As SAP seeks to secure its long-term suc­cess by dri­ving net new name acqui­si­tion, the company’s exec­u­tive lead­ers con­tin­ue to empha­size the impor­tance of increas­ing SAP S/4HANA Pub­lic Cloud adop­tion, and of con­nect­ing mid­mar­ket cus­tomers to SAP Cloud ERP solutions. 

Ear­li­er this year, in March, to height­en its focus on this area, SAP lead­er­ship announced a new SAP S/4HANA Pub­lic Cloud & Mid­mar­ket (S/4HPC MM) orga­ni­za­tion, to be led by pres­i­dent and chief rev­enue offi­cer Bernd Bran­dl. In his new role, Bran­dl is respon­si­ble for dri­ving SAP S/4HANA Pub­lic Cloud rev­enue and prof­itabil­i­ty, with an empha­sis on dri­ving new cus­tomer acqui­si­tion and reviv­ing dor­mant accounts across the mid­mar­ket segment. 

Bran­dl joined SAP in 1997 as a sales rep­re­sen­ta­tive, becom­ing a mem­ber of the SAP Ger­many Man­age­ment Board in 2003. After hold­ing sev­er­al exec­u­tive posi­tions in Indus­try Sales, and found­ing the first Data­base & Tech­nol­o­gy, Busi­ness Ana­lyt­ics, and Mobile Solu­tions divi­sion with­in Ger­many, he was appoint­ed Man­ag­ing Direc­tor for SAP Switzer­land in 2014. From there , he tran­si­tioned to lead Dig­i­tal Core Sales for the Mid­dle- and East­ern Europe (MEE). In 2020, Bran­dl became the leader for Dig­i­tal Sup­ply Chain sales glob­al­ly before assum­ing the lead­er­ship for S/4HPC MM ear­li­er this year. 

In announc­ing his appoint­ment, SAP’s Scott Rus­sell — Head of Cus­tomer Suc­cess, and a mem­ber of the SAP SE Exec­u­tive Board — said that Bran­dl ​“innate­ly under­stands the pow­er of Cloud ERP and the poten­tial it offers cus­tomers to trans­form their busi­ness, grow and dif­fer­en­ti­ate from com­peti­tors.” Speak­ing with ASUG in a recent inter­view, Bran­dl reflect­ed that, ​“You could say I was with Cloud ERP from its first hour at SAP.”

Below, in the first half of our two-part inter­view, ASUG asks Bran­dl about his per­spec­tive on expand­ing inte­gra­tion capa­bil­i­ties, help­ing cus­tomers to nav­i­gate sup­ply chain dis­rup­tion, and more.

This inter­view has been edit­ed and condensed.

Q. What is your vision for dri­ving SAP S/4HANA Pub­lic Cloud rev­enue and prof­itabil­i­ty in this new role? 

A. From my glob­al posi­tion, it’s very impor­tant that we are still doing our busi­ness local­ly. I tru­ly believe in this. I will enable local teams to serve our mid­mar­ket cus­tomers very well, sup­port­ed by region­al and glob­al orga­ni­za­tions that can gen­er­ate val­ue for the dai­ly busi­ness with col­leagues in the field. 

And, of course, based on this strong empha­sis that we have on Cloud ERP, and espe­cial­ly on the Pub­lic Cloud, I think we will con­vince more and more mid­mar­ket cus­tomers that S/4HANA Pub­lic Cloud is the right solu­tion for them to choose, in addi­tion to SAP BTP and oth­er pub­lic cloud solu­tions. What’s very impor­tant in this area is our steadi­ly grow­ing part­ner com­mu­ni­ty; the goal is to lever­age our part­ner orga­ni­za­tions as much as pos­si­ble in the mid­mar­ket area. 

I’ve been focused on mid­mar­ket for many years, dur­ing my time in Switzer­land espe­cial­ly. Mid­mar­ket cus­tomers are very agile and inno­v­a­tive, and lots of these cus­tomers have chal­lenges sim­i­lar to those faced by larg­er com­pa­nies. They’re glob­al, and they deal with strong com­pe­ti­tion every­where. They need an easy-to-use solu­tion that sup­ports their glob­al busi­ness­es. They have lim­it­ed resources avail­able, and so this solu­tion has to be eas­i­ly main­tained, but they nev­er­the­less need per­ma­nent innovations. 

Luck­i­ly, pub­lic cloud solu­tions fit their need exact­ly — not just ERP, but also in areas such as plan­ning with SAP Inte­grat­ed Busi­ness Plan­ning for Sup­ply Chain (SAP IBP) and man­u­fac­tur­ing with SAP Dig­i­tal Man­u­fac­tur­ing Cloud (SAP DMC). From a mid­mar­ket cus­tomer per­spec­tive, an ERP pub­lic cloud solu­tion is exact­ly what they need to meet their requirements. 

