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RES CORP WINS SAP INNOVATION AWARD

26/04/2024 07:20:00 Nhlanganiso Mkhonta

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MBABANE – The Royal Eswatini Sugar (RES) Corporation (Corp) is shaping the future of farming through digitisation with SAP intelligent agriculture.

The RES Corp has recently won the SAP innovation award under agribusiness. The RES Corp group was honoured with this prestigious award for being able to implement the SAP intelligent agriculture solution and combin it with satellite trends, maps and direct crop information.

Through the SAP innovation, the company manages to navigate the pressures arising from global warming, geopolitical conflict and competitive pressures. The annual SAP Innovation Awards honor and celebrate the achievements of future-minded companies that have harnessed the power of the latest SAP products and cloud technologies such as utilising artificial intelligence (AI) or generative AI, for example, thrive in new business realities and create positive economic, environmental and/or social impact to help the world run better.

SAP Intelligent Agriculture, as an industry cloud solution, is built on the SAP Business Technology Platform. It enables agribusinesses to implement data-driven farming processes and service offerings for farmers based on a standard platform and incorporate innovative partner extensions.

Opportunities

RES Corp embraces this approach which for customers opens opportunities to innovate faster and provides flexibility and agility. RES Corp has been a customer of SAP since 2014 and became the first company in Southern Africa to commission more than 25 SAP modules. RES Corp reportedly engaged with the SAP Advisory Council for agribusiness to co-innovate and develop technology to increase sustainability, yield and reduce costs and drive efficiency goals to make better decisions.

According to the entry pitch deck document, RES has been able to drive greater efficiencies in yields, predictability and cost reductions by combining close to real-time outgrower data with agronomic models, satellite and climate data. SAP Intelligent Agriculture along with GIS and GPS data helps RES Corp plan, grow and harvest with greater efficiency.

In the document, it was further highlighted that creating an environment where existing system silos make it difficult to synchronise and coordinate information to increase yields from outgrowers. However, to address this challenge, RES Corp applied AI and machine learning which enabled a more targeted approach to meet outgrowers’ needs from seed, fertilisation, water harvest and transport to increasing overall yields.

This has conserved water, fertiliser and resources. Helping both outgrowers, RES Corp and the wider ecosystem proves that agriculture can run better with technology. “With help from SAP, we have developed an innovative service platform which increases yields, reduces costs and improves sustainability,” said Rob Coombe, the RES Corp group’s IT Manager.

Coombe said at RES Corp they were driving sugar growth efficiencies for RES and their outgrowers with real-time field data combined with external satellite and agronomic data.