Software company SAP announced was recognized as “Friend of Asean” at the 2018 Asean Business Awards held recently “for its positive social and economic contributions to Southeast Asia (SEA).
The Asean Business Advisory Council (Asean-BAC) launched the awards in 2007 to acknowledge and recognize outstanding businesses in the region. The Friends of Asean category honors non-Asean enterprises for their continuous and increased commitment in growing their presence within Asean.
SAP established its presence in SEA in 1989 with an office in Singapore and 16 employees. It has since grown to 11 offices in seven Asean member-states counting more than 3,800 employees.
President Halimah Yacob of Singapore presented the award.
SAP innovations help more than 10,000 customers in Asean work more efficiently and use business insight more effectively. SAP helps organizations streamline processes, giving them the ability to use real-time data to predict customer trends across their entire business, and supports 91 out of the Top 100 Asean companies as customers. SAP aims to support every Asean customer to become a better-run business.
“SAP’s continued expansion will focus on helping more organizations leapfrog the technology gap to thrive in the fourth industrial revolution,” said Claus Andresen, president and managing director, SAP Southeast Asia. “We do so by bringing best practices from our global experience with 25 industries, together with leading technologies such as Blockchain, IoT, Machine Learning and Analytics, while building the capacity of local partners to better serve our customers. Receiving the ‘Friend of Asean’ accolade is an impetus for us to do more to help companies and communities be more successful. We will be successful only when they are successful.”
SAP Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) encourages and supports employee volunteerism year-round to create positive social change in our communities across Southeast Asia. One of the key initiatives is the SAP Social Sabbatical, which is a portfolio of pro bono volunteering assignments where highly diverse teams of SAP employees provide their skills and business expertise to foster social impact by solving concrete business challenges for non-profit organizations and social enterprises. Since 2015, 111 SAP employees have provided skills-based volunteering totaling more than 27,000 hours, an in-kind contribution that is valued at close to 1.5 million euros in support of 40 social enterprises across Southeast Asia.
In 2017, SAP collaborated with the Asean Foundation to establish the Asean Data Science Explorers program also as part of its CSR. So far, the project has trained close to 5,000 educators and youths in SAP Analytics Cloud across all 10 Asean member states.
“In addition to training, the data analytics competition enhances awareness and appreciation of the Asean community among young people and encourage them to play a key role in tackling today’s social issues in the region and help create positive change for a better future,” said Eugene Ho, head of Corporate Affairs, SAP Southeast Asia.
The SAP Analytics Cloud is a new generation software as a service (SaaS) that redefines analytics in the cloud by providing business intelligence, predictive, and planning capabilities all within one tool. Using this cloud platform, Asean DSE participants analyze and visualize data on ‘the United Nations Sustainable Developments Goals to come up with their innovative recommendations to support the Asean Socio-Cultural Community Blueprint 2025.