Lessons Learned at NTT Data’s TransformationNow Event

This article is my summary of the NTT Data Business Services TransformationNow event in London, on October 4th, at the County Hall, London. I attempted to live-blog it during the day, but quickly got bogged down, partly because I wanted to spend time talking to participants rather than tidying up and posting my notes, and partly because LinkedIn turns to be a less-than-ideal platform for liveblogging.

So what follows is a tidied-up version of events. Please note that even when the words might appear to come from a participant, it's all subject to my paraphrasing and note-taking skills, and so might not be exactly what they said.

For once, I was not actually presenting, so I could concentrate on listening to the content and catching up with friends/colleagues/customers.

I live in Paris, so step one was being woken up by the alarm at 6am local time (5am London) and jumping shaved, showered and bleary-eyed into a cab at 6:20am. I managed to do my email on the pleasant Eurostar ride from Gare du Nord, and arrived at the venue near Waterloo station by 9:30 am -- just in time for a quick coffee and croissant while catching up with folks like Andy Steer , Andrew Fox , Steve Rumsby and many others…?

Andy Steer kicked things off, engagingly as ever. A show of hands showed that it was the first live event this year for quite a few people in the audience. He reminded everyone that it’s not just about the content on stage, and that everybody should take the opportunity to meet and mingle with the other participants.?

UK Managing Director of NTT Data Business Solutions Justin Brading started his presentation by explaining he’s an economist by training. And that his son recently asked him the question on everyone’s lips: “What the hell’s going on at the moment?!”

He went over recent changes since we last all met face to face -- including the shift from itelligence to NTT Data, and outlined the three Es that define their services: Economics, Engagement, and Ethics.

One nice touch was a sustainability offer, of one new tree planted for each day of consulting.

Then it was back to Andy — “Everybody talks about innovation — that’s really boring! It’s not just about innovation for innovation’s sake.” He introduced the NTT Data assisted learning project — you can view the innovation award entry at sap.com/innovationawards?for more!

Next up was NTT Data’s Thomas Normark for a discussion about innovation, showcasing recent projects. There were some nice examples of using image-based AI — for example automatically calculating the number of white boxes and blue pallets being loaded into a warehouse, using a cheap camera and a machine learning model.

And the same thing can be done for pigs —including estimates of weight—or checking employees are wearing the right safety gear before entering a building site.

There were also some slightly scarily-real 3D AI avatars and assistants. Attendees could try all this out at the venue, in the Innovation Area.

Then an update on SAP from Ian Wahlers and cazali celine . SAP continues to see steady growth and a move to the cloud. The company scores highly as a great place to work, and is in the forefront of sustainability efforts. The RISE with SAP offer is going strong. There's still a mix of cloud and on-premise, of course, but SAP is now seeing about 10x cloud vs on-premise business in UKI. This also means changes to how SAP works with customers and partners – because SAP is now responsible for running/providing more of the solution?(not just software)

Then Celine Cazali shared an update on SAP’s partner programs, with additional steps towards alignment on customer success (not just sales!)

Then the first track sessions. I chose Richard Stokes talking about how NTT helps customers move to the S/4HANA platform.

It was good update and overview of the value of S/4HANA in a VUCA world, and how NTT Data can help, with pragmatic steps to building a business case and helping you through the transformation journey. And it was focused on the new business opportunities, not just doing a lift-and-shift to a cloud platform ??

It was also nice to see that SAP Signavio featured throughout the presentation — to help you look at your business processes and find the best transformation opportunities (see later in the article for more information about this)

The next track session I attended was with NTT Data’s Richard Stokes and Julian Holmes of Jazz Pharmaceuticals.

Julian: “I’ve spent my whole career in pharma. What I like about Jazz is that it’s so fulfilling. We make real life-changing drugs — for the patients and their families. And we have a CEO who has a passion for making it a great place to work…?“

Start with the history: In 2018, Jazz had outgrown existing systems, and we decided to do an S/4HANA implementation with NTT Data (or itelligence, as they were then called). It was very much finance-led, focused on fully-integrated financial implementation across 11 countries. It gave visibility across the supply chain, for strategic decision making and compliance, but wasn’t deployed into the operational areas.

