The Senior Director of the SAP University Alliances Programme, Mr De Wet Naude, has urged Ghanaian companies to re shape their businesses, processes, and workforce in order to stay relevant in the changing technological environment.
He said many businesses became unsuccessful and irrelevant because they failed to reshape their businesses to suit the changing technological world.
Mr Naude said this in an interview with the GRAPHIC BUSINESS at the SAP Industry engagement seminar which was organised under the auspices of the University of Ghana’s Technology Development and Transfer Centre.
Using Kodac as an example, he said, all cameras back then was from Kodac but the company had now become irrelevant because it failed to adapt to changing technology.
He said the way customers consumed products from companies was changing and was, therefore, important for businesses to now look at ways to make their products simpler and smarter to be in tune with current changes.
“Digital transformation is a reality and it is becoming more and more important for businesses to survive and remain competitive in developing economies,” he said.
SAP is a German multinational software corporation that makes enterprise software to manage business operations and customer relations.
The company, through its university alliances programme visited the University of Ghana’s Technology Development and Transfer Centre to engage with the students.
Mr Naude said SAP sought to introduce its university alliances programme to universities in Ghana, starting with the University of Ghana.
He said the programme was an academic network of faculty and students focused on innovation for the digital enterprise.
He said it intended to offer opportunities for faculty and students to use their software as part of their technology and research.
Mr Naude said its main aim was to engage with academic institutions and help them to prepare their students to face the world of work because the “world of work today is going to be different from the world of work tomorrow”
“We talk to them about digital transformation and new concepts arising. The ways that businesses operate will be different in the future than it is now and as a technology company, we share with universities some of the concepts and the new developments and make some knowledge available to them so they can start sharing them with the students,” he stated.
“You can’t re-write a hand book in every three months but things change very fast so we share what we have observed, what our research has revealed and what we have developed to try and keep pace with the changing world of technology,”.
He said it also had the Enterprise Systems Education For Africa (ESEFA) programme which was being funded by SAP and the German government of development.
He pointed out that the purpose of this programme was to create a foundation specifically for the African continent because it found out many of the things it conceptualised from Europe was not relevant to African universities.
He said the programme had so far been received well over the last three years as it had been applied to over 4000 students in ten African countries.
The Head, Department of Operations and Management of Information Systems of the University of Ghana’s Technology Development and Transfer Centre, Prof. Richard Boateng, said the engagement with SAP would help it achieve its aim of making the content it taught as practical as possible and also to be able to train students who would be relevant to industry.
Sign up for Ghana Star News to receive daily email alerts of breaking news in Ghana. GhanaStar.com is your source for all Ghana News. Get the latest Ghana news, breaking news, sports, politics, entertainment and more about Ghana, Africa and beyond.
