deal architect

Burning Platform – Even More Business as Unusual

In the 86th episode of Burning Platform, we host repeat guests, Peter Maier and Tilman Goettke of SAP. We discuss reaction to the book, Business as Unusual that Peter co-authored and both Tilman and I helped research and curate - link to the Amazon page via the badge on left.

Peter and Tilman discuss feedback about the book as they have handed out bunch of copies at book signings, podcasts and customer  events. Tilman says he is glad the book recognized only a few business executives have time or patience to read books from cover to cover. So the opening chapter has short, two page overviews of each of the 8 mega trends. The book also has "thought experiments" to engage readers. For example, what if a maker of coffee machines wants to evolve beyond selling machines to also offer coffee by the cup? What impact does that for financial streams and for sales and customer engagement? Pretty much everything changes when you try to change your business model and adopt the hot trend of "servitization".

The book offers similar opportunities to think about countless vertical applications for their companies which have emerged as a result of COVID, digital transformations, the Ukraine crisis and the climate change urgency.  Most of these are applications that we couldn't have imagined in 2019.

We also discuss new addressable markets in fast-growing emerging economies around the world. We cover the excitement and hype around Generative AI and low-code tools.    

It is nice to have Peter provide commentary in his new role around strategic customer engagements in the office of the CEO. He says amidst all this choice, customers expect very clear guidance from SAP and consistency from its massively expanded ecosystem (in the book, we included perspectives from strategy firms, Industry 4.0 robotics firms, SAP.iO Foundry startups and many others – see details in this post). He hears from customers their highest priority is their customers and their top line. He lists other customer expectations around sustainability, standardization, efficiency (especially in asset intensive sectors), vendor consolidation and related governance.  

Both say the pace of change has definitely accelerated. Peter points to the phenomenal pace of adoption of ChatGPT. He adds “all the more reason to get up early”. Tilman adds we need to acknowledge “what was science fiction yesterday is today's everyday business reality and the constraining factor is business agility”.

It truly is a thrill to have a strategic discussion with these two industry veterans at a vendor with so much industry and global depth. Enjoy this half an hour. So much change – so many new opportunities!!

I will also have a chance to share a session with Peter about the themes from the book at Sapphire in Orlando in a couple of weeks. Details to follow.

Analyst Cam: Papaya Global – workforces without boundaries

As we have moved to virtual briefings, I have increasingly been excerpting short video segments (with permission) as part of my Analyst Cam series.

This time it is Eynat Guez, co-founder and CEO of Papaya Global. Papaya offers a global workforce management platform in 160+ countries. Her elevator pitch: “Global payroll technology was broken. So we fixed it.” I was introduced to her by Workday Ventures, one of her investors.

As you listen to her, it becomes clear that payroll processing across so many jurisdictions is hairy enough. Their efficiently handling payments to employees, to taxing authorities, benefit plans etc. with the fragmented global financial services landscape, one pay cycle after another, is even more valuable to clients.

Eynat covers the fragmented competitor landscape – payroll outsourcers, HCM software vendors, Employer of Record service providers and firms that provide 1099 type contractors. One of her big advantages is a highly streamlined onboarding process for clients.

They have 1,500 clients. 30% of which are F5000 companies. Customers let them handle their processing, or avail of a technology licensing model. Eynat says the latter is growing significantly in popularity.

She talks about one of her clients CyberArk with over 2.000 global employees. She describes how Papaya consolidated what was being done by multiple providers.

Very crisply done in under 25 minutes.

 

 

Analyst Cam: Salesforce Verticals – Health and Life Sciences

As we have moved to virtual briefings, I have increasingly been excerpting short video segments (with permission) as part of my Analyst Cam series.

This time it is Amit Khanna, SVP and GM, Health and Life Sciences at Salesforce.

The health and pharma markets have gone through an extremely challenging last couple of years. How will they emerge from the ups and downs? Amit presents on some of the trends they are seeing:

• 42% of the members say they're frustrated by the experience they get from their health plans/providers
• 77% of the providers say that non-traditional care revenues, such as retail health, care anywhere, are becoming more important
• 93% of the pharma companies are still not using AI effectively because they believe it's too complex or are unsure where to start.
• Almost a third of the $3.5 trillion the US spends on healthcare (nearly 20% of its GDP) is in administrative costs, much of it waste.

He explains where Salesforce plays – around the areas where EMR and ERP vendors play. Salesforce is more focused on longitudinal care outside the hospital, multi-channel engagement and the entire chain to provide personalized care.

He covers a lot of ground around vaccine management, telemedicine and other trends which accelerated during the COVID-19 pandemic.

But, over and over it comes back to making the patient the center of the universe. I like his closing “Simple concepts (we are used to in other sectors) don’t seem to apply to healthcare. Providers ask you the same questions over and over…my date of birth doesn't change. Knowing about me is a concept (which seems foreign to) healthcare. If we can solve that, through the lifecycle of the consumer, we will reduce tremendous amount of waste in the system.”

