Where is teched 2019

SAP knows this to be a necessity but right now, I get the impression there are so many imperatives that simply prioritizing where development goes must be difficult. Those development decisions are made harder by the fact that no single person owns the SAP stack of applications. I n that context, SAP messaging about end-to-end process integration is an aspiration rather than a reality.

Mueller sits in the middle of that and has to arbitrate and negotiate between competing priorities. Nowhere do I see evidence of a single business process owner who can show me a single way to view business problem solving across the entire stack.

An example helps. During the keynote, Mueller pointed out how various inputs to the planning process can be surfaced in what to me looked like a decidedly CFO friendly dashboard.

What I wanted to see was how a machine learning infused predictive outcome model not only surfaces issues, but can then be refined to optimize for a variety of constraints that represent the issues different LOB managers face when asked to solve for say lack of sales momentum. In my example, increased marketing spending might help bring the theoretical top line up to plan. But then logistics may not have the resources or capacity to deliver, capital might not be available for deploying into key manufacturing capability, compensation might need adjustment upwards.

Any or all of these issues might impact a plan in different ways. How might SAP present that to management in a form that everyone can understand so that the overall plan becomes optimized as expressed in data-driven processes?

Mueller doesn't think there is a software firm anywhere in the world that can do what I'm suggesting. Instead, he points to topics like procure to pay as an example where SAP can provide every p[rocess that sits in and around that topic, including the infusion of experience management as a factor bearing on the outcomes of that process. I get that value proposition but in a sales cycle, that sounds like 'buy more of our stuff' to incrementally move the proverbial needle rather than the opportunity to rethink.

Mueller went as far as to suggest that my 'vision' might be a dream too far. My view is that SAP is well equipped to take moonshots.

After all, that's where its roots lay - in solving problems others chose not to address or thought impossible. The third element of this year's TechEd came about as a result of my conversation with Klein and what I heard in the keynote. Listening to Mueller and other execs, it seems that SAP is changing that model.

The question I ask is who is the customer? Is it that loyal IT person who for 20 years has run a competency center that delivers functionality to you the business user or is it someone else? This is a critically important question when considering the cloud, net new and how deployments are undertaken.

In parallel, Colgate took two subsidiaries - which were recent acquisitions - and put them on the public cloud rather than put them on the 'big mama' template. So now the company learns how putting your business on the public cloud is a good thing. We then came into the gnarly topic of integration. Denecken acknowledged that the acquired products, in particular, represent a challenge but pointed to the early work that Klein undertook in bringing together teams from the core development units and those at SuccessFactors.

The idea was to communicate the problems the business customers experience rather than merely talking about enhancements across horizontal applications. Both Denecken and Klein are confident that we shall see the fruits of those endeavors shortly. I am, as Dick Hirsch put it, reluctantly hopeful.

The fact remains that SAP's portfolio represents a hodgepodge of competing architectures, some of which are cloud-native, some of which are not. That will be much harder for both technical and cultural reasons. Denecken's response suggests SAP has found a working model:. If someone is building a service then I think they need to be compensated on its usage, not its build.

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Jelena Perfiljeva. Great guide! Would be nice to have it before LV TechEd. Like 1 Share. Right click and copy the link to share this comment.

Denys van Kempen Blog Post Author. Thanks Jelena, You are welcome. Sorry, I thought you were going to Barcelona! Next year, I will post it a little earlier. Like 0 Share. Link Text. Open link in a new tab. No search term specified.