SAP is head­quar­tered in Wall­dorf, Ger­many, but North Amer­i­ca is the ​“bat­tle­ground” for its mar­ket, accord­ing to Lloyd Adams, Pres­i­dent, SAP North America.

SAP North Amer­i­ca serves more than 160,000 cus­tomers, with more than 6,000 chan­nel part­ners and dis­trib­u­tors focused on the small and mid­size enter­prise mar­ket. Last year, SAP’s sales in the U.S. account­ed for €10.49 bil­lion (approx­i­mate­ly $11.40 bil­lion) in con­stant cur­ren­cies — near­ly one-third of the soft­ware giant’s rev­enue. The gath­er­ing momen­tum of cloud migra­tion and the poten­tial of gen­er­a­tive AI for busi­ness oper­a­tions both lend cre­dence to Adams’ asser­tion that ​“it’s a real­ly excit­ing time” to be over­see­ing the strat­e­gy, day-to-day oper­a­tions, and over­all cus­tomer suc­cess for SAP cus­tomers in the Unit­ed States and Canada.

“We are demon­strat­ing through our results and through cus­tomer val­i­da­tion and feed­back that we’re stronger and more rel­e­vant than ever,” Adams recent­ly told ASUG. ​“That’s more crit­i­cal than ever now that we’re enter­ing the era of busi­ness AI. Cloud and AI go hand-in-hand; cloud is the back­bone for AI. What I now hear, increas­ing­ly, is that AI is real­ly a large part of what’s dri­ving our cus­tomers to the cloud.” 

Adams first joined SAP in 1998. Before assum­ing the posi­tion of Pres­i­dent of SAP North Amer­i­ca on Sept. 1, 2022, he had pro­gressed through var­i­ous pre­sales, inside sales, and mar­ket­ing lead­er­ship roles in the U.S. and Asia-Pacif­ic regions, includ­ing man­ag­ing direc­tor of the East region of the U.S., direc­tor of SAP North America’s Util­i­ties busi­ness, and chief oper­at­ing offi­cer of reg­u­lat­ed industries. 

With the 2024 results of ASUG’s annu­al Pulse of the SAP Cus­tomer Research offi­cial­ly unveiled, detail­ing the atti­tudes and out­looks of SAP cus­tomers through­out North Amer­i­ca on top­ics includ­ing inte­gra­tion, the cloud, and AI, ASUG sat down with Adams to dis­cuss his recent expe­ri­ences in the North Amer­i­can mar­ket, the con­tin­u­ing evo­lu­tion of the RISE with SAP pro­gram, and more.

This inter­view, con­duct­ed March 14, has been edit­ed and con­densed. It will be pub­lished in two installments.

You were appoint­ed to lead SAP North Amer­i­ca a year and a half ago. How have these first 18 months been for you?

It’s been the fastest year and a half of my life. I’m lit­er­al­ly just over the 1.5‑year mark, and it’s been a whirl­wind, but in a very pos­i­tive way. Even though it’s been 18 months, I very much feel like I’m still com­plet­ing my lis­ten­ing tour: inter­nal­ly, with all of our var­i­ous teams across North Amer­i­ca; out in the part­ner ecosys­tem; and, most impor­tant­ly, with our customers.

What I’m hear­ing is that there’s a real chal­lenge and oppor­tu­ni­ty that our clients have in front of them, whether that’s new client acqui­si­tion or our long­stand­ing, installed-base cus­tomers grap­pling with how to move to SAP S/4HANA, how to get to the cloud, where do they go from here and how they keep inno­vat­ing. That’s par­tic­u­lar­ly rel­e­vant in this North Amer­i­can the­ater, which arguably on a glob­al lev­el is the most com­pet­i­tive the­ater we have.

Though it’s a con­stant exer­cise, stay­ing in touch with var­i­ous stake­hold­ers in the SAP ecosys­tem, how has your under­stand­ing of the cus­tomer base evolved in this time? What are you hear­ing from North Amer­i­can SAP cus­tomers about their pri­or­i­ties, chal­lenges, and concerns?

