«Digital companies are also the most sustainable. The desire to reduce waste along supply chains and enter a circular economy was already driving many companies to integrate sustainability into their core businesses before the pandemic. Now in Italy we are seeing a strong acceleration. And technology helps businesses so that this approach is pragmatic, measurable and enters processes ».
Manos Raptopoulos has been the CEO of Sap Italia since January 2020. A few hours from SAP NOW, the event organized in collaboration with Il Sole 24 Ore which will kick off on October 27th and end on October 28th, explains first of all the virtuous combination between digital and sustainability, the leitmotif of the two days of events and meetings. And he anticipates some of the issues that he will address during the Milanese event, telling how this year and a half of pandemic has changed companies and the competitive scenario.
“In the last 18 months, at least three priorities have emerged that companies in Italy must consider to support their competitiveness and strengthen their internationalization paths,” says Raptopoulos.
First of all, «during the health emergency it became clear that only companies capable of transforming and adapting rapidly to the unstable environment, climate change and geopolitical tensions can win. While everyone understands the whys and opportunities of digital transformation, the hardest part seems to be how to transform holistically. In fact, some think that digital transformation occurs simply by making a technical migration to the cloud or by purchasing new technology. The need to change the way a business works with the help of new, smarter processes is often ignored. ‘
The second priority that Italian companies are facing falls within the context of the customer experience. “The importance for a company of being closer to its customers with an omnichannel logic and being able to count on reliable and flexible supply chains, has been one of the success factors (in some cases of survival) for companies during harder than the pandemic ».