Vietnamese entrepreneurs through the eyes of SAP SEA President

During her recent visit to Vietnam on October 11, 2022, just two days before Vietnam’s Entrepreneurs Day, Verena Siow, president and managing director of SAP Southeast Asia had the opportunity to meet 200 enterprise and SME leaders in Vietnam during the Transform Tomorrow Today event organized by SAP.

Verena was excited at the high level of energy and aspirations of these entrepreneurs. They were keen to learn how to harness the power of technology to realize their life-long business aspiration of going global. Verena believes that having a bold vision will foster creativity and a change mindset in the business.

“Vietnamese businesses are deeply aware of the power of technology in driving business growth and success. Having fewer legacy systems facilitates their adoption of the latest technologies without having to worry about issues such as data migration and system compatibilities,” said Verena.

She highlighted three key factors that drive the sustainable success of a business. First – having an innovative mindset and willingness to adopt innovative processes and technologies. This innovative mindset should not be limited to promoting digital transformation, but rather embedded into the DNA of businesses and the daily habits of everyone in the organization.

The second factor is a strong desire to expand to other regional or even global markets. Finally, they need to equip themselves with the necessary capabilities, or the skills and knowledge, to grow and prosper.

In Vietnam, while SAP is often known as the go-to solution for large enterprises, in reality, up to 80 per cent of SAP customers are SMEs. According to Verena, SMEs are very open when it comes to digital transformation, and are able to deploy at a faster rate thanks to greater flexibility and less bureaucracy. They are also eager to explore new opportunities that come with digital transformation.

According to Hoang Thu Quynh, midshare sales director of SAP Vietnam, all businesses share the same pain, regardless of the size. These include incomplete or non-standardized business processes, scattered and inaccurate data that takes a long time to consolidate.

One of the biggest sustainability challenges for most Vietnamese businesses, according to sales director of SAP Vietnam Truong Manh Cuong, is that they don't know where to start or where to focus.

“But with real-time data and technology, Vietnamese companies can pursue both long-term profitability and sustainability goals through a multi-pronged approach: enabling reporting and compliance through transparency; optimizing and using sustainability data operatively in business processes and decisions, and driving sustainability across business networks,” Cuong added.

By becoming sustainable, intelligent enterprises, businesses in Vietnam can increase their competitiveness on a regional or even global stage.

In line with the "Make in Vietnam" agenda, SAP has set its primary focus for the country in 2022 on delivering sustainable, intelligent enterprise to Vietnamese customers and helping them capitalize on the emerging experience economy.

“By becoming sustainable, intelligent enterprises, businesses in Vietnam can increase their competitiveness on a regional or even global stage,” said Nguyen Hong Viet, SAP Vietnam managing director.

"In addition to driving top and bottom lines, Vietnamese companies should also consider the impact of their business operations on the environment and society to operate intelligently and sustainably,” said Viet.

Intelligence is even more important in the “never-normal” world of business. By embracing the ‘Cloud Only’ strategy and gaining real-time business insights from a cloud-based ERP system, companies will be able to innovate ahead of competitors, operate during times of uncertainty in the market, improve cost savings, and pivot and scale quickly to adapt to changes.

“Today, businesses can easily migrate their applications and workloads to the cloud with the ability to scale and enjoy the benefit of the cloud’s pay-per-use model to reduce total cost of ownership (TCO). We believe that the ‘Cloud Only’ strategy will help drive SAP Vietnam’s cloud CAGR by 54 per cent by 2025,” Viet shared.

Sustainability remains a major challenge, according to Verena, especially as Vietnam transitions to a sustainable economy. Vietnamese companies need to shift from the linear economy, which produces over 91 per cent of waste through standard production, to a circular economy, replete with means that are able to reuse and minimize waste.

A recent survey conducted by Q&Me revealed that 50 per cent of respondents in Vietnam are highly interested in sustainability issues, while 84 per cent are keener on sustainability issues than they were last year. Therefore, becoming sustainable-minded and reducing their carbon footprints is essential for Vietnamese businesses to remain relevant to consumers. SAP is taking concrete steps with the “Chasing Zero” strategy as it strives to enable organizations to achieve zero emissions, zero waste, and zero inequality.

“As with planting trees, we need to take action today to achieve the desired results tomorrow. It takes time to yield results when it comes to digital transformation,” Verena concluded.