As mem­bers of the ASUG com­mu­ni­ty know all too well, dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion — includ­ing, for many SAP cus­tomers, migra­tion from on-premis­es envi­ron­ments to the cloud — is no sim­ple task. Progress toward tech­nol­o­gy mod­ern­iza­tion ini­tia­tives requires care­ful plan­ning, ded­i­cat­ed resources, and exper­tise in orches­trat­ing com­plex solu­tions to achieve mis­sion-crit­i­cal objectives.

It’s with this knowl­edge that SAP launched its RISE with SAP pro­gram in ear­ly 2021, designed to help cus­tomers tran­si­tion their on-premis­es ERP soft­ware, includ­ing SAP ERP Cen­tral Com­po­nent (ECC) and SAP S/4HANA, to the cloud at their own pace by lever­ag­ing a set of cloud solu­tions, best prac­tices, and ser­vices. Since its debut, RISE has been adopt­ed by near­ly 5,000 SAP customers.

To learn more about how the RISE pro­gram has evolved since its incep­tion and to gain insights into its tra­jec­to­ry, ASUG sat down with David Robin­son, who was appoint­ed pres­i­dent of RISE in July of 2023. Pri­or to his cur­rent glob­al posi­tion, Robin­son spent near­ly 20 years at SAP in var­i­ous roles, includ­ing in lead­er­ship capac­i­ties for the organization’s pub­lic ser­vice and cus­tomer suc­cess areas.

In this sec­ond install­ment of our con­ver­sa­tion with Robin­son (read the first half here), we explore the role that RISE can play in future-proof­ing orga­ni­za­tions, the impor­tance of embrac­ing a ​“clean core” phi­los­o­phy — keep­ing ERP sys­tems as close as pos­si­ble to stan­dard, decou­pling cus­tomiza­tions, adopt­ing inner exten­sion meth­ods, and remain­ing aware of cus­tomiza­tion foot­prints—and why cloud-native archi­tec­tures are the key to achiev­ing a ​“per­sis­tent state of innovation.” 

This inter­view has been edit­ed and condensed.

ASUG: SAP talks a lot about ​“clean core,” in the con­text of mod­ern­iza­tion in gen­er­al and SAP S/4HANA in par­tic­u­lar. As com­pa­nies lever­age RISE to sup­port migra­tion to cloud-native envi­ron­ments, why is it essen­tial to embrace a clean core philosophy? 

David Robin­son: We stress the impor­tance of not just get­ting to a clean core, but the impor­tance of main­tain­ing a clean core to max­i­mize the val­ue oppor­tu­ni­ty that cloud — and an enter­prise estate that’s deliv­ered as a cloud ser­vice — provides. 

While that’s an easy state­ment to make, a lot of cus­tomers will say, ​“I do that today. I already have gov­er­nance. I have poli­cies.” Unfor­tu­nate­ly, there’s a lot of evi­dence that a sig­nif­i­cant per­cent­age of gov­er­nance and pol­i­cy mod­els today do not always work effec­tive­ly, because of the rigid­i­ty intro­duced by enter­prise appli­ca­tion customization.

This makes exe­cut­ing gov­er­nance and pol­i­cy deci­sions dif­fi­cult, because cus­tomiza­tion cre­ates fric­tion in real­iz­ing change man­age­ment, cre­at­ing a gap between the orga­ni­za­tion’s needs and IT’s abil­i­ty to respond to and meet them. 

Orga­ni­za­tions enforc­ing a clean core out­come as part of their archi­tec­ture great­ly enhance their own abil­i­ty to exe­cute effec­tive ser­vice deliv­ery strate­gies. It’s a much more effi­cient way to pro­tect — and improve — the val­ue propo­si­tion of cloud-deliv­ered estate, rather than sim­ply rely­ing on good gov­er­nance and poli­cies. When busi­ness and tech­nol­o­gy exec­u­tives make ​“clean core” a part of the ser­vice deliv­ery mod­el, strat­e­gy exe­cu­tion becomes much more efficient.

To this end, we’ve been offer­ing our cloud ERP clean core dash­board for cus­tomers and their GSSP part­ners, to pro­vide insight into core oper­at­ing envi­ron­ments and exam­ine the degrees of mod­i­fi­ca­tions or cus­tomiza­tions. The dash­board allows lead­ers to bet­ter judge and assess how close they are to a clean core oper­at­ing mod­el, deter­mine areas for improve­ment, and iden­ti­fy if mod­i­fied appli­ca­tions with­in their core still meet SAP’s stan­dards, as we devel­op the core prod­uct and pro­vide capa­bil­i­ty to the core. 

