Episode 19: From Stuck to Smart: Navigating SAP Legacy and Leading Change - Christine Grimm

Guest: 

• Christine Grimm - Ex-DSAG Board Member, Founder dxfrontier

Host: 

• Alexander Greb - Consulting Director - cbs corporate business solutions

In this conversation, Alexander Greb and Christine Grimm discuss the critical need for transformation in business, particularly in the context of legacy systems and technology adoption. They explore the cultural mindset that often hinders progress, the role of technology in enhancing user experience, and the urgency to adapt to AI and new technologies. The importance of consulting partners in guiding companies through transformation is emphasized, along with the need for a focus on customer experience. Christine also shares insights about her new venture aimed at bridging gaps in the SAP ecosystem.

takeaways

• Transformation is essential for adapting to changing business environments.
• Legacy systems often hinder progress and innovation.
• Cultural mindset is a significant barrier to technology adoption.
• Technology should serve to enhance user experience, not complicate it.
• Consulting partners play a crucial role in guiding companies through transformation.
• The urgency to adapt to AI and new technologies is greater than ever.
• Customer experience should be prioritized in technology implementations.
• Leadership is critical in driving successful transformation initiatives.
• User groups can bridge the gap between SAP and its customers.
• Christine's new venture aims to simplify the SAP ecosystem.

Follow Christine: https://www.linkedin.com/in/christine-grimm-422b3311a/

Follow dxfrontier: https://www.linkedin.com/company/dxfrontier/

Follow Alexander: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexandergreb/
Follow Johannes: https://www.linkedin.com/in/johanneslangguth/

Thanks to Steven Spears for lending his voice for our podcast intro.
Theme music by Luis Álvarez a.k.a. Fourth Dogma

Chapters

• 0:00 The Need for Change in Business Technology
• 2:53 Understanding the Human Element in Transformation
• 5:22 The Role of Technology vs. People in Organizations
• 8:05 The Challenge of Legacy Systems
• 10:45 The Importance of User-Centric Approaches
• 13:51 Industry-Specific Adoption Rates and Pressures
• 16:21 The Impact of COVID-19 on Transformation
• 19:51 AI: The New Frontier in Business Technology
• 22:34 The Misconception of Transformation
• 25:21 Leadership and Legacy Systems
• 28:11 The Role of Consulting Partners in Transformation
• 30:39 The Future of Business Technology and Adoption
• 41:51 The Role of Change Agents in Business Transformation
• 44:55 Simplifying SAP: The Need for Tangibility and Clarity
• 47:29 Toxic Freedom: The Dangers of Over-Options in Business
• 49:57 The Illusion of Individualism in Business Processes
• 53:56 Balancing Standardization and Individual Needs
• 55:35 The Evolving Role of Implementation Partners
• 59:40 Customer Experience in SAP Projects
• 1:00:32 The Influence of Interest Groups in SAP Ecosystem
• 1:07:29 Christine's New Venture: Bridging Gaps in SAP Ecosystem

Transcript

Alexander Greb (00:00.322)
That was actually a LinkedIn post I did a week ago.

Christine Grimm (00:00.349)
Hahaha!

I saw it, yeah, I saw it. was great. Unfortunately, would say this is quite often still the truth or the reality. And I mean, let's be honest, imagine, you know, outside business world, things are changing and that's a natural way. And even if we don't like it, we have to adapt it. But, you know, in business, sometimes we are still stuck in the, I don't know, 20th Sabkui screens.

I think that is a traumatic situation and we need to ask ourselves why that happens and who has to take the responsibility for that. And it's always easy to blame SAP or to blame the partners or to blame the others. But most of the time, it's the problem within the organization. have, I mean, you always talk about that, the big Lexi systems. We have our standard, we have our own standard.

Alexander Greb (01:01.474)
Yeah, exactly.

Christine Grimm (01:01.938)
have our legacy systems. Technical complexity is overwhelming. And of course, mean, yes, it is. That's absolutely true. And SAP landscapes and implementation projects, they are a massive challenge. But we need to ask ourselves why. And the challenge is most of the time, not the technology. Most of the time, it's the question, why do we need to change? that is an honest answer. Why do we need to change?

Alexander Greb (01:06.211)
Mm-hmm.

Christine Grimm (01:30.804)
Can't we just stay on what we did for the last 30 years? I don't know. And the cost of the transformation versus the cost of doing nothing is something we really need to answer because we need to focus on, you know, how can we after the next coma 20 years later?

Alexander Greb (01:34.712)
Mm-hmm.

Alexander Greb (01:56.654)
Mm-hmm.

Christine Grimm (01:57.478)
wake up and have a, you know, maybe a more advanced situation and more usage of, you know, that technology change. And we haven't even talked about AI coming up the road. mean...

Alexander Greb (02:09.816)
Jesus, so early in this podcast and we're talking already about AI. Let me say something different first because thank you that you be here, Christine. Welcome, we're recording now. I was a little bit late in our already ongoing, very interesting discussion to press that record button. We have Christine Grimm here at Transformation Every Day. Thank you very much. I'm really, really, really stoked that I have you because you have been on my wish list for my old podcast back then already, a years ago.

And I'm sure it's also a lot of people in my audience. We are very happy to have you here because you have been in the last decade one of the most outspoken voices in the SAP universe concerning technology, transformation, concerning actually moving forward. And that's why you have a place in the heart of everybody who is really interested in getting things forward. Thank you that you're here. And we talk about the question.

which I think is very important because to understand now like 10 years after the release of S4HANA, and we still in many cases talk too much about technology instead of usage, we asked the question, would somebody who would have been in a coma for 10 years and who was working for an SAP company, SAP using company, would this person or would there be a high probability that this person can now go back after 10 years into his job and

without really any change continue working because nothing really has changed. And I think we came to a very important point. We unfortunately talked again about technology and not about user. Do you think that this person who slept for 10 years would come to an, let's call it maybe an SAP or DSHE events and listen to the conversations? Would it be surprised about, hey,

They're still talking about the same thing. So what he said like, that's completely new topic. He said, I have to catch up.

Christine Grimm (04:16.07)
Well, would say, as you say in German, one says so, others say so, both, fortunately. But unfortunately, there would probably that person would still think, OK, not so much has changed during the last 10 years. that's, I mean, that's a tremendous, horrible situation. Just imagine, I mean, just imagine in your outside business, in your private life, in society life 10 years before.

Alexander Greb (04:21.56)
Mm-hmm.

Alexander Greb (04:44.238)
Mm-hmm.

Christine Grimm (04:44.336)
And we would just ignore all the change and all the rapid changes and the technology changes and everything around us. So unfortunately in our daily business life, there are things and things meaning like tools, technology, cultures, habits, processes, which probably still the same for years and decades. that's, I mean, we need to wake up here because that is

An absolute alarming situation, I would think.

Alexander Greb (05:18.786)
That's something what I'm, for example, asking myself quite often. When we look into our private lives, we treat new technology completely different than when we go into our offices. I think nobody would, in a way, still think about using flip phones or something like that. If that person's not weird, or if you would do it, you would probably consider to be weird. The other guy with the weird old mobile phone. The vintage person.

Christine Grimm (05:44.434)
No, I'm

Alexander Greb (05:48.61)
But with our enterprise technology, we are much more conservative there. What do you think are the reasons for this?

