>> From Orlando, Florida, it's theCUBE! Covering SAP SAPPHIRE NOW 2018. Brought to you by NetApp. >> Welcome to the CUBE we are in Orlando, at SAP SAPPHIRE 2018, I'm Lisa Martin with Keith Townsend as my co-host. We're in the NetApp booth, and we are very excited to talk to the VP of the Chief Customer Office at SAP, Mark Marcus, Mark, welcome to theCUBE. >> Thank you, glad to be here I appreciate it. >> This event is enormous. One of the things that really struck me in Bill McDermott's key note was, you know, we always here about, oh we are expecting 20 thousand people, he talked about a million people engaging with SAP SAPPHIRE this week, via the in person, and the live, and the on demand video experiences. Massive! 390 thousand customers, hundreds of customer sessions the voice of the customer validating SAP as one of the world's most valuable brands is not only pervasive here its palpable. So talk to us about the Chief Customer Office. What is it, what's it's mission, why was it created? >> Yes, okay that's a great, a great way, so first of all thank you, I appreciate you being here, I live in Orlando so it's great to see this event in my-- People wonder why SAPPHIRE is actually in Orlando, it's because I live here. (all laughing) >> You're the reason! >> You're the reason. >> I'm the reason SAPPHIRE is in Orlando, Florida. >> Okay, you heard it, Mark Marcus, you're the reason. >> No, so what happened is, when Bill McDermott came to SAP, he was a different type of leader, and what he wanted to do immediately is start meeting with customers. So what he did is, he started meeting with customers, and he said if you have any questions or problems, give me a call. And so what happened is, his phone started ringing, people needed help, so he needed somebody that could help him with the customers when he ran North America. And so that was the genesis to Chief Customer Office. So we started off, first, we were extremely reactive. And so what I mean by that is, if the customer had a problem, we'd have to go in, and we'd have to help them. And it's much more difficult when you have a problem, then try to prevent a problem. So what we've been doin' the last several years, is trying to be much more proactive, so instead of waiting for the phone to ring, we've been getting with customers, and making sure, you know, as their project start, begin their steering committee meetings and make sure that things go well. >> So, you've taken that more proactive approach, it's almost how the organization's evolved. What is the focus today? >> Yes, well the focus has always been the customer, but I think it's more of, taking the best practices that we've learned, and actually sharing those with the customers, and helping them explain how other people have done their journey, because what you'll find, is people are in different phases of their journey, and what they like to hear more of is, you know, what did other customers do, what did they do right, what did they do wrong, and how can we be more successful? So we've been able to, over the years, if you think about, just to put it in perspective again, there are, SAP North America has 158 thousand customers, and we're only on, my particular team only has about a hundred of those customers, that we have. So it's a very, very small amount, they're are ones that, you know, are strategic to SAP, that we get involved in. But what we're able to do though, is, through social media and other areas is, customers wanna hear what happened, again, in the past, and how we can, you know, learn from that and move forward. >> So, I'm a big social media fan. Twitter handle has 38 thousand followers, which a lot for your focus on a hundred customers, so I think that, that you're echoing the, the theme very well. Talk to us about how it's changed over the past, 14 or so years, shift has focused from on-premises solutions to hybrid-cloud, to cloud analytics, AI, what's the, what are customers talking about? >> I'll tell you what, you're talkin' my language now, (Keith laughing) okay, because what happened is what we did is, actually what I'm in part, what I'm a part of is actually the cloud ambassador program. And so what that is, is it's focusing on our cloud customers so, you know, success factors, Ariba, Concur, and those kinda things, and so, really what happened, is, you know, when SAP, when I came to SAP 14 years ago, it was all on-premise ERP, alright? So it's very contained, very controlled with what people had now there's Cloud's, we're not really sure what customers are doing, how they're interacting with the solutions, and so what we have to do is we really focus, and again, my group is 100% focused in on that, so. What part of our mission has been is, we're not necessarily know what customers are doing, so we're helping to understand what they're doing, and trying to help educate groups inside SAP to be more responsive and help them. >> So you mentioned having responsibility for some strategic accounts, about a hundred. Do those represent kind of a subset of some of the key areas in which you're looking for the voice of the customer, and their practice using your technology to influence the direction of some of the key technologies? >> Yes, 'cause I'd say they're some of the biggest, most strategic customers that we have, and so what we do a lot of