Major shifts in technology, customer aspirations, and employee expectations are reshaping the scope and role of technology leaders in the retail and consumer goods industry, as they adapt to diverse expectations of consumers to sustainably and profitably grow the business in an uncertain world.

Technology-driven convenience has shifted consumers away from in-person shopping to a model that is always available and caters to their specific tastes, all from the comfort of their preferred devices. With the right tools, new competitors can provide more choices than ever before. For consumer goods and retail companies to stay competitive, transformation and modernization are the only way forward.

With digital transformation high on the board room agenda, today’s retail and consumer goods industry technology leader is at the forefront of many added responsibilities, including harnessing advanced technologies and digital to drive business impact, increase efficiencies through process automation and drive the sustainability agenda through a comprehensive green IT strategy.

Harnessing value from enterprise decision systems like ERP is one immediate lever to deliver business outcomes. A scalable, real-time ERP like SAP on AWS can help the organization drive growth through real-time ingestion and processing of data, automate processes for efficiency enabled by real-world data, and deliver actionable insight for the organization – and align the overall operating model of the enterprise with transformation-focused technology investments such as cloud.