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ASUG Talks
ASUG Talks covers vital topics in the SAP ecosystems, leveraging thought leaders, customers, and experts to help listeners navigate modern challenges and maximize their SAP investments.
ASUG Talks
ASUG Talks Executive Interview: Andre Bechtold, SAP
While visiting the SAP global headquarters in Walldorf, Germany, ASUG CEO & Chief Community Champion Geoff Scott recently sat down with Andre Bechtold, President of SAP Industries & Experiences.
As the software company looks to spur continued innovation, Bechtold focuses on building memorable customer experiences. Through his work with the SAP Experience Centers, Bechtold helps SAP embrace new, cutting-edge practices to help their customers meet modern challenges.
During this conversation, Scott and Bechtold covered:
· How SAP approaches technology innovation
· Bechtold’s thoughts on leveraging AI to assist with upskilling and reskilling
· Building the next generation of SAP professionals
Be sure to check out these ASUG resources to stay up-to-date on what’s going on around the SAP ecosystem:
· ASUG coverage of the SAP Q1 2025 financial results: Despite uncertain economic conditions, SAP CEO Christian Klein touted key growth in total revenue and cloud revenue. Read our full coverage—and what it means for SAP customers.
· ASUG and SAP Integration Research: This collaborative project examined how respondents approach developing and enacting integration strategies. Overall, the research teams found that ASUG members are devoting necessary resources to jumpstart integration practices at higher rates. Learn more.
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SPEAKER_02:From the America's SAP customer community, I'm Jeff Scott, and this is ASUG Talks, a podcast devoted to conversations with the innovators, leaders, and changemakers shaping the future of enterprise technology and the SAP ecosystem. I was recently at SAP's global headquarters in Waldorf, Germany, for a few days of immersive conversations on SAP's key strategies for 2025. One of the areas where there is tremendous opportunity is the cross-section between innovation and resource enablement. What I mean by that is as customers look to adopt innovative faster to remain competitive, or better yet, outpace their competitors, they will need to ensure that all of their people are in sync. And the word people can be very broad here. It can mean internal teams which may span multiple geographies, cultures, languages, and skill sets, as well as external teams from suppliers, contractors, and so forth. During my visit, Andre Bechtold, President SAP Industries and Experiences, sat down with me to discuss this topic in more detail. In his role, Andre is responsible for leading SAP's industry strategy and customer-centric innovation. Andre, welcome to the latest edition of ASIC Talks. As we get started today, I'd like to maybe have you share a little bit with the audience, you know, who you are and where you've come from and what your experience is at SAP.
SPEAKER_00:Thanks, Jeff, for the invitation. Yes, actually, Andre Bestold, I'm working for SAP since 18 years. So nearly in every department within SAP. You've been everywhere. Yes, I've been everywhere. And under every board member you can imagine. So actually, I'm president of SAP Industries and Experiences. And that's actually also what my key role is describing very well. So on every touchpoint of a customer with SAP. We try to provide tangible, valuable examples of how our software could support the customers in their industry with the highest value, that they really can see what is the value of SAP in the context of their value chain, so to say. And that's like my whole background, as I just said, as I have seen a lot of the departments, organizations and SAP and also a lot of customer interactions over years. It really helps me to drive this. I mean, if you come from service and support, like really big install-based customers, big maintenance customers, you have a lot of these interactions. You see actually also the complexity of the landscapes. Then I moved into more the cloud world with SuccessFactors, was responsible for developing the digital boardroom, like going more into analytics, really in the cloud native space.
SPEAKER_02:I remember the digital boardroom. Yes, it was a big thing. It was a big thing. It still is a big thing.
SPEAKER_00:It was actually also a big, I would say, accelerator at that time when we started with S4 to really show the value of S4. It was really like the tangible, I would say, C-level presentation we can give to the audience that really showed the value of a new ERP. And that was quite eye-opening. And then I moved over to the CEO area, which was also for me a quite good learning purse, like transforming SAP itself. We always tell like how transformation should work, but I can tell you within SAP, where the whole IT department developed the products we are using, it's super hard.
