Fresh from time with ASUG members/​SAP cus­tomers at last month’s ASUG Best Prac­tices: SAP for Util­i­ties con­fer­ence, Lloyd Adams, SAP North Amer­i­ca Pres­i­dent, sat down with ASUG to dis­cuss the still-new role, cus­tomer chal­lenges, and North America’s mar­ket growth oppor­tu­ni­ties, among oth­er topics.

Adams, who joined SAP in 1998 and pre­vi­ous­ly was Man­ag­ing Direc­tor, U.S. East Region for SAP, took over strat­e­gy, oper­a­tions, peo­ple, sales, ser­vices and prof­itabil­i­ty across the Unit­ed States and Cana­da as of Sept. 1. In mak­ing the announce­ment his boss, Scott Rus­sell, Exec­u­tive Board Mem­ber, Cus­tomer Suc­cess, SAP, called Adams a cham­pi­on of high-per­for­mance cul­ture, an advo­cate for inclu­siv­i­ty across our work­force, and a cat­a­lyst for inno­va­tion in sup­port of our cus­tomers’ suc­cess,” adding, ​“We are con­fi­dent his appoint­ment will be piv­otal to the con­tin­ued growth and accel­er­a­tion of SAP’s long-term success.”

What fol­lows is an edit­ed ver­sion of the com­plete ASUG interview.

Ques­tion: Can you share insights on your new set of respon­si­bil­i­ties, roles, and key goals?

Answer: In this new role, I’m respon­si­ble for every­thing from strat­e­gy, day-to-day oper­a­tions, and in gen­er­al, the over­all cus­tomer suc­cess here in the Unit­ed States and Cana­da. I’ve been here for 24 years and over the arc of that career, I’ve been ded­i­cat­ed to help­ing our cus­tomers become best-run busi­ness­es. With my per­son­al phi­los­o­phy, I’ve real­ly tried to help SAP become the best trust­ed advi­sor for our clients, because they place such a great amount of trust in us. We’ve put a very, very high pri­or­i­ty on their suc­cess. Over the years, I’ve had the plea­sure of work­ing along­side many of our sub-com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers, most recent­ly as Man­ag­ing Direc­tor in the East Mar­ket Unit and pri­or to that as the Region­al Vice Pres­i­dent of our Nation­al Util­i­ties Prac­tice. I’m eager and excit­ed in this new role, with the oppor­tu­ni­ty to expand that reach and work with many, many more customers.

Q: Are there a set of key tar­gets or ini­tial goals for your work?

A: You know, I’m only 30 days in. Right now we’re dual­ly focused on mak­ing sure that we close out this cal­en­dar year strong, but at the same time make sure we set our­selves up for longer-term suc­cess. This posi­tion is a great respon­si­bil­i­ty, cov­er­ing and lead­ing the North Amer­i­ca mar­ket is so inte­gral to SAP’s over­ar­ch­ing strat­e­gy and plans, right? We often say, where North Amer­i­ca goes, so, too, goes the rest of SAP. Most of our goals are square­ly in the cloud. It should come as no sur­prise that cloud’s going to con­tin­ue to dom­i­nate our growth here in North Amer­i­ca and beyond.

And as I think about it, as a region, we’re very much lead­ing the charge and estab­lish­ing the path that’s going to help get SAP there as an orga­ni­za­tion. We’re in a [pre-earn­ing report] qui­et peri­od right now, so I can’t real­ly speak to spe­cif­ic results. But I can tell you that we con­tin­ue to see sol­id cloud book­ings. Growth per­for­mance and our cur­rent cloud back­log for the region remain strong quar­ter-after-quar­ter. That makes me real­ly hap­py because it under­scores the fact that cloud adop­tion absolute­ly is hap­pen­ing here in North America.

That said, when I think about your ques­tion, what comes to mind is that we’re still very much in the midst of our own trans­for­ma­tion. Trans­for­ma­tions can be tough. It’s not just what our clients are going through (big, sweep­ing trans­for­ma­tions and change), but SAP is, as well. It’s pro­gress­ing the way that we need­ed it to, but we’re in the midst of it. We still have a way to go. Clear­ly, we’re piv­ot­ing, from our on-premise lega­cy business.

I like to remind the teams that the way we work with our cus­tomers – to solu­tion and deliv­er and help our clients adopt and con­sume what’s com­ing into their orga­ni­za­tions from SAP – needs to be as opti­mized as pos­si­ble. To me, that’s one of the biggest things that’s dif­fer­ent in a cloud par­a­digm. One of the major things I’m try­ing to ampli­fy here with the North Amer­i­can team in this new posi­tion is that we con­tin­ue to do things more cloud-centric.

