Business users lead next wave of digital transformation: Julia White, CMO, SAP

While the first wave of digital transformation was driven by technology experts, SAP’s chief marketing and solutions officer and executive board member Julia White believes the second wave will be led by business experts.

Julia White, chief marketing and solutions officer and executive board member, SAP

White spoke at SAP’s TechEd conference in Las Vegas broadcast to media in San Francisco yesterday about the launch of SAP Build, a new capability of SAP’s Business Technology Platform that provides a low code solution for business users to build apps, automate processes and enhance employee experience.

According to White, “This next wave of transformation is empowered by the people who create business value, the people who are the backbone of how business is done, the people who know the problems they need to solve and innovations they need to fundamentally change the business that they're running.

“These are the business experts, the business users. They are the finance analyst, the supply chain operator, the manufacturer, line manager, procurement specialists, the marketers, the people who sit and live and run those businesses.”

SAP is looking to provide business users with enterprise software development and process automation tools without the development or coding skills required of an IT professional.

As businesses struggle with backlogs of IT projects, IDC predicts that business users will step in to fill this gap.

“Given that the demand for contemporary digital solutions is greater than the ability of professional developers to supply them, IDC envisions that business professionals will become increasingly involved in initiatives to create digital solutions to solve pressing business problems,” said Arnal Dayaratna, research vice president, software development at IDC.

“Worldwide, IDC expects more than 100 million business professionals will become involved in the production of digital solutions over the next ten years.”

Juergen Mueller, chief technology officer and executive board member at SAP told audiences at TechEd that impactful business transformation is led by business users.

“It is about collaboration and invitation between business users and IT working together,” he said.

“We are unleashing business users and we are unleashing IT to get more done.”

According to SAP executive board member, customer success, Scott Russell, “We know that we can create scale and support for businesses using this platform, but we also recognise the future is about bridging the divide between the business user and the IT developer.”

Velvet-Belle Templeman travelled to San Francisco for SAP's Business Innovation Days, as a guest of SAP.