Christine Grimm (05:56.596)
I think that sometimes in your private life, you choose it. You choose it. You are the person to decide you want to change. And in businesses, in corporates, you always pretend to be forced to be changed. that's something which our management systems, our learning systems in companies, they grew by knowledge. I'm more important than you because I know something.

Alexander Greb (06:11.811)
Mm-hmm.

Christine Grimm (06:26.44)
that you don't know. you know, also, hierarchies tended to evolve from that situation. In the past, there have been people knowing more than others and they became leaders, managers, and so on. If you now push people out of that comfort zone, you make them, you know, you make them, so to say, knowledge naked, you make them unpack their knowledge backpack, and you make them jump in a situation where they maybe think they're not important anymore. And that whole...

cultural mindset is much more important than the whole technology situation and the hardest barrier isn't the technology. that is the problem. And if you don't help people to overcome that path, know, help them being curious, help them being brave, being bold as a team and you have that, you know, you have that guardrails where you think it's safe, it's important and we need to do that in order to make the company and overall all.

all of us successful tomorrow. So then people always do what people do because that's a trade humans have. They say, no, I don't know it. It's something new. It's scary. I don't want to do it. so you can offer them the best and leading edge technologies if you have the environment in the company to do so and if you are a bold person and you are doing that.

But if you don't take the people along and you help them to overcome fears and that situation of maybe being a little bit naked, nobody wants to be naked in front of others, then that adaption will not happen. And in our personal life, we just can't do it. I mean, if we mess it up, nobody sees it. It's probably just us and we have to be honest to ourselves.

So that's like always, it's not technology. It's the people in that whole organization.

Alexander Greb (08:28.013)
And it.

This is an excellent point because, of course, you take away from people the whole justification why they did their job, why they were good at their job, because they were very good in using this kind of technology. Which means, in consequence, that the whole argumentation that a huge part of the SAP ecosystem does towards users and towards customers with

talking more and more and more about technology and about the what in the why what how. It's a complete wrong way to do. We should turn back, we should talk less about the what and we should go much more into the why and the how. About what you can actually do, how you can do your work better, how you can solve your problems.

Christine Grimm (09:13.534)
Yes.

Christine Grimm (09:21.342)
Yes.

Alexander Greb (09:23.06)
Did we forget how to do this? By being too drunk with our own technological excellence in the whole ecosystem in the last 10 years?

Christine Grimm (09:33.249)
I would say sometimes, yes. mean, you know, talking about SAP first, and SAP has made a progress to simplify the journey, but it's still, it's far from simplification, it's far from, you know, looking at that whole ecosystem or this massive project. It's far from, you know, lightweight.

Alexander Greb (09:44.652)
Mm-hmm.

Christine Grimm (09:59.636)
plug and play and implementing something just by natural way of interacting with the tools or applications. So it is a very, very complicated situation. And of course, I would say, in the design thinking, you have that one big slogan, don't fall in love with your solutions. Don't fall in love with your ideas. And sometimes I think,

Alexander Greb (10:25.366)
Yeah.

Christine Grimm (10:29.01)
you have SAP has sorry for all the SAP people who might listen to that podcast. They should have to eat their own food because I mean, it is, you know, that that as long as we don't if we can't deliver that lightweight, have joyful, playful interaction, what's maybe assumed on, you know, on the the PowerPoints on the presentations.

it's very, very difficult to digest. of course, mean, partners, are part of that system, yeah, and they are part of that problem. They have to, for themselves, they have to decide, they want to be part of the solution, a part of the problem. And sometimes really they repeat the same playbooks. I mean, if you're still running, I don't know, 200 pages, blueprint workshops in this 2025, you are not helping customers to transform, you're slowing them down. you know, partners, need to be more, they need to...

be more mediators, need to be innovators, not just implementers. And it has shifted from just configuring a system to unlocking new ways of working. And that upskilling and that mindset change, that has to happen alongside the partners and SAP as well.

Alexander Greb (11:43.566)
This is so true. If I may jump on that, when you, for example, I was working in pre-sales and sales for long time and we had back then, yeah, we had this kind of dry demos, for example, that we use to show our solutions to the customer. And I always had the feeling that that was the worst approach, because you came into the comfort zone of users where they feel at home and you showed them something completely different. And what they saw...

Christine Grimm (11:46.951)
Of course.

Alexander Greb (12:13.838)
was, oh, the things that I'm used to like here, a radio button or here, this is completely missing. And he's talking about something completely else. He answers maybe some questions about the technology, but when he leaves, I'm as a user, even more skeptical than before, because anything that or everything that I know or what was told me in the past was the way to go is now not there anymore.

But it's not told me in my own personal context how this, what I have seen now, is actually better. And in a certain way, these kinds of demos never have died. We have now these kinds of immersive experience rooms. SAP has massively invested in that. And so the things got more colorful and so on. But in a certain way, what I criticize with them, still, it's a lot like when we are on vacation and we try to talk to people.

Christine Grimm (12:48.82)
Mm.

Alexander Greb (13:09.006)
who do not speak our language, then we try to make it better by talking louder and slower. And this is, my opinion, a little bit how this whole conversation has evolved. It's still the same thing, but it's louder and slower. And now we expect that the user should really get the message.

Christine Grimm (13:14.673)
Exactly.

Christine Grimm (13:25.736)
Yeah. Yeah. And you know, that whole listening and understanding and adapting, you know,

Christine Grimm (13:38.748)
problem, the problem area and to transform that into a solution area together with the customers. think that's so important and nothing kills trust faster than over promising to be honest. mean, customers deserve transparency, they deserve clear risks, realistic timelines and honesty about that hard mudded way we have to go through together. Well, we all as the ecosystem and that honesty that builds confidence and

not fear. if you, know, that the trust of, of, of confidence, because you keep, you know, blueprint standardized project approaches and try to, you know, to cover it over all your, your, different customers from different industries and different projects that makes, you know, that makes the other part of the table, you know, and we should all be at the same part, to be honest, that makes them, you know, that creates an

that gut feeling that something is not right. We need a story of value. We all can share and we need to understand that. That's a little bit part of that whole problem with SAP trying to tell that one story of value for all the customers. That's partly right. mean, not talking about the necessity of a transformation in general.

Alexander Greb (14:38.348)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Christine Grimm (15:06.748)
of cloud, that's fine, yeah, okay, that's that one story of value. you know, the challenges are much deeper and they're much, they have much more varieties of, you know, history and legacy and change and, you know, the necessity to be, to be much more open and to listen.

Alexander Greb (15:08.003)
Mm-hmm.

Alexander Greb (15:28.59)
fully agree and the story can be the same for commodity processes. If you are in different industries, finance in many cases is not so much different from other industries. It's a commodity process. know finance people do not like to hear this, but it has, let's say, elements of a commodity into it. But for others, for other parts, it's different. And there, of course, you have

Christine Grimm (15:45.916)
Hahaha!

Alexander Greb (15:56.77)
be very, very industry specific. Do you see from your experience in the different industries and regions differences in this kind of adoption rates of new technology where I say like, okay, this industry is maybe a little bit faster. This industry is maybe a little bit slower because of those and these reasons.

Christine Grimm (16:20.02)
I wouldn't say in general. mean, of course, there is this outside market pressure. mean, automotive industry is very much in the focus and they need to be very quick in order to survive. I would say manufacturing is coming along mid-market in general, mid-market as being mid-market, not as an industry. I think they're still struggling, but also that's, I think, you

I think the most inconvenient thing for companies is if you have to react because of outside pressures, or market pressures, the best thing is to react before you need to react, or to act before you need to react. And I think that the mid-market is in general a little bit less aware. Or maybe they are getting more and more aware every day, but I think they're still struggling too much.

