More than fifty years ago, the modern idea of the standard enterprise software was birthed at SAP. Now, after managing companies through technological shifts from the mainframe to mobile, SAP is at the forefront of closing the AI adoption gap for their customers. SAP Chief Technology Officer Philipp Herzig joins Sarah Guo to talk about how SAP has remained a durable end-to-end “operating system” for its more than 400,000 customers from finance to supply chain. Philipp argues that the AI transition in businesses should focus on customer outcomes, UI changes, business processes, and the data layer. He also explains the challenges in enterprise AI adoption, including security, scaling, and data fragmentation, as well as the importance of evals and verifiability. They also discuss SAP’s suite of AI products, limitations of predictive tabular models, how SAP is shifting its pricing models in the AI era, and Philipp’s interest in quantum computing optimization.
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Chapters:
00:00 – Cold Open
00:42 – Philipp Herzig Introduction
01:18 – What SAP Does
02:51 – Why SAP Endures
06:53 – CTO Priorities and AI Push
12:14 – Scaling AI in Enterprise
17:06 – Verifiability and Agent Mining
20:42 – Tool Calling vs. Computer Use
22:11 – Domains Where Agents Deliver Value
24:58 – Limitations of Predictive Tabular Models
29:07 – Barriers to Enterprise Adoption
31:54 – How AI Will ‘Uplevels’ Work
34:03 – How AI Changes SAP’s Pricing Model
36:41 – What Makes a Winner in the AI Era
38:53 – Day in the Life of a CTO
40:08 – Customer Challenges
42:36 – Business Problem of Quantum Computing
46:21 – Conclusion
The suggestions and support offered by AI are helpful only if they’re relevant. On today’s episode, Walter Sun, senior vice president and global head of artificial intelligence at SAP, joins Sam and Shervin to share how his organization is helping employees get smarter about artificial intelligence through the company’s AI Days. Additionally, Walter gives specific examples of support that AI agents could provide to an end user, and makes the case that small language models (fine-tuned large language models) can be built to assist in decision-making.
Read the episode transcript here.
Guest bio:
Walter Sun is senior vice president and global head of artificial intelligence at SAP, where his team applies AI across applications for improved automation, natural human-machine interaction, and augmentation of decisions.
Sun joined SAP in 2023 from Microsoft, where he was vice president of Copilot Applied Artificial Intelligence. While there he founded Bing Predicts, which leveraged anonymized and aggregated data for predictive analytics. He also delivered many AI features for the Bing search engine, Microsoft Windows, Microsoft Dynamics 365, and Microsoft Power Platform. Previously, Sun worked at BlackRock Financial Management and at Apple as a senior software engineer.
Sun has taught at Seattle University and the University of Washington, and he is currently an advisory board member at Georgia Tech and the University of Rochester, and an MIT Tech Review Global Insights panelist. He obtained his bachelor’s from Georgia Tech and his Ph.D. and master’s from MIT.
Me, Myself, and AI is a collaborative podcast from MIT Sloan Management Review and Boston Consulting Group and is hosted by Sam Ransbotham and Shervin Khodabandeh. Our engineer is David Lishansky, and the executive producer is Allison Ryder.
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SAP Executive Board Member Scott Russell used to avoid talking about his personal life with coworkers. But “we want to understand and relate to each other,” he says, and being more open has made people more willing to trust and follow him. “Authenticity, you cannot manufacture that,” Scott says. “When you’re only showing a part of who you are to your team, you’re not showing your true, authentic self.”
In this episode, Scott and Joubin discuss European business structures, three-year contracts, creating a positive impact, informed feedback loops, maintaining a good emotional quotient, too much optimism, tough phone calls, playing the movie forward, helping your community, life balance, implicit trust and authenticity, finding new opportunities, considering other points of view, and speedboats vs. load-bearers.
