Vanessa Molina: 0:03

We work hand in hand with our partners. They're the ones who help lead the charge and change management with our customers. They're also the ones who understand the processes, especially when they've been at the customer site longer than us. You know, we're we work together with our partners to make technology beyond just an enabler.

Tom Raftery: 0:22

Good morning, good afternoon, or good evening wherever you are in the world. This is the digital supply chain podcast, the number one podcast focusing on the digitization of supply chain. And I'm your host, global vice president of SAP. Tom Raftery. Hi, everyone. Welcome to the digital supply chain podcast. My name is Tom Raftery with SAP and we are on episode four of our industry for four Fridays and with me today I have my two guests have neat and Vanessa. Vanessa, would you like to go first introduce yourself and then have neat,

Vanessa Molina: 0:58

wonderful. Thanks, Tom. Thanks for having me. So I'm Vanessa Molina, and I'm the global channel lead for industry four dot o for SAP and sap team centers by Siemens.

Pavneet Bedi: 1:08

And Hi everyone, my name is Pavneet. I'm based in Singapore. I'm also part of the industry four zero channel's team and work alongside Vanessa.

Tom Raftery: 1:17

tremendous, tremendous. And the kind of theme for today's podcast around industry for Dotto is you know that industry four is kind of like a formula for a resilient future but only if it extends beyond the factory. Vanessa, do you want to talk a little bit about that? Why do you think these things need to happen? Why is it important for industry for Dotto to extend beyond the factory? Sure, thanks, Tom.

Vanessa Molina: 1:44

industry for Dotto is a term that can mean a whole lot of things. It's a journey of incorporating the latest tech into manufacturing, you want to increase productivity, reducing costs, you know, increasing output. But I argue that it's so much more than that, you know, for it to live up to this agile and risk resilience promise, I think it has to go beyond the four walls of manufacturing, because ultimately, it's about bi directional data, right? It's really about breaking down the silos and, and having digitally driven processes. So if you look at the research that's been provided by, you know, management, consulting companies, or analysts, they all speak of this resiliency and agility, and the need to be closer to to your customers at the end of the year, at the end of the day for you to thrive for years to come. But at the heart is still data, you know, this data has traditionally been siloed. And it hinders better collaboration between the functions of the business operations, and more importantly, decision making. So So to me, if you want it to live up to that resilient promise, those solutions have to go beyond the plant, they have to reach across the value chain, they have to go end to end where a data is collected in a form that's useful across systems, organizations silos, but more importantly, it has to be available in a very timely manner.

Tom Raftery: 3:00

And can you give me kind of a practical example of what you mean by that?

Vanessa Molina: 3:04

Um, yeah, absolutely, I can give you a personal one. So my house is currently under construction. And I live in Miami, so we're putting hurricane impact windows and doors up, but because it's it's a very odd shaped window that I have, I wanted to have plantation shutters put in front of it as a way of giving me privacy. So I shopped around, and I found a vendor and this, you know, I went to one of the big box stores and they sent a vendor out to my house and, and the person showed up and he just had a tablet and a briefcase. I mean, it was very simple. I got little chips of colors and materials and whatnot, he took a picture of it right then in there, he placed an order for me. And off he went, I got an email within an hour, confirming my order conforming my delivery date and letting me know who my installer was. And since it's a lot size of one custom mortar, I knew the lead time was going to be a couple of weeks. So planning for when I was going to be home was important for me. And I got an email a couple weeks later letting me know that the supplier to the manufacturer was running behind. And for an I instantly called customer service. I called customer service because I didn't know when I was going to be home and how do I need to notify the installers? How does this work, But lo and behold, the minute I called customer service knew the delay, they knew the vendor, they had already let me know, you know, the window of time that the that the person who came to do the estimate to my house, had given them it was all in the system. I didn't have to give them any more information whatsoever. They gave me a new date. They told me you know, it would be there two days or three days later than anticipated. Within the same window of time, notified the installer of everything and, and it was seamless, like I didn't have to go out of my way. But more importantly, they got a customer for life. It showed up on time. I didn't have to go out of my way I didn't have to chase anyone and that's cool. unheard of in building construction nowadays. But that's what happens when there's no silos. When everything is talking to each other, this was a customer service rep. She knew everything from the supplier to the manufacturing delays to the installers that were third parties.

