Truth and Dare – The CxO Challenges

If one is asked the question of what is at the heart of any change for an organization, the response, more often than not, would be the consumer. Whether it relates to sustainable products, user experience, or value for money, the list is endless. While consumers come in all forms, such as end users, end consumers, wholesalers, and retailers, the outcome is the same. Consumers generate demand and cause a shift in the business ecosystem.

The example of the consumer is just one of many reasons businesses will react to challenges. Their reaction will be one of survival or adaption to change. In this chapter, we will look at what challenges businesses face on a day-to-day basis. To define a way forward, we will explore the characteristics of challenges in order to understand them, determine how to address them and find a solution, and examine how they impact the decision makers we know as the CxOs or the C-suite.

As you proceed to read through this book, you’ll see that it has been designed to give real examples of challenges and provide solutions based on RISE with SAP as the platform to deliver a S/4HANA transformation. Although we appreciate that digital transformations can take many forms and scopes, our objective is to first provide you with an appreciation of the challenges businesses face and how they impact businesses, and how CxOs can react to those challenges in determining a solution.

The challenges impacting the day-to-day activities of a business can be defined in eight broad categories:

• The market
• Financial challenges
• Regulation compliance
• Technology evolution
• Evolving customer perspectives
• Operational challenges
• Organizational challenges
• Environmental challenges

Let’s begin!