“At the same time, I was working for GW, a UK-based pharma company that was acquired by Jazz Pharmaceuticals. GW had only just gone commercial, so wasn’t quite as mature — but GW had in-house manufacturing, whereas Jazz used external manufacturing. GW had independently chosen SAP and NTT Data / itelligence. I was part of the process of making that choice: we had also outgrown our systems, but we manufactured in-house, so we needed a full ERP solution, including manufacturing and warehousing and quality, etc.”?

“Our selection of NTT Data was based on the pedigree and experience — we’re highly-regulated industry, so that’s important, and NTT Data had a template to accelerate the deployment in that environment. And the cultural fit with our company was important, and we wanted somebody onshore/nearshore.?I’ve worked with bigger companies, and we preferred the more personalized approach. It led to clearer, more rapid decision-making, more “no nonsense”, concentrating on creating value together, not negotiating the contract.

When the two companies came together we formed a strategic group to look at the ERP strategy and very rapidly came to the plan we’re now working on. We chose to align on the Jazz implementation, but adopting what we had started to build with GW (operations, manufacturing etc).?The goal is very much to create a platform that will allow for Jazz’s continued internal and external growth (for example, potential further acquisitions)

The project kicked off in August last year. The first phase was getting the finance systems together, and that was completed at the start of the year. Then we made sure we were on the latest versions, and went live with that in August [this took longer than it "should" have done]. And now we’re merging our first operations into a fully-fledged SAP. That’s planned for the start of the year. The aim is by the middle of next year we’ll have one integrated system.?

Has the system integration acted as a catalyst to bring the businesses together?

Yes — it’s still in progress, but it’s definitely brought us together. It’s been a means of transforming the way we work — not just what we deliver to the business, but also how we deliver SAP. We know Jazz will grow, so we’re looking to do more frequent changes… Pharma is typically slow, but we intend to challenge ourselves. We use Tricentis for automated “headless” testing—standardized ways of working, etc.?We’re looking at changing the way we deploy. The regression testing will be totally automated, so we can do everything more frequently. And then on the business side, we’re adopting standardized training and processes—in other words, a lot of the things that one talks about, but we’re really trying to live up to it,

Standardized processes can be challenging, but the benefits are fairly obvious — we want to do the same thing in different parts of the world, to enable interchangeability of resources, and lower costs. It’s a change management exercise. When ERP becomes a struggle, often it’s what gets dropped. We’re investing a lot in communication, stakeholder engagement etc.?

We’re lucky, we have a lot of best-practice experience in the company. It’s about planning and putting it into everything we do.?

NTT Data is a trusted partner. That sounds like a sound bite, but it’s the truth, and it’s vital that you’re helping us deliver something for the common good.??We have difficult conversations, but the right ones — not about the cost of this or that change, but “are we delivering the right things for the business?”

Across the board, NTT Data has provided resources for the change management and the transformation, and helping us build roadmaps.?

Has the SAP roll out helped with your company purpose?

Yes, it has — it’s hard to feel that you're doing something for the end customer when you’re in the middle of an ERP implementation, but we feel like we’re building a foundation of systems that will help the company grow and deliver on our core drivers.?

Any lessons learned??

The standard two or three things tend to go wrong. Data and data migration is one of the biggest challenges. And it’s about change management, adopting business process, and making sure the interface between technology and the business is working. You have to get to the point where you’re able to work on technology and the business aspects together, not separately. It’s about doing the two together, from the beginning, for the whole lifetime of the project.?

How do you build the cadence of upgrades and get the business to buy into that?

We have a culture that helps. And we have a strong IT resource compliance person, who can explain what it this looks like outside of pharma, who provides a different view of the same challenge.

I came from highly-regulated GxP environments, and sometimes that brings a mindset of being slow-moving. But the tools are now out there to accelerate change, and the regulations allow it, so it’s about changing the mindset. We started automating the testing in a non-GxP environment, and that helped show people what was possible.

Looking to the future?

We’re already looking at RPA in finance, and now we’re looking into how we can use it in a GxP environment. And we're interested in pharma 4.0, and we even some augmented reality headsets in the manufacturing space. We’re still mainly laying the foundation for future, but chipping at the edges of what’s possible where we can.

How did you handle people saying “My process is better!” when you merged?

