Knowledge Share Group

May 16, 2018

SAP Leonardo….. What is it?

The Knowledge Share Group is a Sydney based event powered by Precision Sourcing to provide an environment for leaders within the SAP domain to share learnings, knowledge and insight. The group was founded in 2016 with the aim of Helping Talent Achieve in the world of SAP.

Regular attendee Nicole Schnemakers presented the idea of learning more about innovation and SAP’s innovation system SAP Leonardo. In December 2017 Nicole introduced Precision Sourcing’s Principal SAP Recruitment Consultant Jay Wynter and Managing Director Simon Hair to the Innovation Adoption Specialist for ANZ at SAP Australia –  Christian Schroefl and Rob Delnoij the Regional Lead for Consumer Industries.

Who is Christian Schroefl and Rob Delnoij?

Christian has been working for SAP themselves for the last 19 years with the last 8.5 years holding senior roles for SAP Australia. His current role is the Head of Innovation and Technology adoption.

In the interest of one of the Precision Sourcing values ‘collaboration’ Christian invited fellow SAP colleague Rob Delnoij. Rob is the Regional Lead for Consumer Industries and is currently working in SAP’s Innovation Office in the Asia Pacific & Japan region. Rob is responsible for SAP’s digital innovation system “SAP Leonardo” in the areas of consumer product goods, retail and agriculture.

Over the last few years Rob has been focused on the digital transformation of consumer industry organizations with a vision to reimagine the future way in which companies will interact with and deliver value to consumers.

SAP LeonardoSAP Leonardo

During the event

Rob kicked off the event with a Mario Andretti quote “If everything seems under control you’re not going fast enough” before giving an overview of what SAP’s current capability is and its extensive profile in terms of customer base and global reach. Rob progressed to explained how SAP have transformed before in the form of SAP ERP, SAP Ariba and now SAP Leonardo.

 

SAP LeonardoSAP Leonardo

Rob went on to explain what Leonardo is and defined it in 3 separate layers;

  1. Proven Methodology
  2. Innovative Technologies
  3. Industry Accelerators

 

SAP Leonardo

After the overview Christian stepped up to provide some demos of IoT scenarios (connected asset – Pump vibration and predictive maintenance; Raspberry and BME280 Sensor – bare-bones scenario and edge computing, Port of Hamburg video testimonial – linked below) and Machine Learning (SAP Image recognition – open API; Tensor Flow Simulations; Text Recognition – Intelligent Ticketing; Cash Application as intelligent function of S/4HANA Finance and example of Image Recognition of drones taking stock in warehouses) explaining innovation is already all around us and we are consuming it day in day out.

SAP Leonardo

Some points made by Rob were that innovation can be small and doesn’t have to be the big bang super disruptive innovation we all associate with the likes of UBER, AIRBNB etc…

By simply innovating current processes the majority of organisations can make hugely positive change.

Rob communicated that 92% of SAP customers want to innovate and change and by simply reviewing current processes this change can be executed.

One of the goals of Leonardo is faster innovation however with less risk.  Risk for the larger organisations that run SAP isn’t an option therefore Leonardo offers innovative change with less risk.  SAP customers need a method to change and Leonardo is that vehicle.

Message and call to action from Christian: get going, start small, fail early, move openly and in collaborations. SAP happy to help on Innovation Journey end-to-end.

Index;

Hamburg Port IoT example demonstrated:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1CWzjsCn6Do

Machine Learning Examples:

SAP API Hub: https://api.sap.com