SPEAKER_02:Always easier to tell other people how to do it, isn't it? Until you have to do it yourself. Exactly. Yeah, this is hard.
SPEAKER_00:Exactly. And this also helped me to articulate later better the value of what does it mean, a successful transformation. It's not only new software, where it's not only going into the cloud, it's really like comprehensive, taking the people with you, doing change management with the people, doing the right data management, having the processes in place. So it's really good learning in whatever asset I'm doing now. And yeah, at the end I mean industry is always like close to my heart I mean every customer is serving in a certain industry and industry for me is also one of the biggest strengths of SAP over the years we are in the core processes of really different industries and that's definitely something where I see now we need to again highlight this leadership of within certain industries what SAP has and also taking it to the next level when it comes to new innovation.
SPEAKER_02:And speaking of next level, this is a new appointment for you. You've only had this new title for a couple of weeks. Is that accurate? Just two days. Two days. So I'm even like way ahead of you. It's been just two days. Yes, it's just two days. So tell me about the genesis of that. And then what are you hoping to accomplish in these two days? You've had a chance to think about it. What are you looking to do?
SPEAKER_00:With all the strategic changes we had at SAP, with new technologies coming in, for me, it was really The key part is, again, strengthen the position of industries within SAP. Like how we strategically develop our roadmap, how we strategically engage with co-innovation partners, how we can really help them to drive this vertical innovation, but then also find our positioning in certain industries. Because I personally have the feeling where some competitors are going, we have already been. We had these strengths. They like want to copy us. And sometimes we forget a little bit where we are coming from. And so this is definitely one key priority for me, like leading industries, again, like on top of the priorities within SAP and then also whatever we are interacting with, it should be on a umbrella of industries. And it fits very nicely with, to the things I'm already driving with, also learning product, learning enablement, certifications. You can position this, but if you can't tell it in the context of an industry, if you can't explain IT department in oil, gas, energy, what does it mean for them, how they can really leverage and create value out of an SAP implementation, it's super hard to really convince them that SAP is the right partner at the end. And they just not like use best of freed everywhere. So again, combining this industry piece with the product and solution learning piece and have a comprehensive offering for our customers. For me, it creates really a new value, which hasn't been there so far. In the past, we had very like, Some co-innovation from industry context, vertical offerings, like deeply integrated in our core products, and then more kind of LOB product-specific learning paths. What we are trying now is cross-processes, combining these product learnings that we really have comprehensive end-to-end learning journeys for the respective people on the customer side. I think that's something which we... can offer in a completely new way. And that's also the thing where I want to drive going forward.
SPEAKER_02:When you and I first met a number of years ago, you were heavily involved in the learning culture here at SAP. And I see that that's transitioning into the role you're currently playing. Give me a sense and give for the audience today a sense of where do you think this learning culture is going within SAP and what do you have on your mind? I think learning
SPEAKER_00:has changed heavily, especially with AI technology. I was
SPEAKER_02:wondering how long it's going to take you for you to use those two letters. So, you know, was it going to be five minutes? Was it going to be 10 minutes? But you got there. Okay.
SPEAKER_00:And take the next password personalization. So look, AI plays really a crucial role when it comes to the change of learning behavior in the future. And I think it's a good thing for a lot of people who need to get trained on new things to do their job in the future, so to say. Most of the people don't have like the time maybe you had in the past based on the kind of pace of change to have whatever one week in a classroom training and do just like pure training every day. And also the demographic change you have a lot of different kind of learning times. In the meantime, people are used to look at TikTok videos or like using Instagram or other social media things. You have new ways of, I would say, masterclass trainings, like a lot of different training offerings. And I think that the whole learning environment has changed and it's just not about training. It's really like if you want people to really engaged in training and really like be open and passionate about retraining their skills or upskilling you need to inspire them with whatever you're doing so it needs to be practical it needs to be on the job it needs to be personalized and this is something we also maybe did not at SAP in the past. We did a little bit of change in e-learning, more hybrid learning ways, but we never really had a clear focus at the end. It's about the learner. And
SPEAKER_02:they're all different, doing different jobs using the SAP technology.