is, we're able to, we align directly with the executives, at the customer, so one of things with Chief Customer Office, is we're aligned at the C level, so it's, the CIO, the CEO, the CFO, at that level, so we're able to say we heard directly from the leaders of the companies, our most important customers, key customers, and we're able to take that back the other areas of SAP, and say, this is the what the leadership's demanding, and that's what we're able to help them with. >> So, as we're going through this phase of digital transformation, through a lot of organizations, that audience is even more important than, what?! (chuckles) Tell me how, as digital transformation has become, more than just a buzzword but a imperative from the C-suite, from CEOs to CIOs, CMOs, CDO, all the C's, CXO! How has the conversation between those groups changed, from the SAP perspective? >> Yeah, I'll tell ya, that is, again, I'm not just sayin' that you are, you're hitting exactly what we focus in on because, traditionally SAP has been focused more on the CIO level, so it's more the IT groups of implemented ERP, it's been more of a back-office type solution, well now, what we're finding is the line of businesses are the people that are actually making the decisions. So what we're finding out is that, it's not necessarily so much that the, technically, how they work, it's more the business processes they have, and how we can help actually, basically automate, and help them run more smoothly. >> Yeah, Hasso Plattner actually, and some of the guys this morning during the keynote talked about that, in terms of, customers were saying, you know, I'm getting kind of confused, there's so many different product names, a lot of acquisitions, he was talking about that, we heard from customers that there was confusion there. So when he was talking about, in the context of C4 for example of, making things simpler to understand, but also to your point, the back office and the front office now has to be connected so they also talked about that, in terms of, the integration with SAP Cloud, and how they really focused on enabling wholistic integration because it's the processes that have to now communicate together, so that, a whole, kind of proactive, customer responsiveness, that was really apparent this morning. 46 years young SAP, you have a new initiative about the customer for life, tell us about that. >> Okay, so customer for life is a new initiative that we have, so what I told you, at the Chief Customer Office we've done, we're able to touch very few customers, but, you know, again, you know we have 156 thousand, in SAP North America, you know, multiply that all over the world, I mean, it's many customers, okay. So what we've tried to do, is take what we've done on a small scale in the Chief Customer Office, and make that pervasive throughout the whole company. And so what we're really good at too is actually, you know, understanding what the customers do, finding them a solution, but now what we wanna do is go through the whole life-cycle of what we do so, I mentioned, you know, having a customer executive assigned to every customer. Being able to be part of the steering committees that we have, and being able to follow them through so we can help guide them, so it's not only selling the solutions but actually helping them through all the way, so the new initiative we set is customer for life, it's something that we're rolling out right now, and we've had, and again, it's taking what we did in the Chief Customer Office and, you know, propagating that through the rest of SAP. >> So, this facility, you like to say it, 16 football fields, American football fields, so that's a big facility. I walked the facility this morning, got in about three thousand steps. Hundred plus partners on the floor, ranging from system integrators, technology partners, and infrastructure space, software SIs. Help us understand as SAP, 20 thousand plus people here at the show, a million people online engaging on SAPPHIRE, SAP is becoming a platform company. How has that changed your role, your conversations? >> Well, I think what has happened a lot is, especially in the cloud projects, again I'm gonna focus more on what I'm a part of is, you know, there's a lot of new partners that come up. Because what happened is that, you know, we acquired several companies, we did, you know Concur, Ariba, SuccessFactors, a lot of big companies, and a lot of different partners. So really what our role is, in the Chief Customer Office is, to basically, to help these partners to understand how to work together, and we do a lot of things in meetings, we have, what we do, is, it's usually like the three legged stool, it is, you know, it's SAP, the partner, and the customer together, and we all do that together. And what I've found is, some of the problems that we've had is not neces-- you know, I always say like, how can take the exact same solution, and it works well in one company, and it doesn't work in another company? And what it is, to your point, with all the partners here, is it's communication, are they working together, you know, is the partner, and SAP, and the customer all working together, and so that's what I'm really focused on today is meeting with all the, you know, do the SAPPHIREs, to meet with the partners, to make sure