Shaping the digital transformation

Customer Focus Days SAP 2022

At Valantic's SAP 2022 Customer Focus Days, change and SAP experts as well as user companies agreed that change succeeds when organizations leave the familiar behind while maintaining competitive differentiation and finding their own pace. With the Focus Days, the digital solutions, consulting and software company offers a forum for central topics of digital transformation. This year, under the motto Innovation by Change, the focus was on how companies can strengthen their innovative power through change and make themselves fit for future challenges.

Change Management

The digital transformation demands great willingness to change from companies. They have to cope with exponential technological progress and prepare for as yet unknown business requirements. Dealing with this dynamic is difficult, change management expert Michael Groß knows. "Digitization is like white-water rafting, where you have to constantly adapt to new situations," said the Olympic swimming champion. This requires new thought patterns, continuous learning and a focus on the benefits of change, he added. For computer vision specialist Basler, providing a powerful IT infrastructure that enables business innovation, automation and data-driven decision-making is the driver of its S/4 transformation.

The company is already benefiting from the move to the cloud, reported Martina Quast, Head of SAP at Basler: "We have developed an initial bot with Valantic and can determine the quality of processes through process mining with Signavio." As Head of HR-IT at Dohle Handelsgruppe, Thorben Grubert is responsible for the migration of Human Capital Management to the S/4 Private Cloud as well as the introduction of SuccessFactors in the company's HR department. "The new system is more performant and reports are available faster. After implementing all solutions, we will achieve comprehensive added value through synergy effects," he reported on his project with Valantic. For Karsten Ötschmann, Managing Director and Partner at Valantic, the transformation is about creating a platform that ensures long-term and sustainable business success.

The important thing here is to take a holistic view: "It is essential to maintain successful, competitively differentiated processes and optimize them with innovative technology, while relying on standard processes, best practices and automation in other areas. The sum creates the decisive business impact," he explained. The fact that S/4 transformations are a value enhancement was made clear by Rüdiger Hoffmann, Managing Director at Valantic. They enabled growth and digitization in the next decade: "A change-friendly IT architecture is also able to map emerging new requirements." 

Change-friendliness

For projects, Rüdiger Hoffmann recommended: "Pay attention to your organization and, if in doubt, take a step slower." Automotive supplier ElringKlinger wants to use S/4 to achieve more standardization and harmonization throughout the supply chain. Fabian Hörz, Director Global Strategy and Digital Transformation at ElringKlinger, emphasized, "It was good for us to establish the status quo and define where we want to go. This way, we can also communicate the project internally so that people understand why we are taking this step and they may have to leave their comfort zone."

Together with Valantic, the manufacturer of automation technologies ifm is currently determining the effects of digitization with SAP Digital Manufacturing Cloud. Markus Steiert, head of department for operating equipment technology at ifm, explained: "This will enable us to evaluate whether the introduction will bring the desired benefits."