soudal ctac event
TRANSCRIPT
Digital transformation is not about the next new technology. It’s about today’s reality. CIOs must challenge themselves
to reinvent their organization, the process, and/or the business they operate. But where to start?
As befits Ctac, we are there to lend a helping hand. At last month’s cNOW, we shared our vision on digital
transformation but, most importantly, zoomed in on a series of concrete aspects. An overview:
CNOW 2016: How can Ctac help you redefine your business for success in the digital age?
Dream, think, dare, do and persevere
Our home of the day was the impressive headquarters – we
love the garden! – of our customer Soudal in Turnhout. To
kick off cNow 2016, Dirk Coorevits, CEO of Soudal, illus
trated how innovation has made Soudal the market leader it
is today: “Our founder and chairman Vic Swerts has always
been searching for ways to expand the product range and
explore new markets. Today, R&D is more important than
ever. We’ll keep up those efforts, to make Soudal even bigger
than it is today.” His colleague Danny Verstraelen, IT man-
ager, explained how SAP’s ERP solution plays a key role in
streamlining the Soudal business. By deliberately choosing a
standard SAP solution, Soudal can now smoothly roll out the
platform to support its branches around the globe.
Every business is now a technology business
SAP is a software platform, that we know. But what about its
role in digital transformation? That’s pretty big, according to
Kenneth Stevens, Chief Technology Advisor at SAP BeLux.
In his inspiring keynote speech, he highlighted how there’s no
escaping the race to digitization: “You’ve probably attended
numerous events where everyone talked about Uber or Air
bnb. But digital transformation impacts every company. Every
business is now a technology business. Just think of electric
cars. They will transform the logistics and retail sectors, but
also the business of insurance companies and light poles
manufacturers, to name but a few. We’ll all have to rethink our
business, just like SAP is doing too.”
CNOW 2016
Simplification is the ultimate sophistication
The transparency contained in Stevens’ presentation was
surprising: “People are struggling with digital transformation
as they’re facing a complexity hurdle. Software is too slow
and too expensive to facilitate innovation and transformation,
so people stick to ‘keeping the lights on’. I admit that SAP
has added to that and we want to change that.” He points
to the Red Dot award that SAP received for its Fiori user
interface, which testifies to SAP’s hard work to make its
solutions more intuitive. Bottom line: simplification is the
ultimate sophistication. To get the most out of this new digital
economy, businesses need to run simple. At the foundation
of this principle is SAP HANA, SAP’s flexible, secure, realtime
innovation platform.
The road to SAP S/4 HANA
Luc de Winter, Innovation manager at Ctac, entered more
into detail on SAP HANA. The presentation started with
a short description of SAP HANA – from its birth as an
inmemory database used for BW through to the upcoming
release, which will include a variety of apps built on SAP’s
HANA Cloud Platform (HCP). Following his intro, Luc
explained how SAP users can safely move from their current
situation, typically running their businesses onpremise with
SAP ECC, to HANA and S/4HANA. Ctac has designed a
dedicated approach, which includes SAP tools, to help its
customers explore and experience the business value of
S/4HANA.
A successful transformation with Ctac Change
Management
“We forget 50% of what we learn within 1 hour”: that was
definitely one of the things we did not forget of the presen
tation by Richard Benschop, Business Unit Manager Ctac
Education. There was much more, though. As a fan of TED
talks, Richard managed to truly inspire the audience. The
main takeaway from his presentation: a successful SAP – or,
to a larger extend, digital transformation – project requires
change management. Ctac offers change management
services, based on proven methodologies and tools: we
assess the impact of change, calculate impact scores,
propose training sessions (new style – classical trainings are
out!) and help to communicate the changes in an engaging
way. In order to ensure a safe landing …
How to excel at Big Data analysis
“In the digital age, customers demand that you know them
and adapt your products in order to cater to their specific
needs,” said Davy De Regge, business consultant at Ctac.
Big data is generally put forward as the answer to all of
these challenges. Davy advised to handle data analytics
with care, though, in his breakout session on analytics.
He described three steps to convert companies into data
analytics champions: assess the analytics, deepen the initial
analysis through interviews and workshops and define the
gap between the existing and the required state of the data
analytics process. “Be sure to involve all of your employees
in this process from the very beginning. If you manage to get
buyin from everyone, your data analytics process is a golden
ticket to success in the digital age.”
In constant search for perfection:
continuous improvement management
Continuous improvement management (CIP) is powerful, but
its value is often underestimated. CTAC guides companies
and monitors their first steps in the field of CIP – from
identifying the pain chain (weak spots) in the daytoday
organization through to drafting an action plan. SAP tools
help in this process. CIP isn’t just a onehour workshop, it
takes time. But it’s well worth the efforts. It can really help you
turn your current challenges into future advantages.
Winshuttle: how to easily master data in a digital world
The plenary session by Clinton Jones, product manager at
partner Winshuttle, was the last one at the cNOW agenda.
The topic: master data management. “Bad data costs
companies EUR 13.9mio/year,” he said. “Good data can be
core to business growth.” Yet with the staggering amount
of data available in today’s digital world, many companies
feel lost. A quick poll of the audience showed that most
organisations indeed have an abundance of systems to
manage data on top of SAP. Clinton Jones explained and
demonstrated how Winshuttle – a solution that Ctac offers
– makes managing SAP data and handling SAP processes
simpler than ever before, without a single line of code – so
that everyday SAP users become power users.
We concluded cNOW 2016 with great networking, while
enjoying delicious food and drinks, in the amazing setting of
Soudal’s executive lounge. Thank you so much, Soudal, for
welcoming us. And many thanks to all participants for being
there and share their views and experiences with us!
Get in touch!
Let’s keep talking! Contact us via email with
any questions you might have or for sending
you the presentations.
Thanks Soudal!
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