Ker­ri Ten­brun­sel, SVP & GM of SAP BTP North Amer­i­ca at SAP, will be among the first speak­ers to wel­come atten­dees to the ASUG Best Prac­tices: SAP S/4HANA® and SAP Busi­ness Tech­nol­o­gy Plat­form (BTP) con­fer­ence this month.

To be held March 7 – 9 at the Renais­sance Phoenix Glen­dale Hotel & Spa in Glen­dale, AZ, the event will fea­ture a full slate of cus­tomer-led ses­sions and hands-on demon­stra­tions struc­tured to offer a 360-degree view of the SAP ecosys­tem while address­ing the most crit­i­cal chal­lenges faced by SAP part­ner and cus­tomer orga­ni­za­tions and their teams.

At her keynote ses­sion, titled ​“Acti­vate the Pow­er of SAP BTP to Accel­er­ate Inno­va­tion,” Ten­brun­sel will share the stage with Karthikeyan Nee­lamegam, Senior Direc­tor of EA at Flori­da Crys­tals, and Matt Golds­by, Direc­tor of IT at Swift Pre­pared Foods, both of whom will dis­cuss their trans­for­ma­tion jour­neys with SAP BTP. 

Pre­sent­ed in con­junc­tion with an SAP announce­ment, the keynote will reflect upon the capa­bil­i­ties of SAP BTP to accel­er­ate inno­va­tion and unlock busi­ness poten­tial across an entire orga­ni­za­tion, with Ten­brun­sel also pro­vid­ing her view of recent cus­tomer progress around con­fig­ur­ing SAP BTP. 

In an ASUG inter­view, Ten­brun­sel dis­cussed the state of SAP BTP adop­tion and con­sump­tion, as well as the sur­pris­es and mis­con­cep­tions cus­tomers are encoun­ter­ing along the way.

This is an edit­ed ver­sion of the interview.

Q: What are you most look­ing for­ward to address­ing through this keynote?

A: What I’m most excit­ed about is that it is such an incred­i­bly excit­ing sea­son right now for SAP Busi­ness Tech­nol­o­gy Plat­form. If you look around you in the world today, with the change and the inten­tion for trans­for­ma­tion, with the chal­lenges our cus­tomers face both with­in their own orga­ni­za­tions and exter­nal­ly with their end cus­tomers, and with the eco­nom­ic chal­lenges. We’re real­ly fac­ing more chal­lenges than ever before. What is so excit­ing right now is that BTP is based on dri­ving trans­for­ma­tion, agili­ty, flex­i­bil­i­ty, and opti­miza­tion — no mat­ter the sea­son. That’s the stan­dard plat­form. To bring that plat­form togeth­er with all of the chal­lenges that are hap­pen­ing in the world — hav­ing the right solu­tions at the right time — is powerful. 

So often, in today’s times, our cus­tomers under­stand that they must trans­form. We’re see­ing more of those trans­for­ma­tions hap­pen­ing now than ever. Three to five years ago, peo­ple saw trans­for­ma­tion com­ing but did­n’t know how to trans­form. Here we are now, in the mid­dle of the trans­for­ma­tion. To be in the mid­dle of such a sig­nif­i­cant moment and then to have solu­tions that can help empow­er orga­ni­za­tion­al agili­ty for our cus­tomers is incred­i­ble. If you look at the his­to­ry of SAP over the course of 50-plus years, you can expect that SAP is going to bring not only a point of view but also expe­ri­ence and knowl­edge. I think what I’m most excit­ed about is that what we have to talk about is so rel­e­vant to the issues that our cus­tomers face today. That’s pret­ty pow­er­ful. You don’t get those moments too often, and we cer­tain­ly have one of those moments right now.

Q: Your co-speak­ers include Matt Golds­by of Swift Pre­pared Foods and Karthik Nee­lamegam of Flori­da Crys­tals, two cus­tomers with SAP BTP trans­for­ma­tion suc­cess sto­ries who can speak to acti­vat­ing the pow­er of BTP with­in their own orga­ni­za­tions. Broad­ly, how would you assess cus­tomers’ progress with BTP these past few years?

