As orga­ni­za­tions adapt to the chang­ing busi­ness land­scape, they are lean­ing more on their IT depart­ments to help main­tain busi­ness con­ti­nu­ity and to make more pos­si­ble. COVID-19 caused pres­sure on the way com­pa­nies man­age their work­force, exe­cute on exist­ing and future projects, and, quite sim­ply, keep the busi­ness afloat. And these pres­sures are chang­ing almost constantly. 

We sat down with Michael Golz, CIO Amer­i­c­as at SAP, to dis­cuss how the IT team at SAP has had to adjust its work. We also dis­cussed what CIOs across the nation should pay atten­tion to going for­ward. ​“We’re obvi­ous­ly in a very spe­cial sit­u­a­tion,” he says. ​“What it means to be a CIO in today’s busi­ness land­scape changes week by week. As we learn more about the busi­ness impact and how com­pa­nies across the board are react­ing to it, we also learn more about how to rethink busi­ness process­es. It’s a flu­id sit­u­a­tion and every­one needs to remain flex­i­ble and adapt­able while keep­ing the health and safe­ty of their entire work­force front and cen­ter. These are unprece­dent­ed times.” 

We talked more about how SAP is remain­ing flex­i­ble and adapt­able as well as about what advice he would give to oth­er CIOs work­ing to do the same. 

Sharon: How has COVID-19 affect­ed busi­ness at SAP? What spe­cif­ic busi­ness chal­lenges have you expe­ri­enced as a CIO, and how are you address­ing them?

Michael: First, it is impor­tant to empha­size that the health, safe­ty, and well-being of our employ­ees, cus­tomers, and part­ners is the num­ber one pri­or­i­ty for SAP. Accom­mo­dat­ing the change to a vir­tu­al work envi­ron­ment and help­ing our col­leagues through their indi­vid­ual adjust­ments has been top of mind. 

As part of our busi­ness con­ti­nu­ity plan, SAP has an infra­struc­ture in place that allowed for a sce­nario where 100% of the employ­ees would have to work from home. Cur­rent­ly, of the near­ly 100,000 employ­ees SAP has world­wide, more than 96% are work­ing remote­ly. So, in that respect, we were pre­pared. All essen­tial oper­a­tions such as data cen­ters remain func­tion­ing, of course in accor­dance with pub­lic health ordinances.

When you actu­al­ly go through the sit­u­a­tion in real life, you see where you’re test­ing the lim­its, and we’ve had our share of things that we need­ed to adjust. For exam­ple, SAP recent­ly held a vir­tu­al all-hands meet­ing where 75% of our glob­al employ­ees joined the broad­cast with­in a few min­utes. This required some fast action on IT’s part to han­dle the surge and make sure every­one had access. 

Anoth­er exam­ple I can share is the need to adapt our onboard­ing process. To get new employ­ees set up with equip­ment is one thing, but it also requires dif­fer­ent ways of address­ing secu­ri­ty pro­to­cols for those who have yet to set foot in an SAP facil­i­ty. It takes the entire team to work cre­ative­ly and quick­ly to meet these new needs. Com­ing out of this, we will cer­tain­ly look at ways we can fur­ther sim­pli­fy or stream­line process­es, while ensur­ing secu­ri­ty standards. 

Sharon: How have you and your team had to shift pri­or­i­ties dur­ing this pandemic? 

Michael: SAP is stay­ing on track with its own trans­for­ma­tion ini­tia­tives that were in flight before COVID-19. Like every­one else, we’re adjust­ing our IT resource allo­ca­tion as need­ed, and we are remain­ing flex­i­ble around how and when we do cer­tain things. But, gen­er­al­ly speak­ing, the pri­or­i­ties are unchanged and we’re exe­cut­ing on the exist­ing trans­for­ma­tion programs. 

Com­pa­ny­wide, we also have launched inter­nal idea chal­lenges to tap into the cre­ativ­i­ty of our col­leagues world­wide, ask­ing them to think about what SAP can do to help. How can we use solu­tions we cur­rent­ly have, as well as what can we build quick­ly to help peo­ple get through the crisis? 