This is impor­tant because not all mod­i­fi­ca­tions or cus­tomiza­tions to the core are nec­es­sar­i­ly bad as long as they adhere to those archi­tec­tur­al stan­dards that don’t intro­duce rigid­i­ty or tech­ni­cal debt to the core.

ASUG: As you sur­vey SAP’s RISE cus­tomer base, what trends regard­ing cus­tomer size are you seeing? 

Robin­son: Anec­do­tal­ly, a sig­nif­i­cant pro­por­tion of net new cus­tomers sit with­in the mid-mar­ket seg­ment. These com­pa­nies have a propen­si­ty to lean toward imple­ment­ing green­field solu­tions, which imme­di­ate­ly puts them in the clean core camp. They tend to have less lega­cy to unwind and, there­fore, their focus is on accel­er­a­tion to what I call a ​“per­sis­tent inno­v­a­tive state.”

They also tend — on day one — to inte­grate SAP Busi­ness Process Insights (BPI) into their archi­tec­ture, and they often lever­age SAP Sig­navio as they adopt SAP Busi­ness Tech­nol­o­gy Plat­form to achieve exten­si­bil­i­ty. They end up with an ​“inno­va­tion archi­tec­ture” that accel­er­ates the deliv­ery of ser­vices to sup­port exist­ing and emerg­ing process­es. It’s about accel­er­at­ing time to val­ue, a com­mon theme among those adopt­ing a green­field strategy.

Our installed base also fea­tures large enter­pris­es. In many cas­es, these com­pa­nies have lega­cy IT oper­at­ing mod­els that fea­ture a pro­lif­er­a­tion of dif­fer­ent sys­tems and archi­tec­tures. While it’s nice to talk about accel­er­a­tion and achiev­ing a ​“per­sis­tent inno­v­a­tive state,” for many of these orga­ni­za­tions, the main pri­or­i­ty revolves around main­tain­ing cur­rent busi­ness cas­es while pro­vid­ing a val­ue real­iza­tion along a mul­ti-stage trans­for­ma­tion jour­ney. This is where tool­ing, best prac­tices, and a clear under­stand­ing of IT eco­nom­ics are crit­i­cal. We work with cus­tomers and their GSSPs to help them at every stage of their tran­si­tion to ensure that costs and risks are appro­pri­ate­ly managed. 

There is also a grow­ing cat­e­go­ry of orga­ni­za­tions that have devel­oped a pret­ty healthy under­stand­ing of brown­field deploy­ments. [EDI­TO­R­I­AL NOTE: Brown­field deploy­ments involve upgrad­ing an exist­ing SAP land­scape and con­tin­u­ing to use some lega­cy components.]

All those per­mu­ta­tions have to be very well under­stood and eval­u­at­ed on the mer­its of the trade-offs.

ASUG: What do you tell cus­tomers ask­ing why they should embrace RISE if their sys­tems are cur­rent­ly suf­fi­cient and work­ing for their busi­ness processes? 

Robin­son: It’s a great ques­tion because it is top of mind for every CIO and CFO. They want to know, ​“What will I get from this that I don’t already have today?” They need a clear busi­ness case that jus­ti­fies the invest­ment. I also get this ques­tion from exec­u­tives deal­ing with a long series of disruptions. 

A lot of peo­ple in these orga­ni­za­tions are expe­ri­enc­ing ​“change fatigue.” The last thing IT wants to do is show up with a new project or pro­gram that does not have very clear mer­it and very clear val­ue outcome. 

What we’re doing here with RISE with SAP is help­ing our cus­tomers refac­tor their IT oper­at­ing mod­el to sup­port cloud-native envi­ron­ments and move them away from an IT oper­at­ing mod­el based on rigid on-premis­es soft­ware and appli­ca­tion archi­tec­tures that require a tremen­dous amount of care and feed­ing. These lega­cy envi­ron­ments con­sume a lot of day-to-day resources and do not pro­vide a clear view that offers a com­pre­hen­sive under­stand­ing of how oper­at­ing sys­tems, data­bas­es, and oth­er essen­tial infra­struc­ture ele­ments inter­act to enable opti­mal plan­ning and capac­i­ty allocation.

RISE is a tremen­dous oppor­tu­ni­ty for cus­tomers to dri­ve their busi­ness trans­for­ma­tion agen­da. RISE is a cat­a­lyst to IT trans­for­ma­tion because it helps cus­tomers cost- and risk-man­age their jour­ney to a future-state IT oper­at­ing mod­el that allows them to bet­ter respond to con­stant­ly chang­ing mar­ket con­di­tions. An oper­at­ing mod­el based on cloud-deliv­ered resources will enable IT to refac­tor or reset the resources they have today on work and activ­i­ties that deliv­er high­er val­ue and return on tech­nol­o­gy investments.

