Challenged to transform

18th May 2018 |   Nick de Cent

Bill McDermott

Bill McDermott: customer experience at the epicentre of change.

We talk a lot about transformation but how often does training involve genuine transformation? In the case of global software and services giant SAP there was an urgent need for a thorough transformation in the way the organisation sold, driven by major disruption in the market caused by the migration of IT systems away from an on-premises model onto the cloud.

Analysis of SAP salespeople found that about half of them were actually not fulfilling their potential because of the way they worked. Consequently, SAP’s board made the decision to retrain all SAP sales staff worldwide.

The digital race is on; indeed, for many companies, it started a couple of years ago. In 2016, 72% of CEOs said they saw the next three years as more critical than the past 50 for their industries, according to Forbes, which was quoting the KPMG Global CEO Outlook. This is a figure that has not been lost on SAP’s CEO Bill McDermott, who suggests that customer experience is at the epicentre of change, because it redefines every company’s business model and the way they deliver value.

Nick de Cent

Founder of the International Journal of Sales Transformation | + posts

Nick de Cent is the founder and editor-in-chief of the International Journal of Sales Transformation. A business journalist for over 35 years, he has been covering sales since the mid-1980s and has been a strong advocate of enhancing its professional status. He has freelanced for the Financial Times and edited the Sales Performance supplement in The Times. He also writes and edits extensively on behalf of corporate clients, including a Big 3 management consultancy and a top four global executive search firm.
Contact: editor@journalofsalestransformation.com.