Digital technologies are key to solve complex problems. Our experts Elke Manjet and Eva Zauke are describing the way when companies go digital. How can technologies and examples of SAP help to push digital transformation?
Digital transformation is impacting the way we live and the way we work in unprecedented ways. We have all heard the business trends on digitalisation: that 72% of global CEOs believe the next three years will be more critical for their industry than the last 50 years; or the statistics about the impact of digitalisation on business and daily life, for instance, that each person on the planet will have up to six connected devices by 2020. Companies that are asking about their purpose as an enterprise in this new environment are they truly on the right path to anticipating innovation.
Eva Zauke is Chief Operating Officer and heads the Cross Product Management functions for the LoB Digital Supply Chain and Manufacturing at SAP. In her responsibility is UX design for all applications in the portfolio, Cloud Delivery and DevOps services. Furthermore Eva heads the award winning SAP Startup Accelerators in Berlin and Palo Alto to drive customer innovation and engage new channels in Digital Supply Chain, Manufacturing, Industry 4.0 and IoT. She joined SAP in 2005 and assumed different leadership roles in Product Management, Development, Quality Management and Go-to-Market. In the years before Eva Zauke held various management and consulting positions at Deutsche Post and ORACLE. She started her career at Deutsche Bahn. Eva Zauke holds a diploma degree in computer science from the University in Bonn and a degree in economics from the University of Hagen.
Elke Manjet is SVP HR and Global HR Business Partner lead for SAP´s Products & Innovation area. Elke is responsible for shaping and executing the People Strategy for over 25.000 employees globally, aiming at enabling leaders and employees to run at their best and unleash their full potential in an open and trusted environment that fosters innovation.
Elke reports to Stefan Ries, Chief Human Resources Officer and member of the Executive Board of SAP SE. Elke started her professional career as HR Business Partner at Microsoft in Munich. Since joining SAP in 2001 she held different responsibilities in SAP´s HR Business Partner team. As part of the Office of the CEO Elke used to drive Executive Talent programs for 2 years.
Elke holds a Master Degree in Economics with a major in HR from the University of Applied Sciences, Pforzheim.
Improve People‘s Lives
SAPs vision is to help the world run better and improve people’s lives by translating purpose into action. Our solutions help people, businesses, and institutions achieve economic development, social progress, and environmental impact. We believe digital technologies will enable companies and organisations to tackle some of the world’s most complex problems. Our opportunity is to provide our customers, partners, and consumers with the tools they need to have an impact – whether it’s empowering the poor through financial services, providing personalised medicine, building infrastructure, or combating climate change.
Economic improvement for us goes beyond revenue growth. It is also about providing meaningful work to people across the world-empowering prosperity through a living wage, shelter, and nutrition. Another component is to promote innovation by developing a strong industry while protecting individual and organisation privacy.
Innovation is the Key
Innovation is key to human progress and economic development. But in this age of hyper-connectivity and cloud, security and privacy are major concerns for people and companies alike.
SAP provides innovative solutions with world-class security standards to more than 300,000 customers so they can in turn develop their respective industries, provide work, and ensure the mobility of people and goods, thereby improving people’s standard of living.
In today’s data-driven, IoT world machine learning and rule-based analysis can benefit companies greatly. With more and more aspects of our lives and work generating vast amounts of data, it is possible for Artificial Intelligence to contextualise the data and extract meaningful insights to help companies make better decisions to improve their bottom line and increase employee opportunities.
When Companies go digital
We see two patterns emerging when companies go digital: some are driven by increasing efficiency, reducing down-times, increasing customer satisfaction or optimising maintenance effort and costs. Other companies are inventing new business models, transforming products into services, introducing new digital services, new ways to improve the customer experience or designing personalised products and services.
Let’s look at an example of the way in which an SAP customer, a known provider of sports gear and apparel, has redefined themselves. By acquiring three fitness apps with more than 35 million users, they analysed the data collected, which produced some great insights and recommendations, ultimately leading them to dramatically shift their business model. Newly focused on health, they are simplifying the way they do business. Using SAP HANA technology, they can better understand consumer workout habits and anticipate changes in supply and demand. Even more, they can provide personalised advice and information to help push athletes to the next level.
In Future
Digital opportunities are vast and transformative and we’d like to help companies reassess their purpose and translate it into action by determining the best direction forward. The United Nations has defined 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to transform the world’s economy, society, and environment. They inspire us to remain focused on doing our part to solve the most pressing issues facing the billions of inhabitants on our precious planet Earth.
Looking towards your future, we would like to ask:
- What are your experiences with digitalisation?
- Where do you see are the biggest opportunities?
- What creates the biggest challenges?
- Where do you see simplification?
- Finally, looking at the broader picture – where and how do you think digitalisation is influencing and potentially redefining the purpose of a company or business.
We very much look forward to discussing these points at the Global Female Leaders 2018 with you.
SAP is the world’s largest business software company. We serve some of the most amazing customers – and we always have exciting projects on the go. Our mission is to Run Simple, and we’re big on using our technological and business know-how to make the world a better place.
Our people are innovators, leaders, and all around great human beings. They come from many different countries, speak many different languages – and bring their own unique experiences to the table. At SAP, you’ll flourish in an environment that encourages free expression, collaboration, individuality, and diversity.
Gender equality is an important part of our mission – and we’re committed to having at least 28% women in leadership by 2020 and 30 percent in 2022.
Global Female Leaders 2017: A Thorough Look Back
To sum up this great event in a single blogpost would be nearly impossible. Fortunately, we don’t have to try this, because our dear partner Accenture provided us with an in-depth White Paper, that you can now download on our website!
Just fill out the form below and enjoy over 50 pages of insights and key takeaways from the 2017 summit. We thank Accenture for their contribution and hope you enjoy the read!
