2024 marked a period of remarkable technological innovation and transformation, setting the stage for an even more dynamic 2025. SAPinsider recently had the privilege of engaging with three prominent technology and transformation executives to reflect on lessons learned and explore future trends. In a panel discussion, Steve Birgfeld, VP of IT at Blue Diamond Growers; Nuno Miller, Digital COO of N Brown Group; and Stijn Stabel, VP of Data at TVH (and former CTO of Carrefour), shared insights on key challenges, priorities, and innovations shaping their organizations. As a backdrop for the discussion, we examined SAPinsider’s latest executive research from the “CIO’s 2024 Transformation Report Card.” Key highlights include:

• Business process automation, standardization, and redesign remained the leading transformation project in 2024 for the second consecutive year.
• More than half of the leaders in our survey have implemented or are in the process of implementing SAP S/4HANA. 30% remain in the evaluation and pilot phase as the 2027 deadline fast approaches.
• AI adoption is still nascent. Nearly half (46%) of survey respondents in our study say that they are slightly or significantly behind the competition when it comes to AI experience. Only 6% of leaders asserted that they were significantly ahead of their peers.
• Resistance to change remained the top challenge to transformation success. For the second year in a row this response garnered the most attention, and even rose eight percentage points year-over-year. The disconnect between IT came in second while lack of budget and resources rounded out the top three challenges.

Our executive panelists concurred with the survey results and brought their own stories and opinions on what’s behind some of these trends and other challenges and priorities that are consuming both time and focus for them.

I’m on SAP S/4HANA. Now What?

According to Birgfeld Blue Diamond Growers has been on SAP S/4HANA since 2021, and they are planning to go live on RISE with SAP this January. The reason for adding RISE is that Blue Diamond wants to position itself to take advantage of the AI and automation capabilities that are only available to RISE with SAP and Cloud customers. “We have built a great foundation of ERP now with SAP S/4HANA. Now it’s a matter of how to best optimize what we have. There’s a lot of data we now have access to, so we are looking to improve business decision making and give stakeholders better dashboards and analytics,” comments Birgfeld. Blue Diamond is piloting some AI use cases and has created some basic automation that is already having a significant impact. “We created a fairly simple RPA to help our logistic team, and it has already reduced a process workload by 2,000 hours for the year. We’ll continue to explore and replicate options like this and incorporate AI,” reports Birgfeld.

Massive Change Requires Massive Cultural and Organizational Shift

Miller has had the opportunity to lead N Brown Group’s massive digital transformation from a catalog company to an organization that relies more on e-commerce and digital experiences. This has required a wholesale shift in both internal and external processes, workflows, and reporting. A basic change management program with meetings and regular communication would not suffice for this type of organizational transformation. According to Miller he needed to impose a completely different organization that broke down traditional silos and to create a new digital culture. He boldly scrapped the current organization and installed cross functional groups he labeled as “tribes.” “We organized our tribes based on experiences we wanted to create, and we have three different tribes. One for brand and our different businesses, one is for actual journeys. Examples of journeys might be customer journeys, employee journeys, or supplier journeys. The third are mission tribes focused on specific projects that have a beginning and end,” describes Miller.

Every Company Needs to Be a Data Driven Organization

All leaders mentioned data at some point in the conversation and commented on how strong data management is the foundation for any transformation project. TVH’s Stabel personifies this focus and emphasis moving from a CTO role to more of a Chief Data Officer role. Companies like TVH are seeing the importance of having dedicated leadership of data across the company. “Many organizations want to go fast and they want to generate results, but they are hindered by a lack of data quality, and they have poor data governance processes in place. And as long as your data is crap your outcome is not going to be much better, and there are many prominent examples of that,” comments Stabel. Putting a data leader in place is only the first step. That leader needs to be empowered with processes, supporting technology, and the right skillsets. And that includes people that know the applications, the business. and how this data is and can be used by various stakeholders, process owners, employees, customers, and partners. “I can find a gazillion data engineers to come working on my team, but if I don’t have the governance right and have people that know where the data is coming from and how it needs to be interpreted, then my project will fail,” asserts Stable.

What it Means for SAPinsiders: Predictions and Projects for 2025

Our leaders offered some lessons and insights for leaders as they prepare to tackle the challenges and opportunities for the coming year. Investigate RISE with SAP but proceed with caution. SAP is making RISE with SAP and Cloud a mandatory prerequisite for unlocking new innovations and features particularly focused on AI, automation, and analytics. RISE with SAP contracts also provide significant discounting on various SAP cloud solutions that will be hard to pass up for many. Our leaders advise that you investigate RISE with SAP but also realize that this may lock you into SAP as a cloud and innovation provider. Prepare for the ramp up of AI. All our leaders are exploring AI in one facet or another. Focus on taking AI from theory to practical application. Work with SAP and partners to determine use cases that can impact business processes. Pilot test cases and prepare your organization to learn and scale quickly. Embrace bold organizational change. To derive the optimal business return on technological innovation and tackle the change management challenge, you may need to make drastic changes to your organization as Miller did. There are different ways to bring IT and business together whether you align around projects, objectives, or the customers you serve. Focus on business, not technical skills. Our leaders concur that technology skills are far easier to acquire than practical business knowledge. Look both within and outside your organization for tech-savvy professionals who deeply understand business process, data flows, reporting, and analytics. To listen to the entire conversation, click here. To download the research study, The CIO’s 2024 Transformation Report card click here.