Digital transformation as a live experience
"Reinventing business and society"
The two keynote speakers focused on these opportunities in their speeches. Stefan Ries, Chief Human Resources Officer at SAP, reminded the business-oriented audience that it is important to be ready for these opportunities and to gain a competitive advantage from them. Using various examples, he showed how SAP is also setting a good example in the HR sector: with the mobile provision of HR services, the use of analytics and, in the near future, artificial intelligence. However, Ries' most important message was probably to invest in employee training and to take away people's fear of the digital transformation.The second opening speaker was also an optimist: Jim Hagemann Snabe, former Co-CEO of SAP and recently Chairman of the Supervisory Board of Siemens. The lively Dane illustrated the potential of digital change using examples from logistics, the energy sector and the manufacturing industry and urged the audience not to wait for future solutions, but to fully exploit the potential of the technologies available today. "Now is the time," Hagemann Snabe called out to the audience, "to reinvent business and society."
For example Omega and Emmi
What this means in concrete and practical terms could be experienced in numerous topic-specific presentations and demonstrations, use cases and demos. The SAP Live Campus turned out to be an event whose name says it all. The presentations by SAP customers, who provided an insight into their real-life digitalization projects, were well to very well attended. During Omega's presentation, the audience was able to follow the step-by-step introduction of the powerful, scalable SAP ME (Manufacturing Execution) solution at company level, which the watch brand uses to manage and control manufacturing and production processes, while the audience eagerly awaited the presentation by Marcel Härtlein, Head of Digital Transformation at the Emmi Group, on the milk processor's efforts in the area of digital customer experience. Using the example of a campaign for the Caffé Latte product, in which VIP tickets for the Lauberhorn ski race could be won in an online competition, he impressively demonstrated how Emmi not only made its marketing activities measurable and more effective with a solution based on the SAP Hybris Marketing Cloud, but also took the first steps towards an agile and data-driven marketing organization, while at the same time reducing its dependence on external service providers: A 31 percent increase in customer profiles, a 66 percent increase in click-through rates and a three times higher conversion rate. In addition, Emmi can track marketing performance in real time with the new solution.
Digital customer experience in practice
At some exhibition stands, the digital customer experience was not just a lecture, but a real experience. At the "Intelligent Ad" stand, for example, visitors were scanned from head to toe in just a few seconds. The intelligent screen display then immediately made suggestions for trousers, T-shirts and accessories - the underlying principle is comparable to the suggestion system familiar from Amazon: People who are dressed similarly to you have bought these pants and this T-shirt. Technically, this solution is based on a "machine learning" approach. This solution could be used in the windows of clothes stores to support in-store promotions: Anyone looking at the window display is scanned; a screen then displays clothing suggestions that are available to buy in the store.A digital customer experience of a completely different kind was available for practical use in the start-up area: a new type of flexible and at the same time extremely space-efficient wardrobe and storage solution, with which the start-up Zippsafe is revolutionizing the classic wardrobe through clever innovation and with digital elements. The Zippsafe concept is up to 70 percent more space-efficient than a traditional locker. On the one hand, this leads to major space savings and, on the other, to new applications for checkrooms: Zippsafe is used as a space-efficient employee checkroom in hospitals, as a coat service in shopping centers and reception halls or as a self-service checkroom in the event sector. At the SAP Live Campus, visitors were able to store their coats and bags theft-proof in a self-service solution from Zippsafe.
Great interest in innovations
The short presentations on the SAP Leonardo innovation system were regularly fully booked. In ten presentations and numerous live demos, the audience and viewers were presented with possible applications and solutions for the technologies and services behind Leonardo relating to IoT, machine learning, blockchain and other innovations, while the practical presentations on the SAP S/4HANA business suite also met with great interest. Migros' presentation on a major transformative project based on S/4HANA focused on the agility and efficiency gains from a shared, modular business process box and shared experiences from the initial project phases with the audience. Swisscom illustrated the added value of such solutions with new Fiori apps that allow users to access "their" SAP S/4HANA from anywhere.
Virtual visit to the intelligent company
The SAP Live Campus made it clear that tools and technologies, solutions and expertise are available to actively tackle digital transformation projects today and take advantage of the opportunities they offer. However, visitors to the Campus did not have to do without a glimpse into the future. At the "Future-Ready Enterprise" demo stand, visitors embarked on a tour of a hyper-intelligent company in an impressive virtual reality presentation inspired by Adidas: the virtual tour of the company takes them through all stages of a product cycle, from market research and product development to production, marketing and logistics, in which customers are involved as "co-creators" from the very beginning. The result: significantly accelerated processes - it takes just three weeks from development to delivery - combined with a highly personalized customer experience.mass customization at this level is still a dream of the future, but the technologies for it are ready. Now is the time to follow Hagemann Snabe's recommendation and exploit its potential.
