IBM Global Business Services - April 2021

How IBM is evolving its unique partnership with SAP DIGITAL REPORT 2021

How IBM is evolving its unique partnership with SAP Example of an image caption

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IBM’s SAP Practice is dedicated to

the evolution of both companies and their joint strategy to drive the next generation of business processes

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AP wasn’t always the technology giant it is today and was originally founded by five engineers who left IBM to start the company. IBM Global SAP Practice leader Matt Schwartz remembers joining SAP in 2004, when it had fewer than 10,000 people in North America. “It was a much smaller, more intimate organization,” Schwartz recalls. “I pretty much knew every SAP consultant but it is a much different situation now.”

The growth of SAP has been exponential and fueled by a number of acquisitions which has created a new level of complexity. “It was easier to sell, consume and understand what SAP was at that time,” Schwartz admits.

The company, its customer base and its product offerings have expanded. “I’d say the biggest change is that it was very easy to understand what SAP stood for 20 years ago. It was an integrated ERP system. It was one application and now it’s a multitude of applications – it’s an ecosystem. SAP calls it an Intelligent Enterprise. We believe the value now is connecting those Enterprise applications and adding intelligence to them through intelligent workflows.”

SAP rising Do smaller, nimbler companies offering cloud native software solutions pose a threat to monoliths like SAP? “Its Déjà vu all over

again, right?” Schwartz replies with a grin.

“If you look back 20 years companies were buying SAP for finance and supply chain while others purchased a combo of SAP and best of breed capabilities in Supply Chain like i2 and Manugistics, PeopleSoft for HR and Ariba for procurement. You had clients that went with best-of-the-breed solutions and had SAP for their digital core back then, and this continues to happen today even with the newer SaaS solutions in the market. SAP has reached an understanding that customers will continue to make these choices and the power is in seamlessly linking these applications through capabilities in their Business Technology Platform underpinned by the capabilities of the cloud providers.

“ Our ability to help clients understand the business case for change, the value of the transformation and how SAP can help them drive that transformation, helps SAP achieve all their goals” MATT SCHWARTZ

IBM GLOBAL SAP PRACTICE LEADER ibm.com

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Matthew Schwartz talks about IBM's Digital Transformation

The real shift, Schwartz thinks, is in the way we think about integrating and building the next generation of SAP solutions.

Architecting intelligent workflows means leveraging improved API integration capabilities, infusing intelligence with AI and machine learning algorithms. While delivering an outcome with business process management orchestration and continuous business process improvement mining. This is a new way of thinking for both our customers and even our consultants.

It represents the way we need to move

“ Sustainability has become a key driver in commercial decision-making, and software plays its part” MATT SCHWARTZ

IBM GLOBAL SAP PRACTICE LEADER

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to ensure we are building cloud enabled solutions for the future while allowing customers to fully leverage their best of breed solutions as part of their end-to-end processes. This approach with S/4HANA as the digital core provides the ability to define and deliver the business case our customers require to drive their digital transformations.

Partnership depth The IBM-SAP partnership started at the founding of SAP and remains as the longest, strongest partnership in the ecosystem.

What keeps that relationship strong?

“At the core of our partnership is our shared goal of satisfied clients,” Schwartz explains. “Satisfied clients want to buy additional applications from SAP and more implementation services from IBM. Success stories help both SAP and IBM to gain new customers and satisfied customers are also willing to speak to others about their success providing more opportunity to IBM and SAP.

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Given IBM’s track record in the SAP business with over 6,700 projects delivered, SAP feels comfortable making commitments to their customers about IBM’s ability to deliver the business outcomes enabled by SAP. IBM’s ability to deliver on time, on budget with realized value for joint customers continues to fuel the strong growth of the partnership.

“From a sales perspective, our ability to partner with the SAP field has always been enabled by our support helping the C-suite, the board and the shareholders of an organization understand the value they're going to get from SAP.” When working with IBM, our joint customers understand the business case for change, the value of the transformation and how the different SAP applications can help them drive that transformation, as well as the return on investment they can expect. This helps SAP achieve their goals and this shared mission creates a level of trust in the partnership.

