As we pre­pare to get work­ing in this new year, it’s worth tak­ing a moment to reflect on the changes 2020 forced upon every per­son, orga­ni­za­tion, and indus­try. It should come as no sur­prise to any­one, but 2020 will be remem­bered for — and defined by — COVID-19. Almost a year after the virus first emerged, the world is still work­ing to return to a sense of nor­mal­cy — or quite frankly, define a new one. 

Despite these com­pli­ca­tions, many com­pa­nies rose to the chal­lenge, meet­ing the needs of their cus­tomers while adapt­ing new prac­tices and process­es to keep their work­forces safe. Some of the rad­i­cal shifts caused by COVID-19 actu­al­ly turned out to be pos­i­tive changes, which will strength­en orga­ni­za­tions as they oper­ate in a world with­out the virus and empow­er employ­ees to do their best work. ASUG looks back at some of the sig­nif­i­cant devel­op­ments and themes from 2020 and how they affect­ed SAP customers. 

Con­tin­ued Focus on the Intel­li­gent Enter­prise and Dig­i­tal Transformation

At the start of 2020, all eyes were on the Intel­li­gent Enter­prise: an inte­grat­ed suite of solu­tions work­ing across all func­tions and con­nect­ed to intel­li­gent tech­nolo­gies. SAP defines it as a com­plete end-to-end plat­form, and the way to get to it is through dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion. SAP has been encour­ag­ing dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion among its cus­tomers for some time now, name­ly by pro­mot­ing the move to SAP S/4HANA, the company’s ERP platform. 

The focus on dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion and the Intel­li­gent Enter­prise remained unchanged — if a lit­tle altered — in 2020. The SAP Intel­li­gent Enter­prise and dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion were both once again main focus­es at the 2020 SAP­PHIRE NOW Reimag­ined con­fer­ence. ​“The dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion is no longer an option, but a must,” Chris­t­ian Klein, SAP CEO, told atten­dees in his keynote address.

SAP has leaned into changes and uncer­tain­ty brought by COVID-19, posi­tion­ing its solu­tions and the Intel­li­gent Enter­prise as a means to com­bat black swan events and keep com­pa­nies orga­nized and func­tion­ing in any envi­ron­ment. Mov­ing for­ward, SAP will like­ly con­tin­ue its focus on turn­ing its cus­tomer orga­ni­za­tions into intel­li­gent enter­pris­es and encour­ag­ing dig­i­tal transformation. 

Using and Imple­ment­ing SAP S/4HANA in the Time of COVID-19 

Since SAP first released SAP S/4HANA, the soft­ware com­pa­ny has been care­ful­ly guid­ing its cus­tomers to the ERP plat­form. Through­out the ear­ly days of COVID-19, the ASUG Research Team con­duct­ed week­ly Pulse Checks of its mem­bers, gaug­ing every­thing from shifts in tech­nol­o­gy spend­ing to per­son­al and pro­fes­sion­al dis­po­si­tions. Many of the ques­tions ASUG posed to its mem­bers were focused on their usage and imple­men­ta­tion of SAP S/4HANA. In one of the sur­veys, 15% of respon­dents indi­cat­ed they were cur­rent­ly using SAP S/4HANA and 55% said they are plan­ning to use it in the future. Com­par­a­tive­ly, 20% of respon­dents were cur­rent­ly using chat­bots, with anoth­er 25% plan­ning to use the tech­nol­o­gy in the future. Addi­tion­al­ly, 10% were using blockchain, while 16% had plans for future use. 

While this usage is cer­tain­ly encour­ag­ing, COVID-19 did have a mea­sur­able neg­a­tive effect on the num­ber of SAP S/4HANA imple­men­ta­tions. One week, the ASUG Research Team found that 10% of respon­dents indi­cat­ed that SAP S/4HANA was a tech­nol­o­gy that busi­ness­es had planned on imple­ment­ing in the next 12 months before COVID-19 ham­pered these plans. Com­par­a­tive­ly, 5% of respon­dents halt­ed plans to imple­ment ana­lyt­ics solu­tions and 4% put plans on hold to roll­out new AI and ML technologies. 

