#20: Supply Chain Resilience with Ashish Pujari Digital Supply Chain Head APJ at SAP

Supply Chain Resilience with Ashish Pujari Digital Supply Chain Head APJ at SAP Featured Image

Ash Pujari leads Solution Management for SAP Digital Supply Chain in APJ and Greater China. A 28 year veteran in this space, Ash has seen it all. He has been a practitioner, consultant, entrepreneur, sales leader, and value engineer – all in the space of supply chain management. With SAP, Ash joined to lead the Digital Supply Chain and IoT line of business for the APJ region where he oversaw a triple-digit growth in the cloud business. His current mandate is to help set up an Industry4.0 Lab in Japan along with driving the “design to operate” solution portfolio in the region. Prior to SAP Ash was part of the Asia leadership teams for Manugistics/JDA, Cap Gemini & SSA Global (now called Infor).

SAP in a few numbers:

SAP is the world’s #1 cloud business software company with 200-million cloud users. SAP has 100.000 employees and 437,000+ customers come in all sizes and work in every industry and geographic region you can imagine. They include 92% of the Forbes Global 2000 and 98% of the world’s top 100 most valued brands. The company’s revenue for 2019 was €27.553 billion euro.

Listen to the full discussion here:

  • Stream by clicking here.
  • Download as an MP3 here.

 

 

Connect with the Guest:

Ashish Pujari: LinkedIn

Some of the highlights from the podcast:

  • The silver lining in the COVID19 crisis – travel, environment, and freight rates
  • Using lightweight tech solutions to mitigate supply chain risks
  • Lessons from the 2011 earthquake in Japan that can be applied today
  • Data-driven supply chains –  talking about a chemical company in APJ and how they used AI and analytics
  • Collaboration with employees to manage the crisis – over-communicate, be transparent and be honest
  • Supply Chain Excellence vs Supply Chain Resilience 
  • Making the process of hiring more data-driven

Show notes:

  • [02:23] What are some ripple effects and issues that propagate within supply networks at this moment globally, and maybe in APAC?
  • [03:37] What are the silver linings from your perspective during this period? What are some opportunities that you see?
  • [06:27] What type of priorities do you advise your clients to focus on? How do you manage the questions that come from their side?
  • [08:16] When you say a minimal investment, also in the short term, does this also imply a shorter implementation, duration, and complexity. How how does implementation get managed?
  • [09:05] Out of the clients that you have worked with, is there anyone that stands out and who has already been improving on their digital transformation and who has not been disrupted as much as the average organization when it comes to supply chain?
  • [10:02] Creating redundancies in the supply chain to mitigate such disasters like the 2011 Japan earthquake in the future.
  • [11:27] Do you see mapping and having clear visibility as an important aspect of fighting this crisis?
  • [12:56] How can companies use their huge volumes of data and the latest tech to translate them into actionable insights in this period?
  • [15:50] When things are hot and the fire’s hot, everybody panics. But what are things that we shouldn’t do as a company?
  • [16:34] While companies need to figure out means of satisfying customer demands better, I think this is an opportunity to get closer to their suppliers, logistics providers, technology providers, and other ecosystems partners to ensure win-win for all.
  • [17:18] Companies should have closer collaboration with employees and jointly figure out how to manage the crisis.
  • [18:25] What other things do you think leadership should do to promote this safety feeling and also to engage their employees to get their ideas and fight this crisis together?
  • [20:22] An airline in Australia who has been affected quite drastically by the crisis relocated some of their workforces towards one of their partnering retail groups. Are there other interesting examples in this direction? What is your take on this?
  • [22:46] Partnerships during the difficult times will only work if partners are honest and they really want to work as a partner.
  • [23:17] We also saw quite a number of companies shifting their product towards helping the efforts. Do you think more companies should make this a priority, given the fact did the crisis might take months
  • [24:49] Priority of the organization should remain the same, whether there’s a crisis or not which are the employees, customers, and shareholders. 
  • [25:46] How is SAP enabling the team to work from home. What are the challenges and the positive aspects that you see here?
  • [28:10] How do you see the topic of cybersecurity? Have you seen clients strengthen their cybersecurity standards to guarantee a safe work from home policy?
  • [29:16] How did the crisis affect hiring for SAP?
  • [31:08] We want to make these processes more data-driven, more automated to make sure that there is a certain amount of resilience built-in in the future.
  • [31:38] Do you think this data focus skills, analytics, business intelligence planning are the highest in demand at the moment. If you were to give advice to somebody, what are the skills he or she should learn or focus on at the moment?
  • [33:14] Are there certain markets where you see higher demand in your products, in your business?
  • [35:13] What should we expect in the next few months? And how should we prepare supply chain professionals?

Quote from the Episode:

Soundbite from the Episode:

 

About the Host:

The host, Andrei Palamariu is the founder of Supplify where he and his team works on building a platform to connect the supply chain tech ecosystem. His most interesting discussions with the clients are focused on implementing the best technology, digital transformation, company growth and expansion, turnarounds, and product and business development.

Alcott Global connects and upgrades the supply chain ecosystem by finding the right talent through executive search, developing talent through learning solutions, and meeting supply chain technology needs through a comprehensive crunch base marketplace.

The supply chain executive search has been our focus since the very beginning, offering recruitment services for top-tier supply chain roles at every level of the end-to-end supply chain: plan, source / procure, make, and deliver. Our consultants have years of experience in placing top talent, in North America, LATAM, Europe, the Middle East & Africa, and APAC, and besides speed, one of our biggest strengths is our network within the supply chain industry, and we capitalize on it to find the best solutions.

Through the years, we have grown as an organization and our offerings with it. One of our initiatives, the learning solutions- training and supply chain academy, is focused on transforming leadership- self-leadership, executive presence, influence capital, and business acumen. Through Supplify, we aim to match corporations with the top technology companies to solve their supply chain and logistics challenges with a focus on innovation and digital transformation.

We are in constant touch with the leaders in supply chain, inviting them to inspire the supply chain professionals in thought-provoking podcast episodes and events, and showcasing what is possible at the yearly Leaders in Supply Chain Awards.

Related Episodes:

Supply Chain Transparency And Visibility With Stefan Reidy CEO Of Arviem AG

Tech And Supply Chain Disruption With Antonio Boccalandro President, APAC At Blue Yonder

Growth Through Omnichannel With Dione Song CCO Love, Bonito

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