Metro Pacific Investments Corp. is stepping-up its digital journey as it teamed up with SAP Philippines to adopt RISE with SAP on Amazon Web Services—a tool that will assist the leading infrastructure investment company to hasten its evolution into an intelligent and digitally-capable company.
This is a part of its broader business transformation strategy while cementing its commitment to deliver inclusive and sustainable development for the Philippines and its economy, said MPIC chief finance, risk and sustainability officer Chaye Cabal-Revilla.
“Our commitment to contribute to national progress and improve the quality of lives in the communities we serve is anchored on the strength of our various operating companies. Dealing with several business models has resulted in a disconnect across our ERP applications and non-standardized operational processes in our organization, thereby leading to a lack of visibility into real-time data and insights,” she said.
“This also made our decision-making reactive amidst a dynamic market situation. By partnering with a trusted technology advisor like SAP, we hope to realize our business transformation strategy, standardize core processes, facilitate data-driven decision-making with analytics and look at developing new digital business models in the new normal,” said Revilla.
The partnership aims to consolidate, modernize and standardize its enterprise resource planning systems on a single platform through RISE with SAP, a business transformation as a service offering. Powered by SAP S/4 HANA digital core in the cloud, MPIC can streamline operations across its subsidiaries, gain insights into end-to-end performance with process analytics and simplify its accounting, financial close, treasury and risk management processes.
With its diverse set of assets held through its operating companies, MPIC has been helping rehabilitate, maintain, strengthen and improve vital services in the Philippines through the years with several subsidiaries covering toll roads infrastructure, power and water utilities, healthcare institutions, among others.
MPIC said it faced disparate financial reporting systems among its subsidiaries, inconsistent data sets, complex closing cycles and high-volume manual processes to meet regulatory requirements and financial reporting standards, with such an extensive portfolio of companies.
For MPIC, business transformation would enable them to achieve their business objectives and facilitate the attainment of their business imperatives, solidifying its planned transition from risk management to an operational efficient and sustainable financial organization, which are all enabled by analytics and technology.
“Transformation is dynamic and not static. Businesses must be able to change since the quest and journey to transform never ends. As long as there is an opportunity for improvement, there will always be a case for business transformation. We need to accept transformation as something necessary for businesses and sustainability,” Revilla said.
She said that RISE with SAP is a great equalizer for businesses of all sizes as it enables organizations to become intelligent enterprises.
“RISE with SAP fortifies our quest for digital resilience and is a true embodiment of SAP’s tagline that the best-run businesses make the world run better. It is affordable from the licensing and implementation standpoint. It is also streamlined and simplified which makes way for improved employee and customer experience,” she said.
SAP Philippines managing director Edler Panlilio said MPIC’s journey with SAP would help Filipinos embrace technology as a critical enabler.
“By leveraging RISE with SAP, which seamlessly combines business process redesign, technical migration to modern and modular architecture, and the needed data to deliver predictable business outcomes, MPIC has a distinct first mover advantage as an intelligent sustainable future-ready enterprise to achieve true business transformation and faster time to value, flexibility and agility,” Panlilio said.
He sid that with the SAP S/4 HANA digital core and being connected to SAP Business Network, MPIC would also gain access to suppliers, asset intelligence and logistics trading partners for business collaboration while building resiliency against disruptions and optimizing operations, predicting needs, and enabling proactive responses as they accelerate growth and scale for the digital future.
In line with its investment blueprint, MPIC is committed to contributing to the achievement of the 17 United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, with UN SDG 9, which seeks to ‘build resilient infrastructure, promote inclusive and sustainable industrialization, and foster innovation’ as its anchor.
Revilla said this initiative is part of the group’s sustainability philosophy of integrating business and environmental stewardship in their investment strategies.
“MPIC has always been committed to elevating its sustainability initiatives across the group. We have put sustainability at the heart of MPIC, and it is evident in how we design, build, and operate our business with minimal social and ecological disruption. In this aspect, MPIC and SAP share the same vision to create a more sustainable future for all. We believe that RISE with SAP will help us improve our operations and augment our sustainability initiatives,” said Revilla.
Panlilio noted that companies today cannot manage what they cannot measure that makes it even more critical for organizations to be able to accurately capture, monitor, and then optimize the sustainability drivers in key business processes enabled by a strong digital core. Businesses need to focus on being purpose driven and impact more than just the top and bottom line but also the green line.
To help MPIC achieve its goals, SAP aims to embed sustainability into its core business processes to deliver visibility and velocity required to inform and drive better business decisions through embedded, validated, real-time data in a holistic and integrated manner.
“Today, SAP is both an enabler and an exemplar of our own sustainability practices with a clear ‘Chasing Zero’ vision, and we hope to work collectively with businesses and executives to prioritize environmental, social and governance activities that support the interests of the broader group of stakeholders. For organizations to create a future that looks greener, cleaner, and more equal than the world we live in today, they need to look at technology solutions to capture, manage, analyze, and use sustainability data more efficiently for better sustainability stewardship,” said Panlilio.