SBN CLT member Roy Halvorsen from Orkla below shares a summary of the most important points from the Global User Group meeting at SAPS Head Office in Walldorf on November 24-26.
1. SAP Customer Services & Delivery Strategy
SAP's Customer Services & Delivery strategy focuses on helping customers accelerate cloud transformation, drive innovation, and maximize business value through a comprehensive services and support model. Led by a dedicated board area established in 2024, the approach centers on simplifying the customer experience, leveraging AI, and ensuring high customer satisfaction.
Key pillars of the SAP Customer Services & Delivery strategy
Cloud-centric business transformation
- Focus on innovation adoption: SAP helps customers swiftly adopt and consume cloud innovation to realize the full benefits of SAP's integrated portfolio.
- Unified cloud offerings: SAP's strategy prioritizes both public and private cloud environments as equally important for driving customer success.
- Integration through RISE with SAP: The strategy is closely integrated with the RISE with SAP program, which bundles software, infrastructure, and managed services to guide customers' migration to the cloud.
- Strategic advisory: SAP provides customers with proactive advisory services, including assigning Enterprise Architects to RISE with SAP engagements, to help them shape their cloud and AI transformation strategies.
AI-driven and personalized customer experience
- Embedded AI: SAP embeds Business AI directly into core processes across its solutions, including customer service, to enhance efficiency and accelerate impact.
- Predictive service and support: By analyzing historical data, SAP's tools can predict potential customer issues and offer proactive solutions, improving efficiency and satisfaction.
- Hyper-personalization: SAP leverages AI and a unified Customer Data Platform (CDP) to provide highly personalized experiences across all customer touchpoints.
- Connected CX portfolio: SAP connects sales, marketing, service, and commerce into a single process for a real-time, 360-degree view of the customer.
Simplified and tiered engagement model
- Streamlined portfolio: In May 2025, SAP announced a major evolution of its services and support portfolio toward a simplified, tiered engagement model, set to be generally available in 2026.
- Improved engagement: This new model is designed to simplify how customers engage with SAP and to accelerate the time-to-value from cloud innovations.
- Foundational support: All cloud solutions from SAP include foundational support, with access to essential tools, curated content, and guided learning.
- Advanced and premium options: For customers seeking more advanced support, SAP offers success plans and premium engagements to provide personalized resources and expert assistance.
Customer services and delivery offerings
- SAP Services and Support: SAP offers a range of services to help customers throughout their digital transformation, ensuring their solutions deliver maximum value.
- Cloud support: Options are available for cloud solutions, including foundational support and more advanced offerings like SAP Preferred Success.
- Professional services: SAP provides implementation and technical delivery services to support business transformation.
- Premium engagements: High-touch, premium engagements are available for customers with complex or mission-critical requirements
2. SAP Learning Strategy
SAP's learning strategy focuses on providing flexible, role-based, and personalized training that aligns with business needs and technological changes, including the integration of AI. The main components of this strategy are the SAP Learning platform, a comprehensive catalog of courses, and the SAP Certification program.
Core learning platforms
- SAP Learning: A centralized, free platform that provides access to a wide range of learning resources. You can explore learning journeys, find training materials, and prepare for certifications.
- SAP Learning Hub: A subscription-based digital learning solution that offers premium content, including:
- Learning Journeys: Visual, interactive guides that outline paths to SAP solution competency.
- Expert-led sessions: Live and on-demand sessions covering a wide array of SAP topics.
- SAP Learning System Access: Hands-on practice in live SAP environments.
- SAP Certification exam attempts: Subscriptions include four certification exam attempts per year.
- SAP Learning Hub, student edition: A free version of the platform for students and academic faculty. It includes access to training resources and certification attempts.
- openSAP: A platform for free Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) that covers various SAP topics.
- SAP Help Portal: The central repository for knowledge on SAP's product portfolio, offering learning journeys on major topics.
Training and certification programs
SAP's learning strategy is built around official training and certifications that validate professional skills.
Training formats
SAP provides various training formats to suit different learning styles and schedules:
- Live courses: Instructor-led training delivered in virtual, on-site, or hybrid settings.
- Self-paced learning: Includes e-learning courses, e-books, and video tutorials.
- Hands-on practice: Access to SAP learning systems for practical application of skills.
Certification program
The SAP Certification program validates expertise in specific SAP solutions through a tiered system:
- Associate: Foundational certification for new professionals demonstrating broad knowledge.
- Specialist: Focuses on a specific role or integration component.
- Professional: Advanced-level certification for experienced professionals with proven project experience.
