This week SAP’s global CEO, Christian Klein, spoke to the Australian Financial Review about the impact of geopolitics on the tech industry, the future of work, and how SAP is supporting its customers through the pandemic.
In the early stages of lockdown, Christian shared how SAP was instrumental alongside a group of partners in helping Woolworths Group overhaul its online delivery service within days to prioritise and protect the health and well-being of at-risk customers for home deliveries.
“We definitely have more products which are about increasing resiliency, so there the spend is definitely not decreasing … the question is whether CEOs are seeing that business transformation has to happen… At SAP we talked before the pandemic about the intelligent enterprise, higher automation and higher productivity, and now in the crisis, it has actually become even more relevant with so many people working from home,” said Christian.
As a result of the pandemic, SAP also worked with Australia’s largest pharmacy wholesaler and retail network, Sigma Healthcare, to help meet demand following a near doubling of orders.
“We are running large multinational companies, we have customers in Australia, we’re doing business in the US and in China and despite the increasing complexity and the higher degree of protection, we of course still want to provide the infrastructure to make those companies run,” said Christian.
SAP’s youngest ever CEO also talked about the future of work, returning to the office, the birth of his new child, and the impacts of easing restrictions too early. Christian also shared how he’s been using time that he would otherwise have been travelling, and less in the future and how he enjoys the convenience of working from home.
Read the AFR’s full interview with Christian Klein here.
