move to the cloud.
SAP CEO Christian Klein emphasised the company’s momentum that is reflected in the “tremendous success” of its signature cloud offering RISE with SAP. Based on the vendor’s flagship SAP S/4HANA enterprise resource planning (ERP) system, the Business Transformation as a Service (BTaaS) product is aimed at helping organisations transform holistically into intelligent enterprises with a fast time-to-value by harnessing the power of the cloud. Driven by a strong uptake from businesses across various industries, SAP has recently added established organisations Twinings Ovaltine and Asda to its parade of customers endorsing the subscription-based RISE with SAP.
Twinings Ovaltine Leverages RISE with SAP
Owned by Associated British Foods, Twinings Ovaltine is a 300-year-old marketer of tea and other beverages based in the UK. The company has been using its expertise to develop a wide range of tea blends that are exported to more than 100 countries including the US, Australia, and China.
Considering its manufacturing facilities that produce 45 million to 75 million teabags per week, Twinings Ovaltine looked at ways to take advantage of automation and help simplify its business processes in the cloud. With this, the company established a transformation program that is also aimed at improving its customer engagement while ensuring operational efficiency and supply chain reliability.
Sandeep Seeripat, Global Chief Information Officer at Twinings Ovaltine, explained:
“When we started our transformation journey and reflected on what we wanted to do, it was never a technology conversation. It was a conversation about how do we get closer to our customers, understand what they want and how to deliver on that.”
Partnering with the tech giant to adopt RISE with SAP — a comprehensive solution for driving business innovation — the wellbeing drinks brand commenced on a cloud transformation journey to modernise its core processes from finance to manufacturing to logistics. During the implementation, Microsoft Azure will provide the cloud infrastructure element supported by SAP Business Technology Platform (SAP BTP) and SAP Ariba to digitalise procurement operations and support Twinings Ovaltine’s global business.
“We need partners that are matching our business drive, and it’s clear SAP does that. While others can offer the technology, SAP really stood out with its understanding of our business objectives and how it can simultaneously deliver an experience to our customers that goes beyond expectation, whilst setting the platform for our growth agenda,” Seeripat further said.
Meanwhile, SAP UK and Ireland Managing Director Michiel Verhoeven shared the company’s support for Twinings Ovaltine’s digital transformation. Verhoeven highlighted that the group’s move to RISE with SAP establishes a service level that meets its needs while giving an upgrade roadmap that minimises complexity across the organisation.
Asda Partners with SAP for Digital Transformation
Supermarket chain Asda has also expanded its strategic partnership with the German software vendor last month by selecting RISE with SAP S/4HANA running on Microsoft Azure to help provide an agile and unified digital core platform. The food retailer’s digital transformation project is also backed by SAP BTP and SAP Ariba capabilities for supplier lifecycle and performance, spend analysis, contracts, sourcing, buying and invoicing, and supplier risk and commerce automation over Ariba Network.
Moreover, Asda is shifting from its legacy systems and is accelerating its digital transformation strategy to better manage its end-to-end business processes, including procurement, supply chain, commercial, retail, and logistics operations. Following its acquisition by the Issa Brothers and TDR Capital in early 2020, Asda’s move is in line with its sibling company, EG Group, which announced a similar decision last November 2021.
According to Carl Dawson, Chief Information Officer at Asda, the organisation is embarking on a business transformation journey as part of its separation from Walmart. He said that SAP was chosen as the company’s digital core partner because of its market-leading real-time business platforms and strong retail and delivery experience.
“Through RISE with SAP, we are looking forward to building on our strategic relationship and achieving Asda’s goals for now and the future in the dynamic retail industry,” Dawson added.
Rohit Nagarajan, President for EMEA North at SAP, expressed SAP’s support for Asda’s business transformation strategy leveraging RISE with SAP. He stressed:
“This next phase of business innovation will undoubtedly mean Asda will be able to supercharge its operations, streamline processes and harness the power of its data for increased insight and real-time business decision making and we look forward to supporting them on this next phase of growth and into the future.”
