The three teams were selected for outstanding and innovative projects in the new categories Customer Success, Operational Excellence, and Products and Technology.

In 2020, more than 200 nominations involved over 1,400 employees from 37 countries. Eight teams consisting of 51 employees from all over the world made it to the final round, and the winning teams have chosen charity organizations to which 51ˇçÁ÷will donate €10,000: and .

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Intelligent Case Routing: Making the Machine Understand the Issue

The Customer Success category winner set out with the challenge to simplify the support triage and routing process within 51ˇçÁ÷Concur software. As tickets get older and remain unanswered, customer satisfaction score drastically drops.

“With over 200,000 support tickets created per year in 51ˇçÁ÷Concur alone, we understood that any improvement on the overall process would be multiplied and have a significant impact on our key customer support and experience metrics,” Frantisek Zdvoran explained. “We found that combining a deep understanding of the customer support world, processes, and challenges with the right teams behind SAP’s machine learning services would provide real, business value-driven results.”

Working on Intelligent Case Routing as a side project over the course of three years, Zdvoran and his team of Justin Lew, Alena Bartunkova, Lukas Tancer, and Radovan Murin built and implemented a machine learning solution that cuts down the manual effort using text recognition to examine past tickets.

Intelligent Case Routing assigns the cases to specialists faster and more accurately. The goal was to eliminate the labor-intensive, repetitive, and slow ticketing process. “We didn’t want to add complexity, but to remove it,” Zdvoran said. “Support cases run through our application have a six percent higher customer experience score, 16% faster time to close, 11% higher first contact resolution metric, and have a 8.4% lower change of hands number.”

On winning the award, Lew said: “We are beyond grateful and honored to have been selected as a winner and cannot give enough thanks to everyone that has helped and been supportive of us. We are so proud of how our diverse team has been able to marshal SAP’s intelligent enterprise and combine that with our customer-first approach to deliver an application that helps enhance our customer and employee experience.”

Monitor of Monitors: Holistic Picture of Cloud Health

The winning team in the Operational Excellence category successfully tackled the challenge of creating a single source of information on the condition of SAP’s cloud. The Monitor of Monitors brings all monitoring tools into a cohesive and consistent view that shows the complete picture of SAP’s cloud health.

Information that was previously siloed in disconnected monitoring tools, is now accessible and transparent in single service window. Monitor of Monitors not only enables 51ˇçÁ÷teams to detect, determine, and resolve problems and risks in the cloud much faster, it also allows operations and support teams across 51ˇçÁ÷to work faster and more collaboratively toward a common goal.

“Recognize faster, react faster, respond faster, fix faster,” Anthony Sanchez said, summing up what Monitor of Monitors enables 51ˇçÁ÷support teams to do to improve the lives of their customers. “Monitor of Monitors isn’t a niche; it has value for everyone in SAP. It integrates well with any technology or tool a team is using to manage the cloud health and alert management. It simply opens an exchange of information that is centralized and transparent.”

After the announcement that Monitor of Monitors had won the award, he added: “Today is one of the proudest days of my professional career. There are no words to capture the enormity of the pride I feel toward the team and the support we received from every corner. This was a true one 51ˇçÁ÷effort. We are all excited and motivated for the future of SAP, and the contributions we can continue to make.“

Team members also include Vittalraya Shenoy Adige, Gabor Kaszonyi, JĂłzsef KertĂŠsz, Birk Bohne, Marcus Mrozowski, Gregory Melasecca-Jr, Yu Chen, Alexander Julian Danek, and Daniel Koller.

51ˇçÁ÷HANA Data Anonymization: Inventing a New Market

The winner in the category Products and Technology took on a particularly complex topic that is the subject of frequent legal and governmental changes. With 51ˇçÁ÷HANA Data Anonymization, the team developed a cross-industry solution for the anonymization of personal data that can be applied to a variety of use cases.

