Inside information about SAP strategies

A series of articles will follow with my personal observations, summaries and insights of SAP's strategies based on a shift I see in the message from SAP.  The articles are based on information from Executive Exchange meetings at the beginning of April 2019, plus information from our “Meet the Product Owner” trip to Walldorf in March, Sapphire 7-9 May press releases and my long experience. 

Top Management in SAP share their insights in our bi-annual Executive Exchange.  It is organised through the International Network for User Groups called SUGEN. This network is supported by a Global User Group Organisation in SAP which is lead by Yasmin Awad. She builds the agenda together with the Core Leadership Team (CLT) of SUGEN. The CLT of SUGEN consists of customers and UG representatives elected from 17 countries around the globe. 

Christian Klein (in picture) is Chief Operating Officer and a Member of the Executive Board of SAP SE. He is leading the Intelligent Enterprise Group which combines his global responsibility for the development and delivery of SAP’s core applications with his cross-board area mandate for SAP’s global business operations. Yasmin Awad reports to Christian Klein. 

Klein's Group Intelligent Enterprise, drives SAP’s digital core development functions and product management, including SAP S/4HANA and SAP Digital Supply Chain and he manages SAP’s rich industry-specific portfolio.

Klein’s organisation is also responsible for making SAP an Intelligent Enterprise by focusing on business process simplification, global IT and cloud infrastructure, product and services quality, portfolio and investment strategy, intelligent data and analytics.

In our Exceutive Exchange with Christina Klein he shared information based on our questions. The latest changes in the Executive Board of SAP SE and the reorganisations made was explained by him as consolidations after aquisitions combined with the wish from central people to do new things.

Things seem to be going according to plan. He discussed with us the challenge to move HR payroll and I will get back to this subject under "in S/4HANA still missing functionality". Otherwise, his main focus is to get all integrations to a higher quality. To ensure quality, shared objects like the timesheet will be consolidated and further integration functionality to be developed, I will get back to this under "Integration".

The shift is related to the readiness of the functionality in the new S/4HANA, C/4HANA and SAP Cloud platforms. The most important functionality seems to be in place for the "by customers most frequently used business processes".

Therefore, SAP's main focus has moved to phase two, which is to enhance the intelligence of the solution. This means Analytics, Automation, Machine Learning, Integration and new User Interfaces like Voice into all SAP Solutions. 

SAP is a very large organisation and many things can and do run in parallell. SAP's main focus will always be on the actions which generate future revenue.

This focus will ensure SAP is able to support and enrich our investments in many years to come. The SAP company was founded in 1972. They have been able to provide competitive products and support their customers since then. I have been in the User Group since end of the 1980'ies and several customers have been there, as long as I have and some even before me.

The new product is there, and focus is now to enrich it with new technology.

Over the coming weeks, I will cover the following topics:

• The new predictive customer support SAP offers it's customers. Link
• The possibilities for innovation combined with a running, stable, secure environment Link
• The integration initiatives
• Renamed business processes, including the building blocks which are part of these processes and S/4HANA functionality that is still missing and follow up actions.
• The free SAP tool-kit which helps customers to the new platform

Author Eva-Maria Fahrer, 
If you have comments, would like to discuss or ask questions:
+47 922 52 539 and +46 (0)70 569 78 08 or em(at)sbn.no