Video Quick Take: Why Every Company Needs to be an Ecosystem Company

Todd Pruzan, HBR

Welcome to the HBR Video Quick Take. I’m Todd Pruzan, Senior Editor for Research and Special Projects at Harvard Business Review. For large and ambitious organizations, the line is blurring between your customers and your partners. And staying future-ready means your organization needs to prioritize its partner ecosystem. Today, we’re talking with Utkarsh Maheshwari, who’s the Chief Partner Officer at SAP in Asia Pacific Japan.

Heading up SAP’s partner business and working with more than 4,500 partners across the region, he’s here to talk about the partner ecosystem and how it’s evolving. Utkarsh, thank you so much for being with us.

Utkarsh Maheshwari, SAP

Hello, Todd. It’s a pleasure to be here. Indeed, every company needs to become an ecosystem-centric company. And I’m super happy to explore it with you today.

Todd Pruzan, HBR

Well, we’re glad to have you. Thank you. Utkarsh, what is changing about the way organizations operate and the technology that they use that’s blurring the lines today between customer transactions and partnerships?

Utkarsh Maheshwari, SAP

So Todd, the world around us is very different today, right? The macroeconomic trends are actually forcing the change in the organizations. And frankly, a lot of these organizations are actually adapting to cloud technologies. This is very important because this is driving the democratization of innovation. I mean, think about it – the small-scale companies, the mid-scale companies, they are actually having access to the same competencies that some of our biggest organizations have had so far, right?

And that actually means that they don’t have to start from scratch. So this is very important. And the other important thing that’s happening is the fact that because of this rapid change, the organizations are having to work with their core competency. The days of customizing to the last mile are gone from my perspective, right? So the era is really about forming those smart partnerships and really working with the collective expertise of the ecosystem.

So very simply, to put it all together, the macroeconomic trends are changing fast; the democratization of innovation is causing a big change; and finally, the focus on core competency. And all this put together is really blurring the lines between a customer and a partner relationship.

Todd Pruzan, HBR

That’s a lot of change all at once. Utkarsh, when an organization shifts its proprietary data or its intellectual property from siloed on-premises infrastructure to a partner’s cloud-based platform how do both parties limit risk exposure?

Utkarsh Maheshwari, SAP

So Todd, this is also very important to understand, that what’s happening is that there are big buzzwords around Gen AI, around the artificial intelligence and the possibilities that it is actually providing to us, right? But let’s be very clear today. Without meaningful data, there is no AI.

So really, for customers to de-risk, they want to be working with partners who are the infrastructure providers that are really able to play well from a solution and data partnerships, and really are able to orchestrate that; a provider that has actually a diverse ecosystem through which a customer can get actually continuous innovation and continuous integrations. This is very important to de-risk as well.

The good news, Todd, is that there is a cloud for everybody today. Whether you talk about a public cloud, a private cloud, a hybrid cloud, or a sovereign cloud, what it means is that a partner that can actually operate flexibly across all these models becomes table stakes for customers to de-risk, right? Because these partners can actually beautifully bring all the disparate data that’s across multiple systems to be able to create no loss of semantics on any form of layer.

And frankly, for customers, that actually creates a beautiful environment to scale their systems and do it in a very responsible way for them. So that is the best way for customers to de-risk, it’s to work with a very diverse set of ecosystem partners.

Todd Pruzan, HBR

That’s a sound strategy. Utkarsh, are there types of expertise that are essential to an ambitious organization yet more efficiently and economically outsourced than handled in-house?

Utkarsh Maheshwari, SAP

So Todd, I think a lot about this question as well, right? It’s a classic build, buy, or partner type of question. And really, I think it goes back to what I said in the beginning, the macroeconomic factors and the fact that the world is so different today means that every organization has to focus on their core competency and really use that core competency to their advantage and turn it into a unique intellectual property that they bring to the table.

And for everything else, there are fit-to-standard applications and a preferred partner of choice that can truly deliver that accelerated value to the ecosystem. In fact, increasingly from an SAP perspective and in Asia Pacific and Japan, I’m seeing that actually customers through their expertise and through their investment in technology are actually converting their repeatable use cases, finding the new revenue streams, and hosting their intellectual property on such marketplaces like SAP Store and really opening up new revenue streams for themselves as well.

And this is an exciting time from a cloud perspective. These innovations, these are ready to be deployed by other customers. And that’s again blurring the lines between who’s a customer and who’s a partner today. The good news is that customers can do more and more of these last-mile innovations that are unique to them. And partners can continuously collaborate with each other to bring even more collaboration to the table.

So the good news is everybody wins in this equation. And if you really think about it, Todd, SAP has 25,000 partners working in pursuit of customer excellence today. We have over 2,000 intellectual properties on our own SAP marketplace as well. So I am personally very excited by the shift to cloud and the possibilities it brings and really looking forward to working with the ecosystem in bringing – on an ongoing basis – more and more innovation to customers of all sizes.

Todd Pruzan, HBR

That’s great. Utkarsh, thank you so much for your time today. I appreciate your insights on the partnership ecosystem.

Utkarsh Maheshwari, SAP

Todd, it was a pleasure. And I hope to speak with you again.

Todd Pruzan, HBR

I hope so, too. We’ve been speaking with Utkarsh Maheshwari at SAP Asia Pacific Japan. This is the HBR Video Quick Take. To learn more, click the link below.

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