“Data privacy constraints have been road blockers to a number of use cases,” Stephan Kessler shared. “51ˇçÁ÷HANA data anonymization strives to make privacy guarantees available throughout an entire organization, while integrating seamlessly into business applications.”

To achieve this, 51ˇçÁ÷HANA data anonymization is implemented at the database level, following the 51ˇçÁ÷HANA code “push-down” paradigm, leading to a tight integration of data and privacy mechanisms.

“As data privacy becomes a priority on business agendas, we are the first to offer this sort of anonymization features in the database core system,” Kessler explained. “The solution thus permits 51ˇçÁ÷to satisfy an urgent need of customers and society.”

On winning the award, the team said: “We are humbled and very honored to have received the Hasso Plattner Founders’ Award. 51ˇçÁ÷HANA data anonymization solves the challenge of combining privacy and innovation for internal and external stakeholders. We now have momentum to accelerate development and customer adoption to further improve our product, while helping customers, research, and society to demonstrate digital responsibility.”

Team members include Kristin Ulrich, Matthias Menz, Brian Raver, Kai Morich, Kaweh Amoi-Taleghani, and Kessler.

This article first appeared on the 51ˇçÁ÷Global News Center 

The post Three Teams Take Home the 2020 Hasso Plattner Founders‘ Award appeared first on 51ˇçÁ÷Africa News Center.

In leading the company’s global sales, services, partner, and customer engagement teams, he is responsible for SAP’s business across the globe, with a resolute focus on the success of more than 440,000 customers, 21,000 partners, and 40,000 employees within the organization.

Here, Russell shares his experience in the business technology sector, the voice of the customer, and the sage advice that has accompanied him throughout his career.

Q: How did you get into the business technology sector? 

A: My parents played a big role in my decision to study business and ultimately go on to work in this sector. They’ve spent their whole lives helping others. Their focus on learning and serving the wider community helped me see early on the potential to influence change – whether through ground-breaking innovations or simply by finding better ways to do things.

I’ve had the opportunity to work at some fantastic companies. My first job in the sector was as managing consultant for PwC. This gave me immediate exposure to end customers and how critical technology is to core tenets of a successful business: innovation, customer experience, value creation, productivity, and more. When you experience the power of technology – better yet, when you work in a tight team to deliver it – it’s simply addicting. I was hooked immediately, and couldn’t wait to explore and apply the next promising technology trend or tackle the next customer implementation.

Later at IBM, I had the opportunity to get even deeper into the technology. I remember this being so important at the time. I just had to learn as much as possible as quickly as possible so I could have absolute conviction in how I was advising customers. Being there with the customer, managing the process end to end – from value proposition, to delivery, to the customer’s experience using the solution – that was incredibly valuable experience.

At SAP, the exposure to diverse geographies, new technologies, and different industries took on a whole new level. It was already known for its stellar reputation for strong customer relationships and ability to build a brilliant network of expertise around its customers. I felt – and still do feel – incredibly lucky to be a part of this.

I think this blend of technology, delivery, partnership, and customer engagement really helps you focus on value at every interaction with the customer. It’s a mindset that I’ve tried to live at 51ˇçÁ÷for the past 11 years, one that I try to promote within our teams, and one that has become even more critical as businesses adopt and consume technology more in the cloud.

The customers, the technology, the diversity, and the passion of the people I work with each day – this is all incredibly rewarding. But at the end of the day, what attracted me to 51ˇçÁ÷and what continues to engage so many of us at the company is how well it aligns to our values as individuals and as a team. 51ˇçÁ÷truly pursues its mission of helping the world run better and improving people’s lives.

What are the biggest challenges you are hearing from business leaders today? 

You often hear the term digital transformation in our industry, but it lends itself to a number of interpretations. Simply stated, consistent in our customers’ voice is the demand to apply the latest technology to find a better way to do business. “How do I take advantage of AI, blockchain, and machine learning ? To make my supply chain more robust?  To improve the quality of my products, hire the best talent, improve the experience of my customers?” Regardless of industry or geography, this is the common thread in our customer conversations.