SPEAKER_00:Exactly. And our goal at SAP is not like making learning a business our job at SAP is creating SAP talent in the market like creating the knowledge about how to get the value out of our products what I just said to drive adoption of our products that people really are using it really see the value of like extending our products based on our platform or things like this and then it needs to be very practical again like if you are like working maybe with an HR product and you want to do a better analytics about your workforce or whatever you maybe can firstly adapt some technical skills how to build your own dashboard with an analytical tool on top of it and you don't need to involve whatever the IT department or that you can do it by yourself and these are things where I see there's a huge speed of change and And that's a bit where we need to drive and invest from SAP side, and this is also my priority to further drive this, that we find new ways of learning to always address it best to the learner's need.
SPEAKER_02:You know, when I came in the building this afternoon, the lobby was full of lots of young, early, probably college-age, university-age students who were listening to the perspective of SAP. When I think about that group of people, to your point, they're learning very differently than I learned when I went through a hundred million years ago and you only about five, 10 years ago. But, you know, when you think about that next group of people coming in and you think about the tools and the techniques that you're using around experiences and industries, how do you think it's going to change?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I think it changed big time. And I talked to our universities. We have like a large group of universities. I
SPEAKER_02:saw a couple of weeks ago you had something on LinkedIn that you were working with all the university alliances teams. Yeah,
SPEAKER_00:exactly. I mean, we just released last week that we like give certifications and access to our learning offerings for free to all students.
SPEAKER_02:It's a fantastic announcement.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, which is, again, also heavy invest from our side, but we see the value. And it's not only for us, also for our ecosystem. I mean, if you can hire a certified student right away, I mean, you save a lot of time to get them onboarded to SAP project later on. And I think that's definitely also our responsibility as SAP that we create this talent in the market. So I also think it's a very good investment, Eddie, end but coming back to your question we maybe you know the experience center where we normally like inspire customers and we also build up kind of the experience lab where we have reference landscapes for certain industries building together with our partners innovate there and This is also the environment we want to use maybe for students. We want to bring in students, not only, as you said, in a classroom, like learning here.
SPEAKER_02:The old way to do it,
SPEAKER_00:yes. Yes, and how to enter like a new cost center and how to configure the systems. That
SPEAKER_02:doesn't sound super fun.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, where's the experience in that? This is where we need to change a little bit also the perception of SAP, make SAP also a little bit more sexy for young talent. And this is what we are doing in combination with the kind of experience centers and the learning offerings we have. So we bring students into these experience environments. They learn, okay, this is like for industry A, B, C, an end-to-end business flow works without even talking about products at the beginning. And they can really way more rely on, I mean, Every student's also going shopping in the supermarket or like a lot of students like buying maybe a phone online. And like based on these business scenarios, we want to create them. Okay, this is how an ideal process should work maybe. in the future and based on this we give them the applications which like serving this process and then they start to learn how these applications help to improve this process and this is then very I would say tangible and very like reality related to them and then it's also super interesting to see afterwards after they do like define a use case by themselves using the tools configure the tools like how way more engaged they are with working with SAP software. And at the end, if they pitch their use case to the other group, it's really like a complete new way of how they present. They talk not about features and functions, they really talk about this is the improvement, this is the value for this industry because they are really into this case. And that's the point where we think This is how we need to engage young people, young talent and bring them together with SAP because a lot of them are not knowing that SAP is in most of the processes where they are related to also later in their regular life. Yeah. Our service is SAP. Normally they say, oh, SAP is accounting software.