It’s been a per­fect inter­sec­tion of what we call our ​“case for cloud” and the impact of the pan­dem­ic on the day-to-day oper­a­tions of a busi­ness — for exam­ple, the degree to which orga­ni­za­tions worked remote­ly or leaned in to dig­i­tal­ize more rapid­ly. This was pro­found, and through that expe­ri­ence, busi­ness­es are feel­ing the need to move to the cloud more quickly.

As I think back on the arc of 2023, both glob­al­ly and at the North Amer­i­can lev­el, we’ve deliv­ered on our promise from Octo­ber 2020. SAP is a lead­ing cloud com­pa­ny and on a growth path. This is val­i­dat­ed by cus­tomer inter­ac­tion and con­ver­sa­tions. Last year, glob­al­ly, we met or exceed­ed all of our ambi­tions. And in our full-year earn­ings results, we report­ed record cur­rent cloud back­log, which expand­ed by 27%, and 23% year-over-year growth from a cloud rev­enue per­spec­tive. Those are two crit­i­cal­ly impor­tant met­rics by which the finan­cial mar­kets mea­sure us. 

Based on where we see our cus­tomers in the mar­ket head­ing, we’ve also made invest­ments to keep devel­op­ing the right tech­nol­o­gy foun­da­tion and part­ner ecosys­tem, so that we can help facil­i­tate this shift that our clients need to make, mov­ing some of the most com­plex ERP envi­ron­ments to the cloud. We said bold­ly in 2020 that we were going to become a cloud com­pa­ny, and now we are.

In par­al­lel, we’re see­ing that cloud has become the default choice across all ver­ti­cals. That wasn’t always the case. A few years ago, there were some pock­ets of the mar­ket that for their own host of rea­sons were hes­i­tant to make that leap. Now, cloud is per­va­sive across all mar­ket cat­e­gories. Here in North Amer­i­ca, that’s what’s got us all so jazzed — and hyper-vig­i­lant, as we’re com­pet­ing against some of the biggest names in the tech world. This is the bat­tle­ground for SAP glob­al­ly, and it’s part of my respon­si­bil­i­ty to be the voice for that. 

I’m proud of the team, because we’re demon­strat­ing through our results and through cus­tomer val­i­da­tion that we’re stronger and more rel­e­vant than ever. That’s more crit­i­cal than ever now that we’re enter­ing the era of busi­ness AI. Cloud and AI go hand-in-hand; cloud is the back­bone for AI. What I now hear, increas­ing­ly, is that AI is real­ly a large part of what’s dri­ving our cus­tomers to the cloud. 

It’s a huge hon­or and respon­si­bil­i­ty for us, because we can­not and do not take light­ly the degree to which we have to help future-proof our cus­tomers’ busi­ness­es, help them dri­ve con­tin­u­ous inno­va­tion, and help them dri­ve sus­tain­able growth. The cloud is ulti­mate­ly the only mech­a­nism through which orga­ni­za­tions can viably do that. Our mis­sion right now is focused on help­ing cus­tomers see that the soon­er that they can lever­age the full poten­tial of the cloud, the soon­er they can get to that end-state and beyond.

With the evo­lu­tion of RISE with SAP over the past year, specif­i­cal­ly with the launch of the RISE with SAP Migra­tion and Mod­ern­iza­tion pro­gram last fall, what impact has that pro­gram had on cus­tomer adop­tion of cloud solu­tions and ser­vices, par­tic­u­lar­ly for those more ten­ta­tive cus­tomers or those in on-premis­es envi­ron­ments still strug­gling to fig­ure out how to take that step, even how to build a busi­ness case to do so?

Since RISE was launched in Jan­u­ary 2021, it’s evolved quite con­sid­er­ably. If you were to ask me that ques­tion two years ago, my hon­est answer at the time would have been, ​“It’s still some­what nascent. We’ve had some suc­cess on the front of ear­ly adopters, but we still do see — some­what per­va­sive­ly — pock­ets of resis­tance in cer­tain geo­gra­phies and ver­ti­cals.” That’s not my answer today. 

