SAP Design Services Team
Overview
Personally hired by SAP Co-founder and Chairman Hasso Plattner to lead a company-wide transformation focused on embedding customer-centricity into the DNA of SAP’s global operations. Partnering directly with Plattner and then-CEO Henning Kagermann, I launched and scaled a design thinking-driven innovation initiative that reshaped SAP’s products, processes, and culture to drive measurable business impact.
Built a 35-person global transformation team from scratch in 14 months, blending internal SAP leaders with external experts. Had over 100 dotted reports by the end of the second year enabling our program to reach across the organization.
Working directly with Hasso and Henning we targeted specific initiatives and individuals to highlight the impact and value of a customer-centric . We delivered 4 projects in the first 6 months, over the next 4 years we delivered 40 projects, including specific projects for Siemens, Coke, Steelcase, etc.
We redesigned the SAP ByDesign (Hana) suite from the backend forward, driving 17% increase in customer satisfaction. We redesigned SAP’s HCM suite focusing on evolving business practices, distributed teams and evolving work environments. Delivering 4% in bookings. One project with Business Objects was to redesign their contracting process resulting a cost saving of $7.3M the first year. Also worked with the Sales organization on the go-to-market for A1S the including access to sandboxes, communities, etc. resulting a top of the funnel increase of 11%
By the end of year four, we had shifted SAP’s public image from enterprise software incumbent to innovation leader through coordinated storytelling in Fast Company, Wall Street Journal, BusinessWeek, Columbia School of Business Journal, and Financial Times, etc. And we had founded the original SAP Incubator in Palo Alto, which evolved into the global SAP AppHaus innovation network.
In parallel we ramped up an internal training program. Working with leaders from companies such as P&G, Kaiser Permanente, Intuit, etc. we developed a “train the trainer” program eventually creating a network of 3000 Design Thinking coaches. We also changed SAP’s recruiting processes, skills development and performance assessment processes, eventually the DST redesigned the development organization itself as well as their physical work environments.
Leveraging my previous time at Stanford, I work with Hasso and the University to establish of the Stanford d.school, from initial funding to formalization, as well as its sister program, and then later we established the School of Design Thinking at the Hasso Plattner Institute in Potsdam Germany.
Operational and Organizational Impact:
Embedded design thinking into core functions—product development, partnerships, hiring, sales, and support—affecting SAP’s 60,000+ person organization.
Redefined SAP’s development processes, KPIs, hiring practices, performance metrics, and workplace design.
Partnered with key SAP customers including Siemens, Coca-Cola, and Steelcase to co-innovate customer-centric solutions
Brand and Market Perception:
Shifted SAP’s public image from enterprise software incumbent to innovation leader through coordinated storytelling in Fast Company, Wall Street Journal, BusinessWeek, and Financial Times.
Innovation Infrastructure:
Founded the original SAP Incubator in Palo Alto, which evolved into the global SAP AppHaus innovation network.
Capability Building at Scale:
Developed a global train-the-trainer program that certified over 3,000 internal Design Thinking coaches.
Partnered with executives from P&G, Kaiser Permanente, and Intuit to co-develop internal leadership programs.
Influenced curriculum at Stanford, IIT, and HPI to better support enterprise innovation and design-led development.
Academic Institution Building:
Played a key role in the founding of the Stanford d.school and later the School of Design Thinking at Hasso Plattner Institute, expanding SAP’s influence on the future of innovation education.
Deliverables
SAP ByDesign (HANA): End-to-end redesign of the platform contributed to a 17% increase in customer satisfaction.
SAP HCM Suite: Modernized for distributed workforces and evolving business practices, resulting in a 4% increase in bookings.
Business Objects: Streamlined contracting process, yielding $7.3M in annual cost savings.
A1S Go-to-Market: Co-created a sandbox-driven, community-oriented GTM motion, boosting top-of-funnel growth by 11%.
Redesigned SAP’s development processes: Created three tiered customer-centric, design-led processes
Defined global success metrics: KPIs, hiring practices, performance metrics, and workplace design.
AppHaus: Built the original incubator in Palo Alto. Delivered a business plan and blueprint for the AppHaus program
d.school: Liaised with David Kelly and Stanford to create the d.school. Followed up with the establishment of the d.school in Potsdam Germany.
Rewriting the company DNA
It all began with an magazine article, a keynote, a phone call…
Hasso Plattner, Chairman and Co-Founder of SAP, and David Kelley, IDEO’s Chairman and Founder, were connected following Hasso’s 2004 SAPPHIRE keynote, where he referenced a Business Week cover story on the power of design featuring IDEO. Hasso had long wanted SAP to reconnect directly with their end users, the employees, analysts and consultants who were in the software day-to-day. After meeting with David and the team at IDEO, Hasso requested that SAP create their own in-house IDEO. In 2004 I was recruited by the Office of CEO to establish the Design Services Team. In the first year I grew the team from 3 people to 40 designers, business analysts, engineers, psychologists.
