Globalization, Major Regional Shifts in Demand and Supply Base, Geopolitical Risks, Increased Competition and Other Factors are posing multiple challenges for chemical industries in recent times. As a result, it is time for them to begin the digital transformation of their entire business and shift towards being an intelligent enterprise.

Digital transformation is a journey, and chemical industries have established strategic priorities to help them achieve their goals. This article discusses industry-specific features for the Chemicals Industry offered by RISE with SAP’s Business Transformation Service. Let us begin by defining strategic priorities and their benefits for the Chemicals Industries!

Strategic Priorities for Chemical Industries

To begin the transformation, chemical industries should prioritise examining their entire business model and be prepared for it. Thus, Chemical Industries concentrate on achieving this customer-centric intelligent digital transformation by implementing the four key strategic priorities listed below:

• To Assist sell business outcomes instead of just products
• Simplify to shrink cycle times
• Compete as an ecosystem
• Adopt strategic agility in response to market dynamics

In order to achieve the above-mentioned priorities, it’s time for the chemical industries to reinvent by integrating an intelligent ERP system called RISE with SAP, which enables you to innovate products as well as redesign entire business models and processes.

Simplify to Shrink Cycle Times

Chemical companies must be able to operate safely and effectively. For years, they have been attempting to reduce cycle times and improve first-pass yields in order to operate more efficiently, with a focus on individual inefficiencies such as material movement or equipment efficiency. In order to reduce cycle times, modern chemical companies are looking at the company’s fully integrated operations, which operate more reliably and efficiently while providing valuable insights into operations to improve problem resolution.

To better understand this, let’s consider there are two businesses namely:

1. Company A uses a non-SAP ERP system
2. Company B uses an SAP-ERP system

As Company A’s entire business structure is governed by a non-ERP system, these were the pain points faced by them:

• The potential impact to understand an event on one or multiple downstream processes is difficult.
• There is a problem to choose the best solution for the missing functionality to complete the multiple model solutions.
• Integration of operation and management systems is minimal.

As a result, insufficient integration of their traditional system resulted in a high involvement of manual processes.

Now let’s see about Company B, which uses an SAP-ERP system, where:

• They are identifying Market Trends using advanced sentiment analysis supported by machine learning features.
• Collaboration in open innovation networks powered by machine learning maximises reuse and capitalises on the ecosystem’s IP.
• The ability to simulate and predict product and formulation properties reduces time to market and time to value.

Overall, Company B’s Intelligent ERP [RISE with SAP Package] system provides maximum access to reuse all the IPs and patent information. Also, the Machine Learning feature supported them in increasing investment in developmental efforts taken by the organization.

Top Value Drivers

The major value drivers in the Chemical Industries post successful deployment of SAP S/4HANA are:

• Process cycle times have been reduced.
• System response time is faster.
• The Cost and waste reduction are higher.
• Assistance with new business processes is easier to manage.

Now you may be asking, “How can RISE with SAP helps us?”. Here are the primary business capabilities they offer to assist you in reaching your objectives:

• Run simulations and predictive models to allow for real-time sensing and response.
• Shorten time to market, streamline operations, improve asset performance, and reduce rework.

Conclusion

To summarise, SAP S/4HANA is a one-stop solution that can provide intelligent and industry-specific benefits to the chemical industries through a digital core ERP system that helps them innovate markets and sell products, operate manufacturing plants, maintain assets and build a responsive supply chain.

To know more about how SAP S/4HANA or about other solutions that can help enterprises in chemical industries, do get in touch with us!