Accenture Expands Partnership with SAP to Help Clients Establish Responsible and Resilient Supply Chains

Supply chain nerve center helps enhance visibility and reduce risk; Accenture to accelerate development of SAP^® Integrated Business Planning for Supply Chain capabilities

Accenture announced it will collaborate with SAP SE to help organizations reinvent their supply chains with a comprehensive supply chain nerve center that can reduce risk, enhance visibility and support sustainability goals. Additionally, Accenture and SAP plan to co-develop new capabilities for the SAP^® Integrated Business Planning for Supply Chain (SAP IBP) solution to help further enhance an organization’s ability to quickly and cost-effectively respond to changes in supply, demand and inventory.

Using cloud, data, artificial intelligence (AI) and analytics, the supply chain nerve center provides n-tier transparency, allowing organizations to identify risks beyond tier one and tier two suppliers by giving deeper visibility into their network of suppliers and subcontractors. It turns data into actionable insights and improves decision-making by sensing factors such as whether suppliers align with an organization’s Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) goals.

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With an initial focus on the consumer products, high tech, industrial manufacturing and automotive industries, the supply chain nerve center features assets, accelerators and assessments. It includes a supply chain resilience stress test, developed by Accenture and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), to identify potential points of failure, assess related financial exposures, and define appropriate mitigation strategies and actions. Additionally, digital twin simulation software from Cosmo Tech helps organizations see the vulnerabilities in their supply chain, simulate the behavior of their supply chain under heavy loads, and build robust mitigation plans throughout their planning process. Enterprise Navigator, a data-driven Accenture tool, identifies where to focus to capture the greatest business value, finding opportunities to standardize across processes, data, people and technology.

Accenture has developed more than 30 industry use cases for the supply chain nerve center. Through its recently announced generative AI collaboration with SAP, the company is exploring how generative AI and Large Language Models (LLM) can further augment the solution’s capabilities.

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“To build intelligent and resilient supply chains, organizations need a strong digital core that is powered by the cloud, data and AI,” said Caspar Borggreve, senior managing director and lead, Accenture SAP Business Group, Accenture. “By collaborating on the supply chain nerve center, and helping SAP develop new capabilities for its SAP IBP solution to accelerate its long-term roadmap, we are enabling organizations reinvent their supply chains to deliver more value.”

Accenture and SAP have already collaborated on hundreds of supply chain transformations for clients across industries, using SAP IBP and components of the supply chain nerve center. One global high-tech client is realizing greater visibility into component supply data across its partner ecosystem, enabling it to prioritize its build-plan, optimize resources and improve production. A global consumer products company identified and resolved large risks within its supply chain and enhanced existing business continuity plans after conducting a stress test.

“Teaming with Accenture on the co-development of new capabilities and functionalities of SAP IBP will help our customers realize a greater return on their investment, while offering significant enhancements to the supply chain nerve center,” said Dominik Metzger, Head of Digital Supply Chain, SAP. “Together, we are helping to define an intelligent path to achieve responsible and risk resilient supply chains.”

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In addition to integrating with the SAP IBP solution, Accenture’s supply chain nerve center offering can interface with other SAP solutions such as SAP S/4HANA^® Cloud, SAP Business Network, SAP Business Technology Platform (SAP BTP), and the SAP Datasphere and SAP Analytics Cloud solutions. Thanks to an open architecture and composable technology approach, the offering integrates with SAP software-compatible industry solutions from other ecosystem providers.

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