While scrolling my Twit­ter feed, I came across a mes­sage that stood out: ​“You are not work­ing from home; you are at your home dur­ing a cri­sis, try­ing to work.” As the nation braces for a third week of stay-at-home orders and as busi­ness lead­ers get cre­ative with keep­ing the sta­tus quo, there is an ever-present need to stay busy and essential. 

In last week’s ASUG Pulse Check, we asked mem­bers to rate their over­all pro­duc­tiv­i­ty over the pre­vi­ous week. We saw the num­ber of respon­dents who indi­cat­ed they were extreme­ly pro­duc­tive dou­ble week over week, and more than half of respon­dents were some­what or very pro­duc­tive. While busi­ness lead­ers ini­tial­ly strug­gled to get their work­force pre­pared for the changes, most have now proven to be agile and adaptive. 

“Lead­ers at MOD Piz­za are keep­ing with the chang­ing gov­ern­ment reg­u­la­tions and ordi­nances,” said Tara Gam­bill, senior direc­tor of enter­prise sys­tems at MOD Piz­za. ​“This is espe­cial­ly impor­tant as we think about our employ­ees’ and cus­tomers’ safe­ty. We’re also think­ing about how we can keep the busi­ness going, and that includes dou­bling down on deliv­ery oppor­tu­ni­ties and curb­side service.”

Agile Takes on a Whole Dif­fer­ent Meaning 

MOD Piz­za isn’t alone in look­ing to dif­fer­ent — and in some cas­es, com­plete­ly new — ways to keep the rev­enue stream going. Busi­ness­es across the coun­try are trans­form­ing oper­a­tions to either find ways to help meet demands or reimag­ine their busi­ness process­es altogether. 

“There is a part of our busi­ness that isn’t doing so great, but then we have anoth­er part where the demand for our prod­uct is through the roof,” said a mem­ber of the ASUG Exec­u­tive Exchange. ​“And I know we’re not alone. There are busi­ness­es that his­tor­i­cal­ly have man­u­fac­tured alco­hol now focus­ing their ener­gy on man­u­fac­tur­ing hand san­i­tiz­er. It’s incred­i­ble to think of all the dif­fer­ent ways we can repur­pose what we already have.” 

A Renewed Need for Design Thinking

This is the time when many orga­ni­za­tions need to revis­it and revise their strate­gies, and per­haps their prod­ucts or ser­vices. ​“If our dis­tri­b­u­tion chan­nels change, then our prod­uct as we know it today changes, too,” said Gam­bill, who also serves on the ASUG Board of Direc­tors. ​“This is when an enter­prise archi­tect can step in and deploy some Design Thinking.”

She stressed that busi­ness lead­ers need do an impact assess­ment that can with­stand any kind of inbound issue. Today the issue is COVID-19, but tomor­row might present a dif­fer­ent chal­lenge. The key is to have in place the abil­i­ty to take stock of what you have and a high-lev­el under­stand­ing of all your core busi­ness process­es. ​“You need to know how to explain it in con­sum­able, snack­able con­tent,” she added. ​“It needs to be clear to not only your tech­nol­o­gy peo­ple, but also your busi­ness lead­ers across the board so that they can con­sume the infor­ma­tion and know when to pivot.” 

How SAP Cus­tomers Are Adapt­ing Dur­ing COVID-19

Busi­ness lead­ers, as well as the entire work­force, must learn to bend and rein­vent, too. While most busi­ness­es have cut back orga­ni­za­tion­al spend­ing, the expec­ta­tion is to keep busi­ness continuity. 

Accord­ing to the ASUG Pulse Check, COVID-19 is caus­ing orga­ni­za­tions to reduce costs and pre­serve cash. While near­ly half of the respon­dents are not com­plete­ly can­cel­ing planned tech­nol­o­gy ini­tia­tives, a siz­able share of orga­ni­za­tions (64%) are post­pon­ing them. 

