As 2022 came to a close, SAP busi­ness and thought lead­ers fin­ished work and joined with SAP Press last month to release ​“Busi­ness as Unusu­al with SAP, How Lead­ers Nav­i­gate Mega­trends.” In the book, Thomas Sauer­es­sig, SAP Exec­u­tive Board Mem­ber, Prod­uct Engi­neer­ing, and Peter Maier, SAP Pres­i­dent of Indus­tries and Cus­tomer Advi­so­ry, posit a series of mega­trends already at play in cus­tomer envi­ron­ments — trends they see will have an increas­ing impact on orga­ni­za­tions’ busi­ness and tech­nol­o­gy initiatives.

The for­mat not only fea­tures Sauer­es­sig and Maier’s obser­va­tions and argu­ments, but they’ve tapped SAP cus­tomers in a nar­ra­tive style as well as high­light­ed indus­tries most affect­ed by a giv­en trend. 

ASUG pro­vid­ed a series of ques­tions to the authors to fur­ther under­stand and ampli­fy key themes, includ­ing what char­ac­ter­izes ​“busi­ness as unusu­al.” The authors’ joint respons­es were pro­vid­ed via email for the inter­view for­mat below. The book can be found here.

Ques­tion: What inspired and moti­vat­ed you to write this book now?

Answer: In our cus­tomer con­ver­sa­tions, we expe­ri­ence how the mega­trends we dis­cuss in our book dri­ve our cus­tomers’ busi­ness and tech­nol­o­gy agen­da. We found it worth­while to share their voice and our per­spec­tive on how lead­ers suc­cess­ful­ly nav­i­gate indus­try mega­trends using the capa­bil­i­ties of our intel­li­gent suite and our intel­li­gent technologies.

Q: The high-pro­file orig­i­nal Mega­trends book by John Nais­bitt was pub­lished in 1982; what are the key mega­trend dif­fer­ences between then and now?

A: John Nais­bitt iden­ti­fied and dis­cussed glob­al mega­trends 40 years ago and review­ing how these trends have played out has been inter­est­ing. We have seen his pre­dict­ed tran­si­tion from the indus­try to the infor­ma­tion soci­ety mate­ri­al­ize, but his vision of a long-term busi­ness replac­ing short-term prof­it cer­tain­ly has not come true — and, sur­pris­ing­ly, the Club of Rome’s ​“Lim­its of Growth” in 1972 hasn’t influ­enced his pre­dic­tions. And what we have learned: even mega­trends have a lim­it­ed shelf life, and Naisbitt’s glob­al mega­trends show this very clearly.

Con­se­quent­ly, we don’t claim that the ​“2022 mega­trends” we have iden­ti­fied are per­ma­nent phe­nom­e­na, but they have been and will be dri­ving the busi­ness agen­da of our cus­tomers for the fol­low­ing years. Of course, we can’t antic­i­pate the impact of mas­sive­ly dis­rup­tive events, but we see the long-term valid­i­ty and effect of mega­trends like sus­tain­able ener­gy, every­thing as a ser­vice, or cir­cu­lar economy. 

Q: Who is the intend­ed audi­ence for this book?

A: Unlike most SAP Press books, ​“Busi­ness as Unusu­al with SAP” address­es a busi­ness audi­ence by shar­ing how oth­er busi­ness lead­ers nav­i­gate indus­try mega­trends. There’s always some­thing to learn from oth­ers. But we also address enter­prise archi­tects oper­at­ing at the inter­face between busi­ness and IT. This bound­ary has been soft­en­ing as busi­ness lead­ers become more tech-savvy and IT archi­tects and experts acquire more busi­ness knowl­edge to engage in busi­ness and IT strat­e­gy discussions.

Q: The book has an inter­est­ing struc­ture — chap­ters plus thought exper­i­ments, relat­ed mega­trends, and key indus­tries asso­ci­at­ed with each. What is the think­ing behind this struc­ture and its val­ue to the reader?

A: The thought exper­i­ments intend to engage read­ers by allow­ing them to think through the impact of a mega­trend on the best prac­tice, imag­ine what ​“Busi­ness as Unusu­al” would look like, and how this would change their busi­ness. We also chose this approach to make it very clear that we don’t have defin­i­tive answers, but ask­ing com­pelling ques­tions is often a great first step in a trans­for­ma­tion jour­ney. This kind of engage­ment can be very hands-on: Our expe­ri­ence cen­ters in major SAP loca­tions show­case a range of dig­i­tal tech­nolo­gies inte­grat­ed with state-of-the-art busi­ness solu­tions to cre­ate an envi­ron­ment that inspires new think­ing with a dig­i­tized retail store, shopfloor robot­ics, sen­sors, and mixed real­i­ty scenarios. 