Scott Rus­sell, my boss, has a great line that I love to remind peo­ple of: we always have to start with con­sump­tion in mind. It’s not enough to just demon­strate what the art of the pos­si­ble is. For my SAP col­leagues and me, we need to go beyond and clear­ly artic­u­late the impact on the busi­ness of what­ev­er an orga­ni­za­tion may bring in from SAP, even if it means the new way in which busi­ness may be con­duct­ed, or how things at the task lev­el may be dif­fer­ent. That’s a lot of change to grap­ple with.

Q: What is the impor­tance of the North Amer­i­can mar­ket, the U.S. mar­ket, to SAP?

A: With­out ques­tion, it is the largest mar­ket that we serve, with the largest tar­gets, and the dens­est, from a cus­tomer per­spec­tive. We’re present in every sin­gle indus­try. The ecosys­tem is incred­i­bly vast. 

But at the same time the com­pet­i­tive land­scape is arguably the most acute, more so than oth­er region­al the­aters. Not to say that it’s not com­pet­i­tive there, but it’s prob­a­bly at a dif­fer­ent plane here in North America.

With so much oppor­tu­ni­ty, it’s a priv­i­lege to serve this mar­ket. It’s incum­bent on all of us at SAP to be our best and our sharpest and we real­ly can’t take any­thing for grant­ed. You know the cas­es for change that our clients are car­ry­ing for­ward. You know their exec­u­tive teams and their boards are sig­nif­i­cant. You take it as a badge of hon­or to be in the conversation. 

We also rec­og­nize that we are proud of our her­itage and who we are, we’re not the only game in town. That neces­si­tates that we be on our A‑game and hun­gry and nev­er com­pla­cent. That’s what we’re try­ing to do. Like I said, where SAP goes in North Amer­i­ca, results-wise, is where we’re going to go per­for­mance-wise across the globe.

Q: You said in North Amer­i­ca SAP is present in every indus­try. Are there select indus­tries that you are stronger in and oth­ers that you want to grow?

A: It’s an inter­est­ing year for us in 2022. We just cel­e­brat­ed our 50^th anniver­sary. So, to be in this posi­tion now, it’s incred­i­ble to have the oppor­tu­ni­ty to look back and reflect on how much SAP has evolved and what that has meant across verticals. 

In many respects, our lega­cy is our strength. It’s the foun­da­tion on which we built this busi­ness, and it’s why we could con­tin­ue to be the part­ner of choice for 99 of the 100 largest com­pa­nies in the world. I don’t want to say we’re going back to our roots, but we’re going to dou­ble down on the fact that indus­try has always been an intense laser focus for us. Indus­try Cloud, right now, stands as a dif­fer­en­tia­tor for SAP. That’s because we have inti­mate knowl­edge of the unique chal­lenges that each of those ver­ti­cals face in their trans­for­ma­tions. We’re always try­ing to be many steps ahead in that process. 

On the tech front, the ecosys­tem that we’ve been able to build in the past 50 years is unmatched and allows us to dive into ver­ti­cals in a way that is unique to SAP. It helps us at every phase of the cus­tomer’s jour­ney. We’re in an envi­able posi­tion. We real­ly are res­o­nant in every ver­ti­cal, and they’re all crit­i­cal­ly impor­tant to us. That means we need to be pre­cise in how we chore­o­graph every­thing across our port­fo­lio of solu­tions and the way in which we help cus­tomers deploy, adopt, and con­sume them.

In the past, I ran our util­i­ties prac­tice for North Amer­i­ca for sev­er­al years. That was a great learn­ing ground for me: a ver­ti­cal­ly inte­grat­ed mod­el that works as best as it can from devel­op­ment all the way through to sup­port and back around again. That’s one of the hall­marks of SAP. That’s one of the things we try to make per­va­sive in each of the ver­ti­cals that we pur­sue and serve. 

In cer­tain spaces you’ll see us make invest­ments so that we can for­ti­fy our offer­ings. For instance, in finan­cial ser­vices you saw a tie up with SAP Fioneer (finan­cial and insur­ance indus­try solu­tions) to help them com­ple­ment our port­fo­lio with addi­tion­al indus­try-cen­tric capa­bil­i­ties. Over time you might see us do more things like that. At the end of the day, there real­ly isn’t a cer­tain ver­ti­cal or set of ver­ti­cals that we’re prioritizing. 

Q: ASUG focus­es on sev­er­al indus­tries with events, com­mu­ni­ties, and con­tent. Are there indus­tries or mar­kets that we should put more focus on?

