With the Philippines ramping up its national digital transformation initiatives spearheaded by the government, businesses anticipate more seamless and efficient relationships, especially when working with government agencies. While digital transformation offers several opportunities, it also brings challenges and concerns to business owners as they explore new ways to thrive in an increasingly digital economy. Helping businesses address these challenges, SAP has launched Southeast Asia 2025 Strategy, which Rudy Abrahams, the new Managing Director of SAP Philippines, tackled in detail in an exclusive interview with Manila Bulletin.
Backed by more than 25 years of ICT experience in public and private sectors, Abrahams began his working relationship with SAP in 2010 when he was an SAP Enterprise Support Centre manager in Cape Town, South Africa. In 2017, Abrahams officially joined SAP in Dubai, the United Arab Emirates. He held various leadership roles, including Vice-President, Head of Digital Transformation Office, and led the Customer Advisory Team for countries like the UAE, Qatar, Egypt, Pakistan, Kuwait, and emerging economies under SAP EMEA. Abrahams eventually became part of Singapore-based SAP SEA, where he was the Vice President, Head of SAP SuccessFactors, a leading provider of cloud-based people solutions for Southeast Asia.
"As the new Managing Director, I am responsible for SAP Philippines customer-centric and innovative approach to driving digital transformation in the country," said Abrahams. "My focus areas include helping customers, partners, and communities tackle the biggest issues they face, such as business transformation in the cloud, building a resilient supply chain, and creating a sustainable future."
Southeast Asia 2025 Strategy
Aligned with these focus areas, the SAP launched the Southeast Asia 2025 Strategy, which emphasizes the goal to “Transform Tomorrow, Today” by serving as a catalyst of sustainable success for customers, partners, and the communities where SAP operate. The strategy has a set of five key pillars, which includes customer success, cloud growth, helping the growth of SMEs, sustainability, and people development.
"Our first pillar is customer success. We want to ensure that our customers and partners successfully realize the full value of their investment in SAP for the next years to come and building a sustainable future together. We are here to support our customers from end-to-end, covering every step of their digital transformation journey, from building the business case and digital roadmap to project implementation, adoption, and through to value realization," said Abrahams.
In 2020, the cloud market in the Philippines valued at $1.8 billion. With many businesses intend to migrate their workloads to the cloud, the Philippine cloud market is projected to grow to at least $2.8 billion by 2025, according to data analytics and consulting company GlobalData. Helping in driving cloud growth in the Philippines, SAP has introduced RISE with SAP, a subscription-based service that includes a variety of SAP solutions and services.
"Our RISE with SAP offering provides a comprehensive package to support business transformation. We complement this with our leading cloud solutions across multiple functional areas, such as Business Process Optimization, Human Experience management, Supply Chain optimization, Customer Experience, and Analytics, to name a few. These solutions, combined with RISE with SAP serve as a comprehensive suite that can help businesses become sustainable, intelligent enterprises," Abrahams explained. SAP customers in the Philippines that have integrated these solutions include Daiichi Properties, AC Energy (ACEN), and Agripacific Corporation (APC).
SAP cloud solutions and services are not only limited to huge enterprises in the Philippines. Recognizing that 99.5% of registered businesses in the country are MSMEs, helping them grow is one of the key pillars of Southeast Asia 2025 Strategy. "We are also aware that under the new administration, new projects are now in the pipeline to help the Filipino MSMEs achieve inclusive growth and help these enterprises as they embrace digital transformation. SMEs make up nearly 90% of our customers in the Philippines. We aim to continue being a partner in enabling SMEs’ digital transformation. Since 2021, we have seen significant demand for SAP cloud solutions from SMEs, both new and existing customers," Abrahams continued.
Sustainability has been a buzzword among companies today, but for SAP, it is an integral component of its business. "We believe that sustainability is the business challenge of our generation. Companies of all sizes need to act responsibly now. Our customers and partners have seen ESG considerations in their strategic frameworks because of the increasing demand from investors and customers and regulatory developments," he shared.
In the Philippines, sustainability disclosures are critical and publicly listed companies are required to submit an annual sustainability report. SAP aspires to support and enable every customer to realize their sustainability goals and compliances, particularly in achieving three zeros–zero emissions, zero waste, and zero inequality.