MATT SCHWARTZ TITLE: IBM GLOBAL SAP PRACTICE LEADER LOCATION: CALIFORNIA Matt Schwartz is firmly from the management consulting side of the industry, starting out at Andersen Consulting (now Accenture), first on the coding side, then with SAP practice in the mid-late ‘90s. He went on to work in the Price Waterhouse (now PwC) SAP practice.

With the dot-com boom in full swing, he joined a couple of start-ups before joining SAP in 2004, where he would spend almost a decade. “I figured if I was going to be in the SAP ecosystem, why not join them?”

Schwartz says. He followed SAP with a stint at IBM, then another management consultancy stint, this time at EY (again in the SAP practice). Four years ago, the call came from IBM to return to the fold.

Schwartz came back on board to run the North America SAP practice, doubling business in a short period of time, before stepping up to his global role.

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EXECUTIVE BIO

ERP sustainability What happens next in SAP’s journey?

According to Schwartz, it’s already happening.

“Sustainability has become and as policies change will continue to be a key driver in commercial decision-making and software plays a part.” The ability to properly account for carbon impact and to manufacture and

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market sustainable products will take on a new level of importance for organizations.

Looking for ways to lower the carbon footprint, increase the profitability of products while having a positive impact on the environment will become front and center. IBM and SAP are working together to combine their solutions and expertise to respond to this market demand supported

by IBM’s work on the World Business Council for Sustainable Development. This capability is what organizations and shareholders are looking for and as a consumer, that's also what I want. It's about organizations working with IBM Global Business Services and SAP to leverage the technology to facilitate the changes required by the environmental agenda.

Garrick Keatts took over from Schwartz at the top of America's SAP practice in 2020.

He thinks IBM’s SAP proposition is unique.

“When you look at IBM's core fundamental offerings of what we can do for clients to help guide them and what that journey

GARRICK KEATTS TITLE: IBM NORTH AMERICA SAP PRACTICE LEADER

Garrick Keatts is an IBM lifer, starting out at the firm straight from college as a supply chain consultant in the SAP practice. His work has taken him around the world in international markets (visiting 60-70 different countries), but always flying the flag for IBM and SAP’s unique partnership. He returned to the US to focus on SAP HANA before taking on the North America SAP practice leader role in May 2020. “I think what's interesting to me in that time period is what's changed and what hasn't. If I think back 16 years ago, so much of our work with our clients on the SAP front was about getting them transacting capability and allowing them to do that at scale with efficiency. Fast forward to today, so much of the priority with our clients is really more about insights and giving them a more granular level of insights at a quicker pace that they can use to make better business decisions.

What hasn't changed is the fact it's still so much of our work is around giving our clients efficient transacting in platforms to drive their business and their growth

EXECUTIVE BIO

LOCATION: COLORADO

“ There's not a partner out there that has the offerings to do the strategy, work, the implementation, the run from an application and an infrastructure perspective” GARRICK KEATTS

IBM NORTH AMERICA SAP PRACTICE LEADER

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Garrick Keatts talks about IBM's SAP practice in the Americas

should look like, actually implement it for them and get them to that state of utopia that they seek,” he says. “And even from a business perspective to be able to manage that both at an application and from an infrastructure perspective, we're very unique in the SAP partner ecosystem that we can do all of those things. There's not a partner out there that has the offerings to do the strategy, work, the implementation, the run from an application and an infrastructure perspective.”

Keatts is obsessed with data cleanliness, and suggests that in the past data was moved around to the extent that it was effectively massaged before reaching decision makers.

“Today, the business user is seeing that data in its raw state in an instantaneous fashion. We know getting that data into these environments in a very clean and continuously governed state is critical for business operations and program success. It’s incredibly important for

both the expectations and the outcomes the business desires, and to see successful delivery of projects.

Truth in data “There’s less appetite from business users to be held from the truth today than ever.

