200 clients brought onboard for GST-related services: SAP

Increased demand helped firm consolidate its business in India

Enterprise application provider SAP has taken on board almost 200 digital compliance clients across 30 solutions following the implementation of goods and services tax (GST).

The demand for S/4HANA core solution and supply chain solutions has surged post-GST implementation due to business consolidation across the country, the company claimed.

“We are working with policy makers on Bharat ERP and GST already. We are also engaged with smart city initiatives across the country. We have a team engaging with policy makers on these initiatives and utilities and they do take us seriously because a large portion of India Inc. actually comes under SAP clientele. GST has allowed us to bring solutions that are very specific to India,” said Neeraj Athalye, who heads S/4HANA, Leonardo and GST adoption for the Indian subcontinent at SAP.

SAP reaches over 125 million citizens through 200 services across India with GST providing a booster shot to their customer engagement. The Digital India initiatives have further helped the company improve its outreach through a number of roadshows and partnerships to increase GST literacy. While the common perception remains that SAP is for big budget enterprise clients, the company boasts over 76 per cent SME clients out of their 8,800 customers in India.

To fuel the trillion-dollar digital economy of India by 2025, SAP is collaborating with tech powerhouses to extend a holistic innovation initiatives across industries, it said at the SAP Leonardo Executive Summit in Mumbai on Thursday.

SAP Leonardo is a digital innovation system that brings together machine learning, Internet of Things (IoT), blockchain, analytics and big data on SAP Cloud Platform using design thinking services. They also announced that SAP IoT Connect 365 is a managed, cloud-based service that simplifies IoT connectivity by enabling them to connect with enterprise, governments and people to leverage technologies that can drive out supply chain inefficiencies and sub-optimal asset utilisation.

“We have seen that a certain set of use cases are common across industries globally. When the customer knows what he wants he can look for an accelerator (use case-based solution) for that industry with services to fine tune the requirement. Further, we also have design thinking offerings that help the customer understand his requirements clearly,” said Athalye.

Leonardo innovation service is pre-bundled with the Leonardo innovation system to help customers solve their problems in a time-bound, cost-fixed and output-guaranteed manner, he added. Accelerators for automotive, media, power and consumer products among others are in use here.

Athalye added that while GST forced a lot of businesses to rethink their infrastructure and resource usage, it also helped them see the business value in opting for Leonardo offerings to maximise resource optimisation.

While there are a large number of start-ups as well as established companies that are venturing into these areas of design thinking, IoT, artificial intelligence and connected systems, Athalye sees SAP holding a major advantage over the rest due to the holistic portfolio of services in their kitty. “While a customer may start by optimising costs (through engagements with start-ups) over a period, they will scale up (to SAP offerings), hence we partner with startups,” he added.