As a people-first leader with firm support for gender diversity, equality, and inclusion, Abrahams also emphasized people as the fifth pillar yet key foundation of the 2025 strategy. In line with this, SAP is committed to uplifting the lives of Filipinos. Foreseeing that the future of the Philippine economy is digital, Abrahams shared that SAP has a strategic responsibility for SAP in seeding and growing the digital workforce by equipping young Filipinos with the digital skills to prepare them for future employment.
Abrahams also believes that a diverse, equitable, and inclusive workforce is essential in helping people thrive in their careers. At SAP Philippines, over 57.8% of employees are female, and around 56% are in management. Since its establishment in 1995, diversity and inclusion has been fundamental for the company to perform at its best. "Our culture thrives on respect, inclusion, and psychological safety – free from fear, discrimination, and harassment. This is what we nurture here. It is non-negotiable," Abrahams pointed out.
Upskilling the Future Workforce
Education is a key priority of the Philippine government, especially science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). The highest budgetary priority mandated by the Constitution, the allocated budget for the education sector next year is ₱852.8 billion.
“At SAP, we believe education is the key to achieving the country’s digital transformation goals. With the plans laid by the current administration, especially as it strengthens its government digital transformation initiatives, we believe that upskilling talents, particularly their digital skills, is likewise integral,” said Abrahams.
SAP has implemented projects and initiatives in partnership with other organizations to upskill local talents.
SAP, UNICEF, and Generation Unlimited (GenU)’s Educate to Work Program
SAP recently committed to continuing its partnership with UNICEF in support of Generation Unlimited (GenU) for an additional three years to help prepare young people for the workforce.
GenU is a program with the end goal of upskilling the world’s 1.8 billion young people and connect them to opportunities for employment, entrepreneurship, and social impact. With this partnership, SAP, UNICEF, and GenU will pilot a new program that supports "learning to earning" pathways in the digital and green economy for marginalized young people providing them with the skills they need to flourish.
"The Philippines is the only Asian country piloted the program, leveraging GenU signature program Youth Agency Marketplace (YOMA). The other two countries where we will implement this are Nigeria and South Africa. By the end of the first year, SAP and GenU aims to reach more than 500,000 young people with opportunities for foundational and digital skills," Abrahams shared.
The partnership will also support the SAP Educate to Employ initiative, which aims to educate youth aged 16–24 years on soft skills, foundational knowledge, and SAP skills. The program will use the student zone on the SAP Learning site, where students can learn about the latest SAP solutions for free to kickstart their career.
SAP University Alliances
SAP has also been collaborating with universities and schools across the globe through the SAP University Alliances program. This initiative enables academia to educate the next generation for the Intelligent Enterprise and the experience economy, engage at SAP events, build industry partnerships, and prepare graduates for the SAP ecosystem.
About 23 member universities joined the SAP University Alliances program in the Philippines. It continues to empower faculty and teachers to equip the next generation of talents with the latest SAP technologies and relevant skills.
ASEAN Data Science Explorers (ADSE)
SAP has been collaborating with ASEAN Foundation to equip youths (to-date: 30,000 youths and 2,000 educators from over 700 institutes) with data analytics skills to create solutions for the ASEAN region’s pressing social issues.
Now in its sixth year, ADSE competition saw 778 students from ten ASEAN countries competing to represent their country in the National Finals. Team Paradocs, composed of Prince Jewel Federe, from the Polytechnic University of the Philippines – Manila (PUP), and Kim Carlo Monloy, from the University of the Philippines – Diliman (UP), has represented the Philippines for the Regional Finals, that took place in Phnom Penh, Cambodia last October 12, 2022. They competed with all the national qualifiers from among the nine other ASEAN countries.
Organized by the ASEAN Foundation and SAP, the program also collaborated with non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and program alumni in ten ASEAN countries to deliver in-person enablement sessions to youth with limited access to technology and young people with disabilities. The continuous support and collaboration with NGOs and program alumni made it possible for the program to deliver SAP Analytics Cloud training to 3,619 underserved youths in 2022.
“It is an important way to nurture and deepen a pool of homegrown talents across the region to build the workforce of the future. Some participants have even gone on to land strategic roles in household names such as JP Morgan, EY, and Lazada,” said Abrahams.
“The Philippines is one of the active participating countries in this program. It complements the current programs geared toward upskilling young Filipinos and empowering ASEAN youths with essential digital skills, collaboration skills, critical thinking, and ability to communicate ideas. We believe these skills are vital for them to become effective leaders of tomorrow,” he concluded.