LV Podcast_NichMiletich_Protera 0:00 Hello, I'm Robert Holland and this is the SAP Insider Las Vegas 2025 podcast. 0:05 Thank you for listening as we speak with SAP insiders and industry experts about their experiences in the SAP space. 0:12 In this episode, I'm speaking with Nick Miletich of Proterra. 0:16 Nick, tell us a little bit about yourself and your role. 0:19 Great. 0:19 I appreciate the the time. 0:21 My name is Nick Miletich. 0:22 I am COO at Proterra, been in the SAP ecosystem for a little over 20 years now on the MSP space specifically helping clients post, migrate, support their SAP landscapes and in their journeys through the ever evolving SAP ecosystem through the years. 0:43 But yeah, have a have a very strong skill set in the basis realm in the Yeah. 0:51 And this is something SAP wants to get rid of the whole Rise with SAP, Grow with SAP thing. 0:56 Well, they they say they do. 0:59 But even with Rise, you know, they they've designated it technical basis and what they call almost functional basis. 1:07 Right. 1:08 All right. 1:08 Yeah. 1:09 Where when you move to Rise, you move to grow, you have people supporting the environment from SAP, their ECS team on client 000 and the hosting platform, but you still need basis to do what we would consider standard basis tasks. 1:25 Anything in the productive clients, you know, users, transports, anything standard basis still still required. 1:33 So still required, yeah, yeah. 1:36 And I know that a lot of customers that I've spoken with that have, you know, found an advantage in keeping their basis teams even when they move to, for example, Rise with SAP or SAP is for Hunter Cloud Private Edition because it just allows them to streamline troubleshooting and it just makes issue resolution that much faster. 1:54 Absolutely. 1:55 So you've got a lot of experience in the SAP space. 1:59 You're currently with Proterra. 2:00 What are the challenges that you see SAP customers experiencing today? 2:06 What are they or what are they coming to you and talking about? 2:08 Yeah. 2:09 I would say the biggest challenge and the biggest conversations we continually have is how do we navigate this Rise journey, right? 2:18 Some are in the cloud already, some array have, you know, contracts with one of the big three cloud vendors and they want to know, you know, how does that impact me when I move to Rise or they're on Prem and they want that journey. 2:32 And navigating that has been a bit of a challenge for clients because there are products that are obviously supported within Rise, but there's quite a few that aren't. 2:42 And SA PS journey kind of pushes everyone toward the BTP space. 2:47 And I think a lot of clients get overwhelmed when you talk to them about, you know, BTP moving to Rise, comboing all that together. 2:56 Some clients aren't even on on Hana yet. 2:59 So it's just a big pill to swallow. 3:01 And they come to us to talk through. 3:03 What does that journey look like? 3:06 Yeah, I mean, it's a complicated story because there's a lot of customers that have been using SAPEIP solutions for years. 3:14 There's but it's, it's a lot of cloud all at once, it seems like. 3:19 Yeah, it's, it's a big journey. 3:22 And what I was trying to tell people is, you know, take it and take it in small chunks. 3:27 A lot of our clients actually, surprisingly, you know, as as SAP goes and talks to clients of going through that Rise journey, a lot of clients automatically expect, hey, I have to get to S4 Hana, I have to clean my core, I have to do all that at once. 3:44 And that's not the case. 3:46 I would say 80% of what we do ends up being a phased approach. 3:51 We often times aren't even converting to S4 Hana when we go into Rise as a first step. 3:56 We're just getting them into Rise and then either converting a hot S4 at a later date and everything that our clients run as far as other systems, you know, POPI, they actually leave cloud native or on Prem for the time being until they figure out how to convert that into a BTP product. 4:16 Yeah, yeah. 4:17 And I, I mean, I think obviously when you move to rice, what they say or at least when you sign or arrive for the SAP contract, you have to make a commitment as to when you will move to SAPS Rahana. 4:26 But there's no, you don't have to do it today necessarily. 4:31 Obviously, you know, you have to make sure that your resources are going to be available if you're going to have your planning done on this, your side. 4:37 And then any, you know, implementation partner, for example, like yourselves is going to be available to help you in the time frame that you need. 4:45 But it's yeah, yeah, you don't have to do everything all at once. 4:49 Absolutely not. 4:50 And I think there's a, there's a bit of a misconception out there where a lot of people think they do they have to convert, they have to migrate, they have to get to rise. 5:00 It doesn't all have to happen all at once. 5:02 Although do you have to be a little bit careful? 5:04 Because if you don't meet your commitment time, there is a financial penalty associated with that. 5:10 There is, there is. 5:11 And different clouds as well have different incentives as you, as you go through the journey and they, you have to move by a certain time. 5:18 But we also found, you know, as far as moving SAP, in our eyes, generally that's pretty quick. 