Today, of course, there are still orga­ni­za­tions we need to con­vince, which is why our case for cloud is still at the fore­front of much of what we do. And that is, frankly, why we’ve come for­ward with the trans­for­ma­tion incen­tives that we have out there, to accel­er­ate deci­sions. The biggest dif­fer­ence right now is that we do have crit­i­cal mass across all ver­ti­cals, all geo­gra­phies, com­pa­nies of all sizes. 

RISE is the de fac­to motion for new client acqui­si­tion. If you’re a new orga­ni­za­tion that doesn’t have any SAP foot­print, it’s what we lead with. Frankly, we nev­er hear from any poten­tial net-new clients, ​“Hey, tell us about your on-premis­es offer­ing,” which makes sense, giv­en where the market’s heading. 

It’s a bit of a dif­fer­ent sto­ry if you’re some­one that has an exist­ing foot­print. At some orga­ni­za­tions, their envi­ron­ments are quite com­plex, and some orga­ni­za­tions have — for rea­sons that are their own — heav­i­ly cus­tomized envi­ron­ments. Their path, from where they are now to where they ide­al­ly need to get to, looks dif­fer­ent. Togeth­er with their work­force, their part­ners, their hyper­scaler of choice, and our team, we need to be com­plete­ly aligned across the enter­prise archi­tec­ture to achieve the right roadmap to get them from A to B. 

That seems to be the crux of all the con­ver­sa­tions that we’re hav­ing. It’s not, ​“No, we’re not inter­est­ed.” Now, it’s, ​“We know we need to get there. Let’s talk about the art­ful and prag­mat­ic path that we need to blaze, giv­en our cur­rent state and our tar­get end state.” It requires a lot more coor­di­na­tion and thought­ful plan­ning, with a mul­ti­tude of peo­ple at the table. In the ear­ly going with RISE, that wasn’t as evi­dent to us as it should have been. How­ev­er, with three-plus years under our belt, and thou­sands of orga­ni­za­tions who have either made the move or are in flight right now, we have a lot of lessons learned. And we just keep improv­ing the offering.

And that cloud move­ment has pro­gressed fur­ther with upcom­ing dead­lines for end of main­stream main­te­nance for SAP Busi­ness Suite 7, in addi­tion to SAP indi­cat­ing that new cloud-only inno­va­tions will ben­e­fit those cus­tomers in terms of AI, sus­tain­abil­i­ty, and so on…

In July 2023, we all heard Chris­t­ian Klein and our board declare bold­ly to the mar­ket that we need our clients to pick a lane. And the lane that we’re help­ing them pick is cloud, for very good rea­sons, both for the cus­tomer as well as for ourselves.

We only have finite capac­i­ty with­in our prod­uct engi­neer­ing teams, and we can’t con­tin­ue to bring inno­va­tions by way of AI, SAP Sig­navio, the SAP green ledger, and sus­tain­abil­i­ty both in the cloud and across a mul­ti­tude of oth­er on-premis­es environments.

We’re nev­er going to aban­don our on-premis­es cus­tomers. In terms of where we’re going to focus ener­gy into inno­va­tion, we have to do it in the cloud. And so intrin­si­cal­ly, as part of that, that’s where we’re going to lead our clients — on the right time­frame. We’re not say­ing you need to get there today, imme­di­ate­ly, but we are guid­ing them to get into that lane because, at some point in time, they need to take that off-ramp. We’re try­ing to cat­alyze, encour­age, and entice some of that to hap­pen soon­er than lat­er, for their long-term benefit.

Stay tuned for next week’s edi­tion of ASUG First Five for the sec­ond half of our con­ver­sa­tion with Lloyd Adams, Pres­i­dent, SAP North Amer­i­ca, in which he details how SAP is mov­ing to sup­port cus­tomers with SAP S/4HANA skills-build­ing and reflects on the road ahead for SAP’s embrace of busi­ness AI inno­va­tion in the cloud.