Orga­ni­za­tions large and small are deal­ing with glob­al uncer­tain­ty and dis­rup­tion. COVID-19 has not only affect­ed the way we work, but also the work we do. It has touched every­thing from small busi­ness­es to large enter­pris­es, affect­ing sup­ply chains, pro­duc­tion, and operations. 

We recent­ly con­nect­ed (vir­tu­al­ly) with Michael Golz, CIO Amer­i­c­as at SAP, to dis­cuss how the IT team at SAP has adjust­ed its work. Also in vir­tu­al atten­dance for ASUG Exec­u­tive Exchange Vir­tu­al Sum­mit: Nav­i­gat­ing Uncer­tain­ty as a CIO were Tara Gam­bill, senior direc­tor of enter­prise sys­tems, MOD Piz­za; Dr. E. Jef­frey Hutchin­son, SVP and glob­al CIO, Bom­bardier Inc.; Flo­ri­an Roth, CIO, SAP SE; Geoff Scott, CEO, ASUG; Dan Stu­art, SVP of ITS, South­wire; and David Was­com, SVP, Exec­u­tive Pro­grams, ASUG. 

The group dis­cussed the effects of COVID-19 on busi­ness and how and where SAP can sup­port our orga­ni­za­tions. They cov­ered a broad range of top­ics includ­ing chal­lenges, dis­rup­tions, morale, and a post-COVID-19 busi­ness landscape. 

New Work Mod­el, Same Work Ethic 

With most every­one mov­ing to a work-from-home mod­el, CIOs and their teams have been tasked with mak­ing the tran­si­tion smoother. Many bal­ance big-pic­ture strate­gic ini­tia­tives with main­tain­ing busi­ness con­ti­nu­ity while also pro­vid­ing tech­ni­cal sup­port across their organizations.

Dur­ing the vir­tu­al sum­mit, Was­com, who mod­er­at­ed the pan­el, asked about chal­lenges CIOs face dur­ing this pan­dem­ic. Respons­es ranged from keep­ing per­for­mance at peak with min­i­mal dis­rup­tion to scal­ing and accel­er­at­ing train­ing on how to use col­lab­o­ra­tion appli­ca­tions like Microsoft Teams. 

Scott joked that his biggest adjust­ment was learn­ing to deal with his cat while work­ing. But the real­i­ty is that many of us have had to adjust to new work envi­ron­ments and dis­trac­tions. ​“A new nor­mal from a com­pa­ny per­spec­tive,” Scott added, ​“hasn’t been that dif­fi­cult to imple­ment. We’ve been cloud ready for some time, so we didn’t hit many tech­ni­cal glitch­es when mov­ing to a work-from-home envi­ron­ment. Where we did come across some prob­lems was get­ting every­one pre­pared to use the applications.” 

Mak­ing sure every­one can com­mu­ni­cate and col­lab­o­rate is vital for busi­ness con­ti­nu­ity. But it can’t come at the expense of secu­ri­ty. Stu­art remarked that his focus was on keep­ing lines of com­mu­ni­ca­tion open but also on main­tain­ing secu­ri­ty pro­to­cols. Most com­pa­nies have had pro­ce­dures in place to deal with emer­gen­cies, but what’s dif­fer­ent in this case is the mag­ni­tude of the emer­gency. ​“At SAP, we are hard-wired toward dis­as­ter recov­ery and busi­ness con­ti­nu­ity,” Golz said. ​“It is part of our DNA. What’s new to us, and I think most orga­ni­za­tions, is just how broad of a scale this is.” 

Keep­ing Morale Afloat Is Vital for Busi­ness Con­ti­nu­ity, Too

Even with pro­ce­dures in place and busi­ness con­ti­nu­ity plans run­ning, what is hap­pen­ing around the world can affect peo­ple — team­work, com­mu­ni­ca­tions, pro­duc­tiv­i­ty, and morale. 

As CIOs ramp up efforts to keep the busi­ness going and the work­force equipped to run it, busi­ness lead­ers in gen­er­al also need to be mind­ful of remain­ing empa­thet­ic to their employ­ees’ needs and new cir­cum­stances. ​“In some ways, we’re more con­nect­ed now,” Golz said. ​“We start a call by ask­ing how the oth­er per­son is doing, and we get a real answer.” 

Golz added that every­one is going through their own set of chal­lenges, and now is the time to acknowl­edge that — and per­haps try to do some­thing to help. ​“It’s real­ly impor­tant to make those per­son­al con­nec­tions. Let’s make sure that this is phys­i­cal dis­tanc­ing with social col­lab­o­ra­tion rather than social distancing.”

Scott added that the best thing right now from a lead­er­ship per­spec­tive is to be avail­able. ​“You should check in on your employ­ees often. We have been using Qualtrics to check the pulse of our mem­bers and employ­ees on a week­ly basis. We get both the numer­i­cal score of how peo­ple are feel­ing as well as a pret­ty healthy dose of com­ments on where peo­ple are with everything.” 

