What It Takes to Go Digital: People, Purpose, and the Intelligent ERP

The world is changing. Megatrends are sweeping across industries and economies. Businesses must transform to lead in the new digital world, and SAP is there to help. We’ve got our intelligent Cloud ERP solutions ready for our customers and we’ve prepared the floor for a new and stable digital core to their businesses. But digital transformation is not only about installing a new and intelligent ERP. That’s just one of its cornerstones. Digital transformation is much more comprehensive.

We’re seeing changes regarding our workforce, our customers and consumers, and even our networks and the digital stacks that tie them all together. Everything is being transformed in some way or the other. What’s more, none of the changes can be revoked. In the following, let’s focus on two aspects that undergo constant change. The workforce and the customers.

A changing workforce and customer base

First, we as business individuals change every day, from one meeting to the next. The way we hire and train people, and how we use our resources change. Also, how we organize our work has changed over the past century — from paper notebooks and old school personal digital assistants (remember those?) to smart mobile devices. In some areas, change affecting the way we work extends to intelligent process automation and robotics. This may frighten some of us, mostly those who have been in the workforce for a while, but it’s clear that many of us will need skills we don’t even know about yet.

Second, our customers haven’t changed any less. They‘ve moved away from markets to cities to malls to the web, and — just as our workforce — now to mobile. More than ever, they expect their products-of-choice to be available anytime and anywhere, with a greater selection at competitive prices, individualized where applicable, and always of high quality.

These are just two elements that are influenced by our journey towards the digital which also impacts the direction of our digital transformation.

Leading change with purpose

We as leaders must be aware of this mutual impact. We must work hard to become digital leaders in the sense that we must not only acquire a new mindset that adapts to the changes around us, but also push it to all members of our organizations at every level. Moreover, we must not only lead “digital”, but also with purpose, particularly through our people. We must even innovate with purpose, basically through our solutions. And we must amplify with purpose, through our customers, partners, and our global networks.

As such, purpose is increasingly becoming linked to a brand’s value, with SAP being ranked high among the most purposeful brands in the world. Customers increasingly go for brands that they associate with a purpose. Also, job candidates more than ever search and go for opportunities where they feel that their work matters — an ethos that’s often articulated more strongly by younger generations.

So, for me it’s clear that digital transformation, purpose, and the people involved cannot be looked at separately. To successfully transform a business towards the digital, businesses need an intelligent ERP, and they must involve and win over their people. SAP’s on the right track here, I believe, as we have the purpose, the people, and our intelligent ERP. Digital transformation is the backbone for our, SAP’s, future success.