Alexander Greb (17:02.179)
Mm-hmm.

Christine Grimm (17:18.022)
And of course, there is a tremendous cost pressure, a resource pressure, maybe an age, age pressure, a generation change. that is very, very difficult. But in general, would say it absolutely depends on the mindset of the organization.

Alexander Greb (17:30.606)
Hmm.

Christine Grimm (17:45.17)
and the culture of the organization in order to be able to move faster or slower or still wait and see what happens.

Alexander Greb (17:53.15)
And unfortunately, outside pressure is in so many cases the yeah, most, most clear reason to do something. Yeah. I, by the way, I, a few weeks ago, I had a conversation with a CEO of a company who said like, it was quite interesting how, how he expressed that. said, listen in, in the whole years before Corona, basically wasted our time.

Christine Grimm (18:04.157)
Yes.

Alexander Greb (18:22.478)
by doing nothing because it was not difficult to grow. You just had to get stuff out of your warehouses. That was your main objective to do something. Now we realized that damn, our systems do not really fit to those new kind of business models anymore and so on. And automotive is, like you said, probably in that area, the industry.

under the most pressure in the moment, because they were in the winning streak for decades. now they, especially the German industry, they have to evolve. Do you think the decision logic now has changed? So the reasons to do technology advancement in contrast to maybe the decisions they did five to 10 years ago?

Christine Grimm (19:14.42)
I mean, of course, that pressure can't be ignored anymore. mean, companies like to say, you know, they're being careful by delaying change. I mean, we're good in what we did. Why shouldn't we be even better tomorrow when we do the same thing? And, know, that reality, I would say, hits a lot of companies and industries very, very hard. And most of the time, if you say that it's not caution, it's just avoidance. And transformation is very, very uncomfortable.

Alexander Greb (19:39.182)
Hmm.

Christine Grimm (19:42.42)
and postponing is just another way of, to be honest, we stay in our comfort zone and there is no perfect moment for transformation, never ever any company said, okay, now currently we have absolutely nothing to do, so let's do a massive corporate transformation. I mean, of course not, And if you wait for that moment, you are behind and if you wait to start, are behind. I know I need to, we are already quite a few moments into that discussion, I need to bring up AI, AI and...

the technology doesn't wait, your competitors don't wait. I would say the urgency of starting is maybe much, higher than 10 years ago. And of course, during Corona, a lot of companies took the chance to start back then. And I think those will be...

way ahead from those who still said, okay, it's Corona, we need to cut down everything, we need to cut down the costs, need to, you know, and so it's now almost five years after Corona's. you know, that field is getting clearer and clearer at the top.

Alexander Greb (20:53.446)
And like you use these two, these two letters, which at the moment are dominating every discussion with AI. think nobody really has anything of a clue which what awaits us in the next 10 years based on that kind of technology and anybody who claims that he knew that or has an idea is probably lying.

Christine Grimm (21:21.192)
Watch me.

Alexander Greb (21:25.002)
When we put all of this into consideration, do you think that, and we always talk about the major roadblocks in technology adaptation, do you think this kind of additional point with industries that are disrupted with Corona that has kicked us in the back in the last five years and now comes AI around the corner, is this pressure so high that it's actually

putting all the roadblocks away because nobody really can, in his serious mind, state that, no, I do not have to change. I'm continuing with my old ECC implementation like this. I'm perfectly prepared for the future. Or do you think like, OK, we probably still have some discussions to lead there?

Christine Grimm (22:14.164)
My personal opinion is we have a lot of discussions to start, not even to finish, to start. And my opinion also is, yes, there are too many companies who still think that is fine what we did. And maybe there are a lot of companies who say, we don't have the money, we don't have the resources, we don't know where to start. you know, it's just wait, let's see.

Alexander Greb (22:42.862)
Hmm.

Christine Grimm (22:43.154)
maybe disappears. So the reality is it will not disappear and the reality is...

It's even another obstacle and challenge you need to overcome. mean, you still struggle, talking back in the SAP world, if you still struggle adapting S4HANA Cloud and you think, well, maybe my whole on-premise legacy is fine and we just do a brownfield migration from ECC to S4HANA and that will do in the future. Yes, that might do for these people who make the decisions because they will not

probably not be in their jobs when the results of that decision really comes into reality. But if you talk about those companies with that mindset and you still struggle on moving into a cloud or getting rid of the legacy and so on, and then on top, you need to bring AI not as a trophy, but as a really

as really tangible business value into life. I mean, that will never happen. To be honest, that will never happen. So yes, we need to start that conversation very, very quick. And actually, we need to be even quicker because it's not about digital maturity, becoming digital maturity, becoming the awareness in the company that something has to happen. Otherwise, we are not relevant anymore.

Alexander Greb (23:57.71)
Hmm.

Christine Grimm (24:20.436)
This digital maturity is not something you celebrate once. We did a project, oh, we are now on S4 on-premise and now we are at leading edge. It's a behavior. It means experimenting, it means learning, it means adopting, it means getting used to new technologies, getting used to AI showcases, really exploring.

giving people the freedom to really learn with that rapid change, which definitely, definitely every week, every day something new happens in the market. And if we always think why we should not do that in order to think, okay, how can we adapt that? Those companies will not be relevant in five years. That's that's a bet I will do in the future. And to be honest, real impact happens when we as a company

have the freedom to, you know, to.

talking AI, still talking AI. We have the freedom and we have the mindset to have AI sort of and that learning with the new technology, with data, with training data, creating new solutions, seamlessly integrated in our daily work. I mean, that is already a future status, but those companies who really open up and

understand and accept that this change is there and we cannot escape from that. We cannot escape from the speed of technology coming to us as companies, to us as society, to us, to the world. If we like it or not, it's there. So we need to find a way to really use AI as sort of a digital companion and sort of something which will not go away anymore.

Alexander Greb (26:14.254)
Mm-hmm.

Christine Grimm (26:23.828)
And yes, this is something I could go on forever, but it scares me a little bit when we sometimes have discussions also with customers and they still struggle about why we should implement Fiori and why we should, I don't know, AI cases within our legacy, I don't know, database architecture in our data centers. And I think sometimes, no, that will not happen. That will not happen.

Alexander Greb (26:50.328)
Mm-hmm.

Christine Grimm (26:54.374)
And yeah, it scares me a lot.

Alexander Greb (26:59.97)
But probably one of the reasons why we have to be scared for this is that I think the word transformation has in many discussions the wrong note in a certain way. That we talk about transformation and when we talk, we unfortunately mean quite often we implement now a tool and everything changes, everything is different. And then we find out later, okay, we spend some...

Christine Grimm (27:24.016)
Yeah.

Alexander Greb (27:29.422)
considerable amount of money and nothing really has changed. And it's maybe the conversation about implementation projects, one part of the problem, because that's how everybody, the one earns his money, we are selling the software, the other one earns the money, we are implementing that. But nobody really asked the questions, listen.

Christine Grimm (27:31.486)
Yep. Yep. Yep.

Alexander Greb (27:57.172)
you are working in this kind of area, I come into this game of yours with a clear vision, how these can you kind of tools can help you with your situation, with your strategy. But before that, of course, and this is my opinion, from my experience, the problem that so many companies and organizations have, you have to talk about the strategy, what you actually want to achieve, or how do you see your future?

