Transformation Every Day
00:46:50 · Louis Schmidlin
[00:46:50] S0: Yeah, I think what was kind of our biggest of software, the market was just not there, where we really wanted to push agent on top of s four HANA process. And I think that was a big learning because we're like, don't customers see how well this agent could hear and maybe an automation and maybe a non SAP agent. And then we build this most efficient process where they often were telling us, hey, we're back to the basics, know, we're still on ECC and we struggle with complete different problems. And to make these the biggest pain points the ones where your most attention goes to. I think that is one side of the answer. Then on the other side, sometimes we build, or technical team build configuration agent that then go in a live S/4 system and start configuring where there may be an SAP sometimes says cool, but take one or two steps back before you kind of pierce some of our API policies and some of our thoughts where we are like, yeah. But if it if it can change something to the good, why shouldn't we do it? And where where we also need to understand that, you know, the the market needs to move with your solution. And
00:48:07 · Alexander Greb
[00:48:07] S2: the the... This You mentioned something I want to jump into because I want to hear your opinion about that. It's about the IP... API policy, which, when you talk with people in the business in the last months from different areas, the one who work for SAP, one who work, with SAP in a certain way that, are similar to your undertakings, they they struggle at times, yeah, with the API policy, which kind of APIs APIs they can use to to go into the system. And they say, like, okay. If we would have more possibilities there, we could be even faster in our in our, leap aheads that we are actually doing. What's what's your opinion about that? Do you experience similar, yeah, pulls, hand breaks in that way?
00:48:55 · Louis Schmidlin
[00:48:55] S0: Yeah, I definitely experience the same. It's just not always so clear, and everyone has a bit of a different interpretation, and we kind of wait on clearer instruction, and I think if there would be a bit more freedom on this, I think innovation could also move at a higher speed. On the other side, I also understand SAP in many topics where I think that was a conviction we had from the beginning where we worked quite closely with the people of Signavio in the beginning, where we worked quite closely with SAP. One of our backers is also Hasso Plattner Ventures, where they were like, you need to embrace and push the own solutions of SAP. And I think that was a conviction from the beginning, where we never want to work against the Signavio, where we never want to work against the LeanIX, where we never want to work against the Cloud ALM, but either just enhance their own capabilities and work with these tools together, because that's SAP strategy. And I think there you need to work with it. On the API policy, I would say, open it up and make it a bit more transparent on the kind of BTP strategy. Would say this is right, you know, you need to work with these toolings, and you need to help the customer using these tools in a much more efficient way, and that's why we're trying to work with them as close as possible and co innovate together. But, yeah, I think I experienced the same thing.
00:50:29 · Alexander Greb
[00:50:29] S2: But but you said something interesting, concerning, SAP's own stuff in a certain way. Well, since you are in a in a surrounding where there's tool for consultants and so on, who is also going a little bit to that direction, What happens the day SAP ships that those things that you do natively?
00:50:51 · Louis Schmidlin
[00:50:51] S0: Yeah, I think there is always our effort, first of all, to understand where SAP puts the focus on and start integrating with that and making it all better, and kind of just enhancing the realities. We always wanted to focus on the customer reality. We always wanted to say, if everything is in a perfect structure and all, whatever the agent tool trading can do and all of the tools can do, it's all wonderful and it works really well on the presentations. But I think we just talked about what the reality of customer actually looks like and what the most urgent pain points are to get it in a form that even the tools of SAP can work. And I think during this transformation, a lot of things can be done, but also, you know, afterwards, and it's going to be a completely new business model as soon as you understand these processes. What can you do on top of it? How can you modernize? How can you optimize? How can you look directly in the system for incident reporting, for change request tickets, etc. And in the end, we all have a goal which is quite similar. We first want to bring customer faster into the cloud, and secondly, we want to build the most efficient kind of ERP possible in the market, because that makes SAP stickier, that makes customer happier, and an overarching ERP's work better. And I don't think there is any sort of clash in sort of the mission that we all work towards, and I think work there really closely is kind of the key word.
00:52:30 · Alexander Greb
[00:52:30] S2: Imagine a 25 year old SAP junior consulting... Consultant is listening right now, who's unsure about the future and so on because, he experienced something similar that I had experienced when I was young. We were the generation in Germany, yeah, where you had to, or many of us had to to engage in in unpaid employments for months and some for years. And a similar kind of future question mark, discussion is now at the moment also happening with young people. What should they do in your opinion on Monday after listening to this podcast? What what is your encouragement to them? What would you recommend them?