Tom Raftery: 5:14

It's kind of the dreams and

Vanessa Molina: 5:16

it is I don't know, very many people who have fixed normally you're hunting down the supplier or hunting down the manufacturer. But in my case, they really do have a customer for life. I did one window and instantly I thought I should probably do all the windows, and they definitely won me over it with that,

Tom Raftery: 5:37

yeah, cuz it this last 12 1416 months, whatever it's been whatever geography you're in. We've all, you know, spent a lot more time alone, not alone. While some in some cases alone, I meant to say at home. And of course, that has led to a boom in a lot of DIY projects. And I'm not averse to that I've had several here as well. And I've had no such experience. You know, it's been, to your point very much ringing up trying to figure out, when is this person going to come and make this repair? Will they show up? Sometimes they do. Sometimes they don't sometimes they're a couple of hours late. And it's like, ah, pulling out my hair. So, you know, to hear that experience. Hopefully that becomes a more widespread experience for people in the not too distant future. Yes, I would agree. patni need talk a little bit about the ways to make this happen, because it's all about capturing and sharing data, isn't it?

Pavneet Bedi: 6:42

Yeah, I think the example that Vanessa gave had, you know, the systems that people get inputting and generating data at every point of every point in time, and then putting that data together in the customers hands and, and the other stakeholders, like the supplier, the installer, was, I think, the secret sauce. And I also envy Vanessa for such an amazing experience that he has add. So I mean, in, in my personal opinion, the data is this key fabric, and it has to go, you know, back and forth between, let's say, for instance, the manufacturing systems to do the design, the systems that in design could be improved. And also when there's usage data coming from the field, you could also plug it into manufacturing, as well as designed to improve those processes as well. So, you know, by having this two way street with data sharing, I think we can achieve those kinds of, you know, balance between customer preferences, and a high quality and reliable product that you get at the end.

Tom Raftery: 7:48

Okay, and how far along that journey, are we because I mean, as I mentioned, I've had several DIY projects happen here at home. And, you know, it's been a nightmare. I haven't read anything like Vanessa's experience. So you know, yeah, how far along that journey, are we?

Pavneet Bedi: 8:06

Yeah, I think this this is, this is a complex journey for many, many of our customers as well, because they need to connect all these people, and the systems and, and then kind of weave it all together in digital sort of way. So I think it's been a journey for them. But we are seeing an uptake with it. Whenever I have conversations with with my partners, I do hear a lot of stories where they are, you know, clients are looking especially like, for example, I can remember medtech devices, there's a lot of work happening in that area where people are looking at World Class product design, and and doing an end to end sort of study to see where the bottlenecks and how they can improve it. So it's definitely a journey. And, you know, for our customers and for our you know, we are there along with our partners to help them on this.

Tom Raftery: 9:01

Okay. And in the prep call for this for today's talk. You mentioned the COVID-19 relief effort that you're involved with. Do you want to speak a little bit about that as well?

Pavneet Bedi: 9:11

Yes, yes, Tom. It's a topic very close to my heart. Because while I'm sitting here in Singapore, where the cases are pretty reasonable, I would say there are countries like India and now the next wave is happening in Nepal are pretty badly hit. So you know, what, a couple of us thought of a simple idea to make a difference and purchase a couple of oxygen concentrators from various sources in Asia, and then ship them over to India. It sounds pretty simple. And I think the important part of this cause was that we wanted to it to reach the the poor communities that actually needed the most right, right now their game, the complex supply chain problem, because there could be theft on the way so so tracking became really important. There could be a breakdown once it's in use. And if there's no warranty or support provided, then then these, these products wouldn't be of any use. And now oxygen concentrators in my opinion has become this life saving commodity in the last few months, and probably its own manufacturers like Philips or ul in China, I would have never thought that this product would be used so heavily, and would be considered such a lifesaver. So just imagine if there is data that we are able to collect at every stage, for instance, as in when it's going through ports, as in when it's reaching the each destination, if you're able to collect that that helps with the tracking, and then the usage data could really help improve the design to say, look, earlier, you were expecting a concentrated to just handle maybe mild cases, now we have people who are almost going to die if they don't use this device. So that kind of feedback would be absolutely valuable for the device manufacturers. And that's what I was trying to kind of say with with with data going back and forth. It was really important in this in this effort, and it taught us a lot of things as well around this area.

Tom Raftery: 11:15

Yeah. Impressive. Impressive. Vanessa, can you talk a little bit about why you think SAP is kind of uniquely positioned in industry for Dotto and, you know, the end to end technologies?