Christine Grimm (28:22.462)
Thanks.

Alexander Greb (28:27.13)
Many people have no clue in my opinion what their future could be like. Many have no strategy. And because there is this kind of big word of transformation and now we implement something, we give them the excuse not to really think about their strategy, but the possibility to talk about implementing technology gives them the chance not to really think about it and the excuse.

to shift everything over to SAP to the technology and so on and as such not cover the topics that would have been necessary to be done first. Do you see similarly or what's your experience about that?

Christine Grimm (29:09.16)
I fully agree.

That buzzword transformation, of course, I mean, it describes the process. There is no other. I've thought a lot about, maybe we should use another tag for it. But there is no other tag. It's changing something and it's a process. It's not ending. And there is no ending. it's not the next big launch. It's not just one thing and then transformation is ready. It's about showing up.

Alexander Greb (29:18.35)
Hmm.

Christine Grimm (29:43.024)
every single day with the courage to take the next step forward. Even if it's small, even if it's no one watching, but it's something we need to be aware the transformation is being ready for the future, adapting the changes, digital maturity and the culture and you know, looking in our own mirror. Everyone needs to look in their own mirror and understand what's his part and also his responsibility in that transformation process within the company.

Alexander Greb (30:03.81)
Mm-hmm.

Christine Grimm (30:12.532)
not preserving his personal comfort zone, but still being part of his role, making the company successful. And that's also, I think, part of a big problem, because if you don't make people responsible, if you don't make people seen or heard, and if you don't involve them in what's necessary to be heard and to be done, also the...

the inconvenient things, they won't be at your side. You won't be as a team, you know, coping also the difficult times. this is, I always say it's, the technology is changing, yes, but the reluctance lies within the people, the culture, and you know, what companies create.

in spaces for people to really be part of that game. And to be honest, everyone wants to be part of a team. most of the people want to be part of a team or part of game. So that is, from my opinion, that is the biggest, biggest problem. Outdated.

Alexander Greb (31:24.044)
Mm-hmm.

Christine Grimm (31:34.804)
Technology is one part, but outdated management systems and organizations is a much bigger problem.

Alexander Greb (31:42.222)
I would like to quote you now because you said something in our conversations before, which I thought was absolutely fitting. You said, legacy first often means leadership last. Could you tell us a little bit more about that, how you came to that conclusion and how do you think can we break the circle? Because I absolutely agree whenever you see somebody talking desperately

about his legacy systems in those typical ways. Like we've always worked like this and we have so much investments in that we have to secure these kinds of investments or this kind of sun cost bias and so on. This shows that there's obviously no direct vision about the future. How do you think organizations in these kinds of situations and these kinds of circles, how can they break out of this?

Extensions of your ship.

Christine Grimm (32:43.621)
Yeah. Yeah. I think, you know, maybe

Alexander Greb (32:45.112)
Ha ha.

Christine Grimm (32:52.254)
think sometimes, in a situation as you just explained, I think it's sort of standing with the back of the ball, but you have to understand, you have to always understand why companies or people think that.

Sometimes I think when companies or organizations stick with their legacy, it's not, and I think deep inside they know it's not always the best option, but it feels safe. It feels familiar. It's sort of an illusion of control and change always feels riskier than staying in your comfort zone.

Alexander Greb (33:25.422)
Less risky.

Mm-hmm.

Christine Grimm (33:38.312)
Holding on to that old system, saying, mean, leadership last means it's an excuse for hard leadership decisions. Because we know that when you start something new, you have to convince people, you have to have a goal, have to have a common goal. Everyone understands and accepts. And sticking to that goal is the hardest part on the project. And in the past, we always said, I always said, before we start a project, we have to describe

the objectives and the goal. We don't have to describe the way, but we have to describe the situation, what will be at the end if we achieved that, if we manage to implement that project successfully. And everyone in the whole project team organization has to understand these objectives in the same way. And it takes a lot of time to really...

Alexander Greb (34:12.396)
Not activity.

Christine Grimm (34:33.672)
maybe cut it down to three, four sentences to really describe what is the outcome and what is the end result. And sticking to that goal and to that path is the very, very hard. It's the hardest way in project management because it's so easy to escape left and right from whatever you need to do because it's inconvenient and hard decisions are always inconvenient. Nobody wants to be a bad guy. Everyone wants to say, fine, perfect, we are all great, super duper.

Alexander Greb (34:59.576)
Mm-hmm.

Christine Grimm (35:01.042)
Okay, let's do it this way, let's do it that way the next day. That's not getting you anywhere. And these hard decisions, sticking by an opinion, having an opinion, having an understanding of what the right way in the future might be, that is difficult. And that's why a lot of companies stick to what they have, because you don't have to retrain your management, you don't have to retrain your leadership skills, you don't have to retrain...

There is no, in IT you always tend to be there, it's just technology and processes and costs. But you tend to neglect that there are people. And with people there is always an emotional human part of it. And this is very hard.

Alexander Greb (35:32.206)
Mm-hmm.

Alexander Greb (35:47.192)
But do you think since this whole area, since decades is defined not by outcomes, but by activity, everything that we approach in that area, be it RFPs or be it offerings or proposals from SAP partners, for example, it's always proposed for activities, like I support you doing that and so on. It's never concerning outcomes.

So normal to do it like this, that is hard wired in our brains. have sometimes the feeling that we always talking about the activity, not about the outcome. we measure ourselves in the activity in the men or present days. That's something like an implementation cost. That's something we talk about not necessarily in a, we actually achieve the value?

out of the implementations? Are we now better than before? Because, yeah, this is much easier for SAP partners, for example, to propose to a customer. An activity is easier to sell, like, for example, an outcome. Do you think SAP implementations partner are in that a part of the problem instead of part of the solution?

Christine Grimm (37:14.836)
Partly, But also, if you look at the way where those partners come from, they need to adapt the change as well. So change is not very black and white speaking. Change is coming from SAP towards customers and, of course, partners because they are in between. they need to translate the story of SAP in tangible solutions.

And they also have big organizations. They also have a success story had in the past. They also have a legacy in their organization, in their people, in their culture. they need to really, really start to change in exactly the same and even higher speed than the customers. Because you have to have a partner at your site who you can rely to, who you can trust. Because you know that

partner will understand your problem. I think today consulting also needs more boldness, needs more curiosity. Customers, we don't want, I'm talking still as we, well, I'm not a customer anymore, but we don't want to stage progress and process. We want somebody to listen and to understand our problem and to really translate our solution in a

value story. And we don't want, I don't know, a list how to implement 365 services or solutions or something. We want somebody who understands everything which comes from the transformation process, the technology, the process and the culture. And I think this is

hardware partners need to play a much bigger role. That means also upskilling the people, creating that same digital curiosity and mindset in the organization, being always leading edge, trying to look at that whole variety of complexity within a customer organization and not having a 200 page playbook.

Christine Grimm (39:30.93)
Okay, project A I did in that way and in the future I will do it exactly the same that will not work anymore.

So yes, they can be part of the solution, but still they are part of the problem as well.

Alexander Greb (39:38.563)
That's.

Alexander Greb (39:45.784)
So if you would build your perfect SAP consulting partner, it would not be somebody who would do the configuration, or of course not only, but somebody who understands the strategy, knows how to manage the change, and is able to deliver that value by making the technology adapting perfectly to the situation.

And as such, bringing the customer or enables the customer, as I always say, to do things he was not able to do before.