Our goal was simple: instill in the SAP culture two basic principles: empathy, to allow everyone to understand the real people using SAP’s solutions, their emotions, goals, and needs that must addressed; and rapid prototyping to develop quick and cheap solutions that could be updated quickly, at limited costs, in response to users’ feedback and suggestions.
Over a four year period I worked directly with Hasso and Henning Kagermann, CEO of SAP, driving an organizational transformation to embed Design Thinking throughout all aspects of SAP’s development, sales and consulting services. I worked with the Executive Board to redesign the development organization, SAP’s development processes, their performance metrics, and even their physical work environments. Over time my role expanded and I gained 120 dotted line reports across the company to assist in my team’s mission.
To accomplish this transformation we defined a multi-pronged approach to demonstrate, teach, and scale design across the organization.
We delivered over 40 projects to demonstrate the impact of Design Thinking and role that empathy and rapid prototyping play in delivering increased value while decreasing time to market.
We established a global training program, leveraging similar Design Thinking efforts at P&G, Kaiser Permanente, Nestle, Kraft, Steelcase and others. Over four years we trained thousands of SAP team members and established a global network of certified facilitators and coaches with the capacity to run over 250 workshops per year.
Through this work we embedded Design Thinking into the day-to-day practices for the development teams, their development planning and delivery processes, performance metrics and acceptance criteria. And we engaged with number of SAP’s top customers to develop solutions for their businesses, train their leadership on Design Thinking, and lead consulting engagements on behalf of SAP’s professional services group.
Today SAP continues to be a leader in the practice of Design Thinking, with their AppHaus network, DT certification programs, and design-led development frameworks.
At SAP we evolved and expanded the original five step Design Thinking model IDEO developed, and later adopted by Stanford’s d.school.
This model was created to share the basic principles of user-centered design, empathy and rapid prototyping along with the realities of product development.
The resulting model includes the additional steps necessary to ensure both the long-term business success of the solutions, as well as the realities of software development.
Torrent
SAP’s CEO Henning Kagermann asked my team to collaborate with the Corporate Strategy Group to develop the next generation Strategy Enterprise Management System for the SAP Business Suite. This solution, while a highly visible touchpoint for SAP c-level customers, had not been updates for several years.
During the initial research with customers and industry leaders, it was clear that business practices had evolved beyond the capabilities of the SAP’s SEMS. We also observed that many of these organizations had embraced the principles of Web 2.0 (RSS, wiki’s, mobile, chat, desktop widget, collaboration tools, etc.) within their own products and services.
We developed a modular suite that allowed organizations to choose both their approach for defining their strategy, as well as for measuring its impact. This included leveraging our partnership with Microsoft to embed and track performance metrics across their product line. Additionally, looking at the broader implications for Web 2.0 and the ERP Suite, we used this project to create a tangible strategy for why and how SAP should evolve its entire business suite to follow a similar modular, Web 2.0 architecture. Our prototype not only laid out how we could evolve the SEMS solution, it also provided a roadmap for the evolution of the entire SAP Suite from Supply Chain, through HCM, CRM, and Finance, etc. The update to the Executive Board was slated for 30 mins, however as members of the board started to dig into the larger picture, their discussion ran over three hours and changed the strategic priorities for the company.
Delivering the product strategy in the form a prototype allowed the Torrent team to align the organization universally around the concepts of Web 2.0 and the disruption it would have on SAP’s ability to remain competitive against point solutions being sold by smaller companies. In 2009, the Journal of Business Strategy published an article about this project (Since Torrent was in wide us within the company, for the publication we renamed project MorningStorm).
Gateway
Following the Torrent presentation, Executive Board Member and Global Head of HR, Claus Heinrich, asked my team to showcase the Web 2.0 principles to overhaul SAP’s Performance and Compensation solutions. This was cosponsored by Shai Agassi, EBM and Global Head of Development given SAP’s HCM suite was facing serious competition from emerging players (ie. PeopleSoft, Workday, etc.) his goal was to create a more competitive solution for the market.
Working with our Human Resources Department, and with a cross section of customers, industry thought leaders and consultants, we kicked off the project. At the same time we also tapped SAP’s HR Leadership to identify bureaucratic bottlenecks, corporate objectives and regulatory issues in the EU, Asian and North America.
We developed a wiki like solution allowing employees to draft and share their performance objectives with managers and colleagues, the system also integrated data from the ERP suite (ie. bug tracking, CRM stats, Supply Chain analytics, even the Strategy Enterprise Management System (ie. Torrent), etc.) to allow employees to leverage both qualitative and quantitative data to show their contribution as well as its impact. With the wiki backbone in place employee and their manager could edit, update and comment on the plan over time—with all the edits time stamped and tracked. Likewise portions of their plan could be shared with colleagues for feedback, rating input, and dependency tracking. Integrations with Microsoft allowed for direct input from Outlook, Project, OneDrive, etc.
Analytic dashboards and notifications enabled employees to track their performance and any changes that could impact their meeting objectives. The dashboard also gave managers and executives a clear overview of the full organization’s progress.