Staying certified
To ensure skills remain current with rapidly changing cloud technologies, SAP has a "Stay Current" program. This program requires professionals to complete short, non-proctored assessments to maintain their certification status on certain SAP solutions.
Training strategies for organizations
Organizations can tailor SAP's learning strategy to fit their specific needs to increase user adoption, productivity, and innovation.
- Differentiation by role: Customize training for different user types, such as super users (in-depth training) versus end-users (task-specific training).
- Hands-on training: Focus on practical, hands-on experience to build confidence and improve knowledge retention.
- Flexible scheduling: Offer options like short sessions or self-study to accommodate employee schedules and minimize business disruption.
- AI-powered learning: Leverage new AI-driven capabilities for smarter content discovery and personalized learning recommendations.
3. SAP Cloud ERP Private Strategy
SAP's private cloud strategy is focused on providing large enterprises with a flexible, yet highly controlled path to the cloud for their existing, customized SAP ERP systems. Delivered primarily through the RISE with SAP offering, the SAP S/4HANA Cloud, private edition, allows companies to adopt cloud innovation, including AI and automation, at their own pace without needing to fully re-implement.
Core components of the private cloud strategy
SAP's private cloud strategy is built on key components that address the needs of complex, large-scale enterprises:
- RISE with SAP: The primary offering bundling SAP S/4HANA Cloud, private edition, with cloud infrastructure (hosted by hyperscalers like AWS or Microsoft Azure), tools for business process intelligence (SAP Signavio), and the SAP Business Technology Platform (BTP).
- SAP S/4HANA Cloud, private edition: Provides a dedicated, single-tenant cloud environment with more customization options than the public cloud. This allows businesses to carry over specific configurations and modifications from their on-premise systems while still modernizing.
- Cloud ERP Private Edition Package: Introduced in 2025, this package offers a more modular and flexible option for customers. It provides private cloud deployment with standardized best practices, but without the full RISE contract, giving enterprises greater control over their transformation timeline.
Key strategic focus areas
SAP's roadmap for its private cloud ERP centers on several key themes:
- AI and embedded intelligence: The 2025 release of SAP Cloud ERP Private heavily emphasizes embedding Artificial Intelligence (AI) and intelligent agents directly into business processes. SAP's AI copilot, Joule, provides role-specific assistance across functions like finance, procurement, and asset management.
- Continuous innovation: The strategy allows enterprises to adopt new features and technologies, like AI, at their own pace. Innovations are delivered through simplified, near-zero-downtime upgrades, minimizing disruption and accelerating time-to-value.
- Simplified migration: SAP offers a guided and supported path for customers to move from legacy on-premise ERP systems to the private cloud. The strategy is designed to protect existing investments while enabling continuous innovation.
- Data and integration: The strategy promotes a unified data foundation by integrating SAP Cloud ERP with the SAP Business Data Cloud and SAP BTP. This approach connects applications, data, and AI across business functions to deliver richer insights.
Benefits for enterprises
For organizations with complex or highly customized ERP landscapes, SAP's private cloud strategy provides several benefits:
- Cloud benefits without compromise: Combines the scalability and innovation of the cloud with the control, security, and customization traditionally associated with on-premise systems.
- Preservation of customization: Enterprises can maintain and evolve existing customizations, which is a critical consideration for many large businesses.
- Faster innovation cycles: Simplifies the adoption of new features and technologies like AI, eliminating long and costly upgrade cycles.
- Pathway to the clean core: Guides customers toward a modern, "clean core" architecture using standardized processes and extensibility via SAP BTP.
4. Transformation Charter Update
A transformation charter update revises the original charter to reflect new goals, address shifting business conditions, and maintain stakeholder alignment for a successful organizational change initiative. An updated charter revalidates the transformation's purpose, scope, and objectives to prevent "mission creep" and to ensure the program stays on track.
Reasons to update a transformation charter
- Strategic shifts: Changes in the market, competitive landscape, or overall business strategy may require a new direction for the transformation.
- Performance issues: If the transformation project is falling short of its initial objectives, an updated charter can redefine goals and adjust the strategy.
- Scope changes: An expanding or shrinking scope, which may be a necessary response to new information or opportunities, must be documented and approved.
- Regulatory changes: Organizations, particularly those in specific industries, may need to revise their charter to comply with new government regulations.
- New stakeholders: The addition of new project sponsors or key leadership may necessitate an update to re-secure buy-in and clarify roles.
- External factors: A major economic downturn, technological shift, or other external event can render parts of the original charter obsolete.
How to update a transformation charter
- Assess the need for change. Re-evaluate the initial "burning platform" or justification for the transformation and pinpoint why an update is necessary now. Is there a competitive threat, an opportunity, or a performance gap that requires a new approach?