We are reach­ing out to build and main­tain close rela­tion­ships. In one case, an SAP account exec­u­tive was con­tact­ed by the CIO of a con­struc­tion sup­ply com­pa­ny that need­ed to find 500 hos­pi­tal beds for a tem­po­rary hos­pi­tal in New York City. With the help of SAP Ari­ba Dis­cov­ery—which has been made avail­able free of charge to all cus­tomers until end of June — and by mak­ing sev­er­al per­son­al calls to con­nect the com­pa­ny with a pos­si­ble sup­pli­er, they were able to secure the beds with­in the hour — just in time to lock in the order. 

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When Germany’s web­site for strand­ed trav­el­ers had prob­lems, a team of 40 devel­op­ers across three time zones worked over a 24-hour-peri­od to build and deploy a new cloud app to help bring these peo­ple home. 

These are just two exam­ples among many that have hap­pened in large part due to cre­ative and fast-think­ing employ­ees. SAP is offer­ing open access to a num­ber of solutions in response to COVID-19 and will con­tin­ue to reassess dif­fer­ent ways it can help its cus­tomers and partners. 

Sharon: Let’s shift gears and talk about best prac­tices for CIOs. As one of our ASUG Exec­u­tive Exchange mem­bers put it, IT teams are back to address­ing table stakes and non­strate­gic issues as orga­ni­za­tions move to a work-from-home mod­el. What advice would you give to CIOs that want to help get the work­force up and run­ning while still focus­ing on the big-pic­ture, strate­gic ini­tia­tives they had in place before COVID-19? 

Michael: From a tech­nol­o­gy per­spec­tive, IT orga­ni­za­tions have always been the ones to pro­vide the plat­forms for peo­ple to be pro­duc­tive, to con­nect with each oth­er, and con­duct day-to-day busi­ness. Not that the table stakes top­ics have ever been unim­por­tant, but these days we real­ly come to appre­ci­ate the fun­da­men­tals. That said, we need to keep an eye on both the imme­di­ate and the mid- to long-term initiatives. 

I doubt that we will ever go back to the exact same work­ing mod­el we had pri­or to Jan­u­ary 2020. A lot of the busi­ness prac­tices and process­es that we’re now adapt­ing toward are prob­a­bly going to be around for the long-term and may even be per­ma­nent replace­ments. So, there is a lot to learn right now about changes in our respec­tive busi­ness­es and decide which of those are tem­po­rary and which will like­ly be permanent. 

Know­ing all of that, CIOs need to con­sid­er three key points: The ​“here and now” response, the path to reopen­ing impact­ed areas and ramp­ing back up, and the mid- to long-term pri­or­i­ties and busi­ness imperatives. 

Sharon: Inno­va­tion at any time requires time and resources. Accord­ing to ASUG research, many orga­ni­za­tions are post­pon­ing their IT projects dur­ing this cri­sis, while some are com­plete­ly can­cel­ing them. What do you want those SAP cus­tomers to know? 

Michael: Obvi­ous­ly, every customer’s sit­u­a­tion is dif­fer­ent. The lev­el of imme­di­ate impact is dif­fer­ent, as is the path to recov­ery and the time beyond. This will also vary great­ly depend­ing on indus­try. I am advis­ing sev­er­al cus­tomers on their trans­for­ma­tion jour­neys and imple­men­ta­tion pro­grams. Some have com­ment­ed that they see the cur­rent sit­u­a­tion as added val­i­da­tion of their case for change. 

Com­mon themes revolve around cre­at­ing more resilient sup­ply chains, improv­ing demand and sup­ply plan­ning, and find­ing new dig­i­tal chan­nels to posi­tion and sell prod­ucts and ser­vices. On the peo­ple side, it is about man­ag­ing tal­ent in new ways and pro­vid­ing feed­back chan­nels, find­ing con­tin­gent labor, and more — always in the con­text of the respec­tive indus­try and busi­ness situation. 

What cus­tomers should know is that the SAP inno­va­tion and devel­op­ment road maps con­tin­ue. We’re exe­cut­ing and devel­op­ing accord­ing to our road maps and we’re com­ing out with new busi­ness process­es and capa­bil­i­ties. We con­tin­ue to inno­vate, to har­mo­nize and sim­pli­fy, and to bet­ter inte­grate solutions.

The push toward the cloud is going to inten­si­fy, espe­cial­ly as peo­ple real­ize that con­sum­ing a cloud ser­vice with­out run­ning infra­struc­ture is often bet­ter than run­ning a lot of infra­struc­ture your­self. In some cas­es, this will mean mov­ing sys­tems to hyper­scaler ser­vices like Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Plat­form, Aliba­ba, or Ama­zon Web Ser­vices. And in oth­er cas­es, it might mean rethink­ing and adapt­ing to soft­ware as a ser­vice plat­forms for spe­cif­ic busi­ness processes.

