Like most oth­er con­fer­ences sched­uled to take place this year, SAP­PHIRE NOW 2020 was reimag­ined and broad­cast vir­tu­al­ly to cus­tomers around the globe. In spite of some tech­ni­cal glitch­es at the start of the event that pre­vent­ed view­ers from watch­ing in real time, CEO Chris­t­ian Klein struck an opti­mistic and for­ward-look­ing tone as he made clear the path for­ward for SAP and its cus­tomers is through resilien­cy, sus­tain­abil­i­ty, and profitability. 

“I’m ask­ing all of us to become resilient, sus­tain­able, and prof­itable-growth com­pa­nies,” Klein said. ​“I believe SAP­PHIRE is the per­fect place for this call to action. There’s hard­ly any event that brings togeth­er so many deci­sion-mak­ers of the world’s most impor­tant com­pa­nies. I’m con­vinced that togeth­er as intel­li­gent enter­pris­es, we can turn the world’s biggest chal­lenges into our great­est opportunities.”

As in the past cou­ple of years of SAP­PHIRE NOW, this year’s focus was on the intel­li­gent enter­prise, but with a renewed inter­est in sim­plic­i­ty. Klein empha­sized the company’s ambi­tious goal of trans­form­ing all SAP cus­tomers into intel­li­gent enter­pris­es by help­ing them build an end-to-end plat­form of con­nect­ed busi­ness process­es. ​“The dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion is no longer an option, but a must,” he said. 

The Envi­ron­ment We Are in Dic­tates How Busi­ness Runs 

As the pan­dem­ic has taught us all, even the best-laid plans aren’t fail­proof. Busi­ness lead­ers have had to be ready to change on a minute’s notice. Beyond just being agile, they’ve need­ed to be smart. Those busi­ness­es with the right tech­nol­o­gy in place have been able to adapt and respond more effectively. 

“When we can’t inter­act in per­son,” Klein said, ​“we are forced to find oth­er ways of doing busi­ness. With the world in lock­down, busi­ness lead­ers across the world wor­ry whether their com­pa­nies have the resilience to sur­vive. We have all real­ized com­pa­nies which use inno­v­a­tive tech­nolo­gies were more com­pet­i­tive before the cri­sis and are more resilient in the cri­sis. Those that enabled new dig­i­tal busi­ness mod­els, drove automa­tion, and adapt­ed their sup­ply chains, were bet­ter pre­pared for the unexpected.”

Klein made the case that those busi­ness­es that can mas­ter resilien­cy can then move on to sus­tain­abil­i­ty, and then prof­itabil­i­ty. And this is all aid­ed by intel­li­gence. ​“To emerge stronger out of this cri­sis, it is now more impor­tant than ever to set up your enter­prise for growth. Today’s tech­nolo­gies allow you to do just that.” 

He stressed that as com­pa­nies turn to tech­nol­o­gy where pos­si­ble to sup­port the health and safe­ty of their work­force, they should not for­get the biggest chal­lenge the world faces, which is cli­mate change. ​“We are at the turn­ing point,” he said. ​“Just as we can­not ignore the pan­dem­ic and its impact, we can­not con­tin­ue to ignore cli­mate change and the con­tri­bu­tion of our enter­pris­es.” The solu­tion, accord­ing to Klein, is to use dig­i­tal tech­nol­o­gy to sig­nif­i­cant­ly reduce an enterprise’s car­bon out­put, which SAP can help cus­tomers start to do. ​“This could equal the pos­i­tive impact of 500 bil­lion trees. Just imag­ine the impact if all indus­tries join the effort. We can make this happen.” 

A Dif­fer­ent Vision for Dig­i­tal Trans­for­ma­tion from SAP 

Keep­ing the focus on his ear­li­er call to action, Klein empha­sized that com­pa­nies should not only be mea­sured by their finan­cial per­for­mance, but also their con­tri­bu­tion to soci­ety. ​“Togeth­er we can lead this change and become intel­li­gent enter­pris­es that make sus­tain­abil­i­ty prof­itable, and prof­itabil­i­ty sus­tain­able,” he said. ​“We can help you achieve this.” 