A: One that springs to mind — it’s always been a real strength and pow­er­house for SAP — but look­ing back over the last cou­ple of years dur­ing the pan­dem­ic, one that I’d call out is Life Sci­ences. The pan­dem­ic real­ly test­ed the lim­its on things like pro­duc­tion and the dis­tri­b­u­tion of vac­cines. But we were able to real­ly work in con­cert side by side with some of our tried-and-true cus­tomers as well as some more recent upstarts in the space to help them be resilient and be respon­sive to the unique set of con­di­tions in the market. 

You know each ver­ti­cal has some over­lap­ping and then some very dis­tinct set of chal­lenges. If you think about it, sup­ply chain chal­lenges, devel­op­ing, and engag­ing a more remote work­force are just a few cross-indus­try strug­gles that SAP has real­ly been help­ing cus­tomers address over the last few years dur­ing the pandemic.

Q: Speak­ing of what you’ve been hear­ing from cus­tomers on their chal­lenges, what are they telling you that they need and want from SAP?

A: The push to dig­i­tize or dig­i­tal­ly trans­form has migrat­ed from a nice-to-do to absolute­ly must-do. The pan­dem­ic real­ly accel­er­at­ed deploy­ment of so many tech­nolo­gies, from cloud to AI to machine learn­ing and ana­lyt­ics. And busi­ness­es have real­ly shown how resilient they can be across all ver­ti­cals. Now, they’re adamant about not going back­wards. The real­i­ty is, no mat­ter what’s going on right now, cus­tomers are seek­ing to adapt to mar­ket con­di­tions in dif­fer­ent ways. Some of them are look­ing to go into new mar­ket spaces. Some are explor­ing new ways to reach cus­tomers. Some are rethink­ing their sup­ply chains to low­er costs. Across the board there is a fun­da­men­tal acknowl­edge­ment that tech­nol­o­gy is foun­da­tion­al to achiev­ing those objectives.

In enter­prise tech spend in the mar­ket, giv­en the last cou­ple months, we are see­ing the case for change and the busi­ness case behind need­ing to be crisp and the lay­ers of gov­er­nance and reviews scru­ti­nized at a height­ened lev­el. Cus­tomers con­tin­ue to dou­ble down on these strate­gies. I think that’s because it’s become clear and that the pan­dem­ic real­ly embold­ened that tech­nol­o­gy is essen­tial to dri­ve pos­i­tive busi­ness out­comes and it’s an orga­ni­za­tion’s abil­i­ty to do that, very adroit­ly and with agili­ty, set­ting the best com­pa­nies apart.

Q: In con­ver­sa­tions of the last cou­ple of months, have lead­ers among your cus­tomers talked about a poten­tial reces­sion and the fluc­tu­at­ing mar­kets hav­ing an impact or that they have con­tin­gen­cies in place?

A: Because there’s been so much uncer­tain­ty, they’re cozy­ing up to us even more close­ly. They want help in over­com­ing the chal­lenges they face. It’s a myr­i­ad of things, real­ly, every­thing from sus­tain­abil­i­ty to sup­ply-chain resilience, busi­ness mod­el trans­for­ma­tion, and so forth.

One exam­ple is to look at sup­ply chain issues result­ing from Chi­na’s slow­er-than-expect­ed reopen­ing from COVID lock­downs. We’ve seen a vari­ety of instances where that’s caused cer­tain com­pa­nies to real­ly increase their inter­est to help them track logis­tics, man­u­fac­tur­ing, and human resources, just to name a few. We are increas­ing­ly sup­port­ing cus­tomers as they reor­ga­nize their sup­ply chains so they can be less depen­dent on any one source.

We talked about the Util­i­ties con­fer­ence before. For me, that was a home­com­ing because I hadn’t been at that con­fer­ence with so many ASUG mem­bers for about five years. At that time the notion of many util­i­ties mov­ing to the cloud was some­what taboo. At the time, every­thing was CapEx heavy. Orga­ni­za­tions want­ed to know how much to pay up front, and they want­ed to own the asset and keep their oper­a­tional expens­es at a min­i­mum. Lo and behold, flash for­ward five years, in the fall of 2022. I was at the con­fer­ence for one day, but I met with over 15 clients, and to an orga­ni­za­tion, all of them had already piv­ot­ed or are surg­ing in the cloud and get­ting cre­ative in terms of how they han­dle this from a cap­i­tal­iza­tion and an account­ing per­spec­tive. [Cloud is] de rigueur pri­mar­i­ly because of the agili­ty they need­ed, and they saw so many oth­er orga­ni­za­tions and oth­er indus­tries achieve that, so they had no choice but to fig­ure out a way to cross that chasm. 

Dri­ving our cus­tomers ongo­ing suc­cess remains the absolute top pri­or­i­ty for our team here in North Amer­i­ca, and now just with SAP and our vast part­ner ecosys­tem across both the U.S. and Canada.

