The largest regional event, SAP Discovery Day, was held in Belgrade

The company SAP recently held an event in Belgrade for users and partners from the Western Balkan region called "SAP Discovery Day", where the latest technologies, solutions, services, and ideas were presented, thanks to which business becomes more efficient and sustainable. Also, users presented successful implementations of SAP solutions, shared experiences, and gave ideas to future users on how to transform their business, which with certain upgrades will be sustainable in the coming years. 

SAP Discovery Day brought together over 200 existing and potential users, as well as partners who were able to learn from SAP experts about the news regarding SAP S/4HANA Cloud solutions and innovations that enrich the SAP portfolio. The business benefits brought by the implementation of the SAP S/4HANA Cloud solution were also discussed. After that, users who have already successfully implemented these solutions through case studies presented how they transformed their business by moving to the Cloud and how they performed data and technology migrations. 

At the beginning of the meeting, Alexander Metechko, General Manager for the Eastern Europe and Central Asia cluster in the SAP company, and Branislav Sekulović, General Manager of SAP Balkans, greeted the attendees. 

"We are constantly working on the development strategy of our Cloud solutions and innovations. This enabled our users to be more agile, consolidate and modernize their technological infrastructure, as well as to optimize business processes, and overall increase operational efficiency in a secure manner. It is especially important that our users from the public and private sectors are here today and that they will share with us how they implemented S/4HANA Cloud solutions and what benefits they achieved afterward," said the CEO of SAP Balkan. 

Of particular interest to visitors was the keynote lecture at this event, "Flying to the Bus Stop - Debunking the Myths of Cloud, Artificial Intelligence and Transformation" by Paul Saunders, Head of Product Strategy and Chief Evangelist of Cloud ERP at SAP. During the lecture, he reminded the audience about the time 35 years ago when very few people used e-mail for business purposes and when most production processes were not automated. On the other hand, we now have BTP (Business Technology Platform), which enables the transformation, automation, and integration of all business processes and, with innovative technologies, increases business efficiency. "Ultimately, what really matters to customers is not the technology itself, but the business value it creates. If you ask any CEO or CFO, they will tell you that they only care about three things: revenue, cost, and risk. In order to achieve these goals, a technological and mental transformation is necessary. A solid, reliable, and trustworthy database forms the foundation of ERP and artificial intelligence. All of this happens in the Cloud, where scalability and elasticity mean that companies of all sizes can easily compete globally. To help businesses perform at their best, SAP offers a comprehensive set of tools and services that help businesses adapt to change and make the right decisions.” 

After Paul Sanders, Ralph van Uden, director of RISE with SAP, CEE, spoke on the topic "Where we are and where we are going with RISE with SAP" and he revealed how SAP helps users with personalized solutions that will allow them to build a system just like they need, while the operations take place smoothly, quickly and intuitively. 

The lectures continued through the successful stories of SAP users from the public and private sectors, namely - the Ministry of Finance of the Republic of Serbia, which presented how they implemented SAP solutions for the centralization of the information system for the processing of salaries of employees in the public sector through the ISKRA system, an+SAP system that uses SAP HCM (Human Capital Management) within the SAP ERP system and SAC (SAP Analytics Cloud) analytical platform. They talked about the challenges before and the benefits after the implementation of the SAP solution. 

MK Group presented their Cloud journey with SAP, noting that they have been using SAP for over 20 years. They made a special review of the implementation of the SAP S/4HANA Cloud Private Edition solution, which lasts four years and includes all companies within the MK Group system. 

One of the largest domestic retail companies, Tehnomanija, together with SAP partner Enetel Solutions Group, showed how they introduced the SAP S/4HANA Cloud Private Edition solution. Milos Ristić, CEO, Tehnomanija, and Ivan Mijailović, SAP Program Manager at Enetel Solutions Group agreed that the implementation at Tehnomanija was complex in terms of the complexity of business processes and integrations, which are characteristics of the retail industry. In order to provide Tehnomania with further development and growth, Enetel decided to implement the SAP S/4HANA Cloud Private Edition solution, which is the digital core of the company. Through the implementation of advanced functionalities, modules for financial accounting, controlling, procurement management, sales and distribution, and a module for business support of the logistics center are covered. 

"After analyzing the overall business and the complete IT infrastructure of the Tehnomania system, we decided on the SAP solution S/4HANA Cloud Private Edition, and in the first phase, we successfully implemented four modules. They greatly encouraged the increase of work productivity in Technomanija and greater accuracy of reporting and now in real-time, we can monitor the profitability at the level of each item, at the level of the product category, at the level of the supplier, at the level of the retail facility. The controlling module enabled many automatic reports for management that we did not have before. We have always tried to use innovative solutions such as this SAP solution and now we have integrated the entire business. In the second phase, we also implemented a module for the logistics center, which has an area of over 25,000 m2. We have integrated this system with the transport management module, and not only with the internal transport management system, but we have also very easily connected with several external renowned carriers. The complexity of the process, the large number of transactions, over 95,000 fiscal accounts, and over 340,000 other different financial documents that are created every month and during the year in the Tehnomanija company would not be possible to process and monitor in real-time without such an integral SAP system," said Miloš Ristic, CEO, Technomanija. 

In addition to the above, companies from Bulgaria, such as Linkin, which produces aluminum and PVC profiles, presented their successful implementations of SAP solutions. With the help of SAP Cloud solutions, they carried out complete digitization and automation of production lines. 

The last case study was presented by the Bulgarian company SOPHARM Group, which based the company's complete architecture on SAP products and thus covered all key business processes. They use SAP EMARSYS where the central ERP system includes SAP ECC for wholesale and SAP IS Retail for retail, integrated systems that facilitate making important decisions.