5:26 You know, that the journey into moving your ERP system three to six months on average, we see our clients move in there and then focus on, hey, I'm going to go S4 in another year or I'm going to convert something to BTP in another year. 5:41 So they've met the financial commitment and move to RISE. 5:44 Yeah, no, absolutely. 5:46 So I mean, you know, obviously, you know, we talked about the challenge, it's the RISE journey going to the cloud BTP environment. 5:54 And we used to, you know, I think that's a great piece of advice to sort of take it in a step by step approach. 6:00 How can customers prepare themselves for that approach? 6:06 You know, what can they start doing now so that when they start doing that, they're they're ready to move forward? 6:12 Yeah, that's a good question. 6:13 So you really want to understand your business when you go in a journey like this. 6:19 A lot of clients they, they have a lot of what I would consider sprawl, SAP, non SAP systems, they're all interconnected and understanding what you have will help you significantly get you to where you're going. 6:36 And a lot of our clients that journey generally starts with figuring out what am I running, how am I using ERP, What are these business processes that we use? 6:49 How do we convert them either to clean core or do we need them going forward? 6:55 That that has been the biggest kind of first step hurdle that we see our clients doing. 7:01 And, and the best advice I can give is understand your business when you start this journey. 7:05 Yeah, no, that's great advice. 7:08 So, you know, obviously there's a lot of change happening in the SAP space over the next few years, particularly as we come to the end of mainstream maintenance. 7:17 People are going to be faced with this challenge of what do they do? 7:20 How do they get there? 7:22 They they can start their preparations now. 7:25 What are the skill sets you think are going to be the most important for SA proof SAP professionals in the next few years as this all plays out? 7:33 Yeah, absolutely. 7:35 And I'm a little biased just because I I love basis. 7:38 So definitely understanding how Rise operates when you are a basis professional, understanding the nuances around support, right. 7:51 It's just different than what some people are used to. 7:55 So definitely want to understand how the mechanics work of the support model. 7:59 It'll get you a lot further down the line when you've converted to rise to understand, hey, this is, this is how we interact. 8:07 This is how we do our standard basis task is it's a bit different, but it's learning that is going to be key. 8:14 And I know SAP has a lot of onboarding sessions on that. 8:18 They have a lot of webinars on that. 8:19 I highly urge people to go and look at that, attend those virtual sessions because understanding how that ECS team works, how you interact is going to be key. 8:29 From a functional standpoint, that's a, that's a bigger, wider range of skill set and understanding what's out there. 8:40 BTP skill set I think is going to be the hot commodity. 8:43 Understanding how that works and not only from a functional standpoint, but from a technical standpoint. 8:49 I mean, there's a lot of talk about what BTP can do and the functionality of it. 8:54 You don't hear a lot of talk about how do you manage it? 8:57 How do you maintain it? 8:58 How do you know if you go over on your, on your building as an example, or too much data usage or the connectivity between all, all the environments that's that's going to be necessary? 9:11 Yeah, actually there's been some interesting conversations that I've heard this week, just people talking about, you know, there is no necessarily easy way in BTP to see how you're managing your billing and your credits and, you know, that are part of the BTPEA or CP EA, depending on which agreement you have. 9:32 And so, you know, I think there was even somebody said that there was an SAP employee who wrote some script that gives you the information. 9:41 It's like, well, why isn't that more public? 9:43 Exactly. 9:44 Exactly. 9:45 And a lot of that is being built in a cloud ALM, right? 9:49 So in cloud ALM, as you go on your SAP rise journey, SAP does add that into the bomb and you have access to it. 9:58 I haven't seen a lot of clients initially deploy it, but highly, highly recommend getting Cloud ALM up and running as part of your initial start of your, your rise journey because there is some monitoring in there and it'll continue to to grow. 10:13 So, yeah, absolutely. 10:15 So you said you've been in the SAP, SAP ecosystem for 20 years. 10:23 What's your perspective on what SAP partners bring to the picture and, and and then they role in driving innovation? 10:31 Yeah, I mean, SAP partners have been absolutely critical in how even as I've grown through the the MSP journey, how we've managed clients over the years, there's always been the what I would consider framework that SA PS given. 