Transformation Every Day
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?
00:13:15 · JP Haas
[00:13:15] S0: We took a very user centric approach partly because of our backgrounds working in enterprise software and in in the Palantir ecosystem. The... One of the things that Palantir does well is that they are very, very user and outcome driven, and that that always starts with understanding what is the day to day of that person that... Whose job I want to make better, what does that actually look like? And what tools do they need in order to work 10 x, a 100 x better? And that's why we also started from just looking at what exactly is the workflow in transformations as well as an ongoing SAP operations. And then we try to come up with a workflow that really meets all of the different personas in the in the life cycle, in the workflow life cycle where they are. And the way we then approached that was we think the missing piece was always, can you can you derive context about how the current system actually works and runs from from the reality of the system? Let's make this a bit more concrete. Can we actually read out all of the custom code in the configuration in a way that that explains how this particular SAP instance for a company like, you know, random example, BMW, how that differs from the SAP system of Mercedes. Right? What is what is the difference between all of the different plants between... Within within BMW, and how does it deviate from the standard? Importantly, we don't compare Mercedes and BMW. Right? Everyone's data remains in, of course, their own instance of conduct, and there's there's no there's no comparison between those. But the key point is this insight of what makes the BMW system unique, that is not possible today. And the existing SAP tooling also doesn't offer that. It's not it's not based on the specific context of the system that is that is contained in the custom code and configuration. We started out with this with this guideline or the the tagline, the truth is in your code. Right?
00:15:30 · Johannes Langguth, JP Haas, Alexander Greb
[00:15:30] S1: Uh-huh. [00:15:32] S0: There are also limitations of that, and we should talk about that. But it is the most important starting point in order to unlock all of these other workflows. [00:15:45] S3: Hi there. Quick break for a short message before we go right back to the episode. Enjoying the insights and stories on transformation every day? Want to make sure you never miss an episode packed with practical tips and best practices from the SAP world featuring conversations with some of the most interesting people in the SAP universe? Then hit that subscribe button on your favorite podcast platform, whether it is Apple, Spotify, or any other you use. And if our podcast brings you value, [00:16:15] S0: we would be [00:16:16] S3: incredibly grateful if you could leave us a five star review and share it with your friends and colleagues. Your support means the world to us. Thanks so much, and happy listening.