At SAP Sapphire 2025, Chief Operating Officer Sebastian Steinhaeuser joined Cloud Wars founder Bob Evans to share how SAP is driving growth through AI, deep application integration, and internal transformation. In this conversation, Steinhaeuser explains how SAP’s strategy unifies operations and innovation, creating a powerful flywheel effect that helps customers move faster, simplify complexity, and succeed in an AI-driven world.
Highlights
SAP’s Growth and Strategy at Sapphire (00:00)
Steinhaeuser discusses SAP’s role in helping customers by integrating a broad set of applications, rich data, and differentiated AI to create a “flywheel” effect. The integration of operations and strategy has been essential for accelerating strategy execution and aligning towards a common direction. Evans and Steinhaeuser discuss the concept of the flywheel, comparing it to Jim Collins’ book “Good to Great.“
Challenges of IT Budget and Integration (02:32)
A significant portion of IT budgets is spent on integrating best-of-breed applications, inefficient in the AI era. Steinhaeuser mentions a statistic from the keynote, noting that a typical $10 billion company now has about 600 applications, up from 10 in 2000, making integration challenging. SAP’s approach involves integrating all applications with a strong data layer, Business Data Cloud, and bespoke AI to alleviate integration pains for customers.
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SAP’s Role as a Customer and Transformation Tools (05:01)
Steinhaeuser explains that SAP is both the first and worst customer for its own technology, working closely with development teams to optimize products. He provides an example of SAP’s use of Business Data Cloud, which has significantly improved analytics and AI projects within SAP. Culture drives productivity and transformation, augmented by tools like Nina X, Signavio, and WalkMe for enterprise architecture.
Future Priorities and Final Thoughts (07:31)
Steinhaeuser outlines his team’s priorities for the next 12 months: accelerating strategy execution and simplifying SAP to be its best customer. He reiterates SAP’s commitment to working closely with engineering teams to continuously improve and evolve products.
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