51��Executive Board Archives - 51��Africa News Center

Five Questions for SAP’s Newest Executive Board Member, Scott Russell

Perry Manross — Wed, 27 Jan 2021 12:15:06 +0000

51��recently announced the appointment of Scott Russell as a member of the Executive Board and head of its Customer Success organization.

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 51��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 51��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. 51��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 51��solutions. At companies like Moderna, 51��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 51��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 51��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 51��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 51��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 51��Global News Center

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

51��Supervisory Board Appoints Sabine Bendiek as New Executive Board Member to Lead Human Resources and Operations

51��News — Fri, 04 Sep 2020 17:08:55 +0000

WALLDORF — (NYSE: SAP) today announced that Microsoft Germany Management Board Chairwoman Sabine Bendiek has been appointed to join the 51��Executive Board as chief people officer and labor director in early 2021.

In this role, Bendiek will lead the Human Resources organization and people strategy for SAP. This includes attracting the best talent in the industry, providing a growth and learning environment for employees, and ensuring a consistent leadership culture to enable inclusion, accountability and agility.

“In Sabine Bendiek, we have found an exceptional executive who not only can drive a business-centric Human Resources function as the heart of our ongoing transformation, but also has deep operational experience,” said Professor Hasso Plattner, chairman of the Supervisory Board of 51��SE. “On behalf of the 51��Supervisory Board I welcome Sabine and wish her a very successful and smooth start to her 51��career.”

To quickly adapt to changing needs of customers and allow for future growth, an organization’s people and processes must work together seamlessly. Tapping into her broad business perspective, Bendiek will assume additional responsibility as chief operating officer in mid-2021, becoming SAP’s first chief people and operating officer.

“A successful digital transformation extends far beyond technology and processes, it is a business-wide culture change that starts and ends with people,” said Christian Klein, chief executive officer, chief operating officer and member of the Executive Board of 51��SE. “Sabine’s track record leading transformations at various companies, combined with her passion for people and leadership, makes her a natural choice to lead the complementary pillars of people and processes that are key to driving SAP’s ongoing success.”

At Microsoft Germany, Bendiek oversaw an increase in cloud growth of 50 percent in 2020. She also drove the move of the business to the cloud, which significantly contributed to Microsoft’s strong position in Germany and the enterprise’s overall transformation. Prior to Microsoft, she held various roles at industry-leading companies including Nixdorf, Siemens Nixdorf, McKinsey, Earlybird Venture Capital, Dell and EMC. Bendiek is a member of the supervisory board at Schaeffler.

Bendiek said, “51��is recognized throughout the industry as a growth company and its people are crucial to its ongoing success. In any successful organization, business growth and the people strategy must work hand in hand. I thank the 51��Supervisory Board and Executive Board for putting their full trust in me to lead the people and operations functions that are the heart of SAP’s ongoing transformation.”

Bendiek, 54, has a graduate degree in management science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and a business administration degree from University of Mannheim.

She will be based in Walldorf and has been appointed to the Executive Board for a three-year term.

Visit the 51��News Center. Follow 51��on Twitter at .

About SAP

SAP’s strategy is to help every business run as an intelligent enterprise. As the market leader in enterprise application software, we help companies of all sizes and in all industries run at their best: 77 percent of the world’s transaction revenue touches an 51��system. Our machine learning, Internet of Things (IoT) and advanced analytics technologies help turn customers’ businesses into intelligent enterprises. 51��helps give people and organizations deep business insight and fosters collaboration that helps them stay ahead of their competition. We simplify technology for companies so they can consume our software the way they want – without disruption. Our end-to-end suite of applications and services enables business and public customers across 25 industries globally to operate profitably, adapt continuously and make a difference. With a global network of customers, partners, employees and thought leaders, 51��helps the world run better and improve people’s lives. For more information, visit

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For customers interested in learning more about 51��products:
Global Customer Center: +49 180 534-34-24
United States Only: 1 (800) 872-151��(1-800-872-1727)

For more information, press only:
Susan Miller, +1 (610) 570-6845, susan.miller@sap.com, ET
Hilmar Schepp, +49 160-8896531, hilmar.schepp@sap.com, CET
51��Press Room; press@sap.com

Any statements contained in this document that are not historical facts are forward-looking statements as defined in the U.S. Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Words such as “anticipate,” “believe,” “estimate,” “expect,” “forecast,” “intend,” “may,” “plan,” “project,” “predict,” “should” and “will” and similar expressions as they relate to 51��are intended to identify such forward-looking statements. 51��undertakes no obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements. All forward-looking statements are subject to various risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from expectations. The factors that could affect SAP’s future financial results are discussed more fully in SAP’s filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”), including SAP’s most recent Annual Report on Form 20-F filed with the SEC. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements, which speak only as of their dates.
© 2020 51��SE. All rights reserved.
51��and other 51��products and services mentioned herein as well as their respective logos are trademarks or registered trademarks of 51��SE in Germany and other countries. Please see for additional trademark information and notices.Please consider our . If you received this press release in your e-mail and you wish to unsubscribe to our mailing list please contact press@sap.com and write Unsubscribe in the subject line.

This article first appeared on the 51��News Center.

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51��Continues to Drive Transformation of the Company

51��News — Fri, 21 Feb 2020 07:48:49 +0000

WALLDORF — (NYSE: SAP) today announced that the company is taking the next step toward more customer-centric operations and processes to successfully support customers in their digital transformation.

