Globalization of SAP Software was one of our secret sauce ingredients

The SAP Globalization services works at making SAP's solutions legally compliant and available in ‘local' languages. With SAP's ‘Glocal' nature, SAP brings the ability to innovate a ‘local' practice and proactively take it to other markets to check applicability, its value and adapt them for these countries. Till date, SAP Globalization Services have delivered over 60 country versions of SAP's software covering legal requirements and have translated several software solutions into 39 languages. VR Ferose, Head of the Globalization Services Organization at SAP speaks to DATAQUEST on its multi-pronged activities. Excerpts

If you were to take a larger picture, in a space like Enterprise Software- how critical is country specific issues - like if you factor in ERP of those days. In the 1990s, many failed due to not meeting the requirements- client and country-how has things changed over the last 2 decades and how is SAP leveraging its globalization services to foster localization, globalization and innovation of your products?

Globalization of SAP software includes the following:

Internationalization which is about technical enablement of the system to operate globally (ex. support for multiple currencies, Holiday calendars) Adding Localization capabilities (legal requirements, statutory reporting, local business practices) dedicated to the needs of the business in a specific country and Translation of our software (Product User interfaces, documentation and associated collaterals) in order for SAP to speak the language of the locals.

The ecosystem has already embraced SAP HANA, SAP's in-memory platform, to deliver new innovations and solutions to business problems which were not possible before due to technology limitations. In fact, a Tax Declaration Framework solution we developed for Brazil was made possible due to the capabilities offered by the SAP HANA platform around its ability to handle huge data volumes, real-time processing of complex Brazilian taxation rules along with integration of data from disparate systems. Similarly, we are working on payroll control center powered by SAP HANA to simplify time consuming pre and post processing work of payroll run which was identified as a big pain-point by our global customers.

Can you with specific instances demonstrate how the cross country collaborations helped SAP to better understand the local needs and find similarities/divergences across geographies and come out with globally deployable solutions/methodologies and that has helped in hastening your overall solutions adoption and market penetration?

We, at SAP, deliver solutions that cater to needs of the markets globally; specifically focused on emerging economies as that's where business models and regulations are rapidly changing. A few specific instances of globally deployable solutions built by Globalization Services are listed below:

SAP File Lifecycle Management was built specifically to address the needs of the Indian public sector organization to achieve digitized file management. It encompasses the entire lifecycle from file creation, movement, tracking, noting, review and approval process fitting the special needs of the Indian customer. Hindi translation is also available for various solutions in the SAP ERP application that includes Financials, procurement, Sales and Distribution, and HCM.

 

According to World Bank Data for 2012, the average time taken by private sector companies to prepare and pay taxes in china is 338 hours, in India is 243, in Russia is 177 but Brazil is at a whopping 2600 hours annually. We look at how this problem can be solved leveraging technology and launched a product called "Tax Declaration Framework" to simplify the lives of for our Brazilian customers.

New Finance Solution for China, Mobile applications for real-estate companies in China, localizing our Banking solution for Russia are additional examples of ‘local' country specific business practices delivered by Globalization Services to help our customers in these countries to run better.

Can you give a sense about the scale of activity Globalization services indulges in. For instance when you say -" SAP Globalization Services have delivered over 60 country versions of SAP's software covering legal requirements and have translated several software solutions into 39 languages". An activity of this nature sounds humongous and calls for huge back end work? How is it done- can you give a sneak peek?

SAP Globalization Services is a 1200+ person strong team active across the globe with R&D groups present in 8 of our Labs and product managers present in around 40 countries in 50 locations. This group works closely with our customers, partners, government authorities and auditing companies to understand the requirement, co innovate with the ecosystem, deliver software in a non-disruptive manner and provide support services for our customers.

Globalization Services teams inside SAP work 24/7 to make sure that every legal change that gets introduced by governments in several countries, is delivered on time and in high quality so that our customers can sleep peacefully every night knowing that they have a legally compliant system at all times. Globalization Services delivers 1000+ legal changes every year for more than 120 countries and with regards to translation, we handle approximately 280 Million words in volume covering Product UI, documents and collaterals which keep increasing every year

In your previous role at SAP Labs, you have been credited for creating a ground up transformation in terms of process to work culture to employee retention. Are you bringing those best practices on to globalization services and can you talk about some of the new initiatives you have taken here?

The scope and challenges across these two roles are fundamentally different. As the head of SAP Labs India, my main challenge was to manage innovation, processes and structures across diverse lines of businesses. The current role entails working with a leadership team that is spread across the world. This also involves managing diverse expectations from markets and stakeholders. In the last 12 months we have primarily focused on expanding our horizons to deliver innovations on cloud, SAP HANA and working closely with the ecosystem to reduce time to market and expand our addressable scope. In addition to these, we have focused on developing leadership and talent through investing in their training and exposure to best practices.

Can you talk more about the Globalization services and also an update on the future plans?

SAP plans to touch 22 Billion EUR in revenue with 35% operating margin by 2017. We are well on track to achieve this goal due to our growth strategy based on Innovation in Applications and Analytics with SAP HANA as the foundation platform and increased consumption of the Cloud. New routes to market via the ecosystem and geographical expansion into fast growth markets like BRIC, MENA, LATAM, Africa aids in executing our Vision to help the World run better and improve people's lives.

Globalization of SAP Software was one of our secret sauce ingredients because of which SAP has been highly successful in the past. The Globalization Services team is going to repeat this success in Cloud Applications as well, thus helping SAP become The Cloud Company in the market. Investments to achieve this started in 2013 and first results are already looking very promising. Making sure customers' existing systems remain legally compliant and speak the language of the locals will continue as it has been for many years. Besides this, we will be significantly increasing our investments into innovation to deliver localized and ‘next practices' for the emerging markets which is a hot topic inside SAP with direct attention of the SAP Board members.