The COVID-19 out­break has placed a lot strain — and atten­tion — on sup­ply chains and the pro­cure­ment process. Com­pa­nies are rely­ing on soft­ware solu­tions more than ever to main­tain their sup­ply chains and sup­port the pro­cure­ment process. 

ASUG recent­ly sat down with Chris Hay­don, pres­i­dent of SAP pro­cure­ment solu­tions, to dis­cuss SAP’s approach to intel­li­gent spend and how SAP is address­ing cus­tomer con­cerns and requests through its pro­cure­ment offerings. 

Jim: Chris, thanks for join­ing me. Why don’t you start by explain­ing your cur­rent responsibilities?

Chris: This is a new­ly formed func­tion with­in SAP, as we want to take an end-to-end, full-mar­ket view of win­ning in the var­i­ous lines of busi­ness or mar­ket seg­ments. I’m lead­ing the end-to-end busi­ness strat­e­gy approach and the cus­tomer-fac­ing voice and per­sona for SAP Pro­cure­ment Solu­tions, which includes SAP Ari­ba, SAP Field­glass and SAP S/4HANA oper­a­tional pro­cure­ment. I help orches­trate our go-to-mar­ket strate­gies, cus­tomer suc­cess orga­ni­za­tions, and our prod­uct and engi­neer­ing orga­ni­za­tions. My team is always look­ing at how we can orches­trate the best capa­bil­i­ties of SAP from a prod­uct, sales, and ser­vice per­spec­tive to deliv­er busi­ness out­comes for the customer.

Jim: You’ve been work­ing in this par­tic­u­lar space at SAP for some time, includ­ing in your pre­vi­ous role as the chief strat­e­gy offi­cer for SAP Ari­ba. How has this expe­ri­ence equipped you for your cur­rent position?

Chris: I start­ed study­ing com­put­ing in uni­ver­si­ty back in the day, before mov­ing into pro­cure­ment. I worked in pro­cure­ment for one of our cus­tomer orga­ni­za­tions for near­ly a decade. I’ve been an actu­al prac­ti­tion­er, whether it’s as a pur­chas­ing offi­cer or work­ing in strate­gic sourc­ing. I’ve walked a mile in our customer’s shoes. And that has cer­tain­ly helped me. The first oper­at­ing site I was at just hap­pened to run SAP, as well.

I was work­ing on the busi­ness net­work side of a com­pa­ny that was acquired by Ari­ba. This gave me a great under­stand­ing of how to man­age and orches­trate the end-to-end pro­cure­ment and sup­ply chain process­es from VRP to ERP and every­thing in between.

While work­ing in the SAP Ari­ba ecosys­tem, I had sev­er­al roles includ­ing lead­ing prod­uct and solu­tion man­age­ment, direct­ing strat­e­gy, and over­see­ing the cus­tomer orga­ni­za­tion (which includes the renew­al base, adop­tion, ser­vices, and sup­port). All this has giv­en me a full 360-degree view of the tech­nol­o­gy and how it applies to the busi­ness out­come. This back­ground, com­bined with the fact that I’m a fel­low prac­ti­tion­er, has aug­ment­ed me well.

Jim: How has the cus­tomer per­spec­tive assist­ed you in your cur­rent role?

Chris: It’s some­thing we talk so much about. It’s not about what fea­tures and func­tions we offer in our prod­ucts. It’s about the busi­ness out­comes the cus­tomer wants to achieve and align­ing our capa­bil­i­ties to help the cus­tomer achieve them. I’m always think­ing about things such as what a pur­chas­ing offi­cer needs to do or how to assist a cat­e­go­ry man­ag­er. Admit­ted­ly, I’m a bit rusty in some areas. But I think the cus­tomers keep you pret­ty hon­est. Under­stand­ing what they do and putting it in con­text is very important.

Jim: Can you explain SAP’s approach to intel­li­gent spend? What advan­tages do orga­ni­za­tions gain by look­ing at these busi­ness func­tions holistically?

