SAP CEO Bill McDermott: 'It's A HANA World'

SAP CEO Bill McDermott took center stage today at Sapphire Now 2015 to expand on the enterprise resource planning (ERP)’s company vision of making the world a better place and improving the lives of people by introducing data-driven and seamless solutions into the marketplace. 

“Data-driven businesses must be seamless,” McDermott told conference attendees. “When you think seamlessly, you can be a champion.”

With more than 20,000 customers in attendance, Sapphire Now, being held this week in Orlando, Florida at the Orange County Convention Center (OCCC), promoted the concept of digitally transforming businesses by keeping things simple for its customers, something McDermott harped on during his keynote address last year at SAP Sapphire Now. Yesterday at SAP’s Global Partner Summit, SAP Global Partner Operations President Rodolpho Cardenuto told channel partners in the audience that SAP believes “complexity is the enemy.”

According to SAP, the answer to removing complications out of the equation is SAP HANA, the company’s in-memory platform designed to process high volumes of data in real-time. “It’s a HANA world,” SAP’s top executive told reporters during a press conference.

During his keynote address, McDermott told those in the audience that data is the foundation to every business — and customers need a digitized data platform that takes core business operations into consideration. “Data empowers people,” he said. For him, it’s all about digitizing the customer experience while also “capitalizing in a world without boundaries.”

McDermott proposed a vision of taking human capital management into the cloud to manage not only full-time employees but temporary workers, too. He talked about how SAP’s partnership with Disney enables theme park managers to redirect resources where needed if an employees call out.

“We’re in a new world where the customer has to be in charge of everything,” McDermott said. Businesses need to be able to engage with their customers in the moment. For example, he said, businesses want to find out immediately when a customer sends out a tweet, so that they can respond with ease. “The [HANA] platform gives you permission to re-imagine your business,” he said.

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