Nigeria’s businesses share in $650b global losses to poor collaboration

 
SAP advocates cloud adoption among organizations
Lack of effective collaboration among organisations is costing businesses globally, Nigeria inclusive, an estimated yearly loss of about $650billion (N198.2trillion).


According to SAP, which disclosed this, these losses have been made worse by the adoption of weak software application in the coordination of all business processes under a single Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software platform.


SAP, a market leader in enterprise application software, at a media conference in Lagos, advised organisations to adopt cloud solutions in their businesses, as well as the right ERP software that will boost operational efficiency and ensure cost reduction. According to SAP, no matter the industry or geographic location, all businesses today have one overriding thing in common, “to be successful and sustainable you must be digital. While the rewards of moving a business towards digital are considerable, the initial transition can be challenging. Innovation requires the ability for businesses to collect, manage, analyse and leverage data of all types, to extend and connect to business networks, and to innovate new edge scenarios to allow the business to continuously adapt and advance.”


The firm stressed the need for cloud adoption among organisations, to address the mountains of inefficiencies and missed opportunities in operations. These it said, would redirect the mind-set of chief executive officers in understanding digital transformation, unleash its powers while finding a balance between maintaining a healthy business and current infrastructure, and innovating without disruption.


The Managing Director, SAP West Africa, Pedro Guerreiro, explained that most organisations invest a great deal to maintain and customise their IT landscapes to meet their unique business needs. He however said today, nearly every organisation has some level of cloud presence, typically for customer relationship management, and human capital management, or procurement.
“Moving to the cloud does not mean breaking off some parts of the business in a piecemeal fashion or taking a rip-and-replace approach.” Cloud is one of the key drivers of digital transformation. Cloud has disrupted the traditional IT model by drastically reducing time to market and for innovative solutions. With its ease of use and ubiquitous access, cloud has democratised the decisions about software purchasing, access, and usage,” Guerreiro said.

The SAP MD noted that cloud computing offers immense opportunity for companies to improve their business operations, regardless of sector, adding, “modern cloud offerings reduce IT infrastructure complexity and free up resources that can be better applied to driving innovation. And with security topping the list of concerns among business and IT leaders, cloud providers today invest talent and energy into ensuring their offerings are able to meet even the most stringent security requirements,” Guerreiro added.


Already, IDC has revealed that cloud spending would surge by 25 per cent to reach more than $100billion, with cloud data centres expected to double in number. In a separate study, analysts found that an astonishing $237billion in profits were lost by the top 200 global companies alone, mainly due to the hidden costs of complexity.


ERP Group Manager, TGI Group of Companies, Manikan dan Velrajan, said the use of SAP ERP software in all their group operations, have hoped the group to save huge cost.


“We are into multiple businesses that cut across various sectors of economies and we needed a wide-based ERP solution that is built around cloud computing and we found that in SAP S/4HANA Cloud, which is an intelligent, NextGen cloud ERP that takes enterprises into the digital age,” Velrajan said.


Speaking on the SAP HANA Cloud, Guerreiro said it was developed to provide companies with an agile, low-cost and scalable solution that helps optimise finance processes, cash flow management, supply chain management, real-time insights, and an end-to-end view of the performance of the entire enterprise. “That is why SAP is the fastest growing enterprise cloud company at scale, with more than 110 million users trading more than $820billion,” Guerreiro said.