Christine Grimm (40:23.144)
Yeah. Transformation doesn't happen in a PowerPoint universe, so to say. It happens exactly there where customers fight their daily battles. I think asking the right questions with the right people and truly understand the problem, not the perceived problem, the problem. And being someone, we hand in hand,

try to struggle that, try to battle that problem. I think that is something I would wish from partners. And of course partners, they have to create revenue as well. So they have to make their money fine. And I think that business model, how that whole ecosystem and talking about SAP as well, creating revenue and money out of adoption.

is something which should change because if you don't look at the adoption rate, you immediately ignore the customer success because, and I know adoption is not equal to success, but it's probably a better score than just deploying something. So the focus has to be the customer success and the customer value.

or the company's value as the North Star for everything partners do and SAP does as well, that has to change. And from my opinion, always a good conversation starts with listening and asking the right questions. Technology. So I haven't mentioned technology at all because technology should be easy and lightweighted. And technology should, so to say, deploy itself.

business value coming out of technology. That's something we have to, together as partners, as SAP, as customers, we have to build.

Alexander Greb (42:31.726)
Absolutely. you mentioned a very important point because adoption was actually measured as deployment. Deployment was adoption. Which means like if you are having that or sold that or in that way, you deployed it basically. And that in the past, in my opinion, caused so much damage because it's

It was a false friend. turns, for example, the seller into somebody who just wants to get his things out, yeah, lean conversion and so on. Doesn't matter if there's any value. It matters if the customer actually uses that. It made consultants to something like a accomplice of customers who do not really want to change. but because nobody said, hey, you should not do it like that. You're jumping too short. You should...

do a little bit more. You should go on not just on a technical conversion, should treat it as something strategic and do more in that. Consult in many cases did not really do that because a good consultant is somebody who fulfills the wishes of his customer, even if he doesn't agree to that. And as such, the customer success is, in my opinion, something which so many in our universe

Christine Grimm (43:36.92)
Thank

Alexander Greb (43:54.552)
did not really comprehend what this is all about. Do you see any trends or any, let's say, voices and so on who go much stronger now into the way, it's not about just doing things, it's about doing the things right. It's about not going through the cloud for cloud's sake, but going through the cloud because it turns you into something which is better prepared for the challenges of the future. Or.

As one of the lonely voices in the community in the last 10 years, do you see still like, need much more people who talk in the same way like we do.

Christine Grimm (44:36.468)
I think there are a lot of people and I mean you are one of the ambassadors for the change of course and you know I mean thank God. The problem is today.

If you look in LinkedIn and sort of it's a, I don't know, it's a hate laugh and I'm sort of always struggling in between being very annoyed from LinkedIn and the algorithm and being interested because you you tend to get, you know, always tend to get the same blah, blah. And, but still there are so many interesting voices and interesting people and you know, I don't

Alexander Greb (45:04.29)
Mm-hmm.

Alexander Greb (45:09.134)
Hmm.

Christine Grimm (45:19.976)
No, I don't. There's a list. And thank God there is a list because I think the good thing is those people who, well, those companies who resist any change, are not as loud on the LinkedIn or maybe they don't even in my algorithm. I think, but still coming back to your question, I would have to have a look to name.

gives you some names because I don't know yet. can't answer that right now. But hopefully, I think there are a lot of people being ambassadors for the future.

personally.

Christine Grimm (46:08.606)
think that is not enough. mean, to be honest, if you say something, if you read something, if you hear people on stage, if you hear podcasts, it's still the others. It's a way. It's far away. The whole ecosystem has to become an ambassador of change because, know, customers, a big problem is trust.

you have your implementation partners and if they have a business model which comes from, I don't know, the 1990s and this is a trusted advisor for customers, they will believe whatever they say. There can be, you know, the most interesting keynotes, stages, podcasts, futurists on the world talking if the trusted environment around is not changing. Change is very difficult to achieve.

That's why

Overall, SAP, from my point of view, has to be much more tangible and reachable in approaching the customers. I mean, we know that, yeah? you're SAP, have a lot of marketing. Of course, we always do marketing. That's fine. But coming from that high polished...

cloud only super duper innovating cases into the reality of customers, architectures, enterprises and problems. It's like this big worm stretches and stretches and stretches and the head is in the innovation universe and the bot is still here. And that is a problem because if you can't

Alexander Greb (47:48.206)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Alexander Greb (47:54.356)
But the tail is somewhere completely else, yeah.

Christine Grimm (48:02.548)
translate your message into small digestible pieces, which can be consumed by customers and can be translated by every partner and every person, you will have a problem. Because you will always assume that SAP is expensive and complicated and it's just the problem or the solution for the others.

From my point of view, if I would have a wish to SAP, I would really, really, really wish that we achieve more.

Christine Grimm (48:46.878)
more simplicity, more lightness. mean, so that, you know, radical simplicity. so we just, you know, it's sort of a, it's, it's, it's everything starts with a, with a tangible working case. The ecosystem feels really like an app store, transparent, fast. It's not like, God, my, have to, what, what service do we need to deploy? my God, what, how do we deal with the BTP? my God. What does,

It's so expensive to build a data ecosystem because we need 365 different applications and subscriptions and everything. So it's very, very complicated. And that is a big problem for that whole ecosystem from my point of view.

Alexander Greb (49:32.366)
I had about that and very interesting conversation in one of our last episodes with Michael Sokole concerning the clean core and the fit to standard, something where SAP is very, very strongly going to now. When you say simplicity is necessary, would that also in your opinion mean fewer options? Yeah, because we agreed in that discussions about one of the problem was to say like, hey, we are like a platform. Yeah, you can do everything with that, which is maybe

a very high promise for something, but it's probably a little bit of a lazy argumentation also because when you say like, I'm a platform, you can do everything. You basically completely retract from the discussion about, Hey, what are the use cases, the actual use cases that you can do. So is something like fit to standard and something like clean core, which is one of the really strong discussion points at the moment is, this in the solution?

Christine Grimm (50:21.651)
Hmm.

Alexander Greb (50:37.912)
Giving less options?

Christine Grimm (50:40.318)
I would, I mean...

don't, from my point of view, just my personal opinion, I don't understand that SAP is giving so many options because all these different options cost a tremendous amount of money also for SAP because they have to maintain, I don't know, 68 different releases and implementation strategies and hosting strategies and that can't be...

Alexander Greb (50:58.615)
Mm.

Christine Grimm (51:08.222)
that can't be from an entrepreneurship that can't be the right way. it's, you know, to always say that's that toxic freedom you create. You give the companies, you know, the perceived feeling that everything is fine. Still wait, you don't need to change now. Everything is fine. But that is toxic freedom. And toxic freedom is always the worst thing you can have in a partnership. So...

Alexander Greb (51:12.462)
Mm.

Christine Grimm (51:36.276)
I'm a friend of being honest, being clear and giving clear guardrails. So if I would be the person making the decisions and a lot of people say, thank God you're not, but I wouldn't have given customers so many options because it's difficult. I mean, it's like when I'm in a restaurant and I have a menu, is, don't know, my husband, he gets crazy because I will never be able to decide for something.

Alexander Greb (51:58.104)
Yeah.

Christine Grimm (52:05.556)
And at the end I wonder what he has.

Alexander Greb (52:08.77)
Yeah. And you always say that the restaurants with many choices are quite often the the worst ones. Yeah. Because the really high-class restaurants have maybe like five to six choices and that's it.

Christine Grimm (52:15.123)
Yeah.