Despite this, ASUG has heard from a few com­pa­nies that tack­led either com­plete­ly remote or hybrid dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tions of SAP S/4HANA dur­ing COVID-19. The sixth and final episode of the ASUG Express series, Achiev­ing Suc­cess with SAP S/4HANA Vir­tu­al Boot Camp, focused on remote migra­tions. Alex Nearey, project man­ag­er of retail and fash­ion indus­try CoE at SAP, walked atten­dees through a case study of a large ath­let­ic fash­ion and footwear com­pa­ny that is in the process of a remote transformation. 

Shift­ing Sup­ply Chains 

By far one of the most sig­nif­i­cant effects of COVID-19 — vis­i­ble to both con­sumers and busi­ness­es — was the strain the virus put on sup­ply chains. In North Amer­i­ca, stores saw an incred­i­ble short­age of toi­let paper, clean­ing sup­plies, and hand san­i­tiz­er. ​“COVID-19 is prob­a­bly the biggest dis­rup­tion to sup­ply chains that we’ve seen since World War II. It’s affect­ing the entire globe,” said Richard San­dall, chief sup­ply chain evan­ge­list at Inno­vapp­tive, a mobile sup­ply chain and plant main­te­nance solu­tion provider and SAP part­ner, ear­li­er this year.

This rad­i­cal shift has spurred com­pa­nies to reex­am­ine their upstream and down­stream sup­ply chains. It has made them rethink how they acquire raw mate­ri­als and how they get fin­ished prod­ucts to con­sumers. Richard How­ells, VP of solu­tions mar­ket­ing at SAP Dig­i­tal Sup­ply Chain, told ASUG that one of the main take­aways from COVID-19 was the ​“need to bal­ance cost and risk.” A few ways to find this bal­ance include out­sourc­ing less goods and prod­ucts, while sourc­ing mate­ri­als need­ed to make a cer­tain prod­uct clos­er to the points of pro­duc­tion and sale. In anoth­er inter­view with ASUG, How­ells also sug­gest­ed that com­pa­nies begin iden­ti­fy­ing alter­na­tive sup­pli­ers in dif­fer­ent coun­tries, exam­ine where inven­to­ry is kept, and define alter­na­tive sourc­ing strategies. 

But, the impact of COVID-19 wasn’t nec­es­sar­i­ly an entire­ly bad thing for sup­ply chains. While it caused major dis­rup­tions, it also point­ed out some faults in sup­ply chains, which orga­ni­za­tions are work­ing to fix. Abe Eshke­nazi, CEO of the Asso­ci­a­tion for Sup­ply Chain Man­age­ment, told ASUG that com­pa­nies need to focus on mak­ing sup­ply chains agile and resilient. ​“We were not as agile as we should have been,” he said. ​“I think this is one of the learn­ings we need to take away from this sit­u­a­tion: Effi­cien­cy at what costs?”

Ensur­ing the Safe­ty and Well-Being of Employees 

Anoth­er major shift we saw in 2020 was an increase in the amount of time and ener­gy orga­ni­za­tions spent ensur­ing both the safe­ty and sat­is­fac­tion of their work­forces. The health impli­ca­tions of COVID-19 demand­ed that new, strin­gent actions were tak­en to ensure the con­tin­ued suc­cess of employ­ees in this altered work­ing envi­ron­ment. Busi­ness­es car­ing for their employ­ees is noth­ing new, but in the face of a pan­dem­ic, the health of the work­force became a para­mount con­cern. ​“This is a ter­rif­ic oppor­tu­ni­ty for human resources because so much atten­tion is being paid to the work­force right now,” Lisa Rowan, research VP for HR, tal­ent, and learn­ing strate­gies at IDC, told atten­dees of the ASUGFOR­WARD Employ­ee Expe­ri­ence and HR ses­sions. ​“We are at the very begin­ning of a lot of changes.”

Office employ­ees shift­ing to work­ing remote­ly is one of the most sig­nif­i­cant work­force changes stem­ming from COVID-19. Orga­ni­za­tions have increas­ing­ly lever­aged solu­tions such as video con­fer­enc­ing and mes­sag­ing appli­ca­tions to keep their work­forces orga­nized. Addi­tion­al­ly, we’ve also seen busi­ness­es take stock of their employ­ees’ atti­tudes and feel­ings while giv­ing their work­ers an oppor­tu­ni­ty to pro­vide feed­back on com­pa­ny prac­tices and process­es with solu­tions like Qualtrics Employ­e­eXM. As we begin to think about how we can return to our offices, there are appli­ca­tions like SAP Cloud for Real Estate, which help orga­ni­za­tions plan for that safe return. 