They want to understand where the issues are. They want to get to them quickly, and they want to be able to identify those issues before they become a major problem. They want the opportunity to fix them in flight versus having to initiate some sort of project 1, 3 or 12 months later.”

IBM was awarded the SAP North America Award for Partner Excellence for 2021. For someone who has spent his entire career in the orbit of IBM and SAP, Keatts has a granular understanding of the partnership.

He sums it up as “alignment of objectives”.

“We’re both about helping our clients be ibm.com

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“ Digital transformation hasn’t simply appeared.

It’s been evolving for a long period of time” ALLAN COULTER

CTO, IBM GLOBAL SAP PRACTICE

Allan Coulter talks about Enterprise IT within IBM

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ALLAN COULTER TITLE: CTO, IBM GLOBAL SAP PRACTICE INDUSTRY: INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY

EXECUTIVE BIO

PROFESSIONAL SERVICES Allan Coulter has been with IBM for 23 years. Having started out as an accountant (“incredibly boring”), he was given the opportunity after graduating from University to dabble in financial software programming – the company he worked for then started an SAP program….from here he joined PwC then IBM in the SAP Service Line.…”I starting off as a Finance Process Consultant then I got involved in some of the new technologies when they first came out, the likes of SAP Business Warehouse, SAP Portal and the likes…..I was always the person that was invited to check out the new stuff…. I was interested in how things worked, so I got involved in what was then called Basis…I combined all of this when certifying in Enterprise Architecture. I actually ended up with a really good balance of process skills and technical skills. I think this has ended up being crucial in the role I have now, as I get to see how technology is best applied to improve the way our customers deliver their processes….”

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more successful in their business operations.

When we're both on that mission path, it creates a lot of complimentary synergies and it doesn't create much conflict. That's why the relationship has been so strong for so long and will continue to be.

“When you look at what SAP is taking to its clients, IBM has to support that with the business strategy up front around business transformation. We have the ability to execute on every migration option that’s out there for our clients from ECC to S/4 HANA. And we have the ability to run that infrastructure platform using the most proven technology that has ever run SAP on the IBM Cloud. That aligns us, and lines us up very nicely to continue to be successful together.”

Allan Coulter, CTO for the SAP Practice, has also been with IBM for over 20 years. He has 12

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witnessed the evolution of SAP from a singleERP solution to one that has evolved over time to a software stack that underpins the Digital Transformation ambitions of IBM’s customers.

“However Digital transformation hasn’t simply appeared. It’s been evolving for a long period of time. Even 10 years ago, we had clients that started to infuse automation into the way we were building out the processes….. what we are delivering today is the next iteration, what we call the Intelligent Enterprise.

For me, it’s really as simple as making SAP simpler, smarter and more connected to the rest of the application portfolio using a set of new technologies from IBM and SAP. Truly a partnership For Coulter, the relationship between IBM and SAP is “truly a partnership”. “We know the strength that each party brings to the

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table. We’ve been a partner of SAP for over 40 years, but it is constantly evolving… a great example of this is the ‘Evolution Partnership’ we signed last year with SAP that is how we collaborate on taking the Intelligent Enterprise story to the market.

The partnership is really about how to accelerate that ambition level….“How do we use the new technology solutions from SAP, the likes of Data, AI, Automation, IoT combined with the core ERP system to create new outcomes for our customers.

When you combine SAP and IBM technology, you have an amazing platform foundation for creating new innovations, new ways of working, new customer and employee experiences – at the end of the day, this is what it is really about – it’s about the creation of new experiences powered by technology."

But the biggest change in Coulter’s opinion is the new integration approaches.

“Companies are moving away from this wall-to-wall ERP story – they’re adopting a balance of ERP and best of breed…so the new technologies need to reflect this change… and to shift from old fashioned integration techniques into a more APIbased approach.

As part of Evolution, we’re constantly building out end-to-end process solutions that are designed to easily integrate SAP with these new cloud-native applications… this means that we have the platform foundation to help any client realize their Digital Transformation journey irrespective of their complexity."

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