we're aligned, you know, talk about our key customers, and make sure that we're all working together. >> We talked to one of the gentleman yesterday who was running some of the communities around HANA and Leonardo and, just the massive amount of content that is being generated to enable and educate customers across 25 plus industries, was massive, as well as, leveraging that peer validation from customers, like you're saying, you know, some customers in certain industries have a ton of success with the same thing that others customers struggle, depending on a lot of different variables. So that sort of collaboration and communication, even within the SAP communities alone, was very apparent yesterday that that's one of the big drivers, of I'm sure, the customer for life initiative is, as you have evolved, so have your customers. One thing that struck me yesterday was, you know, looking at, you're now number 17 of the World's top most valuable brands up there with Apple, you know, products that we can engage with and, I saw on a bus yesterday some of the messaging, and ERP you can talk to, and hear from. (Keith laughing) So SAP really set a very lofty ambition of being up there with the Amazons, and the Coca-Colas, and the Googles, and now you have technology that people can, you know, like at home with their digital assistant, talk to and communicate with. I thought that was very powerful message. >> And I'd say that's, I'd say too that, you know, I've worked with SAP for 14 years, and when I came to SAP, nobody had really heard of SAP and what they were, they thought maybe, you know, sometimes on TV when you see SAP when it's translated in other languages or something, that's what they think of SAP, they don't really know what the company is but, yeah, it's been great to see how, you know, people would stop you, you know, whether you're wearin', you know, they'll see somethin' on your laptop, on your shirts or somethin' like that, yeah so it's been good. I think that's been a big focus of getting it out because, one thing is is we have 150 million cloud users, that's a lot of people, so a lot of people use SAP, so. Again, one of the cloud products that we have is called Concur, it's for expense and reporting, and so a lot of times people might not've heard of SAP, but they've heard of Concur, because they all do their expenses, that kinda stuff. So, exactly right, it is pretty good, you know, when you have even family members know who SAP is now. They've done a great job, you know, hiring, you know, with the market department and the people they've hired, it's been great, it's been good. >> So, okay, we talked a little bit about analytics and the customer experience as we're looking at intelligent business. Is that a message that's actually resonating with customers in that top 100 strategic accounts, are they using analytics to actually power business, What are some of the data analysis success stories? >> Yeah, I would say that, what I would say is that, what I've found a lot of times is that, you know, people can get the information in, but they need to be able to get the information out. And so, everybody across that has done it, so, I would just say almost every customer we have has basically needed to get that out, and do reporting and those kinda things, you know? So, part of what we do at the Chief Customer Office is, you know, not only, you know, help them with the reports that they have, but to be able to run that kinda stuff. >> You guys also have, you know, some really interesting use-cases, I'm a Formula One fan, I've worked with Formula One before, I'm, I understand it from a fan perspective. You guys are really involved in McLaren Motorsport, for example, from finance, to procurement, to manufacturing. How are you seeing some of these really big use-cases like Formula One, or Coca-Cola, infuse into some of the, you know, the mid-sized businesses, who, you say, might be using Concur for example. What is some of the value that a small company can get from the massive users? >> Yeah, well I'd say there's a lot of things, because what happens is that from those big massive customers that we have, we're able to put together as we call model company. And so what a model company is, is it takes the best practices you have and puts it into more of a, I'd say nothings out-of-the-box, but makes it much more easier to implement, to be able to do it, so what we're able to do is, you know, with the massive amounts of info like McLaren, I think Hasso mentioned what, there's 400 sensors that they're getting on their cars, and that kind of stuff. So basically being able to take all the information that we have, and then from that, distill it down into where it's a very, repeatable type instance we can use for other customers. So there's a lot, I mean that's what we do with a lot of the, what the customers have, we try to get that back to where other people can use it. >> A Formula One car is basically an IOT device. You said 400 sensors, generating a ton of data, per race weekend, times three days, times 20 events a year. I read from Gartner just the other day that by 2020, which is around the corner, there's expected to be 20 billion IOT devices. What are you hearing from your customer base regarding IOT and being able to synchronize this, you know, modern next-gen data