SAPinsider Technology Executive Forum Issue 1 2021

“It’s a great step forward for SAP to enable their cur- rent and future customers to — from a single point of contact — run their business transformation. GEA is currently undergoing a massive consoli- dation transformation project, and after learning about the RISE with SAP offering I feel even more confident that GEA is on the right path based on the technology roadmap that is currently underway. The company is already running on Microsoft Azure, all process management runs on Signavio, and one of GEA’s major partners is Accenture. The collabo- ration with Microsoft that’s included in the offering is a value add for GEA because we run Microsoft Teams and Microsoft Suite 365 and we’re really looking for- ward to learning more about the integration capabili- ties of Microsoft Teams to SAP S/4HANA. The major question I would advise other compa- nies to ask that are considering a transformation: Am GEA Group Company: GEA Group AG Industry: Manufacturing Global Headquarters: Germany Employees: 18,000+ Annual revenue: Approximately 5 million US dollars (2019) Company Snapshot Christian Niederhagemann CIO, GEA Group I ready to kick off this journey? You have to do your homework to prepare your company from not only a technology perspective, but a process goal-oriented perspective. Determine your goals upfront. Then, how do you set up this transformation considering all of the necessary components like data, culture, business, process, and customers? Getting transformation off the ground: the foun- dation is ensuring that the IT side understands the business side, and vice versa. This collaboration is the major value add to any company. It’s really important to speak the same language. For example, having information available from Qualtrics has helped GEA’s IT team be able to design the best applications for our customers.” Listen to the full interview with Christian. SAPinsiderOnline.com 30