Chris: Orga­ni­za­tions need to man­age the end-to-end out­come across their whole spend base while also being very sophis­ti­cat­ed in where they apply the resources. That trans­lates to sup­ply base devel­op­ment, learn­ing the cost of goods sold, and boost­ing sales, rev­enue and cus­tomer reten­tion. Our approach to spend man­age­ment is ensur­ing we look across the four pil­lars of the spend that need to be man­aged, whether that’s indi­rect, direct, main­te­nance, repair, oper­at­ing sup­plies, or ser­vices. It’s not just about SAP Ari­ba, SAP Field­glass, or SAP Con­cur. We think about this as an end-to-end process.

That’s our dif­fer­en­tia­tor. Our cus­tomers and part­ners are always encour­ag­ing that end-to-end view. They are large­ly tired of bespoke solu­tions. While bespoke solu­tions can dri­ve deep into some spe­cif­ic sce­nar­ios and net­works, har­ness­ing that end-to-end vis­i­bil­i­ty is vital.

[ad]

Jim: What are some of the main cus­tomer pain points that you keep hear­ing about in the intel­li­gent spend space? How is SAP address­ing those pain points?

Chris: Adop­tion is num­ber one. We are always con­sid­er­ing how to make the solu­tions eas­i­er to use. But it isn’t just ease of use. We are also always exam­in­ing how to elim­i­nate trans­ac­tions and rethink the way these process­es are done to make them more effi­cient. The sec­ond pain point is sur­round­ing insights. Our cus­tomers want impact­ful insight to help them make faster deci­sions, whether that’s sup­ply chain vis­i­bil­i­ty or run­ning sourc­ing events. In our road map, we are focus­ing on the out­come expe­ri­ence for all our appli­ca­tions and pro­cure­ment processes.

Jim: Con­grat­u­la­tions on a suc­cess­ful SAP Ari­ba Live dig­i­tal con­fer­ence. I know it can be dif­fi­cult to piv­ot from a live event to a dig­i­tal one. What were your thoughts on how the event went? 

Chris: I was excit­ed and sur­prised by the basic views we had. Rough­ly speak­ing by the num­bers, nor­mal­ly for SAP Ari­ba Live we host about 3,500 to 4,000 peo­ple. For our vir­tu­al event, we had more than 12,000 dig­i­tal atten­dees and more than 15,000 views of the keynote and break­out ses­sions This event showed the pow­er of dig­i­tal, and I think that goes to the core of what SAP is all about: the dig­i­tal net­work. We were able to get more part­ners, sup­pli­ers, and buy­ers than we imagined.

We also brought a lot of val­ue to our cus­tomers. The pow­er of SAP Ari­ba Live has always been cus­tomer-led and inter­ac­tive. Being able to host it dig­i­tal­ly was very well appre­ci­at­ed by our users.

Jim: Dur­ing SAP Ari­ba Live, you announced that SAP was open­ing access to SAP Ari­ba Dis­cov­ery to non­cus­tomers. Why don’t you walk me through why SAP made that deci­sion and what you hope will come out of it?

Chris: SAP Ari­ba Dis­cov­ery always been open to every­one. What we want­ed to do, frankly, is remove all bar­ri­ers and match sup­ply with demand, so we dropped the fee for sup­pli­ers to respond to buy­er post­ings until the end of June 2020. SAP is all about mak­ing the world run bet­ter improv­ing people’s lives. Some of the ear­ly indi­ca­tions com­ing out of Asia about COVID-19 cen­tered around try­ing to find and match med­ical sup­plies. That got us think­ing this would be a good idea.

The response has been very, very grat­i­fy­ing. We just want­ed to help com­pa­nies match sup­ply and demand in this crit­i­cal time. As we all know now, sup­ply chains impact all of our dai­ly lives.

Jim: Speak­ing of COVID-19, this out­break has led to sub­stan­tial chal­lenges for the pro­cure­ment process. What are some of the ways you’re see­ing busi­ness­es deal with these challenges?

Chris: The spir­it of cama­raderie and part­ner­ship, with­out the need for a legal agree­ment, is a big cor­po­rate jump. We are see­ing a lot of that right now dur­ing the pan­dem­ic. It’s not about being a buy­er, sup­pli­er, or com­peti­tor. It’s about being a con­stituent in the community.