Each mega­trend is rel­e­vant for a range of indus­tries, and we observe how flu­ent indus­try bound­aries are becom­ing in many cus­tomer and part­ner con­ver­sa­tions. The mega­trends them­selves don’t exist in iso­la­tion. There are con­nec­tions: Inte­grat­ed Mobil­i­ty, Every­thing as a Ser­vice, and New Cus­tomer Path­ways have strong links. So, we want to moti­vate lat­er­al think­ing and read­ing — mov­ing across indus­try bound­aries and explor­ing the ter­ri­to­ry of con­nect­ed megatrends. 

Q: Also, in the book, there are ref­er­ences to ​“next prac­tices.” Could you define this and help read­ers embrace ​“the next” when it’s chal­leng­ing enough with today’s prac­tices, process­es, demands, etc.?

A: Indus­try best prac­tices have always been evolv­ing, dri­ven by a com­bi­na­tion of busi­ness and tech­nol­o­gy inno­va­tion. Take the evo­lu­tion of car man­u­fac­tur­ing from the first assem­bly lines in Ford fac­to­ries to the high­ly flex­i­ble mod­ern ​“con­fig­ure-to-order” that sup­ports mak­ing a gazil­lion vari­ants of high­ly cus­tomized vehi­cles. And look at how dig­i­tal tech­nolo­gies, from punch cards to arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence, have changed how peo­ple and machines work togeth­er. We observe that the speed of trans­for­ma­tion is get­ting faster, dri­ven by busi­ness and tech­nol­o­gy mega­trends and dis­rup­tions. Con­se­quent­ly, we see lead­ers fol­low two par­al­lel tracks: a ​“best-prac­tice” track to dri­ve effi­cien­cy and excel­lence in know­ing what and how things are best done today. And then they run the ​“next-prac­tice” track to exper­i­ment with new ways to do the same — and dif­fer­ent — things to reach the next lev­el of dif­fer­en­ti­a­tion and effi­cien­cy: just look at the dis­cus­sion about how the auto indus­try opti­mizes their cur­rent busi­ness mod­el of mak­ing, sell­ing, and financ­ing cars to shap­ing new busi­ness mod­els for an era of inte­grat­ed mobility.

Q: Why is now, this moment, a time of ​“busi­ness as unusual?”

A: The last three years have shown us how fun­da­men­tal­ly and quick­ly our world can change and how impor­tant the abil­i­ty to adapt to change rapid­ly has become. Mul­ti-year cor­po­rate pro­grams have been com­pressed into quar­ters, months, and weeks. Fun­da­men­tal beliefs have gone out of the win­dow. And we per­ceive a new open-mind­ed­ness of many lead­ers to try new things – to embrace the idea of run­ning a ​“busi­ness as unusu­al.” So we think it makes sense to use this momen­tum and start cus­tomer engage­ments to dis­cuss how mega­trends can inspire new ways of doing new things. 

Q: We noticed in the final chap­ter a ref­er­ence to the sta­bil­i­ty of cryp­tocur­ren­cy. Giv­en recent devel­op­ments (FTX, etc.), do you still see that as an impor­tant future megatrend?

A: By their very nature, finan­cial ser­vices have been the first to get dig­i­tized (yes, there are some parts of the world where paper checks are still com­mon) because bank­ing and insur­ance ​“prod­ucts” can be ​“made” and ​“oper­at­ed” in data cen­ters. In our book, we observe that ​“the speed of inno­va­tion and time to mar­ket is only lim­it­ed by the prod­uct designer’s cre­ativ­i­ty and the time required to define and imple­ment new prod­ucts and ser­vices in the bank­ing and insur­ance sys­tems.” In the exper­i­men­tal space shaped by fintech’s many ideas and inno­va­tions, both from star­tups and loose­ly teth­ered sub­sidiaries, still under­ly the ​“hype cycle,” and it’s dif­fi­cult to pre­dict which will sur­vive. Cryp­tocur­ren­cies hold many promis­es, but they are also sub­ject to the same prin­ci­ples as oth­er vehi­cles to store and trans­act finan­cial val­ue: trust by the peo­ple who believe in the nar­ra­tive that you can exchange a few met­al coins in your pock­et with a loaf of bread at your bak­ery. If this trust goes away, any cur­ren­cy will fail. So, we don’t see (or describe) cryp­tocur­ren­cies as a mega­trend but as one ele­ment in the Future of Cap­i­tal and Risk mega­trend, in which bank­ing, insur­ance, and cap­i­tal mar­kets are fun­da­men­tal­ly chang­ing. We fea­ture three case stud­ies – Bank of Lon­don, Ergo Mobil­i­ty, and Deutsche Börse – to illus­trate dra­mat­ic changes hap­pen­ing in the sec­tor. Ergo Mobil­i­ty, for exam­ple, focus­es on Smart Insur­ance for the next gen­er­a­tion of Smart Cars.

