Far-reaching nationwide transformation initiatives such as CPEC promoting digital transformation agendas: SAP chief

Islamabad: Managing Director ‘SAP Pakistan’ Saquib Ahmad has said that due to far-reaching nationwide transformation initiatives such as the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) and Pakistan Vision 2025, Pakistan’s organizations were eagerly outlining digital transformation agendas.

Interacting with journalists here, the MD SAP maintained the government’s recent announcement of special tax relief package in Information Technology (IT) industry was an encouraging decision that would help boosting the country’s exports.

Briefing on digitalization in Pakistan and SAP’s role, Saquib Ahmad said CPEC had necessitated digital transformation agendas.

He called for streamlining the tax regime for the country’s information technology sector and opined that the relief package must be for at least five years.

Ahmad, mentioned that due to inconsistency in the tax policies, the IT investors and experts were confused and they seek consistency in the policies.

He informed that the SAP was providing free training to the youth under Prime Minister SAP Kamyab Jawan (successful youth) Programme.

“The next era of computing will be defined by intelligent enterprises. Organizations need to cut through the hype and be more useful and efficient to be an intelligent enterprise to make the world run better using emerging technologies,” he said.

The MD SAP emphasized that keeping in mind the future prospect, businesses in Pakistan were transforming fast to digitalization.

“From textile, food, agriculture, and telecommunications industries to healthcare and fashion industries, the private sector of Pakistan is increasingly adopting digitalization to keep up in the fast-evolving environment. Going forward, SAP’s plan for 2022 is to tap on other industries to help them optimize costs, efficiency, and customer experiences,” he remarked.

Ahmad said that in a challenging business climate, companies need to seize every competitive advantage and increasingly, those advantages are digital. “SAP has more than 22,000 partners worldwide in 140+ countries, driving their digitalization journey and enabling them to become resilient and agile organizations. A study by McKinsey found that since the pandemic, there is a palpable sense of urgency among business leaders to digitalize and modernize their processes and legacy systems,” he added.

Ahmad stressed that an intelligent enterprise has greater visibility, focus, and agility, which allows it to do more with less, offer best-in-class customer experience, and develop new business models and revenue streams.

“As the cloud takes on a more predominant role in our modern world, many businesses are considering welcoming a cloud-first strategy into their IT operations,” he contended.

He further said: “A Cloud-first strategy, the use of a cloud solution instead of building a non-cloud-based solution, helps organizations with savings and scalability, reduces human error, and allows for better streamlining and coordination.”

He pointed out that the latest SAP cloud offerings help companies optimize their end-to-end processes and innovate with new capabilities in the cloud while reducing operating costs, improving productivity, and unlocking new opportunities for growth.

Ahmad appreciated that the SAP was already seeing strong success in co-innovating with Pakistan’s digital leaders, diligently working to realize the Digital Pakistan vision by supporting skills development and training of youth in collaboration with major universities.