Webcast : Bramasol Insights to Action: Highlights From SAP Finance Connect 2025 with John Frohlich

Jim: Well, it’s great, but what we’re maybe two or three of the key things that stood out of the show with you as far as new initiatives, new waves of change.

John: Yeah, great question., I would want to say three things, and I’ll probably say four at some point, but I’ll start with three. I think the first one is I right? And I think that’s something we’re all hearing about everywhere. They put it front and center in many different ways and their head of research and development, Muhammad Alam, really spoke about it in in in great detail and showed how SAP is really addressing the forward looking marketplace and how having an integrated suite and an integrated platform is so fundamental to creating what they call this a AI flywheel, where data, apps and air are interconnected not in a layered level, but in a flywheel that turns around and constantly generates insights and actions to it.

So, you know, that was a big change. And he talked a lot about the idea that without that flywheel, you have so many integrations and different data structures to worry about. It’s sub optimizes instead of maximizes or creates. But what Muhammad was saying was called the global Maxima for your your thing. So I was big and they touched on I think a keen or very interesting piece was the idea of where they’re so heavily focused on a gigantic a I and believe it or not, they’ve already created over 300 agents in SAP to date and they add more and more every day.

In fact, we were told they’re going to add probably in the neighborhood of 40 to 50 more before the end of the year. So very big investment in AI from that perspective, as well as thinking about and talking through the paradigm change of AI, is that the way you interact with the core ERP? So huge changes coming in that space. That was thing one.

Number two clearly was the suite. You know, I mentioned that SAP Connect was not simply a finance show, but it was everybody was there. Walk me, was there scenario? Was there the supply chain people, the finance people, the reporting and analytics teams were all there. So it was much broader and it coalesced with SAP’s discussion of SAP as a suite, not as SAP, as a disconnected set of applications like some of the red software might be, but rather a truly integrated set of a suite of applications that works natively together and that now, instead of just buying applications, you’re buying levels of a suite in SAP.

And I think that went well too. You could see how they interacted very sharply in some of the demos that they gave at a high level around the agents and how agents might interact between the customer experience, human resources, finance and operations to drive decision making in an organization. So that was, you know, a key message that we heard.

Jim : Did you have a number three?

John: A number three? Well, number three was, of course, public cloud all day.

Yeah. It’s not to say that that private cloud or, you know, private cloud is, you know, is still there. And it’s absolutely a core part of their business. But the innovation, the drive, the focus for new businesses and new new areas is really about the public or multi-tenant cloud and how it builds this pathway, because that’s how they envision them working, you know, in and amongst each other.

So, you know, those would be the big the big three messages

Jim: Would it be fair to say when I listen to you talk about those three, the word holistic really came to mind because the the whole API is a flywheel and the idea of suites that are the bring together complete solutions and obviously the cloud, it would seem that SAP has moved into putting all the pieces together to achieve the business goals of their customers and to create this inertia with the flywheel so that it all continues to move forward and gain scale and performance and speed. Is that a fair way to characterize it?

John: I think that’s a great way to characterize it. And of course, underlying that, the other message was all about the business data cloud, right? The integration that they use for business data cloud to create, you know, a I’ll call it a holistic or a heterogeneous, homogeneous sum, what they call semantic layer.

Right. I’ll talk a little bit out of my depth here. But, you know, semantics is, you know, the language, right? And it’s all about making sure that the the various systems speak the same language with the same constructs and the same build. So that easily you can interpret data, imagine, you know, the vision of the future. While, you know, SAP would love everybody to use 100% SAP.

The real reality is that’s probably not going to happen in a lot of cases. But to the extent you can use tools like SAP, business data cloud powered by DATABRICKS and the BTP to create a language, a library, if you will, or a repository of data that can be pulled by a a generative AI or an agenda. A tool like Joule is exceedingly powerful, right? And that’s kind of the vision for the future

Jim: right? So it kind of takes down the fences and brings in other data sources, even other processes. And you never have to leave the main SAP environment with all its benefits, but you don’t miss out on any data that may have been legacy or be residing somewhere else.