Q. You have a strong back­ground in dig­i­tal sales and dig­i­tal sup­ply chain. With sup­ply chains still under pres­sure through­out the world, how can SAP make a dif­fer­ence in help­ing cus­tomers nav­i­gate the dis­rup­tion, and how has your famil­iar­i­ty with these top­ics informed your approach to lead­ing S/4HPC MM thus far? 

A. When you look at SAP Dig­i­tal Sup­ply Chain, which is a very broad area of func­tion­al­i­ty that we deliv­er in our Design to Oper­ate life­cy­cle of prod­ucts, what SAP wants to deliv­er to the cus­tomer is an inte­grat­ed sup­ply-chain solu­tion that serves each and every need they have in this area. For cus­tomers that need a dig­i­tal sup­ply chain, we cov­er a lot of ERP func­tion­al­i­ty for them as well. 

If you’re look­ing at a man­u­fac­tur­ing com­pa­ny, it encom­pass­es finance, dig­i­tal sup­ply chain, HR, per­haps also dig­i­tal sales; and so, we think of sup­ply chain as a core part of ERP. In addi­tion to this core sup­ply-chain func­tion­al­i­ty that we have in S/4HANA Pub­lic Cloud, we offer add-ons, such as SAP IBP, SAP DMC, SAP Enter­prise Prod­uct Devel­op­ment (SAP EPD), and oth­ers. For sup­ply-chain cus­tomers, we have a mar­ket-lead­ing solution.

Q. Since the intro­duc­tion of GROW with SAP to dri­ve sales of SAP S/4HANA Pub­lic Cloud in the mid­mar­ket, what have you learned about this sector’s posi­tion on cloud adop­tion and any spe­cif­ic obsta­cles its com­pa­nies face?

A. Com­pa­nies of every size are mov­ing into the cloud. Mid­mar­ket com­pa­nies are even faster in mak­ing this move, for sev­er­al rea­sons, but what I’ve observed in mid­mar­ket is the huge cost pres­sure that they face in opti­miz­ing what their busi­ness does, espe­cial­ly in HR-inten­sive areas of the world where the cost per per­son is very high. By mov­ing to pub­lic cloud, they save mon­ey through not over­ly cus­tomiz­ing their sys­tems; the CFOs of these com­pa­nies are well-aware that they spend a lot of mon­ey on inte­gra­tions. They can get rid of this by using SAP products. 

There are still some areas where inte­gra­tion is need­ed, but over-cus­tomiz­ing past ERP sys­tems has pro­duced costs that nobody wants. Speak­ing more broad­ly, the pub­lic cloud approach is exact­ly what the mid­mar­ket needs, because it pro­vides that cost secu­ri­ty. And as we’re ship­ping new inno­va­tions and major releas­es every half year, the pub­lic cloud sce­nario gives all of us at SAP the abil­i­ty to react faster than we were able to do in the past to new require­ments. For the mid­mar­ket, that veloc­i­ty is very important.

Q. Even with a 2027 end of main­stream main­te­nance dead­line for SAP Busi­ness Suite 7 loom­ing, every cus­tomer is on their own busi­ness and IT evo­lu­tion jour­ney. Not all of those cus­tomers favor pub­lic cloud solu­tions. What are your views on the posi­tion of ​“cloud yes, cloud-only no,” as ASUG and DSAG mem­bers put forth in recent research?

A. At the end of the day, every com­pa­ny has to decide for them­selves what’s the right way for­ward for their busi­ness. We cer­tain­ly can help, and we have part­ners that help them find the right way. SAP offers var­i­ous solu­tions that cus­tomers can choose. In sig­nif­i­cant num­bers, our large enter­prise cus­tomers are going with a pri­vate cloud approach, which makes sense for them for them to do. On the oth­er hand, they can also use our pub­lic cloud solu­tions, and a lot of them are using SAP IBP as their plan­ning solu­tions or oth­er add-ons we provide. 

There are also oth­er soft­ware com­pa­nies on Earth, and a hybrid route that one can trav­el. From a cus­tomer per­spec­tive, every­thing is there that they need for a bright future, but they have to act. 2027 is get­ting clos­er, but those cus­tomers will man­age. Nobody will be left behind. That’s not the way SAP is act­ing. We have had part­ner­ships with our cus­tomers and their com­pa­nies for decades, and we will help them wher­ev­er we can. But, on the oth­er hand, S/4HANA is the lead­ing ERP sys­tem on the globe. It’s time for every­body to move on.