SAP Cus­tomer Busi­ness­es on the Front Lines 

Main­tain­ing busi­ness con­ti­nu­ity involves much more than sim­ply keep­ing your work­force mov­ing; it also requires keep­ing busi­ness oper­a­tions mov­ing. While some orga­ni­za­tions like SAP and ASUG can move to an almost com­plete work-from-home mod­el, oth­ers that oper­ate man­u­fac­tur­ing plants, sup­ply chains, and oth­er ser­vice-type oper­a­tions need to approach the mat­ter from a dif­fer­ent angle. 

Bom­bardier, which is a glob­al man­u­fac­tur­er, was deal­ing with the effects of COVID-19 when the virus first hit Chi­na. ​“It’s been a very unique expe­ri­ence to watch as coun­try by coun­try has had to react to what’s hap­pen­ing,” Hutchin­son said. ​“We need­ed to watch out for coun­try-spe­cif­ic guide­lines and make sure we were adher­ing to them, while also keep­ing our work­force safe as well as a close eye on our glob­al sup­pli­er base.” 

As the bor­ders around the world start­ed to close, it cre­at­ed a major obsta­cle for Bom­bardier. ​“We just could not get the prod­uct mov­ing,” Hutchin­son added. ​“We’re think­ing through how that’s going to move for­ward and how are we going to con­tin­ue that oper­a­tion and dri­ve it from an over­all point of view.”

Although MOD Piz­za has had its sup­port team work­ing from home since March 9, it still has a work­force that needs to serve cus­tomers in per­son. ​“We need­ed to act quick­ly in terms of the safe­ty of our employ­ees and cus­tomers while man­ag­ing stores all over the coun­try,” Gam­bill said. For cus­tomer-fac­ing busi­ness­es, the cir­cum­stances change almost dai­ly, as well as geographically. 

Get­ting Ready for the Post-COVID-19 Normal 

There has been a lot of talk about a new nor­mal. When is it going to begin and what does it look like? Some might argue that we are already liv­ing it, while oth­ers believe now is the time to pre­pare for it.

“We’re work­ing hard to try and under­stand what life will look like going for­ward. We know it will be dif­fer­ent,” Hutchin­son said. Like many CIOs, he is look­ing at sys­tems, busi­ness process­es, how to stream­line, and where to do it, among oth­er things. ​“The idea is to enhance our capa­bil­i­ties as an organization.” 

To the extent that it is pos­si­ble, many orga­ni­za­tions are lean­ing toward adopt­ing a mixed work envi­ron­ment. ​“We’re going to learn a les­son that con­sul­tants have known for years,” Hutchin­son added. ​“The com­bi­na­tion of spend­ing some time in the office along with some time work­ing remote­ly is going to be the new way of work­ing.” Scott agreed and added, ​“Even as we reopen offices, employ­ee safe­ty will need to remain top of mind. We may adopt a split shift where some peo­ple come in the office and oth­ers stay home and then alter­nate that.” 

No mat­ter how things change, we know that tech­nol­o­gy is going to play a big role. ​“It’s impor­tant to dri­ve inno­va­tion,” Roth said. 

SAP Keeps Busi­ness Run­ning Dur­ing COVID-19 

As IT teams look to keep busi­ness oper­a­tions and process­es run­ning at full throt­tle, Was­com asked how an SAP tech­nol­o­gy stack has helped with imme­di­ate responses. 

Gam­bill not­ed that MOD Piz­za is a 100% soft­ware as a ser­vice (SaaS) shop and one of the first adopters of SAP S/4HANA Pub­lic Cloud in North Amer­i­ca. ​“Our finance and account­ing func­tions are in the cloud, and we’re also an SAP Suc­cess­Fac­tors shop. So that has giv­en us access any­time, any­where. From a SaaS per­spec­tive, SAP has been con­sis­tent and avail­able. We’ve had no issues at all.”

Roth talked about SAP also run­ning on its own soft­ware and how that has helped to bet­ter under­stand the needs of its cus­tomers. ​“The intel­li­gent enter­prise real­ly con­nects the front office to the back office,” he said. ​“Our sys­tems have enabled us to run remote­ly and at a time that is real­ly important.” 

Watch the full ASUG Exec­u­tive Exchange Vir­tu­al Sum­mit: Nav­i­gat­ing Uncer­tain­ty as a CIO on demand and learn how oth­er CIOs are han­dling COVID-19 and plan­ning steps for the future. ASUG mem­bers can reg­is­ter for the Exec­u­tive Exchange Vir­tu­al Sum­mit: Unit­ed in Lead­er­ship on May 13, 2020 from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. CT.