I have been doing video interviews with a number of CIOs, software executives and practitioners about acrobatics they have been seeing in various vertical sectors during the COVID-19 crisis and the "New normal" they can expect as the economy wakes up.
This time it is Peter Maier, President, Industries at SAP. He describes examples from public health, auto, oil and gas and other sectors but I was also pleasantly surprised by many angles he emphasized.
SAP has the image of a lumbering giant whose projects take forever. He described a project where they built a registration portal (Rückholprogramm) within a couple of days for the German Federal Foreign Office (Auswaertiges Amt) to help airlift stranded German citizens around the globe as commercial air travel came to a standstill.
He describes another 2 week project to help manage capacity across 25 hospitals in the Heidelberg University system.
He describes how they quickly collected 750 feature ideas in response to the crisis which should make their way into their products. He repeatedly talks about supply chain opportunities in many sectors. SAP set up a Global Pandemic Taskforce in late January - way before most other companies. That's one advantage of their global reach - they could see first hand what was already happening in China.
SAP is also encumbered with a SI ecosystem which traditionally has depended on large, on-site implementation projects, snarkily referred to as the "school bus" model. In a new world with travel at a standstill, it is good to hear him talk about remote project delivery at Galp Energia, a Portuguese oil and gas company. He also describes INDEX-Werke's part, service and IoT platform, iXWorld to remotely support the auto industry.
He describes fairly significant public health efforts. He describes contact tracing projects in collaboration with Deutsche Telekom in Germany and Apple and Google in the US. He also describes the Qualtrics COVID-19 Assessment, Testing, and Case Management Solution being used in Utah, Iowa, New Jersey and Nebraska.
Given their presence in just about every industry, I look forward to hearing about more such agility in other sectors
Finally, it was good to hear empathy about customers - he talks about "survival" time for many of them. SAP did not help its image too much by attempting to raise maintenance rates during the last deep recession. The agility and empathy Peter brings out is a lot more encouraging this time.
