How to Approach Change? | SAP Innovation Forum 2017

As Part of the Global C-Suite Study IBM recently released the "CFO perspective: Finance in the Era of Digital Transformation SAP S/4HANA Finance and other solutions" which focuses on how market pressures & technology are changing the business landscape and how IBM and SAP Solutions can help CFOs meet the challenges of finance.

Time to value, ways of working, predictive decision making and process optimization are some of the areas where new technology is seen as an accelerating factor and technologies like Cloud computing and services, mobile solutions, Analytics, IoT and Cognitive computing are seen as the most relevant technologies.

Finance is no longer just a static back office function but a service provider and partner within the organization making it possible for business to make effective business decisions and at the same time execute real time financial transactions based on economic requirements fast, whenever and where ever.

In order to maximize time to value in transformation you have to be agile. Rapid prototyping with a user centric approach and pre-defined solution alternatives makes it possible to 'lean left' and evaluate solution feasibility early and iterate based on findings.

Methods and tools need to be setup in a way that they scale, are adjustable when things change and support user centric development. At IBM we are on our own transformation journey and one part of that journey has been to critically inspect how we approach SAP implementation and transformation projects. It is no longer possible to approach these projects with long implementations, utilising the classical waterfall approach. Our answer to this has been a framework where we have adopted SAP’s new Activate methodology integrating that with IBM design thinking, agile delivery methods, our own SAP specific implementation assets and cognitive solutions what can be rapidly deployed from the cloud to support the transformation. Our interdisciplinary teams are a combination Business, design and technology skilled people to handle all the aspects of client expectations during the transformation journey.

Erkka Puusti 

Erkka is leading Managing Consultant and Solution Architect at IBM Global Business Services, Finland.

IBM is one of the event partners in SAP Innovation Forum 2017. #SAPFORUM