The SAP Student Training and Rotation (STAR) Program is a core part of the culture here at SAP. The program is a multi-year, paid rotational training program designed to help students jump start their careers at SAP. As part of this, interns are given the opportunity to receive on-the-job and structured development, as well as coaching directly from leaders in the technology and sales fields.
However, as our cohort of interns moved through the program, a question that continually sat with us was: How can we as interns use our unique experiences to add further value to SAP’s ecosystem?
Interns have the capacity to bring a unique outside-in perspective to any organisation, especially one of the size and scale of SAP, and we knew there was the opportunity to capitalise on the vital role we play.
So, in 2021 we decided to capture the ideas we had for the business by designing and piloting a program. The STAR Intern Shark Tank was born.
The STAR Intern Shark Tank gives the opportunity for us as interns to come together to innovate and be creative to solve some of SAP’s biggest business challenges, by improving current processes or showcasing an SAP innovation.
The second annual STAR Intern Shark Tank was launched in May 2022 with an uptake of five teams across the business. The teams had the opportunity to connect with mentors relevant to their idea to help shape and validate the issue being tackled, and access to three expert-led workshops to support the process, spanning from design thinking through to prototyping and pitching.
After developing our ideas, we had the opportunity to pitch them to an SAP executive panel consisting of senior leaders from across the business. The pitch day consisted of a series of presentations followed by a small networking session.
Access to such senior leaders is invaluable, and the experience of pitching our ideas provided a training opportunity you don’t get every day. We have some work to do now in further developing and bringing our ideas to life!
While we are still only starting out our careers at SAP, the opportunity to play a role in shaping the business and to add value outside of the direct teams we sit in, is incredible and has given us learning opportunities beyond expectations.
To learn more about the SAP STAR Intern program – go here.
The Ideas, in summary:
Idea 1: STARt your career @ SAP. This idea aims to address some of the issues in attracting Early Talent in Brisbane, Canberra and New Zealand by encouraging STARs to create reels, TikTok’s and other creative marketing strategies more aligned to attracting youth to the STAR program. Additional marketing strategies included networking sessions with university students and sponsorship of university clubs and societies.
By Mitch Regan, Mitchell Steele & Rachel Chiong
Idea 2: New Starter Kit. Aims to simplify business processes by providing a high-level overview of internal tools required for the role of a new starter. It also directs new starters to resources which help familiarise them with the internal SAP tools.
By Ankush De, Lucy Liu, Claudia Huynh & Chris Chiam
Idea 3: SCORE!. Statistics Comprising Of Rugby Events (SCORE) is an application displaying statistics of the New Zealand Rugby team, powered by SAP technology. This idea aims to leverage a recent partnership with the All Blacks.
By Andrew Karatea, Saakshi Hegde, Jason Tran & Mary Mading
Idea 4: New Zealand Rugby Fan Engagement App. An application which aims to increase fan engagement with the New Zealand Rugby team. The application is to be powered by SAP technology and developed in partnership with SAP partners. The app will host player statistics, live polls, highlight videos, amongst other data.
By Sam McGuire, Grant Baker & Michael Coutts
Idea 5: SAPTasker; A task sharing platform that allows Early Career Talent to meet and learn from people across the business, whilst allowing the business to reap benefits of underutilised resources. The vision is to expand the solution to include anyone who is interested to uptake further opportunities.
By Kailin Tan, Matthew Chen, Raymond Liu & Eileen Yang