CHANNEL CHIEF
We talk to SIMON CARPENTER , Chief Technology Advisor,
SAP Africa, about his journey into IT, the challenges and the
highlights so far.
D
Describe your current job
role and the parts that are
somewhat challenging? When you look back at your
career what has been the most
memorable achievement?
As the SAP Africa