SPEAKER_02:But I think when you talk about that, here on the Waldorf campus, you have a retail experience, which is tremendous for those in North America who maybe have never seen it. So if you happen to come to Waldorf, the retail, I think to your point, it puts a practical perspective on how the technology works. Because a lot of what we do from an IT perspective, to your point, is it's not physical technology. So when you see the software and you can kind of see how does a product move through a retail channel, I think that's tremendous. And then you just renovated the manufacturing center here and moved it into a much larger facility. I saw that in the fall of last year. And what's interesting about that is when we come over here and we bring ASUG members to Waldorf, and I think that while we'll spend a half an hour in the manufacturing center, we end up spending three hours. Because to them, it's like a playground. They can actually see the technology and they get to see it in one location. all the process moving from end to end. They get to see how the automation is working, how that's integrated into SAP, how manufacturing gets integrated. So, I mean, you've done a really nice job of making all this technology real. And people can, back to your point, if I'm going to university, I can actually see this tangibly happen. Or if I'm a customer, I can try to almost simulate it and I can touch it and feel it. And I think that's a tremendous amount of progress. And I think it takes a tremendous amount of effort from your teams to pull that off.
SPEAKER_00:Not only from my teeth, by the way, and I couldn't agree more. I mean, this whole experience and the journey is really... well recognized by a lot of our customers but also partners but it also requires not only my team yes for sure but also the developers the partner organization getting like partners in but also some customers supporting us in building these cases and we even like did now just opened on Tuesday our new pop-up supermarket which is like the next level of experience. So this is really then real, real, real, so to say, like SAP people, SAP employees can go shopping there 24-7. A partner from us is running the store, so there also needs to be a return on the vest and everything is built on a kind of public cloud reference landscape for retail. And we even expand this now for fashion, sports retail, that really our employees can go shopping there and buy stuff. And then we can, I think this is like even more real and the next level would then also be connect in maybe the factory, producing something there in real, shipping it to the store and do maybe returns management afterwards. So like really... simulating or not only simulating running the complete supply chain and similar what we are doing here or in also some other places the energy management is also run like completely on our landscape on a sandbox system with the real software having real transaction I think that's even the next level like showing it in reality to customers and then also having partners and that's also coming back to learning again I mean We set this up, the supermarket, the physical space, including the technical foundation and the system landscape, within three months. Think about three months, like complete system setup with partner integration. And we directly, during this phase, had five implementation partners who have now a best practices template. Three months. It is for mid-sized fitness after a while and scale it. And I think that's the way of like way faster learning and engagement with people. And yes, I mean, I'm super proud of this. And I'm also thinking this is something which is unique for SAP because I haven't seen it so far with other competitors. Maybe they copy us in some point of time, but we will also, our community, Did you start
SPEAKER_02:that project with a three-month timeline in mind? Did you think you could get it done that fast? Yes. Okay. What did you learn during that process? Three months is just impossible?
SPEAKER_00:Never underestimate the weather when you construct something.
SPEAKER_02:It always
SPEAKER_00:comes back
SPEAKER_02:to the weather,
SPEAKER_00:doesn't
SPEAKER_02:it?
SPEAKER_00:I mean, honestly, that was the hardest piece because it was so cold over one month in Germany that they were not able to do the boring stuff on the ground, which was mandatory to then set up the container on the platform, so to say. That was the hardest part. Honestly, technical piece the system setup was also not an easy one if it's like completely new again complete new components which are just released but it was definitely the goal to do it as fast as this But it was I need to say it was like massive effort. And I also need to say they were here in the night shift to get it done.
SPEAKER_02:So a few extra hours along the way. So it was it was not just, you know, 30 days, three months of eight hour days. There was a little bit more to it than that. I'm curious if you could share with me when I think about the job and I think the genesis of what you've been doing inside of SAP. Where do you think innovation is going, and what's caught your attention around the innovation landscape lately? What are you super charged up about?
SPEAKER_00:Now I'm not allowed to take the AI password again.
SPEAKER_02:You can, because I was going to ask you some AI questions anyway, but you absolutely can go through the AI. You open the door just a little bit. You can go charging through
SPEAKER_00:now. I mean, for sure, AI is everywhere, and AI will stay there. I have one interesting thing where I'm still looking into, okay, how will this end up? And I talked to just one day ago to NVIDIA about their omniverse aspirations and then also looking into the connect with physical AI and not only like large
SPEAKER_02:language. So the robots and
SPEAKER_00:all. The robots, et cetera, like the human needs and all the things. I think that's also interesting situation to look, especially if you're thinking like, large warehouse management processes, like where you have maybe no humans interacting and you still need to fix certain things. Also, especially in discrete manufacturing industries, how this is working. And that's something where I'm currently a little bit super interested in, especially in looking at how fast will this evolve versus, when I remember back, Industry 4.0. I think it started in 2011, right? Think about how long it took until like there was a kind of, I would say, scaling maturity in the factories of the world, like I would say the mid-size productions companies in Germany. It was a long, long way and even not like super mature everywhere. Yeah. I'm really interested in how long does this physical AI thing takes? Is it also a kind of like now with the AI kind of push that it's just like a kind of, okay, it's everywhere. Everybody is like looking into it. Or is it really evolving now with the speed we also see maybe with large language models and all the things? That's something I'm very interested in, how the development will happen there.
SPEAKER_02:You bring up a really good point that for many of the SAP customer base, we talk about technology innovation and we recognize the speed at which it's running, but yet the adoption of it and making it mainline takes a lot longer than we give it credit for. I think about how long have we been offering or how long has SAP been offering the HANA database and S4? It's been perhaps close to a decade now, right? And we're still talking about customers making that leap. So we talk about all this technology innovation, yet by the time it really hits mainline, it takes a lot of energy and effort to make it happen. And I think that the customer base historically moves slower than what SAP is seeing. So what I see from an ASOC perspective is, is the technology companies, this is not just an SAP issue, I see it across everyone, are moving at a much faster rate of speed than the customers can keep up with, which we see in the ASUG research. Our research shows that the SAP professionals are struggling to keep pace with the rate of change. And in that, I'm curious in what advice do you have for them as you're working through all these things and you talk about a 90-day, a three-month project, how are you reconciling that and what advice do you have to people to kind of keep Yeah,
SPEAKER_00:first of all, I think everybody should be curious always about new things and not just like always falling back to old behavior as soon as the pressure is getting a bit higher. Because if you're always kind of doing this, I think you really fall behind. And I think sometimes it really takes also time. this curiosity to maybe spend an extra hour in learning something new and also getting, like also thinking about how to adapt these new things to your current business and how it could be helpful. If people don't think about this, I mean, it's, I would say the first thing where like things are breaking and especially for SAP companies, And I think I'm speaking here also for SAP, what is the interest and also responsibility a little bit for me when it comes to terms of enablement. I mean, we need to have our people, our employees, always thinking about whatever we do in innovation, from a technology point of view, from a business application point of view, how could it help? the customer based on the current situation and what could be the logic and next step also for the customer. I mean, if we talk to the customer and think, okay, look, this is our new application, this is our new technology and this is the value we see, but it takes the customer three years to get there. There are a lot of other changes happening. There are economic changes happening and we leave the customer behind, so to say. So whatever we are doing, we need to really focus on, okay, is it really valuable for customers? And if yes, how can we help customers to fast adapt this to also a kind of investment impact, which is still manageable? Otherwise, I mean, yes, we're drawing nice lights and nice visions. But if customer cannot adapt, I mean, at the end, it's not positive for the customer or it's not really helpful for the customer. And if it's not helpful for the customer, it's also not helpful for SAP.
SPEAKER_02:Well, we paint this magically rosy picture of a future that many customers can't seem to get to, I think is how I would interpret what you're saying. And From an ASIC point of view, we have these conversations where customers say, yeah, I'd love to do this latest round of innovation with SAP, but I still want to consolidate from six instances of my ERP down to one. They're dealing with some of this scaling issue in very different ways. The next two years, I just want to get to S4 HANA. I'm okay if I just do a lift and shift. I don't have enough time to reimagine all my business processes, but when I think about I'm curious, when you think about the vast expanse of the SAP product portfolio, what are the essential tools that you think customers should be aware of and they should be actively looking to deploy?
SPEAKER_00:I think you mentioned one good point. I mean, lift and shift, from my perspective, is never good advice.
SPEAKER_02:No, so many are doing
SPEAKER_00:it, right? And therefore, I think, and I mean, come later to this, but from my perspective, I'm super excited about the new invest in like our tool chain and like coming from CloudLAM to Signavio to Linux to WalkMe.
SPEAKER_02:They should make that process easier over time.
SPEAKER_00:Yes, absolutely. And again, It's also our responsibility that there is a complete awareness of these tools in the ecosystem with our partners, with the large SSPs, SIs, that they really use these tools and also the methodology to help the customers to really transform in also a faster way and at scale. I think these tools really... evolved over the last couple of years. I mean, if you look at the Signavio capabilities in the meantime, it's really great. But on the other side, to really keep the excitement with these tools, we need to train our own employees like a value advisor in the field with the customer. They need to know how to use the tool, how to explain it to the customer, how they can use it and what is the value out of these tools. And that's the point with, again, like coming back to DNA to the training in these new things. And I would not say like Signavio, LinearX, it's a new technology for sure. They also use AI capabilities in the meantime. But in general, it's like these are tools developed also according to what we see on the customer side, which could help them to drive their transformation faster and with also not lower investments over time. And I think this is where I'm not talking about AI now. I'm really excited about these tools and how they have evolved over time.
SPEAKER_02:So I do want to come back to your AI points throughout our conversation today. And What is your latest aha moment with AI?
SPEAKER_00:A very small one. We had a two-hour Teams meeting, and I used this Copilot summarize function. And you realized
SPEAKER_02:all
SPEAKER_00:the to-dos
SPEAKER_02:that
SPEAKER_00:you signed yourself up for? I was really surprised how good it filled that out, exactly my to-dos, but also the summary. And another one was... I used another AI tool to also summarize some customer briefings for me in a quick way because I hadn't time to read through the briefing beforehand and I just let the AI tool run over the customer briefing. I used that for all the prep with you today. I mean, again, as I said, On this large language, on generative AI, I think this is really progressing day by day and it's really impressive how fast this is evolving. From a just like private perspective, when I look also in this kind of video creation and like what is already possible, honestly, it's fascinating. But it's also sometimes shocks me a little bit. It's scary sometimes. What can you do with all these things in the future? And this is also why I think, okay, it's super important for us to learn and also to teach, by the way. our kids and say like what is the technology behind that? How like algorithms are working? How can they influence and how can you misuse also them? And I think this is also something that we should always have in mind and that's maybe an important message at the end. Not only use AI to train or learn yourself also like sometimes really do a deep dive training on certain things and real research that you have the knowledge that you can also see okay is this really right the suggestion from this AI engine or is this something I should double click and think okay I don't believe that this is the truth and that's the point I think it's the kind of things we need to train the people that they need to keep still their eyes open and just not just follow straight ahead AI, use the AI when it's needed, but still judge, okay, is this like the right thing and have a kind of proper knowledge behind it.
SPEAKER_02:Thank you for allowing me to spend a couple of minutes with you today and hearing your perspectives. I greatly appreciate
SPEAKER_00:it. Thank you, Jack. Looking forward for Sapphire.
SPEAKER_02:I'm going to turn it over to Jim Lichtenwalter, host of ASUG Talks, to examine the current developments and innovations in the SAP ecosystem. Thanks, Jeff.
SPEAKER_01:There's a lot happening the week of May 5th, 2025, especially as the ASUG community gears up for SAP Sapphire and ASUG Annual Conference. A few interesting developments to note. First, SAP recently announced its first quarter financial results for 2025. Despite fluid global economic conditions, the software company reported critical growth with SAP CEO Christian Klein saying that the organization's success formula is working. Read our full reporting on the earnings call and what it means for the larger SAP community. ASUG recently released the results of a collaborative research project and undertook alongside SAP. The research focused on integration, a longstanding priority and challenge for ASUG members. The research not only shed light into how respondents are approaching integration, but also the key challenges customers are experiencing and the best practices they are using to shape their integration strategies. Broadly speaking, we found that more ASUG members are devoting time and resources required to develop I'm Jim Lichtenwalter. Thanks for listening.