Transforming Retail and Consumer Goods Companies:The SAP journey to Google Cloud

Even before the pandemic, retail and Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG) enterprises faced rising pressure to connect the value chain and deliver holistic, personalized, and highly engaging experiences. Only now, that pressure has reached its apex.

To thrive and survive beyond social and economic disruption, digital transformation is unavoidable. And for SAP customers running application workloads on aging, inflexible and costly infrastructure, the time has come to ask: ‘Are we ready for the future?’

At Deloitte and Google Cloud, we’ve seen first-hand the challenges faced by retail and CPG enterprises like yours—so we combined our powers to help businesses embark on a strategic Digital Transformation journey.

By upgrading your SAP ERP to Google Cloud, we can help you drive innovation, reduce risk, simplify deployments, and meet your sustainability goals. And we can help you do it with minimal downtime and disruption to your end-customer experience. But why now—and why Google Cloud?

Start

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Where does the pandemic leave commerce?It’s time for a reality check. The pandemic has upended global supply chains, exposing weaknesses that we can no longer ignore.

We all saw it. As news crept in of the virus, consumers panic bought commodities at a rate far beyond what retailers could anticipate. Quite simply, demand outpaced supply, and a lack of connected insight left retail and CPG IT teams unable to forecast and mitigate the ensuing disruption.

But supply chain vulnerabilities aren’t the only retail and CPG challenges we’ve seen in the wake of the pandemic. With physical stores temporarily shuttered and social isolation an everyday reality for millions, people increasingly turned to digital solutions to shop.

The likes of Amazon, Netflix, and even subscription-based start-ups offering sustainable alternatives enjoyed immense growth. The result is a landscape where convenient, personalized experiences are expected as standard—and that goes for both retail and CPG customers.

The home is now the center of consumption, and it’s here that consumers can browse and engage with their favorite brands on their own terms. And rather than discouraging businesses to set up shop, new disruptors continue to emerge, including direct-to-consumer brands, digital subscription services, and data-driven retailers focused entirely on experience. With SAP and Google Cloud, and end-to-end guidance and support from Deloitte, you

can join the forward-thinking organizations unlocking the capabilities and insights needed to become a built-to-evolve Kinetic Enterprise™—and modernize operations for an uncertain future.

In response, retail and CPG organizations are embracing digital transformation to help.

Retail:• Become customer-centric, data-driven and

intelligent retailers.

• Optimize store operations and drive further operational synergies.

• Create and capture digital and omnichannel revenue growth.

CPG:• Personalize consumer experiences.

• Optimize trade promotion and digital commerce.

• Improve demand forecasting and supply chain efficiency.

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What is a Kinetic Enterprise?A next-generation organization able to move nimbly and respond proactively to change—be it competitive, regulatory, financial, environmental, and more.

Built to evolve, a truly Kinetic Enterprise is supported by four key pillars:

IntelligentTake advantage of digital platforms, intelligent apps, and technologies

ResponsiveScale swiftly on-demand with

cloud-enabled agility

InclusiveDrive app and service-led innovation with

an all-encompassing ecosystem

CleanFocus on lowering business

and technical debt

Amplified by the power of Google Cloud, Kinetic Enterprises enjoy the best uptime in the industry, unmatched security, real-time data and insights, connected by the largest private IP network in the world, and more.

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Whether you operate in retail or CPG, consumer experience is now the competitive differentiator. Fail to deliver seamless interactions across every channel, or the right product at the right time in the right place, and consumers will let you know about it—often by taking their business elsewhere.

And as consumer expectations continue to rise, retail and CPG organizations must recognize the value of real-time business. It’s a fine art, and one that demands you deliver, respond to, and augment the customer experience in real-time as customer demands shift and evolve.

That’s why retail and CPG enterprises are connecting real-time data across the value chain from SAP and non-SAP systems to:

Retail• Scale on-demand, supporting operations during peak season events to meet

customer demand.

• Improve demand forecasting to ensure proper levels of inventory when it matters most.

• Deliver powerful omnichannel experiences and optimize touchpoints throughout the customer journey.

CPG• Identify consumer segments and launch targeted marketing campaigns.

• Improve consumer satisfaction by analyzing sentiment and trends.

• Drive revenue growth by anticipating real-time business needs.

Unlock the power of Google Cloud

With SAP on Google Cloud, you can eliminate data silos hindering digital transformation, democratizing historical and real-time data access. And with Google Cloud BigQuery, you can unify SAP, retail, and external data in a single, serverless data warehouse.

By applying AI and Machine Learning (ML) models to your data, you can unlock detailed contextual insights and use predictive analytics to improve strategic decision-making and better anticipate—and respond to—shifts in market demand.

