Executive Q&A: Unlock the Potential of SAP Business Technology Platform to Drive Transformation and Business ROI

⇨ SAP Business Technology Platform (BTP) has evolved from primarily being an integration tool to offering a wide array of functionalities including artificial intelligence, automation, development, and data management, making it essential for SAP customers to evaluate.

⇨ Recent research indicates that SAP BTP is the second most preferred platform for SAP transformation initiatives among CIOs, showing its growing importance in digital transformation strategies.

⇨ Educating customers on the comprehensive capabilities of SAP BTP is crucial for maximizing its potential benefits, with recommendations to explore packaged licensing during SAP S/4HANA evaluations and to utilize trial licenses for hands-on experience.

SAP Business Technology Platform is one of SAP’s hottest selling and most widely implemented solution offerings. Initial momentum for this offering was based on its integration and analytics capabilities, but now its expanded functionality around artificial intelligence, automation, development, and data management has made this solution an important option that most SAP customers need to at least evaluate if not implement.

Our SAPinsider research supports this trend. Preliminary results from our “CIO’s Transformation Report Card” study to be released at the end of November shows that a quarter of our survey respondents (25%) named SAP BTP as the preferred platform for their SAP transformation initiatives. This was second only to Microsoft Azure in the study.

To better understand this solution, how it is being adopted, and what customers need to prepare for, SAPinsider sat down with Kulmeet Bawa, Chief Revenue Officer for SAP Business Technology Platform (BTP).

The Role of SAP BTP

Mr. Bawa is a seasoned SAP executive with experience running both regions such as India as well as solutions such as SAP BTP.  Bawa prides himself on his ability to assemble, manage and motivate teams. The hyper growth of SAP BTP as well as the very real impact that it is having on customer projects and challenges is what motivated Bawa in his everyday role. “We are sitting on a gold mine, and we are seeing it translating into real business benefits to our customers on a daily basis,” comments Bawa.

According to Bawa, the success of SAP BTP is instrumental to SAP’s overall growth and success. He sees SAP BTP’s role as the glue that enables and optimizes the business functionality that is intrinsic to SAP ERP and SAP S/4HANA. “I see SAP BTP similar to the conductor of an orchestra. There are so many important parts of a symphony. But to make it successfully all these components need to work together in harmony, “comments Bawa.

While SAP typically does not comment on specific solution adoption, Bawa acknowledges that SAP BTP growth since its release has consistently been in the double digits and that continues in the most recent quarters. While adoption is always a positive trend, Bawa, a cloud software veteran, is quick to point out that adoption is only half the battle. “What is super critical when it comes to software as a service is user consumption and ROI once the contract is signed. We have extremely specific metrics that we examine daily and from that perspective I’m happy to report that we are one of the best in class in our industry,” comments Bawa.

SAP BTP: More than just an integration platform

SAP Business Technology Platform has a wide array of functionality. Education and understanding of these elements are a critical first step for customers who are evaluating this solution. Integration has certainly been one of the most popular use cases and customers are not only using SAP BTP for SAP-to-SAP connectivity but for SAP integration with non-SAP on-premise and cloud-based solutions.

“We are seeing more use cases for SAP BTP supporting a wide scope of integration scenarios and companies like Mahindra Group using integration suite end-to-end to meet their needs across the wide spectrum of scenarios,” reports Bawa.

However, now other components of SAP BTP are seeing more widespread exploration and adoption particularly application development and automation. Low-code, no-code tools are in higher demand as companies look to simplify and streamline their development processes. SAP Build, a key component of SAP BTP boasts many capabilities that can help both seasoned developers and business analysts looking to customize and extend key capabilities within their ERP landscape.

Bawa is particularly excited about the integration of SAP Datasphere and other data management and analytics capabilities. These solutions are all available in the cloud, giving customers a leg up on preparing to adopt artificial intelligence. SAP’s vast history, experience, and collected data on business processes across all major industries is a major differentiator for SAP’s offerings and cements its competitive advantage in this area.

The semantic layer within SAP’s offerings is unique and hard to replicate. This layer describes the data and places it in consistent business context. So, no matter how you access this whether it be through analytics, dashboards, applications, or Artificial Intelligence, you have single versions of the truth defined the way businesses operate and think about their data. “IT teams and other partners could spend years and billions of dollars trying to replicate what we already have. This data piece is fundamental to all of our AI ambitions as well.” asserts Bawa.

So, is there anything stopping or impeding further acceleration or progress of the SAP BTP express train? As with any solution, Bawa concedes that there is still work to be done on the education front helping customers truly understand the value and potential benefits.

“We meet customers very often, and what I find at times is that the competitive advantage that we have with the comprehensiveness of the SAP BTP solution is not fully understood by everyone. So, one of the important things we’re working on ins how do we get this message across internally to the sales generalists as well as those that focus on specific industries and solutions,” says Bawa.

What does this mean for SAPinsiders?

Take the time to understand all of SAP BTP’s functionality. SAP BTP is far from being a one-dimensional product. And while integration has consumed the early spotlight, there are many other areas of functionality from AI and ML to automation, development, and data management and analytics that you need to explore and build your knowledgebase around.

Explore packaged licensing for SAP BTP as part of your SAP S/4HANA and RISE with SAP evaluation. SAPinsider has talked to several CIOS and other user executives to find that significant discounts on licensing can be discovered when packaging SAP BTP within your RISE with SAP contracts. This does put at a disadvantage those customers who are focusing on on-premise. You will need to work closely with your SAP rep to explore key options.

Start experimenting today. There are trial licenses and demos available. With the advent of software as a service, the opportunity to really test drive functionality before you implement it is out there if you take advantage of it. This is critical to truly understanding the full capabilities of SAP BTP to help you build the business case and project true ROI.