The global supply chain landscape remains under pressure, facing unprecedented challenges and poised to undergo seismic shifts based on geopolitical conflicts, climate events, and workforce shortages. Persistent disruptions are sending shockwaves through the global economy, forcing companies to reimagine their operations and seek innovative technologies to build resilience against an increasingly unpredictable future.
In this era of constant disruption, SAP stands at the forefront of supply chain transformation. Our vision is clear: to empower our customers with transparent, resilient, and sustainable supply chains. We’re committed to delivering innovative cloud solutions and collaborative business networks that enable autonomous supply chains seamlessly integrated with SAP Business Suite.
To spearhead this critical business, SAP recently appointed Dominik Metzger as the new president and chief product officer of Supply Chain Management at SAP. Metzger brings a wealth of experience and deep-rooted passion for tackling supply chain complexities. His years of hands-on work with customers navigating disruptions and driving transformation make him uniquely qualified to lead SAP’s new unit. This team combines SAP’s digital supply chain, business network, and field service management solutions, positioning the company to address the multifaceted challenges of modern supply chain management.
Nearly three months into this role, I caught up with Metzger to hear about how he’s adapting and his vision for the future of supply chain management at SAP.
Q: Having spent the last five years working in a variety of roles at SAP, what are your priorities for the new role?
A: During my time at SAP, I’ve seen how supply chain management has transitioned into a dynamic and connected ecosystem that demands constant collaboration, end-to-end data integration, and agile processes to keep pace with constant disruptions. My chief priority is to ensure that we help customers not only respond to disruptions but also proactively prepare and act. We can do so by leveraging AI, generative AI, real-time data, and predictive analytics with the power of SAP’s technology. Our vision is to build an autonomous supply chain, enabling customers to have highly efficient processes and personalized, context-rich insights that incorporate data from across the enterprise. This approach allows their teams to focus on truly complex decisions.
With SAP Business Suite, we offer our customers deeply connected, end-to-end supply chain processes—from product data management for discrete and formulated products to planning the demand, supply, production, and inventory levels to purchasing parts and materials to manufacturing execution, logistics, and finally asset and service operations. These processes are turbocharged with a wealth of AI capabilities to help truly bring the experience to a business user.
Yet, AI is only as good as the data it runs on, so we are committed to ensuring all processes are relevant and responsible. Our recent launch of SAP Business Data Cloud (SAP BDC) is a cornerstone of helping our customers fix their data at its very core, within the context of their business process. This makes any ontology or data semantic discussion obsolete: SAP can provide out-of-the-box, semantically aligned data products, spanning end-to-end supply chain functions, enriched with unstructured data through our partnership with Databricks.
Our AI-first strategy will help enable companies to leverage the wealth of structured and unstructured data to become highly adaptive and, ultimately, autonomously act on even the most complex disruptions. This holistic approach helps guarantee that customers will shape their supply chain strategies with real-time intelligence. By embedding this technology deep into SAP’s supply chain management applications, we can drive greater productivity, improve operational efficiency, and create more resilient, agile networks that can adapt to shifting market conditions. We are now conquering the next frontier of truly autonomous supply chain agents, contextually rich and deeply anchored in customers’ business processes.
Now, one of the most valuable sources of data we have not yet discussed: data out of your n-tier supply chain. In the highly interconnected environments companies are operating in, the supply chain business is a network business. My top priority is to enable our customers to benefit from the immense value of SAP Business Network. Our emphasis lies on increasing operational visibility and efficiency. Deep collaboration can enable buyers to identify new sources of supply, even during times of disruption. With market conditions constantly shifting, we are helping businesses to identify risks in the depth of their upstream supply chains to keep operations running and significantly reduce time to recovery.
How has your previous experience helped shape you for this position?
My career has taken me around the world—from Southeast Asia to Europe to the Northeast United States—and through various roles. In my early days, I served as a supply chain application consultant, learning the nuances of SAP technology, the intricacies of industry processes, and the challenges that go along with technology transformations for SAP customers. This helped shape my approach, as I aim to deliver real value by ensuring our solutions are adaptable and capable of driving meaningful business outcomes.
Additionally, while I’m now based in Munich, Germany, I spent years of my adult life in Singapore and New York City. I was exposed to different business cultures, market dynamics, regulatory environments, and languages. This reinforced the importance of flexibility, creativity, and inclusivity, as SAP supply chain management strives to build globally scalable solutions. In this new role, I’m combining those insights and experiences to guide supply chain management at SAP. I want our offerings to align with the real-world challenges our customers face daily, regardless of whether they’re a retailer in Asia or a manufacturer in North America. Ultimately, my experience has driven my commitment to ensuring our solutions are relevant, adaptable, and impactful.
Can you share some insight into what we can expect from SAP’s supply chain management team over the coming months?
We will focus on integrating SAP’s broader AI-first, suite-first strategy that enables customers to seamlessly implement advanced technologies into their daily operations. Our focus will be on expanding automation, improving supply chain orchestration, and bolstering business network collaboration—all critical steps to maintaining resilience in an ever-evolving market.
Another priority is reducing emissions and helping customers meet sustainability goals. Through SAP Green Ledger, customers can integrate carbon emissions data into existing digital supply chain technology, aligning sustainability with sourcing and supply chain management strategies.
My team is also working on several exciting product launches, including announcements at SAP Sapphire in May and SAP Connect in October. Be sure to tune into both events for more information.
A strong, diverse, and collaborative team is essential in addressing any client challenge. By uniting diverse perspectives and expertise under one vision, we can develop platforms that deliver meaningful, long-term business outcomes for SAP customers around the world.
To learn more about Metzger’s insights on supply chain management, listen to a recent episode of the Future of Supply Chain podcast: AI & Manufacturing: Smart Technologies for a New Era of Industry.
Cindy McKendry is director of Corporate Communications for Intelligent Spend and Supply Chain at SAP.
