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We were also able to engage with some of our partners, the people that make things happen on the ground with our customers. We work with some truly market-leading partners to bring additional value to clients, and we caught up with one of those market leaders in Deloitte Consulting LLP.
As part of our BPI Tour Partner Fireside Chats, rouven.moratoadam, General Manager, BPI, SAP, spoke with Christopher Dinkel, Managing Director, SAP HANA analytics, Deloitte, and his colleague, Chip Kleinheksel, Principal and Global SAP CTO. Deloitte operates with a laser focus on delivering value to its customers as they embark on and continue their digital transformation projects.
In conversation with Rouven, Chris and Chip explained the role of process in this transformation and what challenges customers were facing currently.
Rouven Morato: What does it take for customers to thrive in the challenging environment we are in right now?
Christopher Dinkel: Digital transformation is a broad area, but there are two main requirements for success. Technology is imperative. The opportunities it realizes are made more straightforward as we progress, and integration is easier too. Customers can choose from a plethora of platforms, improving on what they do today and pulling out inefficiencies. That’s why BPM is becoming so integral.
The other aspect is people, and that's just as important as technology. How do people interact with data from different systems? How do organizations ensure that people have the correct info at the right time to make insight-based decisions?
RM: At SAP and Signavio, we talk about the intelligent enterprise. Can you explain what you mean by the kinetic enterprise and how that relates to the intelligent enterprise?
Chip Kleinheksel: Many businesses are not yet ready, and they need to drive transformation and improve processes. Recent Deloitte research with business executives revealed that 56% felt internal capabilities were the biggest impediment to moving forward. The days are long gone when a tech landscape and its supporting businesses processes can be built to last. Nowadays, it’s about building to evolve and being agile in the face of disruption.
Organizations need a tech stack to support that. The kinetic enterprise is one built to evolve, based around four key pillars:
Clean ERP – with low business and technical debt.
Responsive – supported by the cloud so that customers can scale up and down on-demand.
Inclusive – the ability to work with multiple systems that are connected, with data streaming in and out of all of them.
Intelligent – how do we enable intelligent processes and intelligent apps?
Business processes enable the kinetic enterprise across all four pillars. Using processes means organizations can tap into automation and AI and other things that drive value and help them be more agile.
RM: What are the challenges in executing against this vision, and where do processes fit with this?
CD: We find that many clients have not put effort into organizational change management. Getting people to transform and do things differently is a seriously tough nut to crack, and failing to do so will have an adverse effect on a business.
It used to be much harder to understand processes but tools like Signavio do this quickly and easily. Companies can now measure the impact of how the business is running versus how it should be running and then take the necessary action to make improvements.
RM: What is the value proposition of SAP’s partnership with Deloitte?
CK: Deloitte has been working with customers in the SAP space for a while now, but we also have the Center for Process Bionics (CPB). This is an organization set up to take advantage of learnings across Deloitte from each implementation, bringing them together to see what best of breed is from a process perspective. This creates opportunities for clients to take advantage of SAP technology, accelerate digital transformation, and pull out additional value.
CPB has 4,000 practitioners, all focused on process initiatives, so we were all excited about the acquisition of Signavio – it's hugely complimentary. Our people are very skilled in BPI and take BPI components from phase zero through implementation, right into continuous improvements. They use Signavio tools to support through the entire life cycle of a program. Together we improve processes, get value from best of breed, and add client value.
RM: How can customers get started with SAP and Deloitte?
CK: The 300 campaign is a great place to start, where we have joined forces to add value for clients through process improvement. Up to 300 SAP customers have free access until the end of the year to the entire BPI portfolio. This brings people quickly into the BPI world.
Technology and people make a successful transformation
A transformation initiative is comparable to a marathon, not a sprint. And similar to a marathon, you need several tools to succeed. The first one is technology: The opportunities it realizes are made more straightforward as we progress, and integration is easier too. Customers can choose from a variety of platforms, improving on what they do today and pointing out inefficiencies. That’s why BPM is becoming so integral for organizations worldwide.
