December, 20218 IN MY V EWAt Syngenta, we have increased our offerings of non-core ERP processes in SaaS cloud solutions, such as Workday for Human Resources, Ariba for Procurement and GTNexus for 4PL. This enables our on-premises systems to be more focused on core Production and Supply (P&S) systems and FI systems. It also reduces the complexity of our internal system architecture while increasing our need for good integration and master data management. More benefits include a reduced need for IT and infrastructure support for our applications, and a move away from traditional perpetual licensing toward straight consumption cost structures. We are also leveraging our core on-premises offerings of AWS cloud computing and Azure, impacting more cost-efficient and scalable ERP landscapes. This includes our Public Cloud IaaS offering that provides scalability and elasticity of compute, cost efficiency and agility in system provisioning. It also increases our network bandwidth by decreasing network costs that enables a move into Public Cloud hosting scenarios. We are also implementing cloud-based Datalake technology, which decreases our dependency on proprietary data-warehousing technology that is costly and inflexible, ultimately increasing cross-functional data access and scalable compute power for advanced analytics and data science. We see us moving away from proprietary and expensive DWs to cloud-based DWs. As such, functional data silos will be broken down, which opens up new possibilities for analytics and digital solutions. For new digital solutions services and offerings where connectivity into our backend ERP for customers and partners, Syngenta is executing a cloud integration and API platform. By exposing our ERP functionality via API, we are opening up a whole new world of applications. ERP users will not directly access ERP systems anymore, but will consume transactional services via smart, mobile interfaces. New digital offerings for customers are being created on cloud platforms with connectivity into our backend systems, helping to create new business models. Our new mobile applications are being used by customers (i.e. Whatsapp or SMS to validate the origin of chemical products) or growers (i.e. seeds quality management) to extend the reach of our core ERP functionality beyond our own company. This BY CHRISTIAN BAYER, GLOBAL HEAD OF ERP/SAP, SYNGENTAPLOTTING THE IT ROADMAP FOR ERP
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