Together, we can help you take a more holistic, accurate, and innovative approach to the future of data-driven commerce. The kind that encourages scalability and flexibility, helping you face up to new challenges, adapt to changing demands and drive growth through supply chain optimization and powerful customer experiences.

What do analysts say about Google Cloud?According to findings by IDC, SAP on Google Cloud delivers1:

• 83% less frequent unplanned downtime.

• 98% lower proactivity and revenue losses due to unplanned downtime.

• 11% more productive development teams.

• 15% more productive analytics teams.

• 11 hours of productive time saved per user.

Respond to the future of customer experience

Did you know?

Omnichannel experiences are expected to drive

70% of sales growth across food and beverage categories

during 2022.2

1 Shari Lava and Matthew Marden, “The Business Value of Improved Performance and Efficiency with Google Cloud Platform,” IDC, July 2020. 2 Justin Manly, Jimmy Royston, and Morgan Sonntag, “CPG Companies Face an E-Commerce Tsunami,” BCG, July 9, 2020.

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Retail and CPG enterprises face immense pressure to reduce emissions and wastage, which let’s face it, is easier said than done. But it doesn’t have to be.

With end-to-end support from Deloitte, you can instantly reduce your IT emissions by moving your SAP workloads to the cleanest cloud in the industry—Google Cloud. In fact, moving apps from a self-managed data center or colocation center to Google Cloud can reduce net operational emissions associated with your workloads to zero.

But your sustainability gains don’t end there. By migrating SAP workloads to Google Cloud, retail and CPG enterprises can:

Retail• Use advanced insights to eliminate silos between SAP and non-SAP data, identifying opportunities

to improve sustainability across the value chain.

• Apply AL and ML to data to help ensure correct inventory levels, reducing waste from excess packing, damages, or expiration.

• Unlock insights needed to reduce the carbon footprint of delivery fleets by optimizing routes and making more efficient use of vehicles.

CPG• Improve demand forecasting and optimize real-time production and inventory to help reduce excess waste

across the value chain.

• Use consumer insights to provide more personalized inventory, minimizing wasteful resource consumption and excess production.

• Create a socially responsible supply chain by introducing track and trace capabilities, helping you respond more efficiently to demand.

Support sustainable transformation

Why Deloitte for sustainability?

Deloitte has been helping turn climate change, circular economy, and sustainable finance challenges into competitive advantages for our clients for more than 20 years.

If you need to operate a climate driven transformation; reshape your business models; create transparent, ethical supply chains; build engagement; or measure, evaluate and assure—Deloitte has the innovative approaches and digital solutions to empower you to think and act differently.

And together we can create a more sustainable and responsible future.

The pandemic has triggered fundamental changes to the global supply chain, such as the reset of international tax rules and the introduction of new global tax policies. And it’s the retail and CPG enterprises that act early to enhance their global supply chains that stand the best chance of building an enduring competitive advantage post-pandemic.

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Cloud migration can be daunting for many organizations. And we get it—the downtime associated with a greenfield transformation of core systems is simply untenable. But change and disruption will keep coming, and left unprepared, you’ll have to deal with much worse than a few hours’ downtime.

Imagine if you could reap the benefits of the cloud without the tradeoffs associated with a traditional migration? That’s where Selective Transformation from Deloitte comes in: a rapidly deployable solution to help you accelerate transformation, enabling a “built to evolve” Kinetic Enterprise.

Instead of starting from scratch, you define your transformation, moving only the data and processes that matter most to your organization to SAP S/4HANA® with Google Cloud technology. Because why should you consign everything you’ve built to the scrap heap when it does its job just as well as it ever has?

Selective Transformation is designed to do the heavy thinking and lifting, allowing you to:

• Assess and understand your ERP processes.

• Reimagine and reinvent your business processes.

• Move your SAP core to the cloud.

And Deloitte will provide critical service support at each stage of your Selective Transformation journey too, including:

• Assessing your current environment and needs.

• Making the business case for Selective Transformation.

• Identifying and prioritizing critical areas and actions.

• And more

Become a Kinetic Enterprise with Selective Transformation

Please get in touch to learn more about how Deloitte and Google Cloud can help you transform into a Kinetic Enterprise.

Copyright © 2021 Deloitte Development LLC. All rights reserved.

Karthik Amirtharajan Senior ManagerSAP on Google Cloud GTM LeaderDeloitte Consulting LLPkamirtharajan@deloitte.com

Kashif Rahamatullah PrincipalNational Google Cloud Practice and Alliance LeaderDeloitte Consulting LLPkrahamatullah@deloitte.com

Praveen Mayalur Managing DirectorSAP on Google Cloud Practice LeaderDeloitte Consulting LLP pmayalur@deloitte.com

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