Very crisply done in about 15 minutes.

Analyst Cam: IFS Verticals - Manufacturing – Part 2

As we have moved to virtual briefings, I have increasingly been excerpting short video segments (with permission) as part of my Analyst Cam series.

This is part 2 of the conversation with Maggie Slovic and Andy Burton, Global Directors for Process and Discrete Manufacturing, respectively for IFS

In Part 1 yesterday, they provided highlights of 6 sub-verticals that falls under their definition of Manufacturing – Automotive, High-tech, Industrials, Food & Beverage, Chemicals and Life Sciences. They talked about the circular economy, servitization trends in product companies, industrial robotics and COVID’s impact on manufacturing.

Today they cover functionality in the IFS Cloud, discuss a few of their customers and some of the supply chain and other threads they picked up at the Hannover Messe, which is always a trailblazer of industrial trends.

Analyst Cam: IFS Verticals – Manufacturing – Part 1

As we have moved to virtual briefings, I have increasingly been excerpting short video segments (with permission) as part of my Analyst Cam series.

This time it is Maggie Slovic and Andy Burton, Global Directors for Process and Discrete Manufacturing, respectively for IFS

In Part 1 today, they provide highlights of 6 sub-verticals that falls under their definition of Manufacturing – Automotive, High-tech, Industrials, Food & Beverage, Chemicals and Life Sciences. Aerospace and Defense, an area IFS has long been strong at, is treated as a separate vertical.  They talk about the circular economy, servitization trends in product companies, industrial robotics and COVID’s impact on manufacturing.

Tomorrow in Part 2 they will cover functionality in the IFS Cloud, discuss a few of their customers and some of the supply chain and other threads they picked up at the Hannover Messe, which is always a trailblazer of industrial trends.

Nicely done – this one is only about 15 minutes long.

More energy innovation

On New Florence

Supercritical geothermal energy

More on carbon capture

Geomechanical pumped storage

Hydrogen-fired train

Relocating farmland to increase carbon capture

More Health innovation

On New Florence

Digital Twin of the Human Body

AI and new drug innovation

Biophilic design for hospitals

The future of mRNA

Non-sleep deep rest

Military applications

On New Florence I knew there would be plenty of energy and health related posts this year, but with the situation in E Europe and tensions in Asia, I have also accelerated some of the posts around defense technology

Here are some recent ones:

Kamikaze drones

The amazing Blue Angels

The evolution of hypersonic aircraft

Low-intensity nuclear weapons

Vacuum bombs

The Thunderbirds and their F-16s

Analyst Cam: SAP Industries - Automotive Trends

As we have moved to virtual briefings, I have increasingly been excerpting short video segments (with permission), as part of my Analyst Cam series. 

I have invited SAP to present updates on various verticals as I discussed here 

This time it is Hagen Heubach, Global Vice President, Automotive Industry Business Unit.

He does a nice job presenting the massive changes in the mobility sector - the emergence of EVs and autonomous vehicles, the effect of the pandemic on supply chains, direct digital sales, transformation of engineering into software cultures, the increase in services and changes in how they are delivered and how all those changes are re-shaping SAP's vertical offerings.

He also presents on the Catena-X Automotive Network (Catena-X) which focuses on creation, operation and collaborative use of end-to-end data chains along the entire automotive value chain. SAP is a founding member. It was launched in May and already has 60 participants including major German OEMs, Tier suppliers (and growing to include non-German ones as well) and a few other tech vendors.

This is SAP at its strongest - global brand names combined with vertical depth. Hagen presents the capabilities crisply in about 18 minutes.

A SAP vertical "Dream Team"

I have long believed navigating SAP is like going on an Easter egg hunt. You know there are lots and lots of goodies, but it takes effort to find them. That was reinforced when I wrote SAP Nation 3.0. I kept asking about CX, AIN, IBP and vertical products. Thanks to Stacey Fish, I was able to delay the book a few times and get those perspectives in the book.

I have been pushing SAP to hear more about verticals especially after seismic changes in so many industries with the pandemic last year. It took a while but Stacy Comes managed to put together a briefing for me with the following executives

• Torsten Welte - Aerospace & Defense
• Matt Laukaitis – Consumer Industries
• Hagen Heubach – Automotive
• Achim Schneider - Retail
• EJ Kenney – Consumer Products
• Markus Bechmann– Utilities 

It was exhilarating and there was very little mention of S/4HANA and cross-industry business networks, which usually get plenty of SAP coverage. 

We identified several topics where one of them will present as part of my Analyst Cam series over the next few weeks. Here are a few:

• Direct to Consumer trends
• The shifting transportation/mobility market and related networks
• Outcome based business models
• Circular economy trends
• Fragmentation in the utility sector
• Energy transition in utilities
• Personalized Medicine

SAP, of course, plays in many more sectors and it will be good to also explore those in future. SAP's backyard is full of impressive customer brands across industries and countries. Makes for a nice egg hunt.