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Distinguished CEO Series
17 October 2018

CIO Academy Asia (CIOAA) recently hosted another edition of its Distinguished CEO series, this time, with Dr Andreas Schneider-Neureither, Founder, Chairman of The Board of Directors & CEO, SNP SE. The theme was “Near Zero – Closing the Gap between Business Strategy & Technology Execution”

SNP, The Transformation Company is a global Software solution provider with a deep focus on transforming ERP/SAP environments through an automated software platform. The company is listed on the Frankfurt stock exchange and was founded in Heidelberg, Germany. Technology leaders from different industries such as healthcare, logistics and hospitality contributed their perspectives on the business priorities in digital transformation and the challenges in modernising existing technology services to take advantage of new capabilities such as data analytics and Cloud.

Dr Schneider-Neureither started off the session by discussing a broad range of operational and strategic pain-points that CXOs of most organisations face in today’s fast-paced digital economy. Not only are businesses stepping up the tempo on strategic moves such as mergers & acquisitions and business carve outs, organisation also navigate tightening regulatory compliance and heightened transparency requirements, further adding to the challenge for IT to keep pace with the fast-changing business environment.

As organisations embark on large scale M&A activity, data stored within corporate IT systems such as Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) and Customer Relationship Management (CRM) platforms often require significant man-days to reconcile within new business entities. Dr Schneider-Neureither however emphasised that complete visibility is more than half the battle won as he shared his personal experiences helping organisations reduce friction in transforming data within complex IT systems as part of SNP’s services.

One notable case study was one of the largest splits in History, orchestrated over a decade ago. The Company – with earnings of $112billion and about 300,000 employees – engaged SNP platform to split their SAP landscape. 50 terabytes from several systems was successfully transformed to meet the needs of both entities all within 6 months with less than 14 hours of down-time.

Most of the CIOs present were managing brownfield IT transformation roadmaps, involving ERP modernisation projects that require careful management of inconsistent protocols and dated business processes. These challenges are a result of legacy data systems and multi-vendor configurations that often distract IT teams from their transformation goals and ultimately fail to fully deliver business value expected from CIOs on time.

A CIO from the logistics industry highlighted the importance of interfacing data more effectively across the supply chain on a day-to-day basis. They currently lack an industry standard which will prove beneficial if one was created to reduce inefficiencies in existing information sharing processes. This is also where SNP’s unique BLUEFIELD™ approach has proven to achieve process improvement outcomes, where disruptions to current workflows are brought to a minimum while improved business processes and data management workflows are integrated with minimal downtime.

Organisations are increasingly leveraging Cloud technologies including Cloud enabled ERP systems such as SAP S4/HANA. To overcome common challenges such as data migration and business process reconfiguration, SNP’s BLUEFIELD™ implementation path has enabled organisations achieve up to 75% faster automated adoption with higher accuracy and minimum risk. This has given IT teams the edge to operate with greater agility and close the gap with the business

Another CIO representing the healthcare industry related his experiences of getting around strict data privacy laws which govern his organisation’s current ERP systems. As healthcare data is subject to heterogenous regulatory standards across different jurisdictions, his organisation is already compliant with a set of standard operating procedures that determine financing rules, payment processes and operational workflows built into existing ERP systems. Any IT modernisation project that impact the proper functioning of these rule mechanism require significant buy-in from the organisation as well as a considerable investment to meet strict compliance standards while such projects take place.

Dr Schneider-Neureither’s experiences growing his team from a one-man start-up to a 1,350 strong global company that work with large companies such as Siemens, L’Oreal, Esprit, Honda and, has demonstrated how SNP’s proven approach has not only mitigated risks in some of the largest and most significant mergers, acquisitions and divestures, but also significantly shortened project timelines so that businesses like can focus on driving value for their customers and shareholders.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][ult_buttons btn_title=”PHOTOS FROM THIS EVENT” btn_link=”url:https%3A%2F%2Fwww.facebook.com%2Fmedia%2Fset%2F%3Fset%3Da.2115358591850238%26type%3D1%26l%3D75a4689efc||target:%20_blank” btn_title_color=”#ffffff” btn_bg_color=”#a22100″ icon_size=”32″ btn_icon_pos=”ubtn-sep-icon-at-left” el_class=”facebook_photos_btn”][/vc_column][/vc_row]