Open letter to SAP Clients

Dear SAP Clients, this is an open letter to all of you who have stopped or postponed their SAP projects because of Covid-19. I'd like to ask you to spare a few minutes for one who has spent her whole business live supporting SAP Clients in being future ready. I feel personally committed to share my view of the actual situation with you which is based on many talks with SAP Customers and Partners and inspired by a brilliant presentation of Glenn Gonzalez, CTO of SAP Germany.

The future of your SAP Projects - Shaping your own success

Do you still remember? A few years ago, when everybody starts talking about Digital Transformation, many of us did not really had an idea what exactly that meant and how it could impact our world. Many different theories, ideas, guesses, benefits, challenges, fears, and threats have been presented under the umbrella of “Digital Transformation” that possibly could influence the world, our businesses, and private lives. Well, I think in the meantime, there are still discussions on the “what” and “how”, but we all have experienced that right now we’re somewhere in the middle or maybe just at the beginning…?? 🤔

I recently heard a brilliant presentation from Mr. Glenn González, SAP CTO Germany*. One important sentence he said is so crucial for the success of our all businesses: The level of expectations people have achieved will never become smaller. If people have once made the experience that a product, they have ordered can be delivered the same day, they are disappointed about any delivery longer than that. Here it is, the famous “Customer Experience”!

But wait a minute…. We are in the middle of a pandemic disease. The world has changed from one day to the other. Many companies were forced to stop working or at least to slow down and reduce. Others, however, make the revenue of their lives.

And the impact on Customer Experience and Customer Expectations?

Did it also slow down? 💤

Was Glenn’s message wrong? 🤯

No, he still is completely right! 🚀

After a few weeks of getting used to the new situation, companies’ creativity of making business exploded. People still can have over-night or same-day deliveries, more used than ever before. There are even thousands of new online offerings that can be booked or subscribed, like online universities, language lessons, dog training courses, workouts, cooking sessions, virtual holiday travels, online medical appointments and many more…

Technical infrastructures have been extended and improved to enable people working from home and surprisingly it works. I even dare to say that the level of Customer Expectations has not suffered, it is maybe different in some areas, it even has increased in other areas, but in total it has not lost levels.

What does this all have to do with SAP projects to come back to the title of my letter?

Well, dear SAP Clients, your customers’ expectations will not wait till we call COVID-19 a history. Progress will not stop. Digital Transformation made some huge steps ahead in our all lives, faster than ever expected. New companies keep on entering the markets with a lot less history and ballast to handle than you maybe have. If you stop your projects that make your company future ready, you lose momentum and risk the success of your company. You all have implemented your business-critical processes on SAP Systems. Many of them are not ready for the future and will harm your competitiveness if you do not modernize them to improve your customers’ experiences. Your clients’ expectations keep on increasing.

SAP projects will no longer be the same. To keep pace with this trend, you will have to rethink your project processes and adopt new approaches. Make technology work for you wherever possible. You already enabled your teams to work remotely from home to keep your businesses up and running. Now start to do your SAP projects remotely to make your business processes competitive and future ready. Also, do not ignore the capabilities of innovations because of the costs you fear. They can make your live a lot easier and save your company.

There is so much support for you from SAP and the SAP partner ecosystem to make it happen:

West Trax delivers complete analyses of the usage, maturity, and future readiness of your SAP systems in just one day with a remote SaaS App, the West Trax KPI Analyzer. It replaces Months of As-Is workshops, leading straight into virtual strategical workshops with the implementation partner of your choice. The App based on SAP Cloud Platform provides reliable facts, benchmarks and what-if analyses and is used as a remote common project success platform. Analyses can be repeated as often as required to make sure you can keep track on your progress and always work and plan with the latest facts. Even multi-system landscapes can be analyzed in just one day.

Many SAP implementation partners like for instance EY and Deutsche Telekom have included the West Trax KPI Analyzer App in their methodology to accelerate your projects and save your time and money.

SAP Partner DAL (Deutsche Leasing) even provides an offering to lease or finance SAP projects to save your liquidity and mitigate your risks.

To talk about all the different solutions and services SAP has prepared to support you until the world turns back to normal, it would need more than this letter**.

So, do not stop your projects, just change the way you are used to handle them and take new directions. This gives your company the chance to identify new opportunities, discover new markets and deliver your clients the best user experience ever. 👩‍💻 👨‍💻

Yours sincerely,

Diana Bohr, CTO & Co-Founder of West Trax

Comments:

"Thanks Diana Bohr. A great article - new technologies determine how we live and how we work. They change us and, above all, they change our expectations. Shaping and tackling the new normal is truly a question of #mindset. I am happy that my keynote provided inspiration."

Glenn Gonzalez
Chief Technology Officer (CTO) - SAP Germany bei SAP

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"Liebe Diana, mit der West Trax-App Planungssicherheit gewinnen und sich dann die Implementierungs-Ressourcen sichern. Das ist der richtige Weg zu SAP S/4 HANA. Viel Erfolg und auf weiterhin gute Zusammenarbeit. LG Bernd"

Bernd Kurzmann
DAL Deutsche Anlagen-Leasing GmbH & Co. KG·Senior Key Partner Manager IT

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