Baton Simulations: Digital Transformation is About Transforming People

SAP is one of the most popular providers of business software solutions that form the basis of digital transformation projects across many industries. The benefits of implementing SAP are well-known; among countless other advantages, implementing SAP ERP software provides access to integrated information, enhances productivity, encourages collaboration, improves efficiencies, reduces costs, and streamlines processes.

Headquartered in Montreal, Canada, Baton Simulations accelerates digital transformation projects with unique SAP business simulations and intelligent user enablement. Baton’s flagship ERPsim simulation was originally developed at HEC, one of Montreal’s leading universities for business administration, and is still used in over 200 universities around the world to teach enterprise integration concepts. Baton Simulations was established in 2009 with the intention of commercializing this academic innovation and then continuing its development. Ten years later, ERPsim is still the only real-time business simulation running on a live S/4HANA system. Participants experience the power of enterprise systems in a realistic business environment, developing competencies that go beyond system mastery, such as cross-functional problem solving, analytical thinking, and process excellence.  Today, SAP, its partners, and its customers leverage ERPsim to accelerate adoption of the latest S/4HANA, analytics, and Fiori technologies.

Solutions that Help CIO’s

Baton’s solutions primarily target the people dimension of digital transformation projects, namely, resistance to change. Resistance to change is one of the top reasons cited by CIO’s for why digital transformation projects fail¹.  Because of this, IT leaders need tools like ERPsim to overcome this resistance by engaging stakeholders across functional silos and getting them to work collaboratively, something the Baton team refers to as cross-functional buy-in and alignment.

Baton did not stop there, however. In keeping with the goal of overcoming resistance to change and accelerating user adoption, Baton also developed a rich flexible cloud-based SaaS solution called Digital Acceleration Solution (DAS). DAS makes SAP applications easy to use by providing users with a suite of tools that simplify how they navigate the technology. The result? Thousands of users, many with no formal SAP training, have used DAS to become productive on SAP software in less than 30 minutes!

ERPsim and DAS form a powerful duo of software solutions used by companies worldwide to overcome resistance to change, get buy-in and alignment, accelerate user adoption, increase user productivity, and shorten time-to-value for their most important enterprise software investments.

A Seasoned Leader behind Baton Simulations

Guy Couillard, the CEO of Baton Simulations, is an industry veteran who has helped public and private organizations, software vendors, and systems integrators improve the way they sell and deploy enterprise software. Moreover, he has developed leading-edge seminars and reusable methodologies covering the entire enterprise system lifecycle. With over 30 years of experience, Guy has been sharing his expertise in technology adoption, risk and knowledge management.

At Baton, Guy is responsible for recruiting world-class talent and managing strategic relationships, especially with SAP and Baton’s largest partners. Moreover, he also oversees the innovation portfolio for the SAP solution provider.

When asked to summarize his overall career experience, Guy says that after nearly 25 years of SAP, working on governance, transformation, and large-scale adoption, his greatest joy, and privilege has been to influence the development of innovative software solutions that genuinely help individuals and organizations drive their digital transformation.

Embracing a Knowledge Sharing Culture

According to Guy, culture is more than just clichés or slogans.  It is about a shared commitment to something greater than the individual. Guy explains, “You know you have achieved something when individual contributors, on their own, will act when they see behaviors from their colleagues that are not aligned with common aspirations.”

A Commitment to Innovation

Baton’s current offerings are indispensable for organizations who want to test-drive the latest S/4HANA innovations in a realistic business environment. Used around the globe, the company offers its solutions in 10 languages.  In addition, Baton is also releasing a new business simulation designed specifically for Public Sector and Defense, in the first quarter of 2019. Finally, Baton will be adding AI capabilities to its solutions later in the year, thereby taking user enablement to a completely new level.

Ref: 1 Constellation Research, Inc., 2018 Digital Transformation Study, January 2019