- Engage key stakeholders. Involve the original project sponsors, key leaders, and other affected parties in the update process. Their buy-in is essential for the revised charter's success.
- Redefine objectives and scope. Adjust the program's vision, objectives, and scope to align with the new strategic direction. Be explicit about what is in and out of scope to prevent mission creep.
- Revise roles and responsibilities. Clarify any changes to roles, accountability, and the governance structure. This ensures a clear decision-making process for the updated initiative.
- Update the implementation plan. Adjust the high-level timeline and resource allocation to reflect any changes in the plan. The budget and resources needed should be clearly defined.
- Secure formal approval. The charter is a formal contract between stakeholders. The project sponsor and other key leaders must formally approve any changes.
- Communicate the update. Broadly communicate the updated charter to the rest of the organization. Clearly explain the reasons for the changes and what they mean for the transformation moving forward. Transparency is key to maintaining trust.
5. SAP Customer Support Strategy
SAP's customer support strategy is driven by a shift from a reactive to a proactive, AI-powered model that focuses on seamless, real-time, and personalized service. The strategy aims to not just fix problems, but to accelerate business value and success for customers.
Key pillars of SAP's support strategy
Proactive and predictive support
- Preventing issues: SAP leverages AI and machine learning to analyze application and support data to anticipate and prevent issues before they arise.
- Autonomous assistance: AI is used to assess situations, make decisions, and take action, often before a customer is even aware of a potential problem.
- Built-in support: Support is embedded directly within SAP's cloud applications, providing a consistent, context-specific experience for users.
Real-time and personalized engagement
- Expert Chat: Customers can engage in real-time chat sessions with the same technical experts who handle support tickets.
- Schedule an Expert: This feature allows users to schedule a live, one-on-one session with a technical expert to address a complex issue.
- Tiered engagement model: Starting in early 2026, SAP will introduce a tiered model with different success plans—Foundational, Standard, and Premium—to align with varying customer needs for cloud operations, support, and innovation.
AI and innovation
- Agentic AI: SAP uses "agentic AI," which goes beyond basic automation to deliver faster, smarter assistance. This includes autoresponders, smart log analyzers, and co-pilots for support engineers to summarize cases and recommend solutions.
- Knowledge management: AI-powered knowledge management tools provide customers and support agents with convenient, contextual, and intelligent self-service options.
- "Joule" integration: SAP's generative AI assistant, Joule, is integrated into the foundational success plan for cloud solutions, helping customers ramp up on SAP Business AI.
Customer success and business transformation
- End-to-end visibility: The strategy focuses on connecting all processes and providing end-to-end visibility to reduce friction for customers.
- Achieving strategic goals: SAP's customer support works closely with product development to help customers achieve their strategic business goals.
- Premium engagements: For customers facing complex, company-wide challenges, SAP offers tailored premium engagements with dedicated experts to drive strategic business transformations.
The shift from reactive to proactive support
Historically, customer care was primarily reactive, focused on resolving issues as they arose. SAP's modern strategy uses AI and real-time data to create a predictive and preventive support model that reduces downtime and minimizes effort for the customer. By leveraging its repository of historical issues, SAP can anticipate problems and offer solutions before they significantly impact a customer's business
6. SAP AI Strategy
SAP's AI strategy centers on providing "Business AI," which seamlessly integrates artificial intelligence into core enterprise processes to enhance efficiency, productivity, and decision-making for its customers. The strategy is built on an "AI-first, Suite-first" approach, where AI capabilities are embedded directly into SAP's applications, prioritizing practical business outcomes.
Key components of SAP's AI strategy
1. SAP AI Copilot, Joule
- Centralized AI interface: Joule acts as an AI copilot and agent, serving as the main user interface for interacting with SAP applications.
- Natural language interaction: Users can ask questions or give commands in natural language, allowing Joule to automate tasks, provide contextual insights, and assist with decisions based on business data.
- Proactive assistance: In addition to user-initiated tasks, Joule offers proactive and context-sensitive help across both SAP and third-party applications.
- Agent framework: Joule uses AI agents to perform complex, end-to-end tasks across different business processes, with new agents continuously being developed for specific use cases.
2. The Business AI Flywheel
This three-part framework is designed to create a virtuous cycle of continuous intelligence:
- Applications: SAP embeds AI directly into its entire suite of applications, including ERP, Human Capital Management (HCM), Supply Chain Management (SCM), and Customer Experience (CX).
- Data: SAP leverages its vast trove of customer business data, unified within the SAP Business Data Cloud, to provide the contextual grounding for its AI models.
