ASUG members were among those selected as finalists for the 2023 SAP Innovation Awards, announced earlier this month. SAP published over 220 submissions, all visible on the SAP Innovation Awards website. Out of those, only 70 entries were selected as finalists, and 16 of those were submitted by ASUG members.
Accenture, Blue Diamond Growers, Bristol Myers Squibb, Constellation Brands, Deloitte, Ernst & Young, Microsoft, MOD Pizza, Penn State University, PricewaterhouseCoopers, Sealed Air, The Home Depot, Union Pacific, and Walgreens were among ASUG members selected as SAP Innovation Awards finalists.
Held annually to honor and celebrate the achievements of forward-thinking companies and individuals that have effectively harnessed the power of the latest SAP products and technologies “to create positive economic, environment, and social impact so that the world runs better,” the SAP Innovation Awards turns 10 with this year’s edition, which will name winners in ten categories:
- 10th Anniversary Superstar
- Sustainability Hero
- Industry Leader
- Partner Paragon
- Transformation Titan
- Cutting-Edge Genius
- Business Innovator
- Experience Wizard
- Adoption Champion
- Services Supernova
Entries are evaluated based on three main criteria: use case creativity (referring to “how compelling or disruptive” the use case is), tangible outcomes (referring to the “impact on individuals and society”), and intelligent enterprise (referring to how effectively the entry demonstrates the company’s journey toward becoming an intelligent enterprise).
In honor of all participants, SAP has donated $20,000 to the U.N. World Food Programme and Save the Children charities. Out of the 70 finalists, a winners’ judging panel will select 30 entries to be awarded top prizes, which include a trophy, a celebration event, and either an SAP Sapphire Orlando 2023 pass or a US$1,000 SAP4Good voucher for a charitable donation.
ASUG Members Among the Finalists
Accenture, a leading global professional services company, saw three of its submissions advance. First, to future-proof its NewsPage application (a distribution management system for consumer goods and services) and help clients access and store more data at a lower cost, Accenture chose to migrate NewsPage from an SAP HANA Service on Cloud Foundry to SAP HANA Cloud, for “a comprehensive route-to-market digital platform experience across the value chain.” Accenture also leveraged SAP Fieldglass as its preferred buying channel for services spend, enabling a more transparent supply chain and significant cost savings for the company. Finally, Accenture selected SAP Risk Management for SAP S/4HANA to automate and streamline its FX risk management process, which had previously been fragmented across multiple non-integrated systems.
Blue Diamond Growers, the world’s largest almond processing and marketing cooperative, faced the challenge of building a world-class supply chain with SAP, ultimately choosing to deploy SAP Transportation Management and SAP Business Network for Logistics, migrate its ERP to SAP S/4HANA, and leverage its existing SAP Integrated Business Planning (IBP) and SAP Analytics Cloud implementations.
Bristol Myers Squibb, a global biopharmaceutical company, lacked an efficient and intuitive approach to maintaining clinical trials and cell therapy data. Its solution involved the use of SAP FIORI, SAP IBP, and SAP Business Technology Platform (BTP) integrated architecture.
Constellation Brands (CBI), one of North America’s fastest-growing large consumer goods companies, required a more transparent supply chain amid rapid growth. To unify data and processes for enterprise-wide supply chain insights, CBI implemented SAP S/4HANA and adopted SAP Ariba solutions and SAP Business Network.
Deloitte, a global professional services provider, leveraged SAP Cloud Platform and AWS technologies to build an accelerator that could improve the standard global trade classification process for VF Corporation, also implementing a cloud integration with the client’s SAP Master Data Governance and GTS systems for full end-to-end integration.
Ernst & Young, which offers professional services for “a better working world,” sought to contribute to humanitarian aid for Ukraine amid its ongoing crisis. Its EY Emergency Response Application (ERA) was built as a mobile-first pro-bono application to help those seeking refuge in Poland to obtain critical information, such as a list of organizations that could provide aid, which is automatically translated into Ukrainian. EY ERA is SAP-certified to enable market visibility and reachability.
Following its deployment of SAP SuccessFactors globally, Microsoft built a series of custom solutions on SAP BTP, including using SAP Analytics Cloud for data analysis and planning to enhance its core HR system and solve constantly evolving HR and talent business needs.
MOD Pizza (in need of scalable HR and ERP technology to replace its previous payroll and accounting systems) decided to implement SAP SuccessFactors and SAP S/4HANA Cloud (public edition) for a cloud-based, people-centric approach with a single vendor, also leveraging SAP BTP, SAP Master Data Integration, and Qualtrics Experience Management solutions from SAP across its enterprise.
Penn State replaced its legacy financial system with a SIMBA accrual accounting system in 2020. Following the SIMBA go-live, it assembled a task force to address key issues impacting research administration and business operations. Part of the solution has been the use of SAP Concur as a travel and expense module to enhance the SAP S/4HANA Embedded Analytics reporting out of its live transactional system.
PwC Germany, responding to business challenges posed by the German Supply Chain Due Diligence Act (SCDDA) that went into effect earlier this year, developed an SCDDA-specific, enterprise-ready software, “PwC Check Your Value Chain,” to automatically identify abstract and concrete risks in complex supply chains.
Sealed Air, a global manufacturer, sought to enable its global sales team with digital content. So, it launched the Sealed Air Sales Library, backed by Mediafly and SAP Sales Cloud, to create a cohesive sales enablement solution that would improve seller productivity and drive buyer engagement.
The Home Depot Canada, a leading home improvement specialty retailer, became the first customer across the globe to successfully transition from SAP ECC on an IBM Mainframe platform to SAP S/4HANA combined with a migration to the Google Cloud Platform in one step. This solution has modernized retail operations, promoting faster innovation of customer-facing applications and improving user experience.
Union Pacific Corporation, a leading transportation company, faced the challenge of modernizing its existing, custom-developed tech landscape to streamline its business processes. To do so, Union Pacific has partnered with SAP Cloud Success Services for a three-year implementation roadmap amid evolving its finance, sourcing, internal logistics, human resources, and expense management systems into the suite of cloud products from SAP, including SAP S/4HANA Cloud, SAP Analytics Cloud, SAP Ariba, SAP SuccessFactors, and SAP Concur.
Using a legacy system outside of SAP, Walgreens experienced significant invoice error rates in billings. Upon leveraging SAP solutions, Walgreens established a better process for creating invoices for scan-based trading vendors.
Winners will be announced on April 12.