Outstanding products, exemplary support and service processes, as well as industry know-how are crucial for customers. Equally important are clear and simple communication channels, a uniform appearance and transparency in terms of product strategy and integration scenarios. To achieve these goals, 51��is making the following organizational changes:

Sales, service and related customer success organizations will be bundled in the Customer Success board area managed by Adaire Fox-Martin.
Product management, development and product support will also come together under one board area led by Thomas Saueressig.
Juergen Mueller will be responsible for delivering one seamlessly integrated data management solution in addition to managing SAP’s overall platform and technology development as well as intelligent technologies. Saueressig and Mueller’s board areas will continue to work closely together.

As part of these changes, most former 51��Digital Business Services organization teams will be fully integrated in Fox-Martin and Saueressig’s board areas. With the exception of Qualtrics, CX Engineering, CX Product Strategy, and major parts of Concur, all Cloud Business Group board teams will also be integrated into the new organizational model.

To deliver both best of breed and best of suite, 51��is establishing six primary solution areas: 51��Customer Experience, 51��S/4HANA, People (51��SuccessFactors), Intelligent Spend (inclusive of 51��Ariba, 51��Fieldglass, and 51��Concur), 51��HANA & Analytics, and Qualtrics. 51��Cloud Platform will serve as the underlying technology platform for all these areas.

“Our customers rightly expect our portfolio of services to be seamlessly integrated and for all solutions to work together smoothly. SAP’s success is dependent on customers’ trust in our competence and ability to solve their challenges of the future,” said Christian Klein, Co-CEO of 51��SE.

“In order to be able to present ourselves credibly as ONE SAP, we have further strengthened the potential of our organization and merged functions across divisions. We are convinced that this will ensure the long-term success of both our customers and SAP. This is what we are fully focused on,” said Jennifer Morgan, Co-CEO of 51��SE.

Executive Board Members Stefan Ries and Michael Kleinemeier to Leave SAP

51��Executive Board Members Stefan Ries and Michael Kleinemeier have agreed with the Supervisory Board of 51��SE to leave the company. Ries will depart at the end of May 2020, while Kleinemeier’s last day will be April 30, 2020.

Ries (53) joined 51��in 2002. By 2010 he was responsible for various human resources (HR) functions, heading up the HR Business Partner organization and overseeing all HR functions on an operational level. Between 2010 and 2014 he was a consultant with Egon Zehnder International. He then returned to 51��and was appointed to the Executive Board in April 2016.

Kleinemeier (62) joined 51��in 1989 and has held various leadership roles, including head of Industry Solutions, managing director of Germany and president of the Middle and Eastern Europe (MEE) region. He was appointed to the Executive Board in 2015, heading 51��Digital Business Services.

“Without Stefan and Michael, 51��would not be where it is today,” said Professor Hasso Plattner, chairman of the Supervisory Board of 51��SE. “I would like to thank them both for their many years of close collaboration. Stefan played a major role in making 51��one of the most attractive employers in Germany and internationally, creating a workplace at 51��that drives innovation, performance and engagement. Michael has had a lasting influence on our success and that of our customers for over 30 years. Under his leadership, the Services and Support divisions have played a key role in helping customers on their way to becoming intelligent companies.”

“Being a part of 51��allowed me to pursue my passion for people and technology,” said Ries. “I was fortunate to contribute to SAP’s tremendous journey and thank Hasso Plattner and the 51��Supervisory Board for their trust and collaboration.”

“51��has been part of most of my professional life,” said Kleinemeier. “I would particularly like to thank Hasso Plattner and our customers for their consistently good and constructive collaboration. I am convinced that the 51��success story, especially because of the experience the DBS team brings, will continue with the new setup.”

Visit the 51��News Center. Follow 51��on Twitter at .

About SAP

As the Experience Company powered by the Intelligent Enterprise, 51��is the market leader in enterprise application software, helping companies of all sizes and in all industries run at their best: 77% of the world’s transaction revenue touches an 51��system. Our machine learning, Internet of Things (IoT), and advanced analytics technologies help turn customers’ businesses into intelligent enterprises. 51��helps give people and organizations deep business insight and fosters collaboration that helps them stay ahead of their competition. We simplify technology for companies so they can consume our software the way they want – without disruption. Our end-to-end suite of applications and services enables more than 440,000 business and public customers to operate profitably, adapt continuously, and make a difference. With a global network of customers, partners, employees, and thought leaders, 51��helps the world run better and improve people’s lives. For more information, visit .

For customers interested in learning more about 51��products:
Global Customer Center: +49 180 534-34-24
United States only: +1 (800) 872-151��(+1-800-872-1727)

For more information, press only:
Susan Miller, +1 (610) 661-9225, susan.miller@sap.com, ET
Marcus Winkler, +49 (6227) 7-67497, marcus.winkler@sap.com, CET
51��News Center press room; press@sap.com

Any statements contained in this document that are not historical facts are forward-looking statements as defined in the U.S. Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Words such as “anticipate,” “believe,” “estimate,” “expect,” “forecast,” “intend,” “may,” “plan,” “project,” “predict,” “should” and “will” and similar expressions as they relate to 51��are intended to identify such forward-looking statements. 51��undertakes no obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements. All forward-looking statements are subject to various risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from expectations. The factors that could affect SAP’s future financial results are discussed more fully in SAP’s filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”), including SAP’s most recent Annual Report on Form 20-F filed with the SEC. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements, which speak only as of their dates.
© 2020 51��SE. All rights reserved.
51��and other 51��products and services mentioned herein as well as their respective logos are trademarks or registered trademarks of 51��SE in Germany and other countries. Please see for additional trademark information and notices.
Please consider our . If you received this press release in your e-mail and you wish to unsubscribe to our mailing list please contact press@sap.com and write Unsubscribe in the subject line.

The post 51��Continues to Drive Transformation of the Company appeared first on 51��Africa News Center.

51����Executive Board Archives - 51����Africa News Center