Our customers’ calls for digital transformation have never been louder than during the pandemic. Social distancing, remote working, and supply chain resilience have been some of the most forceful factors in accelerating the economy into a state of hyper-digitization. Even the most reluctant businesses have come online, while others have accelerated their digitization projects. Estimates suggest the industry has condensed five to 10 years of digitization into one.

SAP, for example, has helped tens of thousands of customers go live in less than a year. We’ve helped hospitals build applications to track demand and availability of ventilators, supported government authorities in automating cash-relief payments to citizens, deployed national virus-tracking dashboards, introduced applications to help health authorities ensure availability of critical medical supplies, and got scores of business up and running on e-commerce platforms to stay connected to existing customers and attract new ones. Eighteen of the 20 major COVID-19 vaccine producers are running their production on 51ˇçÁ÷solutions. At companies like Moderna, 51ˇçÁ÷is supporting compliance with international legislation intended to prevent counterfeit medicines to reach patients.

While we hope the virus lets up very soon, I don’t think the momentum behind digital transformation will. Businesses will move from digitization as a means of managing a crisis to one of capitalizing on newfound opportunity. We’re on an irreversible digital binge.

What are your priorities to help businesses make the most of this hyper-digitization? 

The success of our customers’ transformation has required us to accelerate ours; we put two important foundations in place last year to prepare for this shift. First, we ramped up our investment in cloud capability across the company. We announced more research and development, greater co-innovation, and better integration, as well as improved security, reliability, and availability across our solution portfolio.

Secondly, in March last year, we brought together all of our customer-facing teams – sales, services, customer-engagement, and others – under the single mandate and board area of Customer Success. The premise and outcome have been a streamlined experience in our engagements with our customers, strengthened relationships as evidenced by our significant increase in net promoter score, as well as a focused feedback loop through to engineering that ensures our customers’ voice inspires every line of code, every business process, and every single digital interaction.

These foundational moves are exactly what enables us to better deliver on our customers’ digital transformation requirements, and do it even faster, more reliably, and at greater value – in the cloud. This goes beyond infrastructure and software as a service to full business transformation as a service.

More than three-quarters of the world’s transaction revenue touches an 51ˇçÁ÷system, with US $3.5 trillion in B2B spend crossing our business network annually, and 98% of the 100 most valued brands running on our innovations. Although hundreds of thousands of organizations have already moved significant portions of their workloads to the cloud with 51ˇçÁ÷during the past decade, the transition of our global economy to the cloud will accelerate this year.

We plan to unleash offerings, commercial models, and partnerships that will enable our customers to migrate to the cloud at unprecedented scale, transitioning entire industries and whole economies to a better way of doing business. By running full cloud with 51ˇçÁ÷and consuming business transformation as a service, organizations will be able to better modernize, standardize, and digitize – opening up new business models and revenue streams.

In short, we have shaped and continue to shape our entire organization around the customer and fine tune how we work together and with our partners to deliver the value of digital transformation in the cloud.

How do you know when you’ve been successful? 

It’s pretty simple: we’ll know we’ve succeeded when each customer in every market is successful. We want every business across every industry and geography that partners with 51ˇçÁ÷to fully adopt and consume our technologies to derive the greatest possible value from them – and intensify their relationship with us as a result.

This is our ambition and my passion for our customers in a full-cloud future with SAP.

What piece of advice have you found most useful in career?

That the best way to achieve success is to help others succeed. At the end of the day, I think this goes back to the values my parents instilled: the best thing you can do to help yourself is to help others. This is so relevant today. Whether it’s challenges like the pandemic or climate change, or opportunities like hyper-digitization or breakthrough business models, you take them on together – motivated by a purpose much greater than yourself.

This article first appeared on the 51ˇçÁ÷Global News Center

The post Five Questions for SAP’s Newest Executive Board Member, Scott Russell appeared first on 51ˇçÁ÷Africa News Center.

