Faced with unprecedented uncertainty due to the global pandemic, businesses now more than ever need to be agile to adapt their operations and speed up their digital transformation. At the same time, they have the opportunity to build a technology that advances over time to meet future needs.

Organizations that develop the vision required not only to overcome disruptions or operational inertia but to thrive in a business environment that is, and will remain, in flux are called “kinetic enterprises” by Deloitte Consulting LLP, which considers these types of organizations as more capable of success.

“If you think about the past, organizations built their technology infrastructures to be what we would call built-to-last,” said Kelly Herod (pictured), U.S. SAP offering leader at Deloitte. “The future, though, is all about built-to-evolve. And that’s exactly what the kinetic enterprises are. It’s really how we’re helping our clients [to] create the right technology infrastructures that evolve with their business.”

Herod spoke with Jeff Frick, host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio, during AWS re:Invent. They discussed the pillars of the concept of kinetic enterprises, the advantages of running SAP on the cloud, and the challenges and opportunities created by the new remote work environment. (* Disclosure below.)

Responsible business is on the cloud

A kinetic enterprise is based on four key pillars, according to Herod, and one of them is a technology solution that is clean and unburdened by technical debt, such as legacy systems with huge amounts of custom code.

“The second pillar is that it is intelligent, so we’re leveraging all of the technologies, artificial intelligence, machine learning to really automate and change the way in which an organization runs its business,” she explained.

The third pillar is that it is responsive, which means that it is on the cloud. “And this is where AWS comes in,” Herod said. Then, the last pillar is that it is inclusive, using all of the technologies and microservices available to really optimize and achieve the company’s business value objectives.

The concept of kinetic enterprise assists businesses changing in many aspects, including in digital core enterprise applications, such as SAP.

Created long before cloud computing, SAP has also undergone transformation, with a large number of enterprise resource planning players migrating to the cloud, according to Herod.

“The reality is going in and actually changing out your ERP; no matter what solution you’re using, it’s a big endeavor undertaken,” she said. “The goal here, and we’re partnering with SAP, partnering with AWS, is really focused on: ‘How can we make this more efficient for our clients?’”

SAP Central Finance is the first to migrate

Running SAP solutions on the cloud gives organizations the flexibility to scale or contract their infrastructure based on business needs.

Many of Deloitte’s customers are choosing to start this journey with the finance area, specifically with SAP Central Finance. To help with this migration, Deloitte teamed up with AWS to leverage artificial intelligence and machine learning and, most importantly, standing up an environment on AWS called Kinetic Finance Startup.

“Over a weekend, we can actually connect to your existing ERP solution … we can extract the data, we can use harmonization rules to actually change and modify your data and optimize it for the future,” Herod explained. “And then we … through completely touchless building automation, stand up a brand-new AWS environment with S/4HANA on it and actually automate the configuration and testing of the basic finance transactions.”

This is a less risky way to start the journey, rather than starting with “the heart” of the business or major operations or manufacturing, Herod pointed out. Why? The S/4HANA solution has smart accounting or simple finance, which is able to grab financial information from multiple EPRs, bring it into a central finance environment, and combine or merge the data to get improved reporting.

From there, Deloitte can work with the organization to review the newly built SAP S/4HANA system and make adjustments to align it with the business processes and goals.

Here’s the complete video interview, part of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of AWS re:Invent. (* Disclosure: Deloitte Consulting sponsored this segment of theCUBE. Neither Deloitte nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE