My Experience Working at SAP Headquarters

The best decision I made in 2017 was to join the Rotation Program at SAP Labs Latin America. As an award for being a top performer intern, I was selected to work at SAP Headquarters in Germany, for 6 weeks. Since this was truly a time of great personal and professional learning, I decided to write this article. 

In this fellowship I was able to network, work with and learn from extremely experienced professionals. During this time I was given a challenge: delivering a Session on Leading Edge Technologies and Digital Transformation at the SAP Enterprise Support Global Topic Owner's Summit 2018.

The event

The GTOs Summit brought together senior experts on Enterprise Support Value Maps from 11 different countries. The 7-day event included various KPI and goal-defining sessions using Design Thinking methodology and also meeting with customers at the AppHaus-- SAP’s “customer facing” co-innovation space in which customers, SAP, and end-users collaboratively work on projects. I am really glad to have had the opportunity to participate in the event and meet all the great professionals that were part of it.

My perspective

As an economics and law student, I believe understanding technology trends is fascinating.

Why am I passionate about this?

Without innovation, there is no economic development. Development is a crucial factor to generate more wealth. Without wealth, the companies’ outcomes, the country and people’s lives will not improve. We are living in the 4th industrial revolution and our welfare is closely tied to technological trends.

In addition, a great company’s strategy addresses the main trends occurring in its industry. Understanding the strategy allows one to have more empathy with the customers, as well as a better awareness of the connection between the work and the organization’s goals.

The impact

The way users interact with technology will go through a radical transformation in the upcoming years. Customers need up-to-date, real time information to stop the reactive way of performing and create new processes and business models. We will have cheaper, faster and smarter automation of everything from emails to assembly lines.

Artificial intelligence will allow more natural modes of interaction with conversational systems and immersive experiences with virtual and augmented reality. Conversational systems will improve employees’ daily lives by freeing them from repetitive functions and letting them focus on creating customer value. Virtual and augmented reality allow us to work with virtual twins of real things, which enables new business processes and cost savings, and also ensures people’s health and safety.

As I am talking about economic impact, I could not leave the healthcare sector aside: in developed countries this is where over 10% of the GDP is. AI will increase the "connectedness" of people and their health. Data sharing in healthcare can increase the effectiveness of the healthcare system by driving efficiencies at the patient level through integration of patient information.

“ Integration is a core competency of digital transformation” - IDC

The number of connected devices will grow exponentially. Everything that can be connected will be connected, and the data masses from these devices have a cross industry relevance.

“The world’s most valuable resource is no longer oil, but data” – The Economist

Personal Insights

This is just a glimpse of what I had the opportunity to learn while in Germany. Being able to confidently explain and talk about various technologies that will redefine business models to professionals far more experienced than me was an unforgettable experience.

I learned that setting short-term goals can turn out to be a great way of challenging yourself and becoming more efficient. And, if machine learning is all about learning from data, there is no better place to learn than in a company that facilitates 76% of all business transactions in the world. This data is the fuel for building advanced solutions that no one else can. It is the fuel for the disruptive innovation.

Thank you, SAP, for this lifetime opportunity. Thank you Andrea Guimaraes, Renata Federizzi, Fernanda Scherer Formento, Rafael Freitas, Rashi Khare, Yasir Noman, Alexander Daum, Mateus Mollman, Raul Bellina, Cleber de Moraes, John Cumming and all Management Team and Global Topic Owners of Enterprise Support Value Maps.