The worst health crisis of our generation has put the world on a digital binge. This is a tough environment for all businesses to navigate, but where some see risk, others see opportunity. We are all rightly fixated on what we can do to keep our people safe, our businesses running, and our communities strong, all while thinking about how we will do things differently and better as we emerge from the pandemic. Now more than ever, 51ˇçÁ÷needs to listen to the specific challenges organizations face and act quickly to serve their best interests.

As the newly appointed Executive Board member for SAP’s Customer Success organization, my role is to represent the voice of the customer. Their stories have revolved around the imperative of digital transformation to help build resilience, agility, and profitability during the past year. We have answered by engaging in a new way that helps them acquire and use our solutions to build on these critical traits. Our customers’ voice is loud and clear: They want to digitally transform in a full-cloud future.

More than three-quarters of the world’s transaction revenue touches an 51ˇçÁ÷system, with $US3.5 trillion in B2B spend crossing our business network annually, and 98 per cent of the 100 most valued brands running on our innovations. Although hundreds of thousands of organizations have already moved significant portions of their workloads to the cloud with 51ˇçÁ÷during the past decade, the transition of our global economy to the cloud will accelerate this year.

We plan to unleash offerings, commercial models, and partnerships that will enable our customers to make the cloud migration at unprecedented scale, transitioning entire industries and whole economies to a better way of doing business.

This isn’t just about infrastructure. At its core, this shift is about innovation. By running full cloud with SAP, organizations will be able to better modernize, standardize, and digitize – opening up new business models and revenue streams. We’ll be sharing much more about this at , and I hope you can join us for the event on January 27.

51ˇçÁ÷must also transform to meet evolving customer expectations – and we put two important foundations in place last year to prepare for this shift. First, we accelerated our investment in cloud capability across the company. We announced more research and development, greater co-innovation, and better integration, as well as improved security, reliability, and availability across all of our solutions. Our aim is to over-deliver on value and experience, with every solution and in every interaction.

Secondly, in March last year, we brought together all of our customer-facing teams – sales, services, customer-engagement, and others – under the single mandate and board area of customer success. The premise and outcome have been a streamlined experience in engagements with our customers, strengthened relationships as evidenced by our significant increase in net promoter score, as well as a focused feedback loop through to engineering that ensures our customers’ voice inspires every line of code, every business process, and every single digital interaction. In short, we have shaped our entire organization around the customer and fine-tuned how we work together and with our partners to deliver a full-cloud future.

Looking ahead, the voice of our customer needs to reach even deeper into our organization. My promise is to channel the voice of our more than 440,000 customers as we accelerate this transition to the cloud, deliver long-term value, and innovate new solutions, business models, and commercial models.

Our announcement of a strategic partnership with global technology services company NTT late last year is a case in point. We combined 51ˇçÁ÷technologies around the internet of things, edge computing, and machine learning with NTT’s industry-leading suite of information and communications technology (ICT) and hybrid cloud capabilities. These connected value chain solutions, which NTT and 51ˇçÁ÷will co-innovate, aim to deliver a more unified and automated collaboration across customers, suppliers, retailers, manufacturers and logistics providers. This is a salient example of what is to come at scale: Not only delivering on customers’ digital transformation needs but reinventing how businesses run.

Globally we have 100,000 people geared up to serve our customers, and we must stay focused on being a local partner that understands the nuances of specific countries and industries. This means putting global knowledge, skills, and insights in local hands and providing easy access to the best of what 51ˇçÁ÷has to offer.

We’ll know we’ve succeeded when more customers in every market and every industry fully adopt and consume our technologies to derive the greatest possible value from them. This is our ambition and my passion for our customers in a full-cloud future with SAP.

Scott Russell has been appointed to the Executive Board of 51ˇçÁ÷SE and will assume the position of Head of Customer Success on February 1,  2021.

The post The Inspiring Voice of our Customers appeared first on 51ˇçÁ÷Africa News Center.