Christine Grimm (52:21.3)
And how can you guarantee quality and everything? yes, of course, I had a discussion once with Jan Gilch and he said, for him it's also very difficult because he has to deliver the new solutions, the innovations and everything, but he still has to maintain a lot of releases, different releases. this also, I mean, there are also bug fixes and changes which have to be done, mandatory changes and that...

that freezes developer capacities and that freezes capacity which could focus maybe on easy adaption. mean, we all dream about an AI agent who just overnight creates our SAP cloud-transformed, highly easy simplified S4HANA ecosystem. So yes, coming back to your question, I think that's a burden for SAP. And I think that wasn't the right question, the right decision, sorry.

Alexander Greb (53:18.008)
Absolutely. And since we are now in the advice section for SAP and we move now to the customers, I think one of the most important changes in maybe dogma would be then to be very clear. And this is my opinion now. You can say something against that if you disagree. I think one of the biggest lie that we do to ourselves as users is

this kind of lie of we are so different than the other one. And my company is completely different than anybody else and so on. I'm not sure how your experience is. I'm doing this job now for over 20 years. And I think it's not wrong to say that the questions that I came upon in these 20 years at customers are shockingly limited because so many customers and so many

So many areas are 100 % the same. Yeah. It's like you and me, you and me, have 90.99 % the same genetic stuff and the rest then it's that that's differentiates us for is from each other. But companies in many cases are at a large part, absolutely the same too. So first, do you agree with that observation? And second, do you think like this could be

This self-awareness could be the guide of saying like, listen, with that 90, let's be at 98 % similarity. We waste so much time because we think we have to be individual in that area that we cannot concentrate on the 2 % which really sets us apart, which really makes the decision also for our customers. Do I buy from this guy or from another one?

Christine Grimm (55:15.432)
Yeah, I fully agree. And my experience is exactly the same. You know that

Perceived individualism is just something we made in our heads and in our company. Most of the time there is no really differentiating business value behind. We always tend to ask in projects.

try to calculate the business value of that differentiation and the necessity to really keep that and how can we calculate the outcome and how can you value the outcome. we always try to...

Understand if

We have our process and it's a legacy process. And legacy process is always, legacy is always technology process and organization. Organization equals culture and people. So, and then we have the standard process and we always try to explain or try to understand not to move the individual process into the standard process, but taking the standard process as a given future process.

Christine Grimm (56:34.472)
and trying to understand what we would need to do in order to keep that. That means sometimes nothing because it's just have an open discussion. Sometimes you would need to change the organization, reorganize organizations, change a process, change the technology most of the time with an implementation project towards a new cloud company, cloud architecture. But it's always giving people the chance to

argument towards the positive, meaning what would we need to do in order to have that? Is, you know, make people think and being creative in order to argument, why can't we have that? Do you understand what I mean? And this is for me, this is sometimes has been an eye opener when in the people's, you know, in the understanding of the of the path forward, because if you make people think positive,

Alexander Greb (57:21.134)
Absolutely, absolutely.

Christine Grimm (57:34.652)
It's much easier than if you... We always try to say, yes, but, yes, nice, but. We can't, no? Yeah, probably. Yeah, yeah, well, it's probably European. Yeah. And yes, I absolutely agree with you. We need to... I mean, there is always a part... And also sometimes we have to be realistic. Sometimes the hurdle to overcome that

Alexander Greb (57:39.72)
Mm-hmm, yeah. That's so German. That's so German.

Alexander Greb (57:48.364)
Yeah, I guess so.

Christine Grimm (58:05.204)
individual process might be sometimes too high because the change might be too big for that special situation or that one step. So we also need to be realistic. It can't be standardization just for standardization purposes. And, you know, there is a lot of options where you could keep the standard in general, but still have an individualized process maybe via, I don't know, a BTP adoption or a BTP adoption.

development or extension. So extension was the word missing. So you have to find a balance between getting the customers, the companies on track with the progress forward and being realistic on the amount of change an organization can really digest. But that coming back, I'm quite sure you could easily in a heavy argument

find.

probably always the best, really valuable arguments for understanding that companies are 98 % the same. So.

Alexander Greb (59:18.776)
Mm-hmm.

And I what I always because you you mentioned legacy. But what I always think helpful as an image is that legacy in most cases is nothing else than your strategy from 15 years ago implemented with the technology from 15 years ago. This is this is what legacy is all about. And you should be very clear. Are you still the same company than back then if somebody still does not get it? Sorry. Yeah, then you can use for example, signal you helps a lot.

Christine Grimm (59:35.102)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Exactly.

Alexander Greb (59:52.062)
to show them, look like you are working already past your process in so many cases. And you see then people hiding their Excel sheets, which they use for that to convert or to bypass the process. But this is what absolutely happens. But if we move the needle now to our third party, to the implementation partners, what is your expectation to them?

how should they evolve or should have evolved, have not yet done, but should catch up very, very fast.

Christine Grimm (01:00:34.622)
Probably about what I said before, I mean...

consulting partners and I mean a lot of them to be honest come from the market of our three implementation projects or maybe I don't know.

on premise as four projects. There are a lot of them. And in the past, consulting partners and SAP used to ask, what do you want? I can build it for you. And the best partner has always been the one who was basically

not removable from a customer's organization. So you build your own solutions and nobody else could handle them. And you always have very complex solutions. I think this has to change. That mindset has to change in the whole consulting business. Because you need to help, like a coach, need to help companies to overcome their problems.

I don't know, depending on the objectives of the customer's project. And you need to be curious and you need to be open for change. You always need to be open for the radical change in technology, in industries and everything. So more curiosity, less choreography, being a trusted partner, really talking.

Christine Grimm (01:02:12.5)
about trust, open situation, open the real problems, the real struggles, asking the right questions. I mean, also using AI, I AI won't replace consulting, that's true. But it will expose the weak spots and it forces us to ask better questions, cut through that whole...

Alexander Greb (01:02:28.718)
Absolutely.

Christine Grimm (01:02:40.562)
I don't know, whole... Yeah, exactly, Fock. And really trying to deliver value instead of this ongoing deliverable and delivery project. I think partners also must towards SAP, I think there must be a buffer towards SAP as well, because really to help SAP, because sometimes, I mean, as we said before, the reality...

Alexander Greb (01:02:42.616)
Fog. Yeah.

Christine Grimm (01:03:09.14)
in companies, the daily business, the daily situations. And I'm not talking about those who are still stuck in the 1990s, but the real reality, you change, nothing you do overnight and a project is always a massive, massive, a massive path.

Alexander Greb (01:03:18.04)
Mm-hmm.

Christine Grimm (01:03:31.796)
project is always, now I'm looking for the right word. It's a challenge. Let's call it that way. And partners need to be in between SAP's vision and innovating universe and the reality of the customers. Because they need to translate the solutions. They need to understand the problems, also give them back to SAP, talk to SAP, and being really also there, sort of a mediator board. And therefore, customers,

Alexander Greb (01:03:35.788)
Yeah, definitely.

Christine Grimm (01:04:00.776)
partners have to be open for the SAP roadmaps and the SAP versions and everything. And they need to question their business model, I think. A lot of them needs to question the business models in the future in order to be still a relevant partner.

Alexander Greb (01:04:13.399)
Absolutely.

And probably you will agree with that. What I think is still completely missing is the customer experience suspect in SAP consulting. Because an SAP project is something which is widely considered as not a really pleasant experience. It's lot of work. It's stressful and so on. Why do we not manage to make it something which the customer after the go live wants to say, hey, this was so great.