In this episode, we cover:
Living around the world and away from HQ (01:05)
Signing a three-year contract with yourself (08:09)
The responsibility of delivering $1 billion in revenue every week (11:55)
Getting to the truth when you’re near the top of a huge organization (14:07)
The unintended consequences of optimism (17:11)
Missing earnings and “what’s the worst thing that could happen?” (20:11)
Scott’s childhood in Australia and his lifelong passion for basketball (26:21)
Why the “work version” of Scott isn’t the best version (30:15)
Being authentic with coworkers and how to drive outcomes in your personal life (33:53)
The one place Scott’s family hasn’t been able to relocate happily (38:47)
Loyalty to your work and your family (42:42)
How competition drives better performance and keeps you honest (47:45)
Finding discipline in your schedule and forcing yourself to relax (54:46)
Where SAP is hiring, and Scott’s view of potential M&A or strategic partnerships (57:08)
Links:
Connect with ScottTwitter
LinkedIn
Connect with JoubinTwitter
LinkedIn
Email: grit@kleinerperkins.com
Learn more about Kleiner Perkins
This episode was edited by Eric Johnson from LightningPod.fm
Daniel and Chris talk with Lukas Egger, Head of Innovation Office and Strategic Projects at SAP Business Process Intelligence. Lukas describes what it takes to bring a culture of innovation into an organization, and how to infuse product development with that innovation culture. He also offers suggestions for how to mitigate challenges and blockers.
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Featuring:
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Show Notes:
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Today, consumers, businesses and governments are united in their sense of urgency about the sustainability of the planet. But how do we go about achieving it? In this episode of Smart Talks, Malcolm talks to Marc Rolfe, Senior Vice President and Head of Strategic Partners Ecosystem Success at SAP, and Jason Kelley, General Manager, IBM Strategic Partners, about how strategic partnerships between companies can create a larger industry shift toward sustainability. This is a paid advertisement from IBM.
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This is a live recording from a panel I moderated at the World Economic Forum Industry Strategy Meeting. The speakers included Shwetha Shetty Senior Director, Corporate Strategy Group, of SAP, Adam Ludwin, CEO of Chain, Brian Behlendorf, executive director of HyperLedger the Linux Foundation and Sheila Warren, project head of blockchain and distributed ledger technology at the World Economic Forum.We dive into the pros and cons of using blockchains for elections. which types of problems are best-suited to be solved by blockchain, why B2B applications of blockchain might come before B2C products and what kinds of identity-related data might be safe to put on a blockchain. Plus, Adam reveals some entertaining anecdotes about Silicon Valley safaris and how old World’s Fair tickets could have an analog to blockchain systems today.
Episodes I referenced during the discussion in case listeners want to dive more into the elections topic:
Tomicah Tillemann episode on the blockchain voting pilot in West Virginia: http://unconfirmed.libsyn.com/battling-corruption-with-blockchain-technology-tomicah-tillemann-of-the-blockchain-trust-accelerator-ep018
Alex Gladstein episode with more on blockchain-based voting: http://unconfirmed.libsyn.com/alex-gladstein-of-the-human-rights-foundation-on-the-first-crypto-war-ep021
Tweets about blockchain-based voting:
Matt Blaze’s objecton to blockchain-based voting: https://twitter.com/mattblaze/status/1002921011854143488
Vitalik’s response: https://twitter.com/VitalikButerin/status/1004203105611726849
Tomicah Tillemann’s response: https://twitter.com/TomicahTD/status/1004325810252197888
To address the question at the end about blockchain-based passports:
2 Katie Haun episodes on using blockchain-based systems to solve the problems of "breeder documents" and fraud, waste and abuse:
Fraud, waste and abuse: http://unchainedpodcast.co/live-from-inforum-at-the-commonwealth-club-blockchain-and-cryptocurrency-the-basics-with-kathryn-haun
Breeder documents: http://unchainedpodcast.co/federal-prosecutor-kathryn-haun-on-how-criminals-use-bitcoin-and-how-she-catches-them
Episode with Vinny Lighal, founder of Civic, which is working on a blockchain-based identity solution: http://unchainedpodcast.co/bitcoin-oracle-vinny-lingham-on-why-bitcoin-is-overpriced
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