center with myriad devices? >> Yeah, so that is one of our top initiatives that we have right now. Because, one of the things that we've done is, we have an offering that we have called Leonardo, and what Leonardo is, it was named after the inventor Leonardo da Vinci, alright? So, you know, in his time he was, you know, a great innovator, actually went and saw his house and went over to Europe, and I've done a lot with Leonardo, you know what I'm sayin'? To be able to do that, right? But what that is, is that's basically all about, you know, getting devices to be able to get that information in. Because what you do is, you have you know, thousands of sensors and stuff like that and a good, you asked me earlier about a good success story on that, is one of the ones that I think resonates the most on that is in Buenos Aires, they have a massive problem with rain, you know, it rains a lot, and they have severe flooding, and the architecture is antiquated. But what they've found, is the reason that they were having these flooding problems, is because the sewers and the drains were all getting clogged up. So what they did was, they put a sensor in every one of the drains to be able to make sure that they were unclogged and they were flowing freely. So what they did is, they were able to, if the water flow started going down they were able to empty out the drains, even with an antiquated sewer system, because they were keeping it aligned with, you know, using Leonardo now, they can go and keep it cleaned out, they've had massive rains and the flooding hasn't really been there where it is, so now, what's interesting is every time I go by and see a gutter that's all clogged up, I think, you know, they need Leonardo to be able to help! >> I was reading as well about Alicia Tillman, your CMO, who's been at the helm for about nine months now and, in the context of this desire to become one of the top global brands with an invisible product, she said, you know, that one of the most important things for SAP right now is brand narrative, messages and campaigns will change quarterly or, every six months as they should but, she said, you know, to be able to show the value of basically under-the-hood software, you've gotta be able to show how it transforms countries, lives, industries, and that's one of the things that I think is very, very palpable here at the event is how much impact SAP is making in, whether it's rhino conservation in Africa or, you know, helping water scarcity in India, the impact, which is really the most, the biggest validation that you get, right from the voice of your customers is massive. >> Yeah, and I'd say to that, you know I like to say that, you know, it sounds like, you know, yes we're a software company, and, you know, that kinda stuff, but, it is really a noble endeavor, because we are doing a lot of things to help people's lives, and to run their businesses better, and what you realize is that, Chief Customer Office sometimes we see that other side when the systems aren't running properly at times, you know, they're usually runnin' right, but sometimes they have problems, and when they do, you can just see the impact you have on, you know, people's lives and businesses and stuff like that, that it is really running, you know, it is core to what you have, you know. So I'll tell you one of the interesting things that SAP's involved in is, they do a lot with instant messaging, so they have a part of, one of the acquisitions we have does instant messaging, well, you don't think about that but like, when you use, let's say, Facebook Messenger, or something like that, those messages go inside an SAP infrastructure at times, right? So imagine, you know, if you can't change messages, or doin' those kinda things, you know, so. You're exactly right, it definitely does, what we're doing does really impact a lot of peoples lives, so it's important. >> Well mark, thanks so much for taking some time to stop by theCUBE and chat with us about what SAP is doing with customers, how they're really symbiotically working together with you to evolve and transform this company. >> I wanna say one other thing too, it's great to work with two professionals here, you guys have really helped me a lot. >> Aww! >> I don't do this a lot, but it really made me feel comfortable, so you, I appreciate your help, thank you. >> Our pleasure, thanks so much! And, so you're the reason SAPPHIRE's in Orlando, are you also the reason they got Justin Timberlake tomorrow night?! (Mark laughing) >> I would like that. But I would like to say real quick, one thing before we cut real quick, I would like to say one thing just about the NetApp partnership we have. So RJ Bibby is the person that I work with at NetApp, and, just what he's done to basically, because NetApp really helps run a lot of our infrastructure inside SAP, so it's success factors, some of the high-availability in things that we have, and just working with RJ, and kinda learning how we, how we work and can help other customers, they've really volunteered to help a lot of our customers, and so, I just wanna thank NetApp again for helping us sponsor this. >> Great, great closing. We wanna thank NetApp for having theCUBE in their booth. Lisa Martin, with Keith Townsend, we are at SAP SAPPHIRE NOW 2018, thanks for watching! (bubbly music)