Ongoing economic uncertainty and the increasing complexity of business operations, coupled with the need for accurate real-time insights, make it essential for CFOs and finance teams to be at the forefront of driving organizational transformation.
By unifying financial and operational systems and leveraging technologies like AI and data analytics, these leaders can better navigate challenges, anticipate risks, and align their strategies with evolving market demands.
Consolidating six federated solutions into an integrated Finance and Spend (F&S) group, SAP aims to empower CFOs with tools that enhance their ability to be more strategic, respond to volatility, and optimize spend.
ASUG recently spoke with David Thompson, Chief Revenue Officer, SAP Finance & Spend Management, Americas, about priorities and goals for the new group, including driving scale, time-to-value, AI and analytics, and the adoption of S/4HANA public cloud.
Thompson also discussed the shifting responsibilities of CFOs, who for years served primarily as financial gatekeepers. At SAP Sapphire & ASUG Annual Conference, Thompson will participate in a fireside chat with Dominik Asam, CFO of SAP SE, on what's top of mind for our CFOs and how they can manage through uncertainty.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
ASUG: SAP recently consolidated six federated businesses into Finance and Spend. Please share more about the new structure and what prompted this change.
Thompson: Finance and Spend is an exciting proposition for our teams at SAP and for our customers. SAP F&S is comprised of Ariba, Fieldglass, Taulia, Concur, SAP's Office of the CFO Solutions, and S/4HANA Public Cloud Finance. These six solutions work seamlessly together as an end-to-end process. The thought behind moving them together is we want our customers to see this as a suite of solutions that work as one. Our customers get the most value out of the F&S suite by using these solutions in tandem with one another. That was the genesis behind pulling these functional areas together.
From the customer's perspective, they're going to gain value from the integrations and the end-to-end processes, but the way that they've purchased these solutions in the past is not going to change. They can still make purchases in separate solution areas. However, if you want to truly drive transformation within your organization and unlock the value most optimally, taking a suite-first approach is ideal.
Case in point: if you're doing a finance transformation as part of RISE or as part of GROW, why not use Concur as the first step of that process, as the tip of the spear? Unlock the value for your finance stakeholders, for your end users, and achieve quick time-to-value and a return on your investment while you are in that phase of your transformational journey. This shift is ultimately about giving ROI to the buying centers, to get our customers quick wins while still allowing them to do broader transformation.
ASUG: As the CRO of F&S Americas for SAP, how is the suite evolving to meet your customers' needs in a rapidly changing global economy?
Thompson: On April 1, we came together as one SAP Americas organization; both North and Latin America have merged, and the six different solution areas have come together as one F&S. We truly are one team now moving forward. Customer centricity is at the core of everything we do, but when we look across the different units, we want to drive scale and time-to-value, as well as getting our customer base to see the value in SAP S/4HANA Public Cloud.
SAP S/4HANA Public Cloud allows customers to take on innovation at scale and at the pace of change. My goal is to ensure that our customers realize the value. and that they're comfortable with it. SAP S/4HANA Public Cloud can also be leveraged by organizations that choose to deploy it in a two-tier environment and also as an enabler for acquisitions or divestitures.
I'm a true believer in the idea that much of the transformation that happens, although it may start with ERP, ultimately ends up with finance. We have best-in-class finance solutions that are addressing real-world problems right now.
For example, Global Trade Services will help companies better evaluate what's happening in the marketplace around tariffs. We have document and regulatory compliance that will help customers make better and well-informed decisions around some of the regulatory measures that are in place in specific countries where they're doing business.
In our Spend portfolio, we are focused on delivering the ‘Triple Crown’ of Spend Management: the combination of SAP Spend Control Tower, SAP Ariba Category Management, and SAP Ariba Spend Analysis to take insights and turn them into action. This is incredibly important at a point in time where our customers need to diversify their spend with the suppliers to be able to keep up with the macroeconomic climate.
And we're doing all of this while keeping our SAP Business AI, and specifically our AI copilot Joule, as part of the roadmap for each one of these solutions, so that our customers have a consumer-grade experience and can interact with the copilot to get information quicker than ever.
ASUG: You mentioned tariffs, which are a major concern for both technology and finance leaders right now. What are you hearing from customers about broader macroeconomic trends? Are you seeing the CFO and finance audience play a more central role in these conversations and growing in importance?
Thompson: We're absolutely seeing that, and that is one of the reasons that F&S has come to be. What we've seen is that the importance of the CFO and the office of the CFO within our customer base can't be understated. The impact and influence that some of these broader macroeconomic trends are having on organizations fall within the realm of the CFO.
CFO roles are expanding, and they're becoming more strategic. They now have a greater say over what's being procured within the organization, over how money is being spent. CFOs are having more of a say in what IT buying decisions are being made as well. They're becoming thought leaders within organizations, and that's giving them the ability to not only make spending decisions, but also to make true buying decisions about where the organization needs and wants to be in the future. Uncertainty is never fun, but it gives CFOs the opportunity to invest where investment is necessary for them to survive through uncertainty.