Sharon: Which tech­nol­o­gy today has proven so far to be ben­e­fi­cial for com­pa­nies in this new busi­ness land­scape? Which will emerge as trends com­ing out of this pandemic?

Michael: There are three big ones I think fit into both cat­e­gories. These include col­lab­o­ra­tion, secu­ri­ty, as well as infra­struc­ture as a ser­vice and soft­ware as a ser­vice platforms. 

First, any­thing around col­lab­o­ra­tion is obvi­ous­ly the key cat­e­go­ry right now that deserves atten­tion. That’s every­thing from remote access solu­tions to video and audio con­fer­enc­ing for large audi­ences. Going for­ward, com­pa­nies will look at how to best sup­port teams vir­tu­al­ly, in any mix of on site and off site, local and global. 

The sec­ond is secu­ri­ty, which is even more impor­tant now that so many peo­ple are work­ing remote­ly. There is already an increase in social engi­neer­ing and phish­ing attacks to obtain cre­den­tials and to breach sys­tems. Gen­er­al­ly speak­ing, secur­ing remote access, ensur­ing that you can main­tain your seg­re­ga­tion of duty and access con­trol is crit­i­cal. As com­pa­nies respond­ed to the imme­di­ate needs, they might’ve had to adjust some of the nor­mal pro­to­cols and now need to make sure that they’re rolling that back and strength­en­ing their security. 

The third trend is around cloud solu­tions, both for infra­struc­ture as a ser­vice and soft­ware as a ser­vice. Com­pa­nies that already have these plat­forms are bet­ter able to adjust to the cur­rent busi­ness land­scape. There will be an even stronger move toward infra­struc­ture as a ser­vice as com­pa­nies real­ize that hav­ing a phys­i­cal data cen­ter intro­duces com­plex­i­ty and busi­ness con­ti­nu­ity chal­lenges that ser­vice providers in this space can man­age at scale — often more effi­cient­ly and secure­ly than any one com­pa­ny can do.

Sim­i­lar­ly, there will be a big push toward soft­ware as a ser­vice con­tin­u­ing the trend in the area of tal­ent man­age­ment, pro­cure­ment, and expe­ri­ence man­age­ment, just to name a few. Even those who had been hes­i­tat­ing because they weren’t yet com­fort­able with hav­ing data stored in the cloud will like­ly con­sid­er the ben­e­fits of cloud ser­vices. These solu­tions and ser­vice providers are ready for scale and are pre­pared to ramp up with cus­tomer demand. 

Sharon: What should CIOs focus on today and where should they push to go in the future? What are some of the short-term and long-term actions they can take to increase resilien­cy and to pre­pare for future growth? 

Michael: I think there are three cat­e­gories to focus on: The company’s imme­di­ate response, the plan to adapt and ramp back up, and the company’s mid- to long-term trans­for­ma­tion, which includes being bet­ter pre­pared for disruption. 

In terms of imme­di­ate response, as a CIO you need to think about enabling vir­tu­al and remote work and prepar­ing to gath­er feed­back from employ­ees. People’s health and well-being is para­mount, and that includes fre­quent indi­vid­ual touch­points. This is crit­i­cal to every­thing else going forward. 

In terms of think­ing about restart­ing and ramp­ing back up, CIOs need to think through how that will look, what is need­ed, and who is involved. Some of that might need adap­ta­tion of cur­rent busi­ness process­es and think­ing through some mid- to long-term enhance­ments that are nec­es­sary to be resilient in a poten­tial sim­i­lar scenario. 

Both now and in the future, CIOs will play a key role in think­ing through busi­ness mod­els and busi­ness trans­for­ma­tions to help dri­ve their com­pa­nies’ suc­cess, agili­ty, and pre­pared­ness for a rapid­ly evolv­ing busi­ness landscape.

ASUG is con­tin­u­ing the sup­ply chain con­ver­sa­tion with its upcom­ing vir­tu­al event, ASUG Best Prac­tices: SAP for Sup­ply Chain. On May 11 and 12, hear from cus­tomers, experts, and thought lead­ers on how the last year has chal­lenged and changed sup­ply chains, and what tech­nolo­gies com­pa­nies are using to bol­ster their sup­ply chains.