SAP Leonardo paves pathway to digital transformation

Just a few short months ago at SAPPHIRE NOW, SAP introduced a new version of Leonardo, revamped as a digital innovation platform that would help companies transform digitally. Just today at Asian Innovators Summit 2017 held in Kuala Lumpur, we had the opportunity to learn more about Leonardo from Kathleen Muller, SAP Southeast Asia head of analytics and insight.

“Today at the Asian Innovation Summit in Malaysia, we showcase not the technology of the future, but the technology of now. We show businesses how they can take full advantage of technology that’s available to accelerate their businesses,” said Muller.

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According to IDC, organizations that capitalize and analyse all relevant data and deliver actionable information could achieve an extra $430 billion (on a worldwide basis) in productivity benefits over their less analytically oriented peers by 2020. These figures, while not astronomical, still mean that added advantage over the competition when it comes to many companies’ bottom line.

How ready to move into the future are companies?

According to Muller, most CEOs today say that the next three years will be most critical for their business compared to the last fifty.

“Digital companies are recording achieving extremely high revenue, growth and profitability. But only 5 percent of companies globally, self-report that they use digital as a competitive edge, and that’s a little scary,” she said.

With the depth and breadth of technology today, most companies don’t know where to start on their digital transformation journey. In fact, according to Muller, most digital technology vendors for businesses today still only provide some insights; that’s looking through the rear-view mirror.

“Gartner thinks and expects that in the next 2 years, traditional business intelligence will no longer just be about looking at graphs. Instead a standard function should now move towards conversational analytics, embedded analytics, in everything,” she said.

SAP intelligently connects things, people and businesses and that is something that is vital to digital transformation. According to a new study conducted by SAP Centre for Business Insight, in collaboration with Oxford Economics, 84% of global companies say digital transformation will be important to their survival over the next five years, but only 3% have completed their efforts.

Which brings us to… Leonardo

Leonardo the digital innovation platform aims to help businesses that are being challenged to transform digitally and to capitalise on the needs of digital transformation from customers. The platform offers a powerful combination of the latest technologies, including machine learning, internet of things, analytics and blockchain on the SAP Cloud platform.

This will essentially enable customers to identify and solve business challenges.

According to Muller, SAP started discussions with businesses, learning their requirements and building prototypes of solutions, making business out-comes so that customers are more confident in digital transformation.

SAP Leonardo

Through Leonardo, SAP customers can innovate more rapidly and scale that innovation, embedding it into all their applications and business processes. SAP will bring its expertise in design thinking services to help customers solve the complex problems of becoming digital.

Leonardo, originally put forth as SAP’s Internet of Things (IoT) platform, also offers businesses the power of scalability. Transformation at scale is more powerful when IoT is considered as part of a broader digital innovation system.

The system is robust and flexible, able to offer solutions which are specific to any industry or business need. According to Terrence Yong, Managing Director of SAP Malaysia, the more common sectors which see great use for these services are Retail, Consumer Products, Discrete Manufacturing, as well as Sports and Entertainment.

Moving towards Transformasi Nasional 50

“Digitization has revolutionised every industry today. To remain relevant in the digital economy, governments and businesses need to start their digital journey immediately if they have not begun to already,” said Terrence Yong, Managing Director, SAP Malaysia.

“With TN50 as the framework for our national digital transformation, the Malaysian government and enterprises have an opportunity to be digital leaders in this new economic environment. As a company, SAP is committed to supporting our customers across all sectors achieve this vision as we help them re-imagine their business using the SAP digital business framework,” he added.

Within the country, companies both large and small stand on the cusp of a digital revolution, one that may see those who are not willing to adapt and change, become irrelevant.

To date, we have already seen companies with vision move towards embracing digital as they seek to leverage on technology for a leaner and more productive future. One such company is Malaysia Airports Holdings Berhad (MAHB).

According to En. Azli Mohamed, Chief Strategy Officer, MAHB, the company has already embraced technology and is moving forward with new measures in securing its digital future. Already, SAP technology efficiently runs MAHB’s Enterprise Resource Planning and the company is currently exploring many digital avenues as part of their “Runway to Success 2020” (RtS2020) business plan.

 

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