The postgraduate programme in management for executives (PGPX) batch of IIM Ahmedabad (IIM-A) recently hosted Adaire Fox Martin, President - Asia Pacific Japan, SAP, who interacted with the PGPX students and spoke about the impact of SAP on hyperconnected economies. The interaction was organised under the popular speaker series hosted by the PGPX batch every year.
Adaire shared her perspective on 'Hyperconnected economies and the role SAP plays in it' during the talk.
Her presentation started with the note on how disruptive innovation is changing the face of business, with many companies struggling to keep pace with the change - "Telephone took 75 years to touch 50 million lives, but Angry Birds did so in 35 days".
Today, when the cycle of change is shortened every minute, technology is the underpinning force for business to survive, said Adaire. As lives are moving from real to virtual, data are being generated at a rapid pace and to succeed organisations need to unlock the potential of this data.
Also, with the cost of online memory reducing significantly, it is more cost effective to transfer data from desk to online. This is where SAP with its product HANA has fundamentally changed the architecture of technology, she added.
Adaire also quoted examples of how SAP has reduced the lead time for producing Harley Davidson from 21 days to a mere 6 hours and how it has introduced technology in John Deere trucks to predict maintenance schedules for trucks.
A lot of interaction took place between the PGPX students and Adaire, and she answered all the questions posed by the students in great detail. On asked about the plans of SAP for the Indian market, Adaire spoke at length about how SAP is bullish about the Indian market where there is a lot of pent-up demand and welcomes the shift of the Indian government to e-governance.
Previously on speaker series this year, Alok Mishra, Vice President Asia Pacific - Johnson & Johnson Medical Asia Pacific had visited the campus to interact with PGPX students.