L'Usine Digitale: Where are you today in your relationship with SAP?
Alessandro Troisi : We are currently embarking on a five-year roadmap based on S/4Hana. This is not just about the RISE cloud offering, but also adopting other solutions like Ariba for supplier management and supply chain collaboration. We will also implement SAP Digital Manufacturing.
At the same time, we are starting to leverage the company's transformation platform, developing advanced technology scenarios and we are considering using AI, but we are still in the early stages.
When did you start this migration to the cloud?
We signed a contract with SAP at the beginning of 2022, so we have already been working on RISE with SAP for three years. We have developed central financial scenarios in it: this is the S/4Hana product. We are almost there. And we are also starting the first implementation of a manufacturing company on S/4Hana on RISE for our Indian subsidiary which plans to go live next September.
Did you encounter any particular difficulties?
No. I think the level of support from SAP is quite good, especially thanks to a monitoring program in place. We also engage different implementation partners like KPMG to manage central financials and other integrated systems for the implementation of S/4Hana Manufacturing. The level of reliability of SAP on Rise, in terms of operational support responsiveness, is also very good for us.
So you would say that you are on schedule for this migration?
We are on schedule for our S/4Hana project. We are planning to deliver the Indian factory in September this year and the next one will beItaly. So this is one of the biggest factories in our organization.
Considering the announcements made during Sapphire in Barcelona, which ones stood out to you? Are you waiting for a particular announcement?
There are two things that I think are really interesting: How can we be early adopters of artificial intelligence? What I also took away from the keynote was that for this to work we need a cleaner solution. We should stick to the standard by leveraging SAP Rise and conforming to SAP best practices as much as possible. This way, AI will be more effective and we will be able to extract all the value it can provide. I'm also looking at Signavio and the LeanIX product which can maybe help us map this out and make this as clean as possible.
To date, has Sidel used artificial intelligence?
We've adopted AI to some extent, primarily leveraging Microsoft's Copilot, but we're looking for a use case that can already be applied in S/4Hana because we think there's so much information in ERP that the adoption of AI can bring very great value for us.
With Microsoft, we first carried out a pilot project, applying it to our internal portal. For example, if I need to find a policy that is normally very difficult to find in a document, it is possible to query the wizard which helps you get the best and most recent information on the subject. Or, who can, if applicable, bring them together if you need to mix information from different departments. This is the first adoption we have had, but once again, we will see as we use it how we evolve.
You mention the added value of AI in ERP, what type of value is this?
I saw for example the possibility of combining information and generating documents such as requests for proposals (RFP documents) which we normally spend a lot of time on and this can be significantly accelerated. It could also be about doing a clearer analysis of our performance and implementing key performance indicators in real time, perhaps using low code. There really is a lot of potential that we need to discover and unlock for the future.
Speaking of the future, can you tell me what awaits Sidel in the next two years?
We are transforming our organization. We are trying to move from a purely manufacturing activity to a service activity. We therefore have the opportunity to integrate into our machines the appropriate technology to collect information at the customer's site to ensure more efficient maintenance, but also to support our sales forces in terms of services and maintenance, this is crucial for us. This is where we try to invest to make our business more profitable.
And what could be your next big project with SAP in this roadmap?
Right now, the CFO and Head of Business Transformation of this group is requesting the budget for the project for the next five years. It will therefore be a full-fledged project including S/4Hana on private cloud with a RISE implementation, Ariba, Digital Manufacturing, BTP (Business Technology Platform, editor's note) with the data sphere and SAP Analytics Cloud.
So this is a very significant investment in the SAP digital suite, because we really believe that it will help us harmonize and standardize our ways of working, that it will give us full control of our processes and that it will also give digital the possibility of becoming an actor capable of working with the company, being a partner more than a person who solves problems on demand.
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