A: BTP has been on a jour­ney. Just a few years ago, there was a lot of ask­ing, ​“What is the Busi­ness Tech­nol­o­gy Plat­form?” We spent a lot of time talk­ing about what it is, explain­ing how its strengths lie in its solu­tions, and how BTP is rel­e­vant for any prospect or cus­tomer, whether SAP or non-SAP, no mat­ter where they are in their jour­ney, be it on-premis­es or to the cloud. We were ini­tial­ly evan­ge­liz­ing the brand, help­ing peo­ple under­stand that BTP is so rel­e­vant to lock­ing down a plat­form that is flex­i­ble, effi­cient, and effec­tive. Cus­tomers now say, ​“Okay, I know what it is, but how does it work? Where do I start?” Cus­tomers say, ​“Okay, I’m inter­est­ed. I under­stand what it is. Now, I need to under­stand how to make it rel­e­vant for my busi­ness, based on where we are.” When you bring SAP S/4HANA into the con­ver­sa­tion, it real­ly comes alive. The pow­er of bring­ing BTP togeth­er with SAP S/4HANA, and the pre­de­fined con­tent that comes along with that, is unstop­pable, all the while going back to the key prin­ci­ples of cre­at­ing an effi­cient and effec­tive plat­form, dri­ving data insights, and pro­vid­ing intel­li­gence. You can have soft­ware solu­tions that stand on their own, and that’s great, but when you can real­ly bring them togeth­er, that’s when you can see that trans­for­ma­tion tak­ing place. It’s an excit­ing place for the port­fo­lio, but it’s quite the jour­ney that we’ve been on.

Q: How sig­nif­i­cant­ly did your obser­va­tions at last fall’s SAP BTP Sum­mit, specif­i­cal­ly around the kinds of ques­tions cus­tomers were ask­ing, inform the mes­sage you plan to deliv­er to atten­dees at this next SAP S/4HANA and SAP BTP Conference?

A: Quite a bit, actu­al­ly. There’s so much tech­nol­o­gy out there. And it’s clear that the hearts and minds of the cus­tomers, in many ways, are over­whelmed with their options. At the same time, at the tech­nol­o­gy lay­er, how do they cre­ate envi­ron­ments that can effi­cient­ly scale and run when there are so many options out there? If you think about a car that’s going to dri­ve down the street, the car, in our case, would have an SAP S/4HANA engine, and it has four wheels in order to get from point A to point B. When it comes to BTP, you can use our wheels, or you can use some­body else’s. The fact of the mat­ter is that you’ve got to have four wheels that will dri­ve your data man­age­ment strate­gies, that will dri­ve your ana­lyt­ics approach, and that will dri­ve your busi­ness process automation. 

Whether it’s SAP BTP or some­body else’s wheels, cus­tomers are con­fused about who they should use, why, and when. We cap­i­tal­ize on ​“BTP Every­where,” the idea that we can have a con­ver­sa­tion with any cus­tomer or prospect, no mat­ter where they are in their trans­for­ma­tion, whether they’re SAP or non-SAP. That’s pow­er­ful because not every­body can say that, and not every­body has the pre­de­fined con­tent we do for SAP S/4HANA. Even when it’s not an SAP S/4HANA con­ver­sa­tion, such as when it’s per­haps an SAP Cloud dis­cus­sion, the fact that we can inte­grate with oth­er non-SAP envi­ron­ments is where we see that effec­tive­ness. We want to make sure that, when you’re dri­ving that car, you have SAP BTP wheels on it because we know the pow­er of inte­gra­tion and appli­ca­tion devel­op­ment and how crit­i­cal that is to stan­dard­iz­ing appli­ca­tion changes at the low­est lev­el. Cus­tomers are just so curi­ous to under­stand, ​“Where do I start? How do I begin? Here are my chal­lenges. Where’s the biggest bang for my buck in dri­ving efficiencies?”

Q: What are cus­tomers most sur­prised by these days con­cern­ing SAP BTP? 

A: Most cus­tomers are sur­prised to find that they already own a por­tion of SAP BTP. I don’t think peo­ple real­ize that. SAP has his­tor­i­cal­ly been an on-premis­es com­pa­ny, and we are the mas­ters at sell­ing soft­ware. We take pride in our cul­ture of sales excel­lence and the abil­i­ty to dri­ve busi­ness val­ue for our cus­tomers. But, as you move into the Cloud mod­el, it becomes no longer about sell­ing the soft­ware. It becomes about adopt­ing the soft­ware and con­sum­ing it. Adop­tion is lever­ag­ing soft­ware to solve a busi­ness chal­lenge and to dri­ve val­ue. On the con­sump­tion side, that’s say­ing, ​“We believe in this as part of our orga­ni­za­tion­al change, and we’re going to help to con­sume that adop­tion.” That ulti­mate­ly leads to the soft­ware sales side of it all. What cus­tomers are sur­prised by is that, as we focus on that adop­tion and con­sump­tion, they already own por­tions of the Busi­ness Tech­nol­o­gy Platform. 