Vanessa Molina: 11:27

Yeah, that's a great question. I think when you look at the fact that, you know, we have amazing manufacturing execution systems, our digital manufacturing cloud and the insights, when you look at the fact that we touch, just in digital supply chain alone, we go, we span from design all the way to operate. So whether it's, you know, intelligent products, or improving the products that you're putting out, or embedding them with intelligence, you know, we have our logistics business networks, when it comes to delivering those products and getting them out the, you know, DMC when it comes to the actual manufacturing of it, or making it and then everything around, you know, assets for acid intensive industries, when it comes to operating that. So we have a full stack that ranges from design all the way to operate. But then on top of that, it feeds back into your earpiece system so that, you know, you're all having one synchronized layer of data. And then if you marry that, with, you know, a Reba and our logistic, the networks that we have, and, you know, the business networks, on top of that, you realize that the ability really to unleash all that data from an end to end perspective is already there. And then, you know, our ecosystem is is unparalleled, when you look at the fact that we have partners that can marry our depth and breadth when it comes to industries and processes. That in and of itself is a huge power that we that we yield in the market. And then you know, you also have our push of innovation in industry for Dotto in general, when it comes to standards, creating communities, I think that all of that makes us very uniquely positioned to be a thought leader in this space. And to really guide customers who are struggling with pilot purgatory or transformation lag, for lack of a better word, I think that we really do have a complete suite to offer the market.

Tom Raftery: 13:29

Okay, and have need to do anything to add to that,

Pavneet Bedi: 13:32

I think we've got, you know, most of the points, the only thing that I wanted to add there was that once the systems are in place at a client site, they're generating mungus amounts of data. And then we can put it to good use by using our advanced machine learning techniques in our business technology platform, to sort of help with let's say, visual inspections in manufacturing, predicting asset failure in, in assets, and, and many more use cases that we could build. So it's it's

Tom Raftery: 14:02

literally a one stop shop. Okay, and you want to talk a little bit about as well about our partners and how they're helping, let's do one at a time.

Vanessa Molina: 14:10

Sure. Obviously, I'm biased because I'm part of the channel and I get to manage some really wonderful global partners. But I do think that at the end of the day, we would not be able to go to market as strongly as we can, without our partners, our partners have really have always kind of gone hand in hand with us. If you look at COVID and the supply chain planning offers that we put together and launched at no charge to support our customers, you know, when they needed to address immediate supply chain challenges. And we had a fantastic response, you know, companies of all sizes, whether they were large or small, 18 Industries, they took advantage of our COVID offer, hospitals, clinics, food and beverage companies, retailers, you know, medical supply pharmaceuticals, they all had unique challenges and SAP and their partners. Kind of got together and just rolled up their sleeves and, and developed a program called amplify and went out to market with it. But in general, I would say that we work hand in hand with our partners. They're the ones who help lead the charge and change management with our customers. They're also the ones who understand the processes, especially when they've been at the customer site longer than us, you know, we are we we work together with our partners to make technology beyond just an enabler. patni.

Pavneet Bedi: 15:27

Yeah, so I just wanted to add one thing, I think one, one aspect of partners that really excites me is their innovation potential, and industry, and the industry expertise, because a lot of innovative work that's happening in our ecosystem is done by these guys, right? They're talking to clients day in day out thinking of new use cases, and in working with us, in tandem to, you know, kind of enhance our products fill our gaps with industry cloud solutions. So I think they play a very important role in this part of the you know, the equation as well.

Vanessa Molina: 16:03

That's a great point,

Tom Raftery: 16:04

super. We're heading towards the end of the podcast now, folks, is there any question? I have not asked you that you kind of wish I had? Or is there any aspect of the conversation that we've not touched on that you think it's important for people to be aware of?

Vanessa Molina: 16:19

None from me? Pavneet, Any?

Pavneet Bedi: 16:21

No, Tom, I think we've had a good discussion on this topic. I really enjoyed it.

Tom Raftery: 16:26

Any closing remarks? Yeah, I

Vanessa Molina: 16:28

would say that we've grown closer to our partners during COVID-19. And together, I think we have truly been able to help the world run better. Okay.

Tom Raftery: 16:37

Vanessa, Pavneet, if people want to know more about yourselves, or about industry 4.0, or about any of the topics discussed on the podcast today. Where would you have me direct them,

Vanessa Molina: 16:49

I would say let's go to our website, we have a great story of our innovation where whether you're in the process industry or whether you're in the discrete industry, you can go in and experience industry 4.0 for yourself and se how all of our solutions work t gether. happy to share the li k with a

Tom Raftery: 17:06

super Thank you another link to that in the show notes and have need anything else you want to put in there.

Pavneet Bedi: 17:11

No, don't I I really appreciate the opportunity today. And I really enjoyed it. Thank you. Thank you. Fantastic.

Tom Raftery: 17:19

Thanks, guys. Thanks, everyone, for coming on the show today. Thanks for having us. Okay, we've come to the end of the show. Thanks everyone for listening. If you'd like to know more about digital supply chains, head on over to sa p.com slash digital supply chain or, or simply drop me an email to Tom raftery@sap.com. If you'd like to show please don't forget to subscribe to it and your podcast application of choice to get new episodes as soon as they're published. Also, please don't forget to rate and review the podcast. It really does help new people to find the show. Thanks. Catch you all next time.