Run Simple: Roadmap to Digital Transformation

“Run Simple” is more than a marketing slogan at SAP – it’s a roadmap to an intelligent enterprise. In order to remain ready for the digital age, we use this mantra to accelerate ahead of the competition and lead our evolution. 

Over the last 45+ years, SAP has navigated unprecedented change across all industries we serve, impacting our business models, processes, and the way we work. This change introduces a certain level of complexity that stands as a major barrier to digital transformation and innovation… but that doesn’t stop us.  

As our CEO Bill McDermott says, constant innovation is the key to growth. In 2016, SAP embarked on a major transformation initiative to reduce complexity in our internal processes and systems: SAP’s Digital Transformation to Run Simple.

To prepare for the future, we have to rethink our own business model holistically, and adopt groundbreaking ideas and technologies more quickly. At the same time, we have to remember our promise to our customers. This promise keeps them in the center of everything we do – helping them become more agile and implement easy-to-use software. 

For us, Run Simple is about confronting the challenges of our own digital transformation head on, setting an example for our customers to do the same.  

Leading our Digital Transformation 

This booklet shows how digital transformation impacts every aspect of our organization. Managers and employees at every level within all lines of businesses are facing challenges. Transformation requires a hands-on, all-team approach. That is what we are doing at SAP. 

Here, we take a holistic view of our company to re-imagine how we run and change how we work to benefit our employees, customers, and investors.  

New technologies allow us to innovate and connect our suite of services to create more opportunities in and outside the business. With the help of tools like SAP Hybris, S/4HANA, and Enterprise Analytics, we gain a deeper understanding of each of our customers. Our other tools are also used internally, like SAP Ariba Solutions, SAP Concur, SAP Fieldglass, and SAP SuccessFactors.

We do this to prove it is possible to unlock new business models and run our own enterprise to scale on our software.  

With respect for the past, awareness of the present, and an eye on our future, we make changes that radically simplify, grow, and scale the way we do things. 

Fueled by our people, SAP's Digital Transformation strategy has 3 key areas: Data, Processes, and Solutions. 

Data Management 

Data is the ultimate currency in the digital economy, and the foundation of a successful digital transformation. What kind of value are you looking to get from the information you collect through IoT or customer information?

Decide on the business case first, manage the data well, keep it clean, and then select the appropriate technologies that will help you reap the benefits.

Our Enterprise Analytics and Enterprise Data Management teams deliver real-time relevant insights to decision-makers across the company, leveraging a foundation of clean, well-organized data - a single source of truth.  

Process Refinement 

Run Simple guides the "build and run" of tightly integrated, rock-solid processes that provide the simplicity and ease our customers and employees demand. High-volume, low-touch cloud business models require processes and system landscapes that are holistic - spanning the company, across board areas, end-to-end. 

To accomplish this goal, our Top 10 Focus Projects guide our current business process redesign. SAP must change our operating model, allowing us to move to the cloud at the right speed so that we can consistently provide the right on-premise and cloud choices to our customers. We prove it is possible to run an enterprise like ours, end-to-end, with our standard solutions.  

Solution Expertise 

SAP is a software company. We must look at everything we do from the eyes of our customers and employees - the end users of our products. 

Our Business Insight & Technology teams partner with our Product & Innovation teams to create mature, relevant solutions. Our agile innovation platform, the SAP Cloud Platform, our S/4HANA digital core, and best-in-class LoB solutions come together to enable our digital enterprise holistically, across the value chain. When these components come together, we can think about automation, acceleration, growth, and scale.  

Join Us 

So, please join us, let us know what you think, and learn from our Run Simple story. You can read the whole story right away in our whitepaper, or follow along with this blog series.  Each will focus on a different Line of Business, to provide a transparent, expansive look at how we transform SAP from the inside out - to meet and exceed the expectations of the Digital Economy. 

For more about SAP's Operations and how we drive digital transformation from within, follow me on Twitter @ChrstnKlein