Q: Is this book unusu­al in how it tapped customers/​leaders for input?

A: Alleged­ly, the great physi­cist Niels Bohr found that ​“pre­dic­tions are hard, espe­cial­ly about the future.” So, it made a lot of sense to not only rely on our own points of view about the mega­trends shap­ing the indus­tries but tap into the wis­dom of a well-select­ed small crowd of cus­tomers, part­ners, and our SAP experts. We found their insights so valu­able that we let them speak direct­ly rather than para­phrase them. Of course, we are very grate­ful for their time shar­ing their per­spec­tives on how mega­trends trans­form industries.

Q: Were any ASUG mem­bers tapped for input? 

A: All con­trib­u­tors to the book are list­ed in the appen­dix, and there’s a good like­li­hood that there is a num­ber of ASUG mem­bers among them. In total, we inter­viewed lead­ers and experts in 26 coun­tries to present a holis­tic pic­ture of how mega­trends impact dif­fer­ent economies and geographies.

Q: How is this book most reflec­tive of mega­trends in the North Amer­i­can market?

A: Today, busi­ness is glob­al, but the mega­trends mate­ri­al­ize dif­fer­ent­ly in dif­fer­ent coun­tries. Take the Sus­tain­able Ener­gy mega­trend: North Amer­i­ca is in the com­fort­able posi­tion of being a lead­ing provider of fos­sil fuels for their own econ­o­my and beyond. Com­bine this with the vast poten­tial for renew­able ener­gy (such as deserts for solar and wind pow­er), and the sta­tus of the Unit­ed States as a super­pow­er looks quite safe. Com­pare this to the geopo­lit­i­cal and geo­graph­i­cal posi­tion of oth­er still lead­ing economies in Europe: we are cur­rent­ly expe­ri­enc­ing the risks of a depen­den­cy on ener­gy imports. So: the mega­trends are tru­ly glob­al, as are the sup­ply chains, the finan­cial net­work, and the plan­e­tary bound­aries our economies oper­ate in, but they affect soci­eties and economies dif­fer­ent­ly. We believe we’ve found a good mix of per­spec­tives across geo­gra­phies and indus­try val­ue chains.

Q: What is the most optimistic/​opportunistic/​positive trend in the nar­ra­tive, and why? And what is the most pessimistic/​problematic trend dis­cussed in the nar­ra­tive, and why?

A: We believe that every sin­gle mega­trend we dis­cuss holds threats and promis­es, depend­ing on the reader’s atti­tude to run­ning a ​“busi­ness as unusu­al.” Mov­ing from sell­ing prod­ucts to pro­vid­ing and mon­e­tiz­ing the out­come of using the prod­uct (our ​“Every­thing as a Ser­vice” mega­trend) can be viewed as a prob­lem for a busi­ness — or it can be treat­ed as a great oppor­tu­ni­ty to cre­ate and expand new rev­enue streams, devel­op new busi­ness mod­els, and estab­lish new cus­tomer rela­tion­ships. Through­out our research and dis­cus­sions with cus­tomers, part­ners, and SAP experts, the opportunity/​threat bal­ance shift­ed from see­ing prob­lems and chal­lenges to appre­ci­at­ing the poten­tial for inno­va­tion and new busi­ness rela­tion­ships. And, of course, we are very hap­py and pleased that our SAP solu­tions will play key roles in tack­ling the chal­lenges and cap­tur­ing the promised val­ue from trans­form­ing busi­ness process­es and busi­ness models.

Q: What do you want read­ers to, in the end, learn and do dif­fer­ent­ly, hav­ing read the book?

A: The mega­trends we dis­cuss will impact the core busi­ness of many cur­rent and future SAP cus­tomers in all indus­tries. Lead­ers always see the poten­tial in change — and that’s what the mega­trends affect. If our read­ers are moti­vat­ed to see the mega­trends as oppor­tu­ni­ties to cre­ate new val­ue for their busi­ness: we’ll be hap­py. If they feel com­pelled to work with their col­leagues to fur­ther evolve their busi­ness process­es and busi­ness mod­els: great. If this results in activ­i­ties and engage­ment with SAP and our part­ners to dis­cuss how we can con­tribute to cap­tur­ing those oppor­tu­ni­ties: just bril­liant. In any case, we are look­ing for­ward to their feed­back and inspir­ing discussions

Q: Any oth­er com­ments for the ASUG community? 

A: Many ASUG mem­bers are lead­ers in their respec­tive indus­tries. We encour­age them to review what their peers say and think about the mega­trends we dis­cuss in ​“Busi­ness as Unusu­al with SAP.” We also encour­age the ASUG mem­bers to engage with their SAP teams and dis­cuss how we can joint­ly turn the mega­trends into busi­ness oppor­tu­ni­ties and impact.