Q. Most SAP cus­tomers, in pur­su­ing cloud migra­tion, run hybrid envi­ron­ments. As SAP embraces cloud as the future of its ERP, what is your per­spec­tive on the role of hybrid sce­nar­ios in SAP’s roadmap and sup­port for them in dif­fer­ent forms?

A. Hybrid sce­nar­ios have been with SAP for­ev­er. It rarely was the case that a com­pa­ny was doing every­thing with SAP exclu­sive­ly, and so we sup­port this. We have our APIs that cus­tomers can use. We even sell inter­face soft­ware to var­i­ous solu­tions, to make it eas­i­er for our cus­tomers. We also have part­ner­ships with oth­er soft­ware com­pa­nies, in niche areas where we are not able to solve all require­ments for our cus­tomers. There were always hybrid sce­nar­ios, and they will stay with us.

Nev­er­the­less, I think cus­tomers would like to have as much as pos­si­ble run­ning in one sys­tem and, in prin­ci­ple, that’s the goal our cus­tomers are look­ing for. Inte­gra­tion was always one of the key advan­tages that SAP was offer­ing. But espe­cial­ly in the mid­mar­ket, where we think this is pos­si­ble, we want to serve our cus­tomers with a com­plete ERP solu­tion. That’s what they want, at the end of the day.

Q. As found in ASUG­’s most recent Pulse of the SAP Cus­tomer research, inte­gra­tion between SAP and non-SAP sys­tems is a top­ic of inter­est to ASUG mem­bers. What is your posi­tion on inte­gra­tion, from the SAP S/4HANA and mid­mar­ket perspective?

A. SAP Busi­ness Tech­nol­o­gy Plat­form allows cus­tomers to inte­grate eas­i­ly with oth­er SAP solu­tions. Nev­er­the­less, in today’s volatile sit­u­a­tion, you have to bring the neces­si­ty to inte­grate with oth­er sys­tems to a min­i­mum. In prin­ci­ple, it takes away veloc­i­ty, if you have to change quick­ly. If you do inte­gra­tions with a plat­form like BTP, which is main­tain­able and upgrade-proof, that’s the best way to do it. If you do it in a less upgrad­able way, you will always have the chal­lenge that it makes every­thing slow and costs you a lot of mon­ey, if you have to change quickly. 

If you think about sup­ply chain volatil­i­ty, and all the chal­lenges asso­ci­at­ed with cli­mate change, all the emerg­ing require­ments that we must com­ply with from author­i­ties, the less com­pli­cat­ed inte­gra­tions you have to do, the faster you will be, and the cheap­er your busi­ness will run. Deliv­er­ing an inte­grat­ed sys­tem was always a key fac­tor of BTP, and that is still what we’re after. And if you use spe­cif­ic add-ons from our side, they’re seam­less­ly inte­grat­ed. I remem­ber a lot of dis­cus­sions with CFOs, who love the S/4HANA Pub­lic Cloud approach, because they see that they can get rid of all these inte­gra­tion costs and that we real­ly have the mar­ket-lead­ing finance sys­tem with S/4HANA Pub­lic Cloud they see that they can save mon­ey while still being inno­v­a­tive and agile. 

Q. With cloud migra­tion mov­ing cus­tomers away from cus­tomized land­scapes and toward a fit-to-stan­dard mod­el, do you see SAP pri­or­i­tiz­ing expand­ed inte­gra­tion and end-to-end automa­tion of devel­op­ment and oper­a­tional process­es with­in the SAP standard?

A. We have finance-led process­es we sup­port across each and every indus­try, and we can deliv­er oper­a­tional process­es for the major indus­tries. We are work­ing on oth­ers. We are enhanc­ing this func­tion­al­i­ty day by day, ship­ping addi­tion­al func­tion­al­i­ty two times a year. 

We are also grow­ing our part­ner com­mu­ni­ty, which will use BTP to add on indus­try-spe­cif­ic func­tion­al­i­ty. One man­u­fac­tur­ing com­pa­ny is not nec­es­sar­i­ly doing it the same way as anoth­er man­u­fac­tur­ing com­pa­ny, even if they pro­duce the same prod­uct. Most of their process­es look com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent, and so they are all adopt­ing to a cer­tain extent. Part­ners play a very impor­tant role in the future of SAP S/4HANA Cloud. I have seen at SAP Sap­phire con­fer­ences in Orlan­do and Barcelona that our part­ners are already very active in this area, and cus­tomers were recep­tive to that approach. 

For the rest of our inter­view with Bernd Bran­dl, click here.