Transformation Every Day
00:04:55 · JP Haas
[00:04:55] S0: Yeah, you're right. It is an interesting and not very traditional SAP background. But I think that that has opened many doors for us as well in our mental perspective on on how the industry operates and how we can rethink it in many ways. So let me take you you back to to the founding days. And before that, my two co founders and I, we all worked at Palantir in different leadership positions across product engineering and go to market. And in every big project that we were working on with, you know, industrials, with telco companies, with even government entities, SAP systems were always one of the one of the core systems and data stores that we had to connect with in order to to build the foundation of what Palantir was then going to do with these companies. And what we observed over and over again was was two things. Number one, none of the IT teams that we were working with had a really good idea of what the structure of the SAP system that they were connecting with Palantir even even really looked like. They were telling us things like these structures of the data, but also of the logic that connects everything. These are leftovers of of the last twenty plus years. You just said it, Alex. And there was this feeling of of a lack of control and almost, you know, uncertainty and and insecurity, frankly, because Yeah. These systems are so so mission critical. But if you don't really understand how everything is connected and how things are set up, then making any change in the system is like open heart surgery. Right? There's there's very, very dangerous implications of it, but you're... In many ways, you're flying blind. Yeah. And then the second the second observation was that most of the IT teams that we were we were engaging with in our in our projects, they weren't... They were about to go into these these long S4HANA transformation projects. They were going to take take years and keep them busy for years. And in that time, they weren't able to to work on actually improving the the business capabilities and the business usefulness of these of these SAP systems. And that actually is very, very harmful for for the business. Because if you can if you cannot build new features that make the business better, that slows everyone down. And that phenomenon is something that you see in in IT at large. Right?
00:07:27 · JP Haas
The there's always this gap between the business says I need a new procurement feature or I want to optimize my production process. But the time to implement to implement that and the time to value is is just way too slow. And that is really bad for the for the companies that are that are that are impacted by that. The example that I always go back to, and I really think of that every morning I get up because that's the driving mission statement of what we want to do. We we saw this defense company in Germany that couldn't make more tanks for Ukraine because working on optimizing the production line was not possible to do in a short time frame because the IT team was was busy with an S4HANA transformation. And that's that idea. The fact that businesses are slowed down by the fact that IT projects take too long. That is what's what's ultimately at the core of what's driving us to to do great work every day. We want to bring agility back to to the companies that we work with by turning IT from, in many ways, a slowing down function into an into an enabler of the business. And we should also talk about why that's not actually IT's fault. Right? And that maybe
00:08:43 · Johannes Langguth
[00:08:43] S1: goes back to your point around opening many doors for them. Absolutely. And it's quite interesting what you say because I always have this kind of feeling. Why is what we do always always so big? Why is it something that people say, okay, I have so much fear before doing that step? So I postponed and postponed and postponed until to a point where I... There are really some external reasons in many cases that I finally have to do this kind of step, like transforming myself. Shouldn't it be something that I that I'm enjoying, that I'm looking forward to? Yeah. Like, for example, when when when you do your your fitness routine and so on, when you're happy, hey. I I'm doing now something good for myself. Transform it, it will bring me forward. Why are we not able to make this kind of transformation a positive experience for everybody? And what kind of tools and what kind of capabilities do we actually need to enable our customers to to feel that way? Because whenever you talk about these kinds of veterans who have done this kind of easy c two s four transformation, quite often, it's it's like grandfathers talking about the war. They are so shell shocked because everything is... It took so long and was just a big undertaking and so on. What you say is something where I see the biggest potential of our entire industry of making not such a big thing about the necessary thing, but making something positive out of that.
00:10:03 · JP Haas, Johannes Langguth
[00:10:03] S0: I really agree with that. I think... And it comes it comes down to you you need to bring more of the capabilities of making ongoing changes and quick incremental changes. You need to bring that capability to each of the the team members on the IT side. You also need to involve the business much more. I think there's a lot of the reason why these projects are so complex and so monolithic is that there's a huge coordination effort required between the IT side and the business side of the house. Right? And I think breaking that down and making everything more more transparent and collaborative is a is a step towards that. [00:10:48] S1: Definitely. Definitely. So what was your first step into the world of SAP when I said, I stopped my career at Palantir and do something on. How did you approach that? How did you build up the the connections and your your network and so on? Because I think to come into, let's say, this kind of new industry, while not having something of SAP consultant past where you have a network. How did you manage that? Because I
00:10:48 · Johannes Langguth, JP Haas
[00:10:48] S1: Definitely. Definitely. So what was your first step into the world of SAP when I said, I stopped my career at Palantir and do something on. How did you approach that? How did you build up the the connections and your your network and so on? Because I think to come into, let's say, this kind of new industry, while not having something of SAP consultant past where you have a network. How did you manage that? Because I [00:11:18] S0: think that's that's quite an interesting point in your your... The first thing we did was we had we had numerous and endless conversations with people in the industry. Everyone from consultants to customers to SAP themselves to people in non SAP but equivalent industries. Right? The same problem exists in the Salesforce universe, in the the Oracle universe. So we really tried to understand the the industry and why it works the way it does from every perspective. And this goes back to the point of... I think we had an advantage of not coming directly from the space, but being close enough to it to understand the the principles behind it. Right? And that I think made us made us... Put us in a position to be able to challenge many of the assumptions that led to the war stories that you were you were mentioning just earlier. Right? And some of these things just don't need to be that way. And I think often it helps to be able to approach it with a fresh pair of eyes. Definitely.
00:12:20 · Johannes Langguth
[00:12:20] S1: And where do you see yourself before we go a little bit more into Conduct itself positioning between, let's say, what SAP does, what other companies does. Because you see quite interesting, a lot of different approaches to, let's say, a similar topic. I definitely do not say the same because tools and and and the the offerings are too too different. But you have startups which go the agentic route and so on. You have SAP itself with their own tool for consultants who sometimes more, sometimes less also are in that area. Where did you wrap your head around saying like, okay, we want to make... We want to empower the user because you have an LLM approach. How how do I make this kind of super user with the kind of unlimited capabilities out of him? What did what did lead to that kind of decision, to that kind of approach?