Q: You’ve talked about cloud with a view to 2023. Are there oth­er tech­nolo­gies or solu­tion sets that you’ll talk more about with cus­tomers, in 2023 and beyond?

A: A cou­ple thoughts spring to mind. First, at the very top of mind, for us is that we’re all in on pub­lic cloud. We’re hear­ing our cus­tomers loud and clear on their increas­ing needs for even more agili­ty and resilience. Addi­tion­al­ly, our pub­lic cloud offer­ing in cer­tain spaces is going to become de fac­to for new or exist­ing clients to take SAP capa­bil­i­ty into oth­er parts of the orga­ni­za­tion. You’re always going to see us approach the world by indus­try with a cap­i­tal ​‘I,’ because we have that inter­nal exper­tise, and it real­ly changes the out­come. That will always be an intense focus for us.

The oth­er area where you’ll see even more from SAP is our focus on busi­ness trans­for­ma­tion at an orga­ni­za­tion’s pace. In any ver­ti­cal, you have some ear­ly adopters and fast movers, and then you have some fast fol­low­ers, and I don’t want to call them lag­gards, but more risk-averse orga­ni­za­tions. Regard­less of where a com­pa­ny may fit on the con­tin­u­um, we’re com­mit­ted to their success.

Most of our go-for­ward invest­ment is going to be in the cloud. But we still have an inor­di­nate num­ber of orga­ni­za­tions that want to remain In an on-premise par­a­digm, either because that’s what they know and that’s where they’ve been or that’s just where they con­tin­ue to want to go. Ele­ments of their busi­ness force them into a cer­tain move. One of the beau­ties of SAP is the lev­el of choice we afford our cus­tomers. We are always going to be in the busi­ness of help­ing our clients trans­form. We are always going to try and lead them down a path of that, par­tic­u­lar­ly if they’re going cloud fit-to-stan­dard and built-for-pur­pose, because that’s what cloud is all about.

We want to do it in a way where it’s not mere­ly a lift-and-shift right and or a tech­ni­cal upgrade. We want to make sure there is tan­gi­ble busi­ness val­ue woven into the propo­si­tion, which means the work we do up front, in terms of how we cre­ate solu­tions and help our clients build the case for change, is absolute­ly rock sol­id, espe­cial­ly now in light of the added lay­ers of gov­er­nance, inspec­tion, vet­ting. and approval of these types of spends. These are big projects. 

Mak­ing a com­mit­ment like this with SAP – it’s a big step. We like to use terms like ​‘cus­tomer for life.’ Some­times I joke, tongue in cheek, this is like a mar­riage that can nev­er end in divorce. This is a big com­mit­ment that these orga­ni­za­tions make with us. It’s not lost on us. With that in mind, we have to be real­ly, real­ly crisp in terms of how we do this, how we guide them through their deploy­ment and then per­haps even more impor­tant­ly, how we stay with them.

Post go-live, we make sure they are tru­ly opti­mized and how they adopt and con­sume those capa­bil­i­ties to ensure a high­er yield, in terms of what it is they’re bring­ing in. That will ensure that their renew­al rates go high­er, but it will also earn our right to be back at the table for oth­er trans­for­ma­tions in their orga­ni­za­tion. It’s not a fate accom­plish­ment that we will be at that table. We must earn that. It’s a vir­tu­ous cycle.

Q: The ASUG mis­sion is to help our mem­bers and cus­tomers get the most val­ue from their invest­ment in SAP tech­nol­o­gy. How, in this new role, will you help them do that?

A: I think one of the things that our clients, if we do this right, should be pleased with is the piv­ot we’re going to make to be very bal­anced: not just how we show up dur­ing the solu­tion­ing phase of things, but even more so on the deliv­ery, adop­tion, and con­sump­tion phase of things. Our unique oppor­tu­ni­ty right now is to be that trust­ed advi­sor for our clients. Of course we do that in con­cert with our vast ecosystem. 

One of the things you’ll see from SAP in an ampli­fied way Is for us to be a mis­sion-crit­i­cal third or fourth leg of that stool, where you’ve got the client, you’ve got the sys­tems inte­gra­tor, in some cas­es you might have the hyper­scaler, but that third or fourth leg absolute­ly needs to be SAP. I think if we do that and do that well, it’s a vir­tu­ous cycle and it means good things for our customers. 

Q: Is there any­thing that you want­ed to touch on in this interview?

A: We’re amid a real­ly crit­i­cal trans­for­ma­tion, with a lot left to do and an immense oppor­tu­ni­ty in front of us in the mar­ket, both in terms of cus­tomers we cur­rent­ly serve as well as new ones we’re try­ing to bring to the fam­i­ly. We thank ASUG for the role it plays in help­ing us do that.