Remem­ber, there are four key pil­lars for SAP BTP: data man­age­ment, ana­lyt­ics and plan­ning, appli­ca­tion devel­op­ment and inte­gra­tion, and then our arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence and busi­ness process automa­tion. Espe­cial­ly if you’re talk­ing to an SAP cus­tomer, they prob­a­bly have a slice or two of our SAP Ana­lyt­ics Cloud. They prob­a­bly have some data archiv­ing, or data man­age­ment, from us. We just made some new announce­ments with SAP Build, an incred­i­bly excit­ing oppor­tu­ni­ty to allow the aver­age busi­ness user to be a devel­op­er and have the pow­er to inno­vate on an appli­ca­tion lay­er. How many times, as a user of any­thing, even as a con­sumer with a com­mer­cial-grade app, has that been pos­si­ble? You think, ​“This would be great, if I could do this.” SAP Build puts that pow­er in the hands of busi­ness users. There’s a short­age of devel­op­ers glob­al­ly. SAP’s com­mit­ment is to help dri­ve the adop­tion of SAP Build and to put the pow­er of inno­va­tion in the hands of that busi­ness user. That’s mag­nif­i­cent, really.

They’re sur­prised they have some of these solu­tions in their wheel­house. As part of our adop­tion and con­sump­tion, our focus for 2023 is to get out there and start with, ​“What do you already have, and how are you using it? Are you get­ting the val­ue out of it that you antic­i­pat­ed? What oth­er val­ue can you derive from the invest­ments you’ve already made? And then, how does that lead to mak­ing addi­tion­al invest­ments?” Adop­tion and con­sump­tion are key, but it starts with iden­ti­fy­ing what it is that some­one already has. Cus­tomers are also sur­prised to find that the BTP envi­ron­ment cross­es those four key pil­lars. Some­body who has some data man­age­ment port­fo­lio or runs on the SAP S/4HANA data­base, some­body who’s dri­ving the ana­lyt­ics piece, is sur­prised by how easy it is when you plug all this stuff togeth­er. It’s a start-any­where capability.

Q: Anoth­er ele­ment of SAP BTP is that, with­in its focus on effi­cien­cy, this plat­form has the pow­er to embed sus­tain­abil­i­ty into a company’s busi­ness DNA, as well as to estab­lish more reac­tive and resilient sup­ply chains. 

A: Sus­tain­abil­i­ty is the use case that BTP has been wait­ing for. We don’t get out in front that often; we dri­ve most of what we dri­ve behind the scenes. SAP Build is bring­ing us to the fore­front, putting appli­ca­tion enhance­ment capa­bil­i­ties in the hands of a busi­ness user. But when we look at sus­tain­abil­i­ty, it’s the most pow­er­ful use case in the world today; reg­u­la­to­ry require­ments are sweep­ing the globe, which will require com­pa­nies to pro­vide reg­u­la­to­ry infor­ma­tion rel­a­tive to their con­sump­tion. For us, it’s a mas­sive use case for the Busi­ness Tech­nol­o­gy Plat­form, lever­ag­ing SAP Ana­lyt­ics Cloud, SAP Data Ware­house Cloud, and SAP Sus­tain­abil­i­ty Con­trol Tow­er. It’s a very shiny, impact­ful use case, and we could­n’t be more delight­ed to have the pow­er of SAP BTP run­ning behind some­thing as impor­tant as sus­tain­abil­i­ty for the cus­tomers that we can reach. You’ll see more on sus­tain­abil­i­ty from SAP com­ing in 2023, as well.

Q: Last ques­tion. Reflect­ing on your role at SAP, what achieve­ments are you most proud of from this past year?

A: I love my jour­ney, and I feel very respon­si­ble for help­ing empow­er oth­ers to lis­ten to their own jour­neys and cre­ate a path that can be reward­ing, in terms of tech­nol­o­gy. Whether speak­ing to women in tech or to younger gen­er­a­tions about how to chart their careers, I feel blessed and hon­ored to have the role that I have — not only as the head of BTP. With our trans­for­ma­tion at this moment in time, to be able to impact and affect the world’s largest, most impact­ful cus­tomers and to do so for a 50-year-old com­pa­ny like SAP, I feel incred­i­bly hon­ored to do that. 

I feel hon­ored to be a leader at SAP, to be out in front lead­ing our own trans­for­ma­tion. We’re turn­ing the Titan­ic from an on-premis­es and ERP envi­ron­ment to the Cloud. I can not only say I was there, but I can also say that I had the hon­or, respon­si­bil­i­ty, and account­abil­i­ty to lead teams direct­ly into that trans­for­ma­tion. It’s incred­i­bly reward­ing to see the excite­ment on our cus­tomers’ faces and to hear the sto­ries of how this tech­nol­o­gy has trans­formed what they do with­in their com­pa­nies. That’s all just unbelievable.