Anoth­er thing I’ve been watch­ing com­pa­nies adopt is a day zero start­up men­tal­i­ty. I came from a start­up, back in the day. Peo­ple are active­ly explor­ing the art of the pos­si­ble. That’s what you do every day in a start­up envi­ron­ment. You try one thing today and some­thing dif­fer­ent the next day.

There’s a mind­set that the cur­rent process doesn’t work. So, maybe now it’s time to rethink the way we do things and devel­op a new par­a­digm. I’m a pos­i­tive indi­vid­ual, so I think see­ing this lean-in atti­tude is fan­tas­tic. We’re also see­ing a lot more com­pa­nies try­ing to under­stand how all this affects peo­ple and how they can help their employ­ees deal with being remote. That’s positive.

Jim: How are cus­tomers who use the SAP pro­cure­ment solu­tions bet­ter equipped to deal not only with these cur­rent chal­lenges but also any future ones?

Chris: When you do busi­ness with a great com­pa­ny like SAP, with its fan­tas­tic cus­tomer base and finan­cial strength, we have assur­ances that we can keep the lights on because we’re entrust­ed to run cus­tomers’ busi­ness processes.

The sec­ond thing is a large num­ber of our pro­cure­ment cus­tomers are in the cloud. The abil­i­ty to deploy, ramp up, right, change, and recon­fig­ure process­es is accel­er­at­ed. Now when the appetite is increased and the bar­ri­ers to change man­age­ment are now dif­fer­ent, cloud-deployed sys­tems give cus­tomers a degree of agili­ty and con­ti­nu­ity that is high­ly valued.

As the future changes, we just keep rolling. The accel­er­a­tion to more dig­i­tal inter­ac­tions, col­lab­o­ra­tions, and infra­struc­ture is only going to increase after COVID-19. It’s still very ear­ly and we want to make sure we focus on get­ting out of this cri­sis while help­ing our cus­tomers get out of it. But until there’s no doubt the reper­cus­sions of COVID-19 are going to refac­tor industry.

Jim: What are some of the inno­va­tions com­ing down the road that excite you the most?

Chris: We’re hyper-focused on chang­ing and giv­ing a dif­fer­en­ti­at­ed out­come expe­ri­ence for our cus­tomers. I’m par­tic­u­lar­ly excit­ed about how we can start includ­ing risks and increas­ing­ly sus­tain­abil­i­ty events, alerts and noti­fi­ca­tions into any seg­ment or any por­tion of the end-to-end pro­cure­ment process and sup­ply chain. That’s where we can put impor­tant infor­ma­tion and insights into the hands of the peo­ple to make bet­ter, faster, and more-informed deci­sions. I’m excit­ed about that as we jour­ney through our road map.

Sec­on­dar­i­ly, I’m very excit­ed about how we will con­tin­ue to grow out and sup­port more of the direct mate­ri­als capa­bil­i­ty. How can we make sup­ply chains more agile and dri­ve vis­i­bil­i­ty? Dri­ving the end-to-end intel­li­gent enter­prise approach across our cus­tomer base is a big inno­va­tion that I’m excit­ed about. Our cus­tomers and our clients are always telling us to ​“unleash the end-to-end.” 

Jim: As a busi­ness leader dur­ing this cri­sis, what’s the most impor­tant thing that you’ve learned so far that you’ll car­ry with you after all this is over?

Chris: I think the most impor­tant thing is hav­ing the courage to re-ques­tion every process. I can’t recall a more hec­tic time oth­er than when I was work­ing at a Los Ange­les start­up and I didn’t see the sun for six weeks. Seri­ous­ly, I did not see the sun. I was work­ing 14 hours a day for six weeks.

When you can get dif­fer­ent orga­ni­za­tions to rethink the process and focus togeth­er, it’s just amaz­ing what you can unpack and do. If we can make use of this sit­u­a­tion, I think we can over­come the next cri­sis when it comes and act in a more respon­sive way than what we’ve done. I don’t know whether you can ever pre­dict these things, but how you respond is the real measure.

Jim: Chris, thank you so much for your time. I appre­ci­ate it

Reg­is­ter today for ASUG­FOR­WARD our vir­tu­al expe­ri­ence June 22 – 25, and hear Chris Hay­don speak on an Ask-the-Experts pan­el focused on procurement.