SAP Commits to Services

When former Chief Executive of NGA HR, Mike Ettling, took the reins of SAP’s Human Resources (HR) line of business earlier this year, one expected that his background in global human resources outsourcing and service delivery operations would heavily influence his leadership strategy. When he took the stage last month at SuccessConnect, the annual user conference of SAP’s acquired talent management cloud company SuccessFactors, he overtly declared that SAP was going to put the service in software as a service. 

The statement met with audience applause in the 2,000+ person packed room. With an increasing number of enterprises struggling with “islands of cloud” that are often challenges to integrate with existing corporate systems and legacy software, the onus is firmly moving towards the leading software providers, such as SAP, Oracle and Workday, to drive an effective services strategy – through their own support functions, but also via their third party alliances.  HfS sees the appointment of Ettling and the increased momentum on its services strategy as a major positive for current and future SAP HR clients.