10:51 But the augmentation and innovation of what the partners bring has been absolutely beneficial to everything we've do, we've done. 11:00 And going forward, it's going to be more critical now with Rise understanding how that their products work in Rise and understanding the new innovation. 11:10 Now that you're in Rise, now that you're in BTP, what great products can come out of of understanding that and pushing that forward. 11:19 I've, we use a lot of third party products that interact with SAP at, at Proterra and we couldn't do our job without it. 11:27 Right. 11:28 Yeah, because, I mean, you know, I think the bottom line is that, I mean, there's always gaps in what SAP offers a lot of it deliberate because they don't necessarily want to, you know, have a solution in that space. 11:38 And this is this is where partners can, can certainly fill in, they can add huge value or they can enhance, you know, many SAP tools and solutions that are already available as well as, you know, expertise in deployment and helping you manage and run systems, etcetera. 11:56 So there's a, there's a lot of a lot of a lot that the partner ecosystem brings to the picture. 12:01 Absolutely. 12:03 So maybe, and this is kind of an interesting question, if you could change one thing about the way SAP solutions are adopted by SAP insiders or SAP customers today, what would it be? 12:17 Well, when it comes to adopting solutions, I feel like it gets announced. 12:23 The solutions are out there, but it takes a significantly long time for adoption to happen. 12:28 You've seen that through the years, right? 12:30 You've seen dates push on support, they've SA PS extended it not as much adoption going on at least as fast as as what SAP probably would like. 12:43 My suggestion for that is take it in steps, understand what's going on, what's supported, what is going out of support and break it down. 12:53 You can't do everything at once. 12:54 This rise journey is a prime example of that. 12:57 But don't wait till the end, right? 12:59 There has to be a happy median there. 13:01 And do a little, but keep on doing it. 13:03 Keep on moving that that ball forward because if you don't, you'll be left in a position where it's, it's going to be a bigger mountain to climb in a shorter amount of time. 13:14 That's great advice. 13:16 So we're here at an SAP Insider event. 13:18 This is the SAP Insider Las Vegas podcast. 13:22 What advice would you offer to the SAP Insider community? 13:28 My advice is to understand and grasp what is actually happening with Rise, with the SAP journey and the conversion of BTPI. 13:40 Think Rise and BTP and Grow, which is I'm not going to say newer, but being pushed more. 13:48 Now there is a journey that SA PS making. 13:51 There is a end game, right? 13:53 And it's to be clean core. 13:55 It's to be in rise on a subscription based model and D com certain products that SAP runs today and put them into BTP. 14:05 That is the end goal. 14:07 Don't take that for granted, right? 14:09 Understand and start that journey right away. 14:14 You don't have to move it right away. 14:16 You don't have to sit here and convert everything or decide to go clean core right away. 14:21 But don't delay. 14:22 Move that, move that forward. 14:25 And as I mentioned before, always, always be pushing that ball forward. 14:29 No, I think that's great advice. 14:32 Educate yourselves, learn about what these things are going to mean to you. 14:38 I think unfortunately there's many customers which are sort of like, you know, if I pretend it's not there, it's not going to impact me. 14:45 I'm just going to be able to keep, keep doing what I'm doing. 14:48 And I don't know that that's really true. 14:51 It's it's not. 14:52 And we've, we've seen this change with Rise. 14:56 You know, SAP had a product similar, it was ATC and that wasn't as adopted and it's been since, you know, I'm not saying it's been converted to Rise. 15:07 Rise is a different product with a different model, but SA PS doubled down on it, right, That everything is going to rise, everything is going to grow, everything is going BTP. 15:17 So with that being said, it's it's difficult to, as you said, put, you know, put your head in the sand and wait for something to change. 15:26 It's not going to impact me. 15:27 Yeah. 15:28 I mean, you know it very much. 15:29 I think I don't know that I would necessarily call Rise for SAP Heck 2.0. 15:34 At least there's infrastructure in there that is essentially a Heck 2.0. 15:38 But the new, the newly announced SAP Business Suite, that young Gilg who was you know, a keynote speaker on on day one, you know, he's now he's the head of global SAP Business Suite. 15:48 It's not the same as the old Business Suite. 15:50 It is BTP, it is Business Data Cloud, it is cloud ERP, and it is all of SA PS cloud line of business applications, correct. 15:59 And that's I think going to be the big focus over the next over the next. 16:05 Well, at least you know, the next year until SAP decides to shift again. 16:10 Absolutely, Nick, it has been a pleasure chatting with you. 16:13 Thank you so much for your time and thank you for speaking with the SAP Insider community. 16:17 Absolutely thank you. 16:18 You're very welcome.