SAP puts engineers inside customers. What they build becomes software for the industry.
SAP described the model on 13 October in a post by Dominik Metzger, its president and global head of Industry AI. "Through our forward-deployed engineering model, we co-develop tailored capabilities alongside customers," he wrote.
"We solve high-stakes challenges that have no off-the-shelf answers, then turn those proven solutions into scalable software capabilities for entire industries."
Forward-deployed engineers are a vendor's engineers who work inside the customer's own organisation. SAP named Takeda and Doehler among its Industry AI customers. Doehler's joint head of IT said its logistics team "recovered roughly a third of the time once lost to troubleshooting."
The same day, CIO.com ran a column by Praveen Jonnala, head of IT at Vistance Networks, arguing that such engineers serve the vendor first. "The learning runs one way," he wrote.
SAP's post does not say who owns what is built, whether the first customer pays less, or where reusable software ends and a customer's own data, settings and know-how begin.
If SAP's engineers built something inside your business, what would you want in the contract before it reached your competitors?
Sources
Our file on SAP
- 20 Oct
SAP says all BMW finance reporting uses one template. Approximately 800 processes were standardised.
- 17 Oct
SAP stock rose 57% to €201 since July. Options price a 7.5% swing.
- 16 Oct
Some Ericsson quotes took over two weeks. On SAP's software, many now take minutes.
- 16 Oct
SAP must stop offering one Signavio function in Germany, a court ruled. Celonis won.
- 15 Oct
US Customs priced an SAP planning contract at up to $100 million. Migration follows.
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