Hello everyone and welcome to my blog!
My name is Martin Beganyi, Solution Value Advisory Director in EMEA/MEE. This is my 3
rd blog and this time it is not about Sourcing, but about a business conference.
Recently I had the pleasure of attending and presenting at the SAP Customer Success Day in Johannesburg on Aug 31
st, in the amazing South Africa.
While I was there, I was contemplating my next blog, and I wanted to focus on how to keep customers informed, network and make connections while living in a dynamic world.
One of the best and most effective ways is by attending an SAP Customer Success Day which is aimed at existing customers, driving adoption, procurement best practices, and accelerating value from their SAP investment.
The Customer Success Day was kicked-off by Christian Turk, SAP Head of ISBN Solution Area EMEA South, where he stressed the importance of close relationships between SAP and its customers, in-fact, SAP considers its customers as partners, and this really was the core message.
Christian stated that “
Since several years SAP has repositioning Customer Success at the core of everything, we do in the field i.e., Sales and Post Sales teams. Engaging directly with our community of customers and getting this community engaged in sharing and learning from each other on how to make their transformation journey successful. Getting the engagement of the community is a blessing for us and will help us to serve you better.”
After the session by Christian, I had the pleasure to present the SAP Procurement North Star, which is our strategy for our procurement solutions. I deep-dived into a few areas for example, SAP Guided Sourcing and SAP Guided Buying with a real focus on what to expect in coming months – If you are interested in this here is the link to the SAP Road Map Explorer:
SAP Road Map Explorer
Shortly after a break, several customers presented their success stories to help newer customers learn and avoid common mistakes, but also learn and adopt tactics that can accelerate value – All were great however, I though the following one was the most impactful.
Sasol, who is local to the area, shared how their supplier collaboration on the SAP Business Network yielded amazing results related to ‘Payments on-time’ and an amazingly high ROI achievement – I must say, this story resonated with all attendees.
I also had the pleasure with Lincy Elizabeth from SAP Product Management to introduce a totally new solution, which will be officially unveiled at SAP Spend Connect Live – Let us just say it will revolutionize how category plans are formulated.
Freshly released in August, it was unavoidable to talk about it. In my view, this solution is THE innovation of the year in Procurement space. It is based on BTP with native integration to SAP Ariba Sourcing – truly amazing!
Charmel Bence, Head of ISBN Customer Success Partners - Africa & MENA closed the session, and I would personally like to thank Charmel, Christian and their respective team members, as well as our customers that made this an amazing success.
What to know more?
You can also join our upcoming LinkedIn Live with Deloitte and Spend Matters on Sept 13
th
SAP Spend Connect Live, is coming on October 9-11
th in Vienna - Scan to register.
Thank you and good luck.
Martin