Greg Sarafin: From Partnering to Performance—$8B and Growing

Chip Rodgers  0:01  
Hey everyone. Chip Rodgers, CMO at workspan joining again from the show floor of sapphire. Incredible event. We're about halfway through Tuesday, and it's going, it's been, been a fantastic event. I am so excited to be joined today now by Greg Seraphin. Greg is global managing partner for at EY, for the your ecosystem partners, right? Basically, Chief partner officer for EY. That because the partner

Greg Sarafin  0:29  
is a confusing word. I run the partnerships for EY, the external partnerships, yes. So

Chip Rodgers  0:35  
fantastic. I think Greg has been you've been with EY for about eight years. Watched an amazing growth from about a billion dollars to $6 billion in 8 billion, my friend, 8 billion, and now it's eight. Well, this year we

Greg Sarafin  0:49  
get to eight. Update, we grew almost 2 billion by one in one year. This year, wow. Yeah, the Power Partnership is unbelievable. That's the value you can create with partners. Shared capital, share, go to market share, client relationships. You can really, really unlock value quickly, and it shows up as growth. That's ultimately how it shows up on the balance sheet. Yeah,

Chip Rodgers  1:09  
well, and Greg, we had you on our EBS recently, and I loved your messaging around, look, focus on value creation, right? I mean, it's not just, you know, it's not just like the bottom line, like you'll get there, but focus on how you're creating value together for customers.

Greg Sarafin  1:23  
That's right. If you focus on your revenues, you'll never get there, because you'll treat each other like channel partners. Well, what are you doing for me? What am I doing for you? What opportunities are you bringing for me? Blah, blah, blah. It doesn't work, right? If you want to truly partner, you got to do the hard work. You've got to CO, create, CO, innovate, CO, invest. You've got to where possible. You've got to eat your own or drink your own champagne, right? So if we create a finance solution, well, why don't we use it ourselves? Why doesn't our partner use it, right? We call that client 00, things you need to do if you really want a great value. So then when you show up at a client, you're not just showing up well, I'm helping him sell his stuff, and he's helping me help sell my stuff. Clients through that, right? But we say, Hey, we've invested together. We're using this stuff to run our own businesses. We'd like to talk to you about how you can use it to run and transform your business. Different conversation. Yeah,

Chip Rodgers  2:19  
fantastic about it, yeah. And it's it's also more strategic, and it really becomes a strategy topic. It's

Greg Sarafin  2:25  
core part of how we create value, and it's a part of our strategy as a business, for sure, phenomenal.

Chip Rodgers  2:30  
So here we're here at Sapphire. A lot of things going on with with it is amazing. Tell us. Tell us a little bit about what's happening with SAP.

Greg Sarafin  2:43  
Well, first, kudos to SAP for really getting sapphire, probably the best I've been in decades, right? I thought pre COVID had gotten just a little bit too crowded. If you recall pre COVID, it was, there's a lot of people here, and a very it became very tight and compressed. Last year was the first year back after COVID was a little too open. This year, I think they've got it right, and I like the balance between there's enough interest, but you can still have behind us in our booth. We're still having client meetings right now talking about how we can help clients on their journey, and we can do that, as you can hear, even though there's 1000s of people here, our conversation is not, we don't have to yell at each other to hear each other. So kudos to SAP for getting that right. Also, kudos to SAP for continuing, you know, under the current leadership, to invest where really, ultimately, is going to matter, right, which is at the back, right? The integration across the different platforms that they have process through the BTP layer, of course, but then also the data integration. And to me, as an ecosystem person, the really exciting thing at the keynote today was the focus and attention on the data ecosystem and the AI ecosystem, right? Because, and when I say data ecosystem, not just the incredible value of the data people have in their SAP platforms today, which is a lot, right, but then having partnerships with other parties to attach that data as well. Because we all know what makes great AI is great volumes of data, right? And if you have great AI, then you get great insights to help you run your business better, which is always about best run companies, run SAP, right? That that was, that was what sort of launched them, I think, in the stratosphere, originally. And so this is, to me, another natural evolution of that is, let's get all that data together at scale, give clients, then that the generative AI and the other types of AI to start to create real insight to operate the business better. And then ultimately, it's not a far stretch to see how that AI will start to actually be the process, right? The AI will construct the process. Models. It will fix broken processes. It will now it's probably down the line, of course, but right this is that really important first step to that, that next sort of level of how AI can be your partner, running and optimizing your

Chip Rodgers  5:13  
business, really interesting. So starting with data and then, and then AI for insights, but then AI for process improvements and

Greg Sarafin  5:20  
really, self optimizing, self defining processes, right? That's, that's the ultimate vision. I think. Now, I don't think we're gonna, we're here SAP talk about that just yet, but when you just look at the trends, you can just see that that's where this thing's gonna end up. And you know, again, companies run their most important functions, right on this platform. They run their finance function, they run their talent function. The most important capital at any company today is what? It's human capital. It's not cash, not cash, right? It's people. That's that's the, that's the really scarce resource today. So the talent function, and then the supply chain function, manufacturing, right? So the core things, I mean, that microphone we're talking into was made by somebody, right? It's not digital. It's Adams, it's Adams. It's not bits, right? Now, it's being converted into bits, into that little phone there, right? Everybody, but at the end of the day, there's still something physical that makes all this work. And you don't eat bits, you eat food, right? You know? So people need to make stuff still, and they need to make it really well. So SAP, of course, that's another part of of every corporation that SAP supports, right? So, and then the data underneath that is highly valuable on its own, but then you pull in all this other data from other data providers, and again, your ability to impact your business is just going to go through the roof. And that's exciting.

