Steering a company through the new reality might seem like a daunting task, leaving the company with little choice but to adapt and adjust. However, the new reality can also be a chance to set a new course, said the chief executive officer of SAP SE, Christian Klein, in a virtual event titled ‘Sapphire Now Reimagined’ on the topic of smart enterprise strategies. The business values of becoming an intelligent enterprise include resiliency, profitability and sustainability, emphasised Klein.

“The recent pandemic has shown how helpless we can feel. This crisis will drastically impact society and business for months or even years. The digital transformation is no longer an option, it is a must,” said Klein, adding that the Covid-19 lockdown showed that companies that use innovative technologies were more competitive before the crisis and are more resilient during the crisis. “Those companies that have enabled new business models and adapted their supply chain were especially better prepared for the unexpected. This crisis has shown that businesses that are not resilient will be left with nothing.” And once a company masters resiliency, it can focus on profitability, he added. To emerge stronger out of this crisis, it is more important than ever to set up enterprises or companies using today’s technologies, whereby new business possibilities enable personalised customer offers or new licence models.

Artificial Intelligence drives up to 40% of processes of automation and productivity, which helps to secure the profitability of a business, said Klein. “Amid the Covid-19 crisis, health, safety and business continuity have become top priorities, but we should not forget sustainability. The biggest challenge out there is climate change. Just as we cannot ignore the pandemic and its impact, we cannot continue to ignore climate change and the contribution of enterprises.” If major industries such as utilities, agriculture etc. were to use digital technologies to significantly reduce their carbon output, this could equal the positive impact of 500 billion trees or 7.6 gigatonnes less of CO₂, illustrated Klein in his speech.

”The Covid-19 situation has shown us that we can quickly drive change if we want to,” he said, adding that companies or enterprises should seize this change to run resilient, profitable, and also more sustainable enterprises. ”Today and in the future companies will not only be measured by customers and employees based on their financial performance, but also based on their contribution to society and the environment. Intelligent enterprises make sustainability profitable and profitability sustainable.” 

How to master the transformation into an intelligent enterprise is the key challenge for many companies out there. A thorough business transformation does not only happen by adopting intelligent workflow solutions or by selecting fragmented IT solutions or by just moving the IT landscape into a public infrastructure and creating data lakes, explained Klein. The transformation of a company needs to be holistic and this includes customers, employees, products and brands. Companies must be innovative and possess the agility and speed to quickly react to business needs in today’s fast changing environments, he added. A real business transformation is also about identifying a wide set of solutions, products and functionalities to address a company’s needs, but it is also about the appropriate implementation and seamless adoption of those solutions, concluded Klein.