- AI: These insights are then fed back into the applications, creating more intelligent and efficient business processes.
3. Strategic partnerships and acquisitions
SAP strengthens its AI capabilities through internal development and external collaboration. SAP has acquired companies such as LeanIX, WalkMe, and SmartRecruiters to expand and automate its portfolio. The WalkMe acquisition helps make Joule an "omnipresent" copilot that can provide assistance across different applications. SAP partners with technology providers to enrich its AI offerings. These include:
- Databricks: Collaborates on a data lakehouse platform to enable advanced analytics and machine learning on SAP data.
- Perplexity AI: Integrates its answer engine into Joule to combine SAP business data with public web knowledge for richer query results.
- Google Cloud: Uses Google's Gemini models to enhance supply chain risk mitigation.
4. Responsible AI and customer focus
SAP's AI development follows principles of relevance, reliability, and responsibility. The strategy focuses on:
- Ethical guidelines: SAP established guiding principles for AI in 2018, ensuring AI is built with security, privacy, and ethics in mind.
- Business-relevant outcomes: AI features are developed to solve specific, tangible business problems.
- Enterprise-grade trust: SAP builds a "trust moat" by de-risking the AI journey for large, regulated organizations through clear ethical and data privacy commitments.
SAP's AI investments and results
- Massive upskilling: SAP has committed to upskilling its workforce for the AI era, dedicating a significant portion of employee time to AI training and making AI skills mandatory.
- Increased scenarios: The company is expanding the number of available AI-powered scenarios in its portfolio, aiming for more than 400 by the end of 2025.
- Cloud transformation: SAP uses AI to help customers accelerate their migration to the cloud with AI-powered tools for code and process analysis.
7. SAP Global Adoption & Experience
SAP Global Adoption and Experience refers to the suite of services offered by SAP to assist customers with software implementation, licensing, and ongoing use. The program is designed to help customers maximize value from their SAP investment, particularly as they migrate to cloud-based solutions like RISE with SAP and S/4HANA.
A significant aspect of SAP's efforts has focused on the large number of customers still using its legacy ERP Central Component (ECC). A 2024 analysis from Gartner found that less than 40% of ECC customers had secured S/4HANA licenses, highlighting the challenges SAP faces with broader adoption.
SAP's Global Adoption and Experience services
The Global Adoption & Experience (GA&X) Center of Expertise (CoE) offers services that include:
- Adoption Insights Service: Leverages advanced analytics to help customers forecast cloud consumption and optimize their future Bills of Material (BOM).
- Customer Measurement Service: Provides individualized enablement for managing license utilization and best practices for measurement, with expert support to clarify licensing topics.
- Digital Access Evaluation Service: Guides customers through the process of evaluating their document generation to determine the suitability of the SAP Digital Access license model.
- License Pathfinder for RISE: Facilitates the assessment and projection of license requirements for customers migrating to RISE with SAP.
- License Rights Management Service: Helps customers align their software usage with their contractual agreements and manage associated risks.
The customer experience perspective
The "experience" component of SAP's strategy focuses on ensuring a positive and effective user journey. Key initiatives include:
- Customer-specific AI adoption: Provides tailored solutions built into SAP Business Suite to help customers adopt and benefit from SAP Business AI.
- Employee experience management: Tools like SAP SuccessFactors Work Zone and solutions from partners like Strada Global are used to create personalized, role-based workspaces that unify tools and communications.
- SAP User Experience Management by Knoa: An application that analyzes user behavior to maximize the value of SAP solutions and boost performance efficiency.
- Cloud transformation: A streamlined cloud delivery and support methodology that focuses on enhancing customer satisfaction and delivering value.
Challenges and critiques
Despite these efforts, SAP has faced criticism regarding its customer experience and adoption strategy.
- Pressure on licensing: The rebranding of SAP's audit and license compliance arm to "Global Adoption Insights & License Compliance" and a "laser-focus" on indirect usage in 2025 has put pressure on customers. This has led to scrutiny of usage through third-party applications and generated concern among the customer base.
- Critiques from consultants: Some consulting firms have expressed the opinion that SAP is "losing touch" with customer needs and risks significant attrition by prioritizing aggressive licensing practices over customer sentiment.
- S/4HANA adoption lag: The slow adoption of S/4HANA by legacy ECC customers, highlighted by Gartner, signals that many customers are not yet convinced of the value proposition or are unwilling to undertake the large-scale migration effort.
Summary by SBN CLT member Roy Halvorsen from Orkla from the Global User Group meeting at SAPS Head Office in Walldorf on November 24-26.
See also pictures on this link and this link