Key Takeaways: Professional Services Companies as Digital Enterprises: Is Your Firm Ready?

If you were unable to attend, you may go here and follow the instructions to view this webcast on-demand.

Thank you to SAP for sponsoring this comprehensive and enlightening webinar. Thanks and appreciation also goes out to our distinguished panelists for their time and insightful commentary on this topic:

• Michael Liss, Vice President, Professional Services Industry, SAP
• Justin Ladenburger, Vice President SAP Cloud Solutions BD, Rizing
• Michalene Schechter, Director Finance Product Strategy, SAP Platform Architect, Accenture Global IT

What did our audience learn during this discussion? The following is a brief recap of some key takeaways from the webinar:

Digital Enterprises operate completely in the cloud. More and more companies are migrating away from on premise solutions and moving more to a true SaaS cloud environment.

• This means customers no longer have to deal with data centers and hardware and complex integration requirements.
• It allows companies to get out of the development business from an IT perspective and focus more on consuming existing capabilities. Not investing money and manpower continuously building IT solutions allows companies to focus on utilizing current, up-to-date capabilities.

Panelist Justin Ladenburger noted that RIZING's path to provide positive customer experience through the Cloud was driven by the firm's desire to better support change in their organization; streamline operations and efficiently operate across 3 lines of business; offer better service and adapt to market disruptions.

• Data driven decision making addresses the need to utilize and refine data, gaining insights to make better decisions for employees and customers.
• It is important to find the right resource mix of hybrid talent (FTE and contractors) in order to optimize operations and plan for ongoing demand.
• Automation and AI technology deliver valuable efficiencies. As increasing competition has thinned profit margins for professional service organizations, leveraging Robotic Process Automation provides bottom-line benefits for service quality and delivery. What technological innovations and industry trends have made this possible, and necessary?
• Companies such as SAP continuously invest in emerging innovation areas such as artificial intelligence, machine learning, digital assistance, robotic process automation and predictive analytics, which are critical to the professional service industry. Once running as that digital enterprise, you can take advantage of these innovations as they are released.
• Companies can better support change in their organizations. These technologies allow for streamlining operations to operate efficiently across multiple lines of business, different regions and countries; manage disjointed systems, siloed processes and data which otherwise make it difficult to drive reliable business planning and decision-making.

Panelist Michalene Schecter noted Accenture's priorities in becoming a digital enterprise were driven by a mandate for their business to consume more and own less [technology]. Accenture's business is powered by a digital core SAP S/4HANA private cloud, run on RISE by SOAR. Their platform for compressed digital core transformation focused on 4 focus areas:

• Stay current: keep regular upgrade cadence, hosted in private cloud; take advantage of tech managed services to focus on innovation.
• Get to standard: lean in to SAP innovation and take advantage of new capabilities.
• Clean digital core: complex systems and landscapes make upgrades a complex life event, slows access to innovation. Review current customizations, and meet requirements in a sustainable and responsible from an IT perspective.
• Consume more, own less: surrounding with digital cloud allows reduction of digital core; surround core with cloud products, SAP Analytics Cloud to support treasury, PAPM.

Moving to the Cloud provided Accenture the ability to respond to the speed of the business and make global changes to operations or operating models fast and simple.

Panelist Michael Liss described some of the innovations SAP has developed and the advantages that come from Cloud operations.

Software as a service is a great way to start the digital enterprise journey, and the embedded machine learning and predictive analytics within many different SAP solutions allow companies to reimagine innumerable processes.

• Considering robotic process automation, SAP is delivering hundreds of bots that can automatically process things that traditionally required manual intervention. For example, bots that can actually properly reclassify WIP (unbilled work in progress) and bots that can go out and look at the projects with time billed/assigned incorrectly and move that time from the wrong project to the right project.
• SAP has launched a new digital assistant called JOULE. This uses natural language queries that automatically reach into SAP solutions to determine appropriate actions and answer sets to anything you ask. JOULE can be launched from a desktop or mobile device and allows you to use your voice to interact with SAP. JOULE will actually be able to go out and find the answer set for you and deliver it to your device. It also does this within the boundaries of your security protocols, so you're only allowed to see the data that you have the authority to see.
• Leveraging AI, requires a large foundational data model for it to effectively learn and apply that intelligence. SAP has one of the largest, most complex and powerful language data models, accessing anonymized data from more than 400,000 customers around the world. This ensures higher optimization and provides valid intelligence back to all users.
• These technologies allow for streamlining operations to operate efficiently across multiple lines of business, different regions and countries; manage disjointed systems, siloed processes and data which otherwise make it difficult to drive reliable business planning and decision-making.

Register and view the webinar On-Demand here.