John: Yeah, well, you know what? It truly and you know, I was fortunate enough to do a podcast on this a while back, but, you know, if you truly think of the far flung future in a way, I think Satya Nadella from, you know, our friends over at Microsoft, Satya is not wrong. I mean, telling the CEO of Microsoft is not wrong is probably not insightful, but I don’t I don’t think he’s he’s he’s he’s wrong and he’s he’s right and he’s wrong in his statement.

I don’t think it’s that ERP won’t matter anymore. ERP is absolutely will matter. It’s the underlying tools and the underlying things that generate the the the information. Right. The data, the information, the transactions all being managed there.

Jim: Right. But in the future that a company still has to accomplish all the things that Europe does.

John: So it still has to and the information has to all be there and they have to be able to find that information and to generate that information.. But in the future, I may not care where I’m getting the information from. I will use a front end SAP believing that it’s going to be, you know, Joule will be there, front end, right? There’ll be a tool. And all I’ll do is like I’m doing with you right now. Talk. I’ll get on my laptop, I’ll open it up and say, good morning, Jim.

Can you show me all of the open? You know, all of my you know, can you provide me with insights on where I am from a cash perspective in my business? And what are some of the outstanding issues that I ought to be considering as I look at cash forecasting and meetings with my banks over the next couple of days and it would then go into it doesn’t care what tool it’s going to go into, it’s going to go into the databases and a variety of tools, extract information and say, here’s your outstanding air, here’s your outstanding cash payables, here’s your current, your your currency conversion, your cash conversion cycles.

Here are some outstanding issues and challenges you might face with supply chain that will delay the arrival of certain items that will can affect your payables. But also as you’re shipping things, you know, since you’re all of a sudden it’s going to bring all of this together. And I haven’t touched SAP or any other solution myself. All I’ve done is talk to a screen.

John, Jim: And that’s why I think SAP in the world see it going right. You know, in the couple of minutes that we have left to kind of wrap up, I’m curious with your premise, so head on from a business standpoint. Well, I’d love to hear about whether it was a successful show, but even more importantly, I’d love to hear your impression from the conversations you had on the floor and with lots of different folks.

Jim,John: Are they ready for these changes? Are they speaking the language or in maybe if you have an anecdote or two without revealing any private customer conversations, maybe some of the things that came up where that made you excited about. Wow, that’s a loaded question. Okay. Are customers ready for it now? I don’t know. I think that’s a hard question.

John: I think do customers want to be ready for it and are they asking a lot of questions about a I and what it means for the future? Yes. So am I excited to hear them talking about the way they want? You know, we had a couple of people came up and said, you know, I really want to hear about, you know, agents for Treasury or agents for BRIM, agents for Rev REc.

Right. So I think they’re they’re thinking about it and it’s on their schedule or on their timeline. But whether or not we’re all ready for it is a different question. I think it’s a a mental readiness, a paradigm shift that a lot of us are going to have to make. And then I think it’s also a understanding that you still have to do all of the basics, all the all the requirements to set up the underlying systems in order to make that AI work, AI it’s not you know, it’s no, no more a magic wand than anything else has been over the past 30 years.

Jim,John: Right. So it it doesn’t yet implemented several through it. It does not yet implement itself. I think if if I were to stretch a little bit and say I think where, where it’s going, Jim and what I’m encouraged by people is it’s encouraging us to think carefully about how we ask questions and to build prompts and questions. And I think the skill of the future will be our ability to ask these tools and ask for information in a way that produces the kinds of results and allows us to work recursively or inter interactively with those tools.

Jim,John: That’s very well said. Thank you for your time. Is there anything else you want to add? Yeah. No, I don’t. You know, just that I’m super excited. I thought it was a fantastic show for Bahamas, all for us. We met a lot of customers. We met a lot of senior executives. I’m super excited by the direction SAP is taking.

John: I think they’ve got the right, the right direction, the right thinking. And, you know, I’m looking forward to next year.

Jim:Sounds great. Thank you again, John. It’s great speaking to you.

Jim: Thanks, Jim.