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Baurs IT Director Anoja Basnayake, along with the team, receiving the award
In appreciation of its continuous streak towards embracing a journey of sustained digital transformation, A Baur & Co. Ltd., also known as Baurs, one of the leading diversified corporates in the country, recently won the Finance Transformation Award at the Dare to Dream Awards 2023 Sri Lanka Edition, powered by SAP in partnership with John Keells IT and knowledge partner, EY.
The award was part of the SAP Special Recognition of the Year in recognition of Baurs’ track of demonstrable innovation, rapid transition and success in its enterprise-wide transformation efforts through adopting various SAP technologies and solutions.
In 2021, Baurs completed a major milestone by migrating to SAP S/4 HANA 2020 on cloud deployment with SAP Analytics Cloud Live reporting, making it the first company in Sri Lanka to do so at that time. This included cloud migration, technical migration with integration platform conversion, S/4 HANA migration with business process re-engineering, adaptation of SAP Mobility Platform, and the deployment of SAP Analytics Cloud.
This paved way to initiate project RISE ABC with the aim of further integrating the SAP landscape and business processes of Baurs while expanding the company’s digital footprint and overall value proposition through optimising its operational processes and deploying timely innovative solutions.
The project kicked off during the height of the unprecedented pandemic, forcing the project to be implemented in an offline, phase-wide execution approach with geographically dispersed stakeholders both across Sri Lanka and globally. Despite the various constraints posed, Baurs was able to successfully complete it within the projected timeline and budget, overcoming all other business challenges as well.
The outcome of this to Baurs were numerous, including process simplification and automations and adhering to best practices in inventory management including digitalised procurement process, revamping existing financial processes with the new features of S/4 HANA Finance & Controlling, all of which resulted in increased agility and higher availability, and better productivity, security and compliance.
It also established the digital core with S/4 HANA which has inbuilt AI, ML capabilities, enriched with a vast solution stack with latest technological disruptions such as IOT, RPA and blockchain, giving Baurs the edge to utilise them in the near future.
Baurs was also one of the first to embrace digital transition back in 1982, following IBM’s entry into Sri Lanka. Since then, it has always challenged the status quo. It has continued to adapt to the evolving technological changes, embracing cyber security and disaster recovery measures, machine learning, artificial intelligence, IoT among others. The company also took the lead in sales force automation which goes beyond than mere mobility, data and analytics, to comprehensively integrate the various businesses and channels.
