ERP increasingly serves as the hub of organizations' environmental sustainability strategies. But so far, it has mostly been used to standardize and automate the collecting and reporting of environmental, social and governance (ESG) data for customers, investors and regulators. There's a growing sense that ERP can be put to greater use if it's more closely integrated with enterprise technology that has a direct impact on sustainability, such as supply chain visibility, logistics and asset management, to effect real change.

This more ambitious vision of IT-driven sustainability calls for digital transformation of business processes and presents daunting development and integration challenges. So ERP vendors have set up partnerships with the professional services and Big Four accounting firms Deloitte, EY, KPMG and PwC to make it a reality.

One prominent example is EY's partnering with SAP to help customers implement sustainability through their SAP systems.

In this podcast, EY partner Marsha Reppy shares her experiences and insights on the challenges of sustainability and assesses where companies stand on the maturity curve. Reppy heads EY's sustainability consulting practice for the Americas, having joined the firm in 2006 after five years at Deloitte. She has worked for more than 20 years helping consumer products and retail companies with their digital transformation initiatives through technologies like analytics, AI and intelligent automation, and has extensive experience working with SAP systems.

Other topics discussed in the podcast include:

• what sustainability means in practice for organizations
• the biggest technical challenges of sustainability
• EY's role in the SAP partnership

Host: David Essex, Industry Editor, TechTarget

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Supply chain sustainability is an ambitious strategy for managing the environmental, social and corporate governance impacts of product sourcing, manufacturing and delivery. But the inherent complexity of supply chains makes it difficult to ensure that each component in a product, from raw materials to subassemblies, finished goods, packaging and transportation, meet the environmental and labor regulations of countries and international organizations.

Companies have long used information technology to manage their supply chains, but most still struggle to achieve adequate visibility into the practices of their suppliers. In recent years, the environmental, social and governance (ESG) movement has brought new pressures from shareholders, customers and regulators for companies to collect and report data on their sustainability practices.

Artificial intelligence shows promise for helping organizations make sense of the enormous amounts of data needed for supply chain sustainability and for meeting increasingly strict ESG requirements.

RobobAI (pronounced "robo buy"), a vendor of spend analysis and procurement management software based in Sydney, Australia, is applying its AI-driven analytics platform to supply chain sustainability.

In this podcast, CEO Julian Harris explains how RobobAI works and how it monitors risks, such as raw materials from suppliers sanctioned for modern slavery. He also describes ways it supports diversity by, for example, identifying opportunities to employ indigenous labor.

A native of Wales, Harris held executive leadership positions at several IT service companies before co-founding RobobAI in 2017. He is also chairman of Search365, a company with offices in Australia and Singapore offering AI, analytics and search products for the financial services and government sectors.

Other topics discussed in the podcast include:

• where RobobAI fits in ERP and supply chain management software architectures
• how it can improve supplier visibility by analyzing spend data from multiple ERP systems and other data sources
• how Coca-Cola uses RobobAI to improve visibility into its suppliers
• where the ESG movement stands today

Host: David Essex, Industry Editor, TechTarget

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Subscribe via Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/erp-confab/id1669762576

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Every major ERP vendor has strived to move its on-premises applications to the cloud and entice its customers to follow. Most still struggle to replicate the capabilities of their legacy ERP systems in software as a service (SaaS), and new products built in the cloud from the ground up tend to appeal more to first-time buyers. Cloud migration remains the industry's biggest challenge.

Oracle, which in most assessments ranks second to SAP in global ERP market share, appears to be winning the fight for SaaS ERP leadership among vendors with long histories in on-premises ERP. Its Fusion Cloud ERP is the most complete multitenant SaaS suite, bolstered in recent years with dozens of AI apps and a new user interface. What's more, Oracle underpins its applications with AI-infused Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) and cloud versions of its flagship Oracle Database. It claims to be the only vendor with the complete cloud "stack," from foundational infrastructure to databases and business applications.

At its annual CloudWorld user conference this month in Las Vegas, Oracle wrote a new chapter in its cloud story with a raft of product introductions, including Oracle Database@AWS, which enables customers to access its AI-based Autonomous Database on Amazon Web Services, the leading public cloud. Oracle also unveiled new generative AI agents for Fusion Cloud ERP and supply chain applications, among other notable features.

In this podcast, Holger Mueller, vice president and principal analyst at Constellation Research, shares his assessment of what the CloudWorld developments mean for Oracle's cloud strategy and its customers, and where they leave Oracle in its rivalry with SAP.

Before joining Constellation Research in 2013, Mueller spent over two decades in consulting and product development, including stints at Oracle, SAP and Fair Isaac Corp. (FICO). His research focuses on next-generation apps, human capital management and the future of work.

Other topics discussed in the podcast include:

• What the addition of the Redwood UI to Oracle NetSuite means for the popular SaaS ERP platform for SMBs
• Why Oracle's rapidly rising, multi-billion-dollar investment in its own data centers shows how serious it is about using OCI to deliver AI to customers
• Recent board departures at SAP, which leave it with perhaps the least experienced board since the company's founding

Host: David Essex, Industry Editor, TechTarget