At the recently concluded SAP NOW Southeast Asia event held in Singapore, SAP showcased a range of innovations with customers and partners who shared their success stories and digital transformation journeys with SAP solutions and services.
The event, hosted at the Raffles City Convention Centre, brought together over 1000 customers, partners, and technology experts from around Southeast Asia (SEA) to discuss SAP solutions like green ledger carbon accounting and Business AI, and spotlight how organizations are leveraging SAP solutions and business networks to future-proof their businesses.
"Our mission in SEA is to uplift the lives of our region’s 700 million people. At SAP, we are doing that in three ways – boosting innovation through new ideas like business AI, driving sustainable outcomes by investing in carbon accounting and the green ledger, and helping businesses future-proof their infrastructure for resiliency in the cloud,” said Verena Siow, President and Managing Director, SAP SEA.
Hosted at the Raffles City Convention Centre in Singapore, SAP NOW brought together over 1000 customers, partners, and technology experts from around Southeast Asia.
During a panel discussion led by Siow, Metro Pacific Investments Corporation (MPIC) proudly shared its success story with RISE with SAP, a bundle of tailor-made enterprise resource planning (ERP) software, transformation services, business analytics, and partner expertise guides designed to help organizations push their personalized journey to the cloud. RISE with SAP can transition businesses current ERP data and processes to the cloud with less risk and without compromise. MPIC implemented RISE with SAP toward the end of 2021. It is the first in the Philippines to adopt RISE with SAP and the implementation took only three months.
“We are among the first companies in the Philippines to implement RISE with SAP at the shortest possible time. One thing that I like about SAP is they listen. Over a year working with them, we were able to co-develop many things together. From an innovation perspective, SAP is very open and has the resources to make things happen. RISE with SAP is an answered prayer for us,” said June Cheryl “Chaye” Cabal-Revilla, Chief Financial Officer and Chief Sustainability Officer, MPIC.
“As you know, MPIC has many businesses: we have large ones and small ones. If we were to use a regular enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution for our smaller businesses, it would be very expensive. Thus, RISE with SAP is a perfect fit because it is cost efficient, easy to implement, and easy to understand. Change management is a breeze and, from cost efficiency standpoint, it is like no other because it is cloud based. It also empowers us, and we are not beholden to getting IT people or contracting IT companies to do things for us,” Cabal-Revilla added.
Verena Siow, President and Managing Director, SAP SEA delivers a speech at SAP NOW.
MPIC is the largest infrastructure group in the Philippines. Through Meralco, the company is into power generation and power distribution, covering more than 50% of the power requirements of the country. MPIC is also into water distribution and toll road management, through which the company services about two million vehicles on the average each day. MPIC also provides health care with its hospitals across the country.
“At MPIC, we do a holistic, end-to-end approach on EESG (economy, environment, social, and governance) and strategize through our key performance indicators based on those aspects. For us, what we have done to transition from risk management to overall resilience, you must look at it from an EESG perspective. One example would be using technology as a strategy for future proofing. Instead of us being disrupted, we want to be ahead of the curve; we want to ride on the disruptive wave and use whatever disruptive technology as our means. Instead of just preparing, we want to be able to anticipate things and embrace it early,” said Cabal-Revilla during the panel discussion.
“RISE with SAP is an answered prayer and perfect solution because we grew by acquisition. We have large businesses and smaller ones. Applying the EESG approach and starting with the economic perspective, we can streamline processes and enhance cost efficiency. For the environment, with the push of digitalization across the group, we can go paperless and reduce our carbon footprint, preventing the cutting of more trees. Being in the cloud is also more sustainable because it requires less energy and GHG (greenhouse gases) emissions. For the social aspect, we can optimize resources and provide better experience for our people. Our employees are happier. We have better work-life balance now, instead going overtime and doing many things. Our customers are happy as well. In terms of governance, we have better control. We now have a better architecture that helps us ensure better cybersecurity; it gives us peace of mind and better response. RISE with SAP also helps us with our integrated report,” she continued.
Siow during a panel discussion with Phuah Aik Chong, Chief Executive Officer, PETRONAS Digital; June Cheryl “Chaye” Cabal-Revilla, Chief Financial Officer and Chief Sustainability Officer, MPIC; and Loganathan Ramasamy, Chief Executive Officer, ST Logistics.
Cabal-Revilla further shared that MPIC aspires to transition and invest more in green technologies, such as the capability to convert wastewater into potable water. The company is also investing in biodiversity protection projects, creating designs with less social and environmental disruptions. One example is the Cebu-Cordoba Link Expressway, which was featured in a National Geographic article titled “A bridge of tomorrow”.
“Instead of doing a straight bridge, which is more efficient but will disturb 300 hectares of mangroves, we veered away from it because it is the right thing. We must protect the communities living there. The mangroves protect them from storm surges and enable fisherfolks to fish more. That is our thinking now. It is not just about doing our business, but we now have a foresight of the impact of what we do,” she added.
MPIC was joined by other Southeast Asian organization who are in various stages of digital transformation with SAP, namely Aboitiz InfraCapital, Changi Airport Group, Petrosea, ST Logistics, and Visa. “It is clear we are at an inflection point, and the best way to Transform Tomorrow, Today, is through continual innovations: bringing expert partners, including customers themselves, together to collaborate and tap the power of the collective to thrive in the SEA digital economy,” said Siow.