RISE offers a path to future-proof­ing orga­ni­za­tions in con­stant­ly chang­ing busi­ness land­scapes. There is an ever-grow­ing tal­ent short­age at all lev­els of the stack. That’s why most IT mod­ern­iza­tion and trans­for­ma­tion ini­tia­tives focus on exten­si­bil­i­ty and inno­va­tion to address their cus­tomers’ always-evolv­ing needs.

These dynam­ics are also why con­ver­sa­tions around arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence (AI) have been so per­va­sive. How­ev­er, secur­ing the ben­e­fits of AI in the enter­prise has some cru­cial pre­req­ui­sites. For instance, AI requires com­pute elas­tic­i­ty and an archi­tec­ture that enables access to ser­vices, large datasets, and oth­er impor­tant resources across the enterprise. 

While these require­ments are dif­fi­cult to meet with con­ven­tion­al on-premis­es archi­tec­ture, they match up nice­ly with the val­ue propo­si­tion of cloud-based enter­prise architectures. 

What we’re try­ing to do is sim­pli­fy and expand access to — and accel­er­ate the val­ue real­iza­tion of — AI ser­vices applied to busi­ness and indus­try process­es. To this end, SAP is weav­ing AI into all aspects of its appli­ca­tion and ser­vice deliv­ery strat­e­gy, so that cus­tomers are not forced to build the con­text and con­nec­tiv­i­ty need­ed to lever­age AI ser­vices into their applications.

ASUG: As the new pres­i­dent of RISE, what are your key pri­or­i­ties with­in your team?

Robin­son: Pri­or­i­ty one is to sim­pli­fy — as much as we can — how we com­mu­ni­cate the val­ue propo­si­tion of RISE. We have to syn­the­size our mes­sage in a more con­sum­able way for our cus­tomers and their strate­gic part­ners to make effec­tive deci­sions that reduce the costs and risks they face while improv­ing per­for­mance and enabling that ​“per­sis­tent inno­v­a­tive state.”

RISE is a trans­for­ma­tion enabler and accel­er­a­tor. It uni­fies solu­tions, best prac­tices, and engage­ment to change the way IT appli­ca­tions are deliv­ered and con­sumed. There is a fun­da­men­tal dif­fer­ence between run­ning S/4 on an infra­struc­ture and con­sum­ing S/4 as a cloud-deliv­ered service.

The rea­son we’ve cre­at­ed RISE is to be a cat­a­lyst, a facil­i­ta­tor for that tran­si­tion by uni­fy­ing solu­tions such as SAP S/4HANA cloud with BTP and Sig­navio, along with all the oth­er base­line appli­ca­tions and solu­tions that make the foun­da­tion strong. RISE is also about iden­ti­fy­ing and imple­ment­ing best prac­tices, method­olo­gies, and tools that man­age the costs and risks asso­ci­at­ed with that tran­si­tion through a cloud-ori­ent­ed engage­ment model.

Sec­ond pri­or­i­ty is demon­strat­ing the val­ue propo­si­tion of RISE with clear, objec­tive, and com­pelling evi­dence. There is a grow­ing body of expe­ri­ence and evi­dence based on qual­i­ta­tive case stud­ies and ref­er­ences. Our 5,000+ ear­ly adopters have pro­vid­ed all of us an impor­tant, quan­ti­ta­tive sto­ry to tell. We’re gath­er­ing this evi­dence of suc­cess in real­iz­ing val­ue and shar­ing it with our com­mu­ni­ty and the market.

The third pri­or­i­ty is around focus. This is based on a larg­er mis­sion for SAP to cre­ate world-class engage­ment and expe­ri­ences for cus­tomers. This is why cloud-based resources and strate­gies are so nec­es­sary. Stake­hold­er inter­ac­tions with the cloud are much more inti­mate and col­lab­o­ra­tive than those based on lega­cy on-prem infrastructures.

This requires me — and my entire team — to focus on cus­tomers’ inter­ac­tion with us and our oper­at­ing ser­vice deliv­ery. We must make that inter­ac­tion with our cus­tomers as sim­ple, effi­cient — and, most impor­tant­ly — mean­ing­ful as possible.

For more from David Robin­son, read the first half of our inter­view here.

Patri­cia Brown is Edi­to­r­i­al Direc­tor at ASUG.