But, work­ing from home is not an option for every­body. Some jobs require employ­ees to be onsite. Last year, ASUG inter­viewed Dan Dub­blestyne, direc­tor of health, safe­ty, and envi­ron­ment at Wood­bridge Foam Cor­po­ra­tion, about how the com­pa­ny piv­ot­ed from man­u­fac­tur­ing prod­ucts for the auto­mo­tive indus­try to pro­duc­ing N95 masks. One of the key con­cerns dur­ing this project was ensur­ing the safe­ty of all Wood­bridge employ­ees work­ing onsite to assem­ble the masks. Dub­blestyne laid out how the exec­u­tive team had dai­ly meet­ings and imple­ment­ed a ​“Safe Work Play­book” for Woodbridge’s facil­i­ties to fol­low dur­ing COVID-19. The com­pa­ny installed phys­i­cal bar­ri­ers between work­sta­tions and insti­tut­ed pro­to­cols such as tem­per­a­ture checks, required per­son­al pro­tec­tion equip­ment (PPE), and per­son­al hygiene standards. 

“We’re very hap­py with the out­put because, among about 7,500 team­mates glob­al­ly, we had few­er cas­es report­ed than expect­ed,” he said. 

Fur­ther Use of Intel­li­gent Technologies 

We’ve been hear­ing about emerg­ing tech­nolo­gies such as RPA, ML, and AI for years now. Many busi­ness­es are cur­rent­ly lever­ag­ing these solu­tions in their day-to-day oper­a­tions, bring­ing vital insights to employ­ees. One of the pos­i­tive changes COVID-19 brought was a new empha­sis on these solu­tions. In a blog post, Andy Wat­son, SVP and gen­er­al man­ag­er of SAP Con­cur for Asia Pacif­ic, Japan, and Greater Chi­na, dis­cussed how solu­tions like these will become a neces­si­ty for com­pa­nies to remain com­pet­i­tive mov­ing for­ward. SAP CEO Klein agrees with this sen­ti­ment, telling ASUG mem­bers that ​“AI, ML, and RPA are becom­ing a neces­si­ty to future-proof any business.” 

ASUG mem­bers are already well on their way when it comes to lever­ag­ing these solu­tions. Dur­ing the COVID-19 Pulse Check sur­veys, the ASUG Research Team asked our mem­bers which tech­nolo­gies they are cur­rent­ly using and which they plan to use in the future. Almost a third (32%) of respon­dents are cur­rent­ly using RPA, and anoth­er 31% have plans to use it in the future, while 42% of respon­dents plan on using AI and ML, and 13% already adopt­ed those solutions. 

In no par­tic­u­lar order, here are the ten most pop­u­lar arti­cles from ASUG News + Views in 2020: 

• • SAP Extends Main­te­nance for SAP Busi­ness Suite 7 and Com­mits to SAP S/4HANA
  • How COVID-19 Is Affect­ing Every Aspect of Sup­ply Chains
  • The Why, How, and What Behind the Qualtrics IPO Announcement
  • SAP Exec­u­tives Talk About the Effects of COVID-19 on the Com­pa­ny and Customers
  • What’s in Each SAP S/4HANA On-Premise Release
  • 5 Things to Know from the SAP Q3 2020 Earn­ings Call
  • SAP Makes Waves with Its 2020 Orga­ni­za­tion­al Restructure
  • A Pulse Check on ASUG Mem­bers Dur­ing COVID-19
  • Low-Code and No-Code Soft­ware for SAP Customers
  • A View into SAP Road Maps in 2020

ASUG is kick­ing off 2021 with a lot of events. Don’t miss our Pulse of the SAP Cus­tomer 2021 – Behind the Data vir­tu­al event on Jan. 19, 12 p.m. ET/11 a.m. CT where we’ll give ASUG mem­bers a first look at the results of our annu­al study of SAP cus­tomers across the U.S. and Cana­da. We’ll also be launch­ing a num­ber of our Influ­ence Coun­cils next week. Click here to see the sched­ule and register.