Let's do the next project right after that. Because we found value. was working great. Let's do this again. Of course, we cannot wrap up without having spoken about the interest groups, DSHE, ASAC, the big, big, and we can say powerful organizations which shape opinions, strategies, and so on and so on.

Christine Grimm (01:04:52.99)
Yeah, exactly.

Christine Grimm (01:05:03.934)
Thank

Alexander Greb (01:05:15.65)
They are the mediator in many cases between SAP and its customers. And having been a very prominent person in this area, where do you see the role in the interest groups in this kind of topic that we discussed in the last hour? And where do you see they have to evolve, to progress, to change, to

still play a relevant role in that.

Christine Grimm (01:05:46.036)
talking from my former role and I was brought representative for transformation, course, transformation and sustainability. I think in this case, the role, I heavily played the role, you know, giving the DSEC members a vision of the future, a vision of the future, meaning being honest, being realistic about what will happen.

in the future, the change and the radical disruption which will come, translating them into a way forward within the SAP ecosystem. mean, talking SAP and being honest and also challenging SAP, delivering tangible and possible solutions and transformation programs and everything and not ignoring the actual problems of the customers. A good example was

And I was part of that myself, being an early S4HANA adopter, you've been the most valuable and precious customer being early on SAP strategy. And then the cloud came and you've been sort of, I don't know, somewhere in the past. Exactly. So we said, we have to recognize, you have to recognize that. sort of you have to motivate customers to do it.

Alexander Greb (01:06:56.494)
Hmm.

Alexander Greb (01:07:02.968)
Suddenly you were not interesting anymore.

Christine Grimm (01:07:13.522)
the change again, because we all know, mean, even being on S4HANA on-premise, it's not just like easy peasy, lemon squeezy, moving to an S4HANA cloud, private or public or whatever. So we sort of developed a transformation program with the funding to help customers to overcome that hurdle, maybe. And to understand the problems and to understand, you know, BTP adoption, we invested a lot of effort in, you know,

training programs and curriculums and things like that. So giving customers sort of SAP roadmap as an author and trying to help them to understand and translating them into tangible projects and processes. Also, giving feedback to SAP about what is good and what is not so good and where all these perceptions from customers different to

SAP messages. I think this is something the SAC should absolutely continue because I mean we cannot, I always tend to say

In the future, influencing in our free and on-premise versions was part of requesting something which then SAP had developed back then or maybe brought up in your application and things like that. In these days, this will not happen the same way anymore because the whole cloud business is different. So we need to help or DSEC needs to help customers trying to understand.

the SAP way forward, trying to understand how you could move into that new area or into that new architecture. And this is a different set of tone, and this is different support. And some would say, well, it's always like speaking SAP after the mouse. No, it's not. You can still have an open and conflicted discussions.

Christine Grimm (01:09:23.828)
That is something we always used to do, but still help companies to move into the future because it will not help anyone if we always tend to say, it's fine. You can stay on your ECC forever. It's absolutely okay. And that is, I think, the biggest responsibility from user groups. And I think ASAC is playing the same role.

Alexander Greb (01:09:37.986)
Yeah, exactly.

Christine Grimm (01:09:53.458)
sometimes a little bit stronger, I would say. But I mean, of course, there you can't really 100 % compare, you know, the US market or the American market and the European market. But still, this is from my point of view, the role I was playing. And this is something I would hopefully expect from the DSEC. Still, let's see who is taking that role.

Alexander Greb (01:10:21.358)
Absolutely. I think you mentioned that it's a very fine line, of course, that these organizations have to do between on the one side being the kind of guide, which definitely means like, they explain or they have a part in explaining the SAP strategy. But also, of course, the other extreme of being like a union, trying to be or trying to be a voice for somebody who feels a little bit left behind. And

Maybe of course it's not avoidable in the future that some companies will technically advance more like others do. Because like you said, we have different cultures. have different also, of course, performance levels per customer. For some it's easier to move to a certain cloud environment, for example, for others it's not. I think what we definitely agree on that the role

of these organizations will get even more important in the future because the technological speeds will advance even more. And the challenges that we await will be even more challenging for us. And as such, of course, we need these kind of voices who are in a certain way independent, because I think that's what their purpose is.

consultants in many cases cannot really be independent. Some try to market themselves as independent, but I think this is in many cases quite a big BS part because you cannot be as a consultant 100 % independent. You have a portfolio, have competencies and that shows how independent you actually are. But those organizations can be and as such, think they definitely will be.

Christine Grimm (01:12:04.731)
Of course.

Alexander Greb (01:12:15.808)
even more the one to listen to in the future than I've been in the past.

Christine Grimm (01:12:18.13)
Yeah. But still those organizations, I mean, they, you know, remember where they come from. So they need to accept that the independence and you know, they exist because they want their member companies be successful in the future.

If they are not successful anymore, they will not exist anymore, those groups. So it's very, very important to understand.

that everything is changing. we need to be, those user groups, need to be leading edge.

Alexander Greb (01:13:07.352)
Definitely. And as we are talking about change and leading edge, a lot of things have changed for you too. Personally, professionally, you went away from your former job at Freudenberg and you, that's quite like that, you do now your own thing. Can you tell us about that?

Christine Grimm (01:13:31.508)
I do my own thing, yes, I always do. Now I'm officially doing my own thing.

Alexander Greb (01:13:34.636)
You do your own thing because that's the wording that you hear today. I'm doing my own thing.

Exactly. Of course, some do also in their professional lives do that when working at corporations, which is not very good thing, you, yeah, you, you build up a startup. If I hope that's the right wording for that, tell us about that. What was the reason and what are you doing?

Christine Grimm (01:13:58.088)
Yes. Yeah, exactly.

Christine Grimm (01:14:04.933)
Yeah, it was, mean...

After 10 years within Freidenberg, which was a great experience because you learn in corporates, you learn a lot, you experience a lot. I think it's essential for what I do now having experienced that in that way, because when you go into the software development industry, so to say, and you don't need to

You don't need to be...

convinced just because you have a very good idea and you start building up castles in the air so you really know what real problems in real companies are, having talked to a lot of companies in the past and having experienced that in also in like a big company like Freudenberg. and after 10 years I said okay that's a good time now for a change, 10 years is quite a good time and so I decided to quit my job and with the...

some other people we decided to bring our expertise and experience together and form a new company. And that's what we did. So it was a big step coming from the name is Dex Frontier. Dex Frontier. You probably added in the comments something. So what are we trying to do?

Alexander Greb (01:15:27.448)
Tell us a name. Tell us a name.

Alexander Greb (01:15:34.84)
Definitely. Definitely.

Christine Grimm (01:15:40.734)
Basically, we are trying to help companies bridge the gap between, talking about the SAP ecosystem, because we thought we are staying in the SAP ecosystem. That makes sense. We have a lot of experience there, and we know the problems. And one of the problems, are absolutely, I mean, you my mindset, absolutely cloud transformation, and we want to help customers to move into the cloud ecosystem.

And what is the problem today? mean, in the past, you have this monolith R3 system or this S4 on-premise system. And within there, you have your stacks and your development stacks and your data and applications and UI and everything. Now, it's much more.

modularized and you have your suite and you have the BTP and you have maybe lot of other applications. And it's not just, you probably know that exactly. It's not plug and play and you deploy everything and it's easily fits together and everyone knows exactly what to do. That's not the case. And even more, the very, very difficult situation is still implementation projects. They tend to focus

Alexander Greb (01:16:40.397)
Yeah.

