$3.4 trillion: this is the amount that global spending on digital transformation is projected to reach by 2026. A huge number that shows the importance of this transformation movement for businesses. Today, 89% of large companies at the global level are engaged in a digital transformation project. Projects that are complex, that require significant investments in time and money, but also human investments.
To discuss this, I am delighted to welcome Michael Manouvrier, Chief Digital and Information Officer at Roquette; Benjamin Paris, Head of Digital Business Solutions at Roquette; John Lecointe, Deputy Director Industries and Services in France for Sopra Steria; and Vianney Le Blan, Director of the SAP business line in France for Sopra Steria.
Today, we have been talking about digital transformation for dozens of years. What are the expectations and the particular challenges today?
Yes, Anaëlle, indeed major challenges in digital transformation. The first is always more services. Companies want to provide more services to their customers and so this requires more immersive, remote user experiences. Being able to use the product ahead of time, having benchmarks on prices, being able to have a notion of service-optimized delivery, and better after-sales service.
The second is indeed the costs of production. The challenges of how we reduce the cost of production, especially with what we experienced with price inflation, Ukraine, and how we optimize the production chain, supply chain, and that we can improve production costs.
And the third major challenge is agility. In a world where competition is indeed increasing, how can we be faster than others ultimately, and offer new products, and new services?
And if we look more specifically at the industry, what are the major transformations at work?
Yes, so, the industry is experiencing a major boom. Moreover, there are strong investments with 2030 projects on this. And so four distinct parts are experiencing digital transformations. The first is everything that is around design and prototyping. So having a digital modelling of processes, of flows, through 3D models, of products, a car, a plane, a submarine, or a factory as such or the supply chain. So there are digital tools that provide this modelling of processes and 3D also associated.
The second is indeed predictive maintenance. So indeed, there, manufacturers expect to be able to anticipate breakdowns and to be able to change equipment on the fly to reduce production downtime or indeed have better productivity across the entire chain.
The third point also which is very much awaited, is the monitoring of the production. And so there, the same, digital products such as industrial metaverses, industrial 5G, allow to have a modelling, a flow, a monitoring that goes beyond cockpits or reports a bit classic. So how do we follow production from end to end with all the sensors, IoT, within the factories.
And the last one is the optimisation of production. How can we redo the match and the film, finally, ahead of the phase. Review what happened in the past, and optimize, whether it's on engineering, manufacturing or actually the supply chain, optimize each process and each flow. And so here too, we use all the digital products that exist.
Absolutely. And so there, we made a global panorama of the challenges of digital transformation for companies. This is a subject you know well all four of you since you led together a transformation project important for Roquette, with the support of Sopra Steria. What were the initial challenges for Roquette before launching this project?
So the first challenges, these are not digital challenges, they are already challenges for the company, in terms of transformation on processes for the whole company, after supported by digital means. But the first desire was really a transformation with a homogenisation, the fact of setting up a common practice, no matter the place, no matter the function, but in any case to have elements that can be comparable, measurable in the same way, independently of the sites.
So it's really the first, the first vector on which we relied on the SAP platform.
So indeed, at the heart of your project, there is SAP. Why did you choose this tool? What is the impact on the professions today?
We'll maybe describe SAP a little bit. It's the software leader in Europe. 80% of CAC 40 companies use this solution. SAP is 75% of the SBF 120. And so it's really a platform that allows you to model, to integrate end-to-end processes into the transformation of companies. It also relies on what we call the Business Technology Platform, this platform offered by SAP which provides the user experience, to provide artificial intelligence, AI, RPA, the whole solution is mainly user-oriented, business-oriented, and in end-to-end processes.
And at Roquette, in fact, we already had SAP for quite a while because in fact SAP was already deployed in the early 2000s, on a first perimeter, more on support functions. So more on finance, management control, maintenance, or investment management, examples. But recently, we have extended the scope of our application to cover other processes, much more operational processes to provide service to our customers.
So, to cite examples, better management of our warehouses, management of transport processes on the production side, better visibility on our production in progress. We start, we transformed the elements to have at least one production declaration per day, which allows us to have better visibility on our work in progress, on what will happen, which also allows, for example, the quality teams to better know the different analyses that will be necessary to be able to make deliveries to customers. These are examples of additional processes that we have implemented via process transformations in our digital tool in SAP.
So obviously, beyond a change only technical, there is a whole human change to be carried out, since to guarantee the success of the digital transformation project, users must adopt the tool. How did it go at Roquette?
So to go back to the starting point, the genesis is already a transformation within the company, the importance of the process. So indeed, there is a preponderant part on change management and be sure to have a good understanding also of the impacts that these new processes and these new solutions have for all employees. Because we're leaving, we're leaving in a world completely integrated, where the action of a person upstream will have a consequence on a person downstream, with a real connection between the two. And it's very important that people can understand it.
In relation to that, we have set up a system that goes from what we called awareness, that is to say the introduction of the new principles to all employees. So we did workshops, we called them simulation games, workshops to put in a situation on the entire process from end to end, the stakeholders to allow them to properly understand. Even if, for example, it's a logistics person who understands how production works, how quality works, how sales administration works. These different elements have been presented.
Then, we formed what is called train the trainer, so a circle, a first circle with key users so, let's say a little more push on the processes, how they run in the solution. And these trainers themselves went to see the end users to explain to them day by day how it was going to happen.
All this accompanied by elements of communication, explanation to keep up to date with the progress as it went along. The sharing of experience also from previously deployed sites, since we made progressive deployments, site by site. We started with sites, let's say modest, to grow later on sites of a slightly higher importance. And so sharing experience also from previous sites was strongly recommended.
And so we sent people from the sites that were going to experience the deployment on a site already deployed to really see in real life how it went.
I'm responding to what you're saying, Benjamin. I think what worked in the success of this project is indeed a global change I think what worked in the success of this project is indeed a global change conducted with the same cross-functional team. What we also see at Sopra, in the broad sense, is that when we give meaning, when we highlight the added value for each user, and make this awareness-raising training fun through gamification, we get all the teams on board. The collaborative effort multiplies in these new programs, as we experienced with Roquette. It's much simpler to embark, grow, and support all the teams in change, which is crucial for the success of a project.
Among the other changes in this project, data has become the heart of the operation at Roquette. We deploy an organization around the data, enhancing it, and focusing on continuous improvement. Change is not something that stops at the end of the project but is continuous. We exploit data to modify processes, reduce variability, and fine-tune the product-process operation. On SAP projects, laying the foundations by working with IT, end-to-end processes, and ensuring fluidity of data to improve company performance is just the beginning of the transformation. The rest is yet to come, with many projects ahead to further transform companies.
Today, digital transformation is often linked to artificial intelligence. At Roquette, AI is used to monitor and optimize machine operations, and computer vision is applied to automate specific operations. Algorithms are used for optimizations across different areas. Generative AI is also being used, with RoqGPT now available for employees in a secure environment. This is just the beginning, and there are broader implications since AI relies heavily on data. Compliance, data veracity, and the choice of AI solutions are key challenges for the future. Companies like Roquette are fully invested in these developments, which will continue to evolve in the coming years.
A big thank you to all four of you for taking the time to be here today and for this very interesting discussion. We are eager to follow the evolution of digital transformations in companies.