If, when you think about SAP SE’s main customers, you generally think of major businesses from the FTSE 100 with brands that are household names and extremely complex operations, then it may be time to reconsider how you look at Europe’s biggest tech company. While it is certainly true that most of the big businesses you can name do have SAP solutions within their IT, and SAP touches on the vast majority of transactions that take place every day around the world, the vision the German founded tech giant has for the future is not corporation focused.
SAP has been moving strongly into the SME sphere for some time now, and their latest appointment of a new president will be focusing on the SME centric SAP Business One, SAP Anywhere and SAP Business By Design teams within the larger SAP SE organisation.
Barry Padgett Appointed as New SAP President
Barry Padgett is the name of the man appointed to lead this newly consolidated area of SAP’s business and help drive the company toward its goals within the SME market. Based in Seattle, Barry Padgett comes from SAP’s Concur business, where he has been working since 1997. Prior to his appointment as a new SAP president, he was Concur’s Chief Product Officer. The appointment becomes effective on July 1st 2016 and is part of a wider restructuring at SAP’s senior levels geared towards the business’ current ambitions.
SAP and SMEs
SAP already has a fairly strong share of the SME market using its products, despite its image as a solutions provider for enterprise level companies (something the brand appears keen to shed). Their SME focused products are geared towards offering solutions to many of the same problems and complexities SAP has always assisted with, but in a way that suits companies who don’t have a large IT department (or even an IT department at all). SAP is a thriving and specialised area of IT for consultancy as well as for companies that produce SAP related products like www.weaveability.com, SAP ecommerce provider, and so the SME world is well supported when they do turn to SAP.
Moving Towards the Future
It is always interesting when a company of the stature of SAP creates a new senior position, or brings together areas of their business under one leader to form a new structural group as they have done here with SAP Business One, SAP Anywhere and SAP Business By Design. These kinds of changes give a very strong indication of where a business views its most important priorities to be in the near future, and also hints at areas where they may have identified weaknesses.
It will be very interesting to people in the IT world to see how SAP continues to demonstrate its commitment to small and medium sized companies in the coming months and years as Barry Padgett begins unifying his teams and driving them forward in his new capacity as President.