Alert Solutions, a member of the Alert Group, in collaboration with SAP, held the first ever SAP innovation forum last Tuesday 8th October at the Xara Lodge l/o Rabat. 

The aim of this event was for high-management professionals and key decision takers of various companies to get informed of today’s latest SAP technology and understand how the SAP business suite can help business can run smarter, faster and simpler. 

The large number of attendees were welcomed to the event by Alert Group Business Development Manager Marthese Portelli who also gave details of the events agenda.

The SAP innovation forum was kicked off by the SAP Senior Vice-President of South Europe, Steve Stathis Tzikakis.  Mr Tzikakis put a strong message across – SAP considers Malta to be a very important market and hence the reason why SAP is investing so heavily in Malta.  He explained the strong relationship that there is between SAP and Alert and how both will be supporting one another in SAP implementations.  He then went on to emphasize the key factors that businesses need to look at to secure their future – analytics, mobility (mobile devices) and cloud technology. 

Claudine Cassar, Alert Group Executive Chairman followed.  Ms Cassar explained that Alert Solutions are the sole Value Added Resellers of SAP products and Services in Malta.  She also explained that recently the company was also recognised by SAP as a VAR for the Middle East and North Africa region.  The VAR status allows Alert to provide implementation, training and support services as well as directly selling SAP ERP and BI licencing.   At present, Alert is in the process of becoming a Product Centre of Excellence for SAP, and this shows the full commitment that Alert has to SAP portfolio.

Victor Denaro, CIO of Bank of Valletta, followed Ms Cassar’s speech with a very intriguing presentation on the challenges faced by today’s Chief Information Officers.  The keynote session was closed by Alessandro Baiocchi, an advisor from KPMG Italia who kept all the techies on the edge of their seats, whilst sharing with them his experiences in implementing SAP’s latest ground breaking technology: SAP HANA.

Two parallel sessions were organised after the short coffee break. The first session was targeted to SME organisations, whilst the second targeted Banking Institutions. SAP specialists gave detailed presentations and demonstrations of SAP’s strong line-up of enterprise applications in these sectors.

The SME session also witnessed an SAP testimonial by Mr Frederick Schembri, Managing Director of APL Swift (Aurobindo Malta).