We’ve had challenges in quality, for example, with different ways of working. It comes down to the culture. We spend a lot of time talking to the right people, influencing the right people, both top-down and bottom-up. Wherever we need to be, we’ll talk to people and align on process.?

Do you have clear ownership of business processes?

Yes, we do have that, and it's an important point. We have global process owners, and some good leaders who know ERP. I come from a big global company, with full-time global process owners. Our people also have day jobs as well as process ownership, but we’re getting there.?

Next: a quick lunch — a great Chicken Curry. And I’ve missed British cheese!

I then wandered over to the innovation area and had a great discussion with Isabelle Wilson about the adoption of AI-driven virtual assistants/receptionists.

Personally, I suspect they're a bit of a gimmick, like Pepper the robot in the past, although Isabelle mentioned live installations -- for example at a Danish(?) union headquarters where the receptions threatened to quit because the work was so boring. That part of the job was replaced by an interactive avatar (see below), allowing the staff to do more useful and rewarding work.

It's a great premise, but I have my doubts about adoption. I find it slightly creepy, personally, and the data shows that people far prefer interacting with ATMs/Cash Dispensers, for example, than with human bank tellers. In other words, if you can do it with a few buttons, I think most people would prefer that, as a simple touch panels or a phone app, without all the pretend-human aspect.

I also find it uncomfortable/slightly disturbing that while the avatars can have any appearance, the default always seems to be an attractive young woman. Can't somebody do one with a friendly retiree, or a cartoon dragon or something?

One option I find intriguing: that the avatar could be a 3D scan of yourself. That might help make it feel like it's more "augmented me" and less "subservient person".

Then back to the track sessions.

Nick McFetrich of NTT Data Business Solutions introduced SAP’s suite of sustainability products and interviewed Craig Dixon , the IT Director of Plastipak on their sustainability strategy.

The session was sparsely attended, unfortunately (there were other good sessions on at the same time, but… hey it’s only life on earth that is at stake! ??)

Plastipak has a revenue of around $3 billion, 42 plants around the world, and is Europe’s largest PET bottle provider.?

Over the years, there’s has been a strong emphasis on energy savings and other efficiencies that reduce emissions. For example, a 2 liter container used to way 53 grams, and now it’s only 24. “Our company is still early in our ESG Strategy, but it’s now under one umbrella, and we’re working with Carbon Trust.?

When it comes to solutions, we’re still early in the roadmap. We use ECC on HANA and are tracking electricity consumption, etc. The US has been using SAP EHS, and it’s now being implemented in Europe. And we recently signed a contract for Concur.?

Most importantly, it’s about building something that we can put back into the business, and we’re investing in SAP Analytics Cloud for that. Visibility is key for changing mindsets, and we’re bring that concept to the shop floor. For example, we have waste bins that used to be marked with what it costs the company for a particular level of waste. Now it’s showing the carbon footprint instead.?

In the future, everything around data manipulation is key. There’s unfortunately been a lot of poor practice or greenwashing in the recycling business. Having more sustainability visibility and trust will help.

Any advice or recommendations, lessons learned? Carve out people who can purely focus on this. It’s not a part-time job, it’s a day job. The business was ahead of us and it took a while to get IT on board. it’s not just about a small team reporting to the board, but driving it through everything the business does.?

Craig is also the Special Interest Group chair for Sustainability at the UK & Ireland SAP User Group (UKISUG). There’s a webinar on October 25th with Craig Dale and Lindsey Rowe will give an overview of SAP’s own journey and strategy. “If you have any suggestions on what you’d like to learn, drop me a line!”

“It’s like picking up pebbles on a beach. One person could do it, but it would take forever. But if everybody moves just one or two pebbles, we can do it…”

In the next track session Graeme Hughes of NTT Data presented “Introducing SAP Signavio as a key value driver for Business Transformation.”

It was a great overview — and honestly, I feel like anybody listening would immediately rush out and start using the various tools presented, because the benefits seemed so tangible and obvious!

Then a session on SAP Analytics Cloud Planning with Matt Penston of NTT Data and Dan Flynn of Premiere Foods. It was a great pragmatic overview of various projects they have been doing since 2019, steadily building on the technology and moving into new areas

And then the keynote with one of my favorite authors, Tim Harford of the Undercover Economist fame, along with many, many other books, articles, podcasts, TV and radio shows.

Come back here later to see updates!