Christine Grimm (01:16:56.584)
very much on the suite and on the processes and not so much slash not at all most of the times on that whole ecosystem, integrating the BTP and trying to get use out of the value of the BTP. And that's what we are doing basically connecting that whole ecosystem by

very much AI and automated infused and automated infused product, meaning a person like me, and I would call myself very experienced processes, consulting, whatever, very little experienced in deep dive heavy technology and absolutely not experienced in operational BTP deploying stuff.

I'm the person, I'm the persona who could do that. So I can talk to our bot and say, I need a custom app because I want to be very nice and very standardized and very clean core. But I need something and I want to do it. I don't want to do it in, I don't know, somehow, somewhere. And I want to do it on the BTP. So I need a custom app. And the custom app is, I don't know, in that and that process area.

This is the business case and I type everything in. And basically, the bot is doing its magic and everything is, you know, the system is created, the BTP setup is created, the HANA deployment is everything, the accounts are created, connected, everything is set up and, you know, in the background, the Terraforming runs and a GitHub repo will be created for the developers where all the, you know, the...

business cases are typed in and the developer can basically start and the whole process maybe takes I don't know.

Christine Grimm (01:19:00.734)
days if communication between business and the developer is smooth and easy instead of weeks and months. just setting up a BTP, setting up a BTP, mean, let alone the custom app thing, just setting up a BTP with all the accounts and everything up and running. A lot of customers, they don't even know how and who is going to do that. And this is a process and it's sort of

Alexander Greb (01:19:01.774)
Instead of

Christine Grimm (01:19:28.71)
In the beginning, we started talking about that use case, mean, of course, people of our team, said, well, that's very easy. said, yeah, we experienced that being a very heavy and painful process. And we talked with lot of customers and we always got the confirmation that you don't know how to start, you don't know where to start. We don't have the skills, we don't have the resources.

and we don't have the operational people and the developers don't want to do that because it's not sexy developing things. So that's when we said, okay, we need to jump in there. And so we built, we created our product, it's called DX Starter. And this product is basically helping to bridge that gap and helping business users or maybe operational people who have no idea how to set up BTP platforms.

Alexander Greb (01:19:58.787)
Mm-hmm.

Christine Grimm (01:20:21.67)
or even partners which want to speed up their processes in the projects because they have maybe no BTP scaling. This is our target group. Will it be the one and only solution forever? No, probably not. But we think now this is a big opportunity because in most of the projects, and I've never seen once, I'm not saying all of the projects, but still saying most of the projects,

Alexander Greb (01:20:23.16)
Mm-hmm.

Christine Grimm (01:20:51.538)
That whole setup is coming smoothly and integrated as part of the project deliverable.

Alexander Greb (01:20:58.374)
And what I see in there when you tell me about the functionalities, of course you have the implementation in the beginning and so on. So you have a certain state. So the goal life is happening and you are starting to work with that. But of course, a lot of new ideas come in that kind of beginning after the implementations when the users realized, hey, listen, I could do also this like that and so on.

Unfortunately, in so many cases, implementation partners gone by that moment. So nothing really happens either way or it happens, but in the way you do not really want. Yeah. Like it starts that certain departments build up their Excel side cars and so on and so on and so on. By that you help not only to democratize additional functionality, but also that it's done in the right way. Technically clean.

Christine Grimm (01:21:34.761)
Yeah.

Christine Grimm (01:21:52.199)
Exactly.

Alexander Greb (01:21:53.806)
clean core and it can be, yeah, and especially it can be done maybe not by everybody, but by almost everybody.

Christine Grimm (01:21:56.564)
Cost efficient.

Christine Grimm (01:22:04.34)
Yeah, that's true. And I think that is the biggest value because I remember when we, I mean, we've been, we know putting on my former Freudberg head, we've been, I would say early adopters in a lot of ways also within the BTP. I think when we started it back then, it was still called HANA Cloud Platform, I think, I don't know. And we bought that, we subscribed it and...

Alexander Greb (01:22:26.222)
Mm-hmm.

Christine Grimm (01:22:32.702)
Basically, took us at that time years to understand what is wealth and what's all about and basically how to structure it, how to set it up and integrating data and services and development environments. And that is so painful. And of course, when it's painful, also meaning most of the time very, very expensive because you have to...

Alexander Greb (01:22:38.53)
What is this all about?

Mm-hmm.

Christine Grimm (01:23:00.52)
You have to find resources, very expensive external resources, or you have to build up internal resources. So that's when, and that was not just a, I don't know, a one shot specific problem within Freudenberg. So within DSAC, we had those discussions endlessly with companies. So we said, okay, that's a good starting point. And that's sort of a blind spot in these whole implementation projects, which could help, of course, customers.

partners, also SAP and of course us as well.

Alexander Greb (01:23:32.762)
And of course, since you are, sorry for calling you that, but you're a seasoned experience professional. It's not like you're coming out of university and have an idea, but when you have an idea, of course, this is on a foundation of your huge experience you had not only at Freud and Buck, but also of course, as in the hundreds of thousands of conversations and experience you did as DSHE member. And if...

The experience of Christina Grimm is in that tool. think that's already a huge value proposition.

Christine Grimm (01:24:09.46)
Thank you very much for that, that, Gute Siegel for that tech. I hope so. I mean, we think, it's a good thing and it's sort of demystifies technology a little bit or the complexity of technology, which is always good. mean, coming back to some simplification and, I mean, we have very, very, very absolutely great, tech experienced team, my founding partner.

Alexander Greb (01:24:17.09)
Fantastic.

Alexander Greb (01:24:25.038)
Mm-hmm.

Christine Grimm (01:24:38.736)
He is basically the technology brain behind all of that. And that's good because of course I'm absolute technical rookie, but I can translate business problems. So that's quite good. But still, that's sort of, you know, always the great technology engine is running underneath and it's just, it's very simplified from the UI and you know, that's something the tech colleagues need to.

need to accept that you can't put it.

Alexander Greb (01:25:09.294)
Absolutely. And the good thing is, people who are interested in that, they are not only are limited to listen to this podcast, but they can talk to you on the DSHE, yearly annual congress in Bremen. We talked about that, that you will be there, I will be there also too. I think this will be a very interesting event when people want to get in to contact with you. What else?

Christine Grimm (01:25:21.808)
Of course.

Alexander Greb (01:25:38.837)
options do they have?

Christine Grimm (01:25:41.17)
Well, I have LinkedIn profile myself and our company as well. maybe in, think I would assume in the comments of the podcast or the post, will maybe add that. And I think if somebody wants to find me, Christine Crimm, I think there is always a way to get in touch somehow. So I'm open to talk. I'm open to understand.

Alexander Greb (01:25:55.189)
Absolutely.

Alexander Greb (01:26:04.151)
You're not hiding.

Christine Grimm (01:26:09.876)
problems and maybe help our ecosystem to eliminate a few of those existing obstacles. That would be nice.

Alexander Greb (01:26:19.478)
Awesome. And I think we did already in this very nice conversation that we had. Thank you very much for taking your time, Christine. It was a pleasure. And yeah, I'm looking forward to our next conversation, probably in Bremen at the DSAG.

Christine Grimm (01:26:35.806)
Thank you very much, Alexander. So see you then. Bye.

Alexander Greb (01:26:37.25)
Thank you very much. See you then. Bye bye.