He cau­tioned that a true busi­ness trans­for­ma­tion doesn’t hap­pen by sim­ply imple­ment­ing an intel­li­gent work­flow solu­tion, or by select­ing a vari­ety of best-of-breed ven­dors, or by mov­ing your IT land­scape to a pub­lic cloud infra­struc­ture. Klein shift­ed to prod­uct strat­e­gy and empha­sized, ​“Only SAP can deliv­er the busi­ness out­comes [resilien­cy, prof­itabil­i­ty, and sus­tain­abil­i­ty] we just talked about.” 

He pro­vid­ed a new per­spec­tive on the SAP Intel­li­gent Enter­prise, which con­nects expe­ri­ence to intel­li­gence and oper­a­tions to pro­vide a com­plete, 360-degree view of an orga­ni­za­tion. He also intro­duced the company’s Cli­mate 21 pro­gram to help dri­ve sus­tain­able and prof­itable busi­ness deci­sions by under­stand­ing your organization’s car­bon foot­print. And final­ly, he dis­cussed the SAP Indus­try Cloud, which is a port­fo­lio of ver­ti­cal indus­try cloud solu­tions from SAP. ​“SAP Indus­try Cloud offers cloud-native indus­try appli­ca­tions, deliv­er­ing dif­fer­en­ti­at­ing and inno­v­a­tive busi­ness capa­bil­i­ties for the fourth indus­tri­al rev­o­lu­tion,” Klein said. ​“We will part­ner with our ecosys­tem to gain broad cov­er­age across all indus­tries, build­ing on our part­ners’ exper­tise to expand the scope of our solu­tions and enhance the ver­ti­cal capa­bil­i­ties of SAP. And with more than 400,000 cus­tomers world­wide, we will fur­ther evolve this.” 

Con­nect­ing the SAP Pieces and Sim­pli­fy­ing the Process 

For every­thing to work togeth­er with the aim of accom­plish­ing these goals, Klein point­ed to three key prin­ci­ples: inte­gra­tion, inno­va­tion, and agili­ty. ​“Regard­less of the size or indus­try, it is fun­da­men­tal in the dig­i­tal age to run your enter­prise seam­less­ly across the val­ue chain,” he said. 

Through­out his keynote, Klein reit­er­at­ed that the SAP solu­tion port­fo­lio — which includes the intel­li­gent enter­prise resource plan­ning (ERP) suite and the Busi­ness Tech­nol­o­gy Plat­form—embod­ies the intel­li­gent enter­prise vision, and does so through inte­gra­tion, inno­va­tion, agili­ty, and speed. ​“We want to serve you with the best pos­si­ble busi­ness out­comes to help you quick­ly adopt and get the most val­ue from our solu­tions to ensure your long-term suc­cess,” Klein said. ​“Togeth­er, we’ve embarked on the jour­ney to become intel­li­gent enter­pris­es. We have come a long way already, mak­ing a sig­nif­i­cant con­tri­bu­tion to growth while act­ing sus­tain­ably. Let’s show the world that when peo­ple and tech­nol­o­gy meet, amaz­ing things happen.”

ASUG lat­er had the oppor­tu­ni­ty to ask Klein more specif­i­cal­ly about the biggest chal­lenge he’s iden­ti­fied so far in his tenure as sole CEO and how he hoped to turn this chal­lenge into an oppor­tu­ni­ty. He not­ed that the cur­rent crises have affect­ed every­one includ­ing SAP, but this was the time SAP could step in and help. ​“SAP soft­ware is at the cen­ter of these needs. There’s a lot of buzz talk around dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion, but none of that applies to busi­ness trans­for­ma­tion. Our soft­ware runs the busi­ness process­es, and there’s no trans­for­ma­tion unless you trans­form the busi­ness process­es.” That, he said, meant SAP will remain rel­e­vant, even in dif­fi­cult times. 

Reg­is­ter today for ASUG­FOR­WARD, tak­ing place on June 22 – 25, to learn, exchange ideas, and gain infor­ma­tion about your SAP invest­ment that you can put into prac­tice immediately.