“Every company is becoming a technology company.” Many of us have heard this phrase, which has become a mantra for the corporate world. The way we live, work, and create value is changing at an incredible pace, and the speed of digital innovation is accelerating as we speak.
Be it catering to ever-changing consumer expectations; establishing new business models; making products, services, and operations more efficient and sustainable; or delivering market-making innovations: to stay competitive, companies must continuously adapt, reinvent themselves, and make technology core to their business strategy. However, while the need to change is clear, many companies are struggling with the “how.”
From my personal experience with many customers, they are oftentimes running complex and highly customized legacy systems with years-old applications and thousands of lines of custom code. And while these systems might still need current business needs, such complexity hinders the ability to adapt to changing business needs and market requirements, and it prevents companies from being able to innovate, grow, and scale.
There is no doubt that making such complexity simple can seem like a daunting task. The good news: we at SAP are here to support you on this journey. We help reduce complexity and redesign systems toward a modular, agile, integrated, and highly secure enterprise resource planning (ERP) landscape that provides you with a holistic view of and real-time insights into the entire business.
In January this year, we launched the SAP Customer Evolution Program. Its aim is simple: to help our existing customers reinvent their business — at their own pace and on their own terms, for unmatched business value. Using best practices and our latest innovations, we guide them toward a holistic landscape and business process transformation that is tailored to their unique business needs and requirements — no matter if we are talking cloud or hybrid environments.
We accelerate our customers’ journey toward an intelligent, sustainable enterprise in three simple and straightforward steps: plan, execute, and innovate.
Starting with the planning phase, experts across SAP evaluate customers’ unique situation and innovation needs. Together with them, we define business goals and core business processes, and identify the main roadblocks that hinder agility and innovation. Jointly, we evaluate their existing landscape and define the best transformation path.
Second comes execution. Based on customer input and using our consolidated experience, we build a custom-made value case, followed by a phased transformation plan that is tailored to their pace and fully aligned with SAP’s product road map. This helps ensure our customers plan the right step at the right time while making use of our state-of-the-art innovations.
After that, we use the combined power of SAP and our powerful ecosystem of more than 23,000 partners to implement the designed road maps. Automated tools for the most critical phases of the deployment and outcome-driven services help our customers lower the total TCO and time to value — no matter what their deployment path is, whether greenfield, system conversion, or selective data transition.
And as transformation journeys are continuous, we maintain an ongoing feedback loop to be a trusted partner also for future innovations. Using our best practices and building a standardized and agile landscape, customers can easily consume every innovation and further evolve their business processes — today, tomorrow, and in the future.
Our promise holds true: we remain committed to leaving no customer behind, helping them to be ready for whatever lies ahead. We provide them with a vision for their unique transformation into an intelligent, sustainable enterprise, fitting their industry, current landscape, key business processes, and priorities. We turn this vision into reality with an evolution journey that is tailored exactly to their needs.
Jointly with our ecosystem, we will drive a smooth and intelligent execution, plugging in the right services, accelerators, and tools based on their target architecture. Because this is our joint journey – and we are only getting started!
Thomas Bamberger is president of SAP Customer Evolution.