So, what does that mean and how does it affect those run­ning SAP sys­tems or plan­ning SAP projects? Mar­ty Mru­gal, glob­al head of cus­tomer first at SAP, told me, ​“Busi­ness con­ti­nu­ity is top of mind for us. We often cite the sta­tis­tic that 77% of the world’s trans­ac­tions touch an SAP sys­tem. So, we’re 100% focused on mak­ing sure that those busi­ness sys­tems — and our cus­tomers — are always operational.”

Ulti­mate­ly, every­one from lead­er­ship down needs to learn how to adapt and change. ​“We’re reassess­ing every day,” said Daniel Stu­art, SVP of IT ser­vices at South­wire and mem­ber of the ASUG Board of Direc­tors. ​“We have dai­ly hud­dles to iron every­thing out and pri­or­i­tize what’s right for the right now.” 

Grow­ing While Remain­ing Still

Accord­ing to research by Gart­ner, there will be three trends that emerge out of this pan­dem­ic. The first is that remote work­ing will be a preva­lent way of get­ting jobs done. Sec­ond is that orga­ni­za­tions across indus­tries will increas­ing­ly rely on dig­i­tal platforms/​channels to increase future resilience and growth. And third, data and ana­lyt­ics will become essen­tial in assist­ing faster and bet­ter decision-making. 

These trends give a glimpse into where employ­ers and employ­ees should begin to shift some focus. Although many events that served as a plat­form to learn, net­work, and share ideas have been can­celed or post­poned, many oth­ers are pop­ping up on a vir­tu­al plat­form. This past week, ASUG host­ed its first SAP-Cen­tric EAM vir­tu­al con­fer­ence. ASUG has also host­ed — and will con­tin­ue to host—Exec­u­tive Exchange round­ta­bles and dai­ly Think Tanks, just to name a few chances to con­nect with oth­er SAP customers. 

Time to Sharp­en Your SAP Skills

SAP also is offer­ing a num­ber of dif­fer­ent learn­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties to the broad­er ecosys­tem. It recent­ly launched a dig­i­tal learn­ing ini­tia­tive that con­sists of three pil­lars: open­SAP, which includes mas­sive open online cours­es; free learn­ing jour­neys for uni­ver­si­ties; and the SAP Young Thinkers program. 

“The top three con­cerns for CEOs right now include the con­stant­ly chang­ing reg­u­la­tions, polit­i­cal con­di­tions, and the avail­abil­i­ty of skills,” said Eva Zauke, chief knowl­edge offi­cer and SVP of SAP Knowl­edge and Edu­ca­tion. ​“Peo­ple are instru­men­tal in mak­ing any busi­ness suc­cess­ful, and with this ini­tia­tive, SAP wants to make peo­ple successful.” 

Accord­ing to Zauke, SAP has seen reg­is­tra­tion for the cours­es more than dou­ble since launch­ing the ini­tia­tive, with the most pop­u­lar cours­es focus­ing on SAP S/4HANA, intel­li­gent tech­nolo­gies such as robot­ic process automa­tion (RPA) and the Inter­net of Things (IoT), as well as SAP Suc­cess­Fac­tors and SAP Ariba. 

“We’re excit­ed to offer this access to pro­vide val­ue to our cus­tomers and part­ners so that they can be suc­cess­ful in their work­place and in the work they do,” Zauke said. 

Redefin­ing Our Work

Dur­ing one of the ASUG Exec­u­tive Exchange round­ta­bles, one par­tic­i­pant remind­ed every­one, ​“Work is some­thing we do. It’s not some­where we go.” As every­one learns to adjust and find a rhythm again, we’ll find that there are oppor­tu­ni­ties ahead of us — whether it’s learn­ing some­thing new or think­ing of a new way to do some­thing we’ve always done. In the mean­time, keep your eyes open and spir­its high! 

Reg­is­ter for one of the ASUG Think Tank online ses­sions tak­ing place and stay tuned for a fol­low-up series of the ASUG Exec­u­tive Exchange online ses­sions. You can also explore options from ASUG for train­ing your SAP teams.