Chip Rodgers  6:38  
Yeah, yeah. Really. Hey, Nirav, so come on in. Nirav Desai, who's our VP of our GSI organization. So Nirav, I think you had a question

Speaker 1  6:49  
Absolutely. So first of all, so great to have you here. Greg, always wonderful to be working with you. Congratulations on your award, the SAP Pinnacle Award. Oh, thank

Greg Sarafin  7:00  
you. Yeah, so, so we won the pinnacle this year for industry cloud, which is really, really awesome because we've invested a lot in industry cloud over the last couple of years. We believe that, you know, what we bring to customers has got to be a lot closer to what they ultimately need than it is today, right? So we need to bring our industry expertise and our understanding of where industries are going in the future. So not just where industries are today, but where they're going to be. We need to build those assets and innovations around the core SAP platform, keeping the core clean so putting it in BTP and the other external layers, right? But ultimately, and then the integrations between the different SAP modules specific to each industry. So, you know, we have we, I think we probably won, because we had some really awesome stuff in energy and also some really awesome stuff in insurance, but we got several industry platforms out there today, and ultimately we're going to invest and build these platforms for every industry that we serve, because that ultimately is what's going to unlock value for our clients faster with less risk. Industries are everything they are, and it's not just SAP, right? We can take this broader SAP. If you look at Microsoft, you look at any company, they are all verticalizing around industry and bringing industry specific capabilities into their platforms. Because businesses don't have the time or the risk appetite anymore to start with something that's here to get to here, they need to be here to get to here, right? And so companies like ours need to invest again. It goes back to that earlier point. We need to co invest with our partners like SAP to create these assets that give our clients faster time to value, less risk, better business case, better outcome. That's the

Chip Rodgers  8:55  
idea. Fantastic. Awesome.

Speaker 1  8:57  
We were with Karl farbach yesterday, and he talked about the whole fly wheel in as you talked about CO innovation, co investment, co selling, co marketing, right? So how do you do with do that with SAP today? You know, could you talk about your partnership with SAP today and some of the highlights there?

Greg Sarafin  9:11  
Yeah. So we're really proud. We are a top five partner for SAP in terms of the volume of work that we are fortunate enough to do with them in the marketplace. They're also a top five for us in terms of our partners. What's more important to me, though, is, what do we do for clients? And to me, you know, some of those important things that we do for clients, we do with SAP because, again, these are critical business functions that we're helping our companies, our clients, transform so they can run their businesses better, serve their clients, better serve their people, better their shareholders, better and stakeholders more broadly. So, because you're at the core of these really important functions. By definition, if you do it well, you're going to have a high impact on your client. Yes. And so, positive, positive impact, a high positive impact. Yeah, thanks for that correction or addition, yes, absolutely clarification, a high positive impact on your clients, because that's, that's what your value is to them, right? Your value of them is to help them transform and run their companies better. And so SAP is a great partner

Chip Rodgers  10:21  
for that. That's fantastic,

Speaker 1  10:22  
holistic solutions for the end customer, right? It's a grading. Win for you, win for SAP. Most importantly, win for the customers, right?

Greg Sarafin  10:29  
That's right. And again, thinking more broadly, it's not just about tech, although tech is certainly you can't do anything today that's meaningful without technology, but you can spend a lot of money on technology and get no business value if you don't also change your business to take advantage of the technology, right? So a big part of what we do is we help our clients to find first, what does that end state business or that target model look like? Why is there business value there? What is the value case? Then we talked about, okay, how do we then, partnering with SAP, partnering with others, get you there, underpinned by that technology and that the digital transformation element. But at the end of the day, it is a business transformation enabled by digital is not a digital transformation.

Chip Rodgers  11:22  
And then there's all the change management and everything goes along with that ticket to make it real.

Greg Sarafin  11:26  
Nothing comes for free, like I said earlier, right? The client, so we have to invest before we even see a client, right? CO invest with our partners to create that flywheel, like you said, yeah. But then our clients need to do the work too, right? Getting to that end state takes a lot of work. It takes capital, and again, not just money. People need to stop doing what they're doing and start doing the change elements to get to where they're going. And that puts additional burden on people. Let's face it, big transformations are a lot of work, and it's not like you see. So we can bring people right to help with the transformation, but ultimately, the client also has to bring people to help with the transformation. And like you said, it's change. It's managing that change, getting that step wise function to the end state, and getting the business benefits along the way, particularly if it's a multi year transformation. You can't say, well, in five years, we'll see if it all worked out. Nobody has that appetite, right? You really gotta, you gotta show you gotta show progress pretty early on in these transformation journeys, or the capital allocation breaks down,

Chip Rodgers  12:37  
right? Greg, this has been fantastic. Thank you so much for sharing, sharing some time and and ideas and advice and Ey, you guys are doing tremendous work with SAP and all your partners. So congratulations and congrats on the Pinnacle Award. Thank

Greg Sarafin  12:54  
you very much. Good to talk to everybody. Thank you.

Chip Rodgers  12:57  
Okay, thank you all for joining us, and we'll see you a bit later this afternoon. So thanks. Thanks again. Thanks everybody. You.

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