On the topic of tariffs, companies are still figuring out how tariffs will impact them. Questions like, Should I import or export to a particular location? or Is it still worth selling into that market if costs rise by 15% to 30%? are top of mind. These decisions are critical—not just in terms of logistics, but also in understanding how tariffs affect pricing, competitiveness, and overall strategy.
ASUG: You’ve also mentioned Joule. What role will AI and automation play in the Finance and Spend Management roadmap, and how are customers leveraging these capabilities today in their organizations?
Thompson: SAP Business AI is interwoven throughout everything that we're doing across the organization. All our roadmaps in the public cloud are laden with artificial intelligence, and that's a fundamental part of everything that we are doing. As an example, I'll use some of our Concur use cases because they're exciting and they're relevant to a broad swath of users.
Take something relatively routine, like pre-trip approvals. Employees often need manager approval before booking travel. With our AI, that process becomes much smarter and efficient. For example, an employee can say, “I’m planning a two-night trip to New York City,” and Concur Request will make tailored recommendations—factoring in company policies, past travel behavior, and even carbon emissions. The employee can review the suggestion, send it for approval, and if the manager signs off, book the exact itinerary—all in one seamless flow.
This is just one example of how SAP is embedding intelligence into everyday processes. Joule and SAP Business AI are integrated across Finance and Spend Management and woven throughout the broader SAP ecosystem to deliver smarter, faster decisions at every level.
ASUG: Today's CFOs and procurement leaders are focused on managing risk and cutting costs. Can you touch on how Finance and Spend solutions can help organizations gain more real-time visibility, better control their total spend and help them manage risk in a volatile economy?
Thompson: SAP Business Data Cloud (BDC) gives us the opportunity to pull in data from all sources, to give ultimately an individual like a CFO or a corporate controller the ability to make decisions in real time. Pulling in data in from all their data sources, from SAP ERPs to non-SAP ERPs through our relationship with Databricks will allow finance leaders to make real-time decisions based upon reporting dynamics that allow them to drill down into specific data points. It has created a game-changing mechanism, for them to be able to take that data and turn it into insights and ultimately make decisions based upon that. And it's all in one place, so they don't have to go to multiple places to get the same information, which can be cumbersome, can take time, and can ultimately delay decision-making.
Let's consider a 15% tariff on goods and, for illustrative purposes, let’s say we're sending goods from the U.S. to the U.K. This product is now 15% more expensive to deliver. In the past, this might have been modeled manually using spreadsheets -- pulling data from multiple systems, multiplying unit costs, estimating margins, and entering figures into separate forecasting tools. You're putting that into your sales forecast system; it's completely federated.
Now, with integrated systems, that process becomes seamless and can be done all in one repository. You can pull tariff impact data directly from your SAP finance system through the Business Data Cloud (BDC), feed it into SAP CPQ (Configure Price Quote), and dynamically update pricing. This unified flow enables faster decision-making and more accurate profitability modeling—giving companies the agility they need to stay competitive. It’s this end-to-end integration that sets our suite apart from more siloed, federated approaches.
ASUG: With ECC customers going through transformation to the cloud or purchasing ERP, why should Finance and Spend solutions be a top priority?
Thompson: Any time you look at a transformation, it needs to be thought of as just that: a transformation. Just simply moving from ECC to S/4, you certainly eliminate technical debt, and there is a benefit to doing that. You certainly allow yourself to be able to take advantage of the latest innovations. But what you don't get is the benefit of true transformation. And transformation can be seen in several different ways, such as: finance transformation, procurement transformation and supply chain transformation.
At its core, transformation is about driving true tangible benefits back to a business or a buying center within your organization. A simple lift and shift, again, certainly has its benefits, but if you're looking to truly change and transform your organization, it should be done in functional areas such as finance or procurement where you're driving benefits back to the business that can be quantifiable, that have qualities that help improve the organization for the better.
ASUG: Will you be hosting any sessions at SAP Sapphire? What should customers be on the lookout for related to Finance and Spend?
Thompson: SAP Sapphire this year is going to be a game-changer. I look forward to it every year, and this year is going to be no different. But I think now, with the announcement of SAP BDC, you're going to see that theme throughout. And SAP Business AI, the Joule AI copilot – these are all things that our customers should be really excited about.
For me, specifically, it's how those solutions play within finance and spend management and how they show up in our roadmap. You're going to see that it's going to show up in the keynotes, and it's going to show up in the sessions, that every one of our sub-solution areas within finance and spend has Business AI included. You're going to see Joule within the roadmap, and you're going to see the value it delivers. One of the most exciting areas for me is how we leverage SAP Ariba Category Management to diversify our supplier category spend and using the Joule copilot to support that.
I'll be doing a fireside chat with Dominik Asam, our global CFO, on what's top of mind for our CFOs and how they can manage through uncertainty and leverage AI to do so. Dominik is one of the preeminent thought leaders in the space, and for anybody that's part of the SAP Select track, they will get a ton out of this, whether they’re part of the finance organization or not.