Sapphire chief strategy officer Chris Gabriel on NTT DATA acquisition and AI
CRN caught up with Gabriel to get the lowdown on NTT’s major acquisition and how it will impact Sapphire
Cloud first, ServiceNow, and integrating with NTT DATA, but not necessarily in that order, are top of mind for Sapphire chief strategy officer Chris Gabriel as we head into 2024.
The mid-market partner was snapped up by NTT DATA in November for its SAP and ServiceNow capabilities.
Speaking to CRN about his agenda for 2024, Gabriel says the takeover tops the list.
"My top priority is the integration into NTT DATA and how we can help them in the UK accelerate their mid-market as well as helping them engage their install base of existing customers with some of our enterprise propositions.
"We're going to be their mid-market engine in ERP. But obviously our ServiceNow proposition fits beautifully into their customer base.
"Our data analytic proposition fits beautifully in there. Our asset management proposition fits beautifully in there. So it will be becoming their engine room in the mid-market, as well as enabling them to access some of our great capabilities that we've built over the last three years."
Gabriel adds he doesn't "see any change" in priorities in terms of automation.
"Ultimately it's about helping businesses adopt the technology that helps them operate their business and transform their business."
2024 strategy
Expanding on what will be Sapphire's focus next year, Gabriel highlights the cloud, innovation, and its ServiceNow business as key elements to the growth strategy.
"It's about really accelerating ServiceNow adoption.
"Cloud adoption in all that we do. I think is going to be the number one priority.
"The vendors we work with are either trying to move their customers to the cloud, or using the cloud to deliver digital services back to those customers who can't yet move to a cloud native.
"We're going to shift to the cloud. We're going to grow all of our platforms in the cloud. But we're not going to forget that we want to bring everybody with us.
"With these new technologies, the cloud allows everyone to raise the water line. Our B1 base are predominantly on-prem and they shouldn't be locked out of innovation.
"So then it's how do we hook them up to the cloud so they can then take as many advantages as they can."
Where will Sapphire invest?
Gabriel admits that while it's "all well and good doing those individual platforms" the big thing for Sapphire has been the wider technologies - workflow integration, data analytics, AI and automation.
"That's about joining organisations up across these platforms. It's great having the best CRM, ERP and services operations platform in the world. But if they're not joined up, your business doesn't get the digital dividend that it could get.
"So the bit we've invested in, in those wider technologies, is just to make sure our customers can operate more effectively across their business rather than thinking about those individual silos.
"We're not going to go after any more platforms. We're not going to pivot into any new technologies that we don't have in our portfolio. It's about growing the franchise and growing the capabilities we've got and then making sure our customers can operate."
Overcoming the skills shortage
Gabriel concedes Sapphire is facing the industry-wide skills shortage, but believes certain obstacles can be overcome elsewhere.
"Some of those skill shortages are being mitigated by the technology leaps forward. A really good example is, we've got this big ECC install base out there with a whole bunch of old code and SAP have spent a huge amount of time in order to put that old code into the GPT code, translate it and then create a new code.
"So this whole thing of there not being enough skills to do the re-coding, there are enough skills.
"The challenge for us is being able to tell that transformational story that customers can understand and believe in, translate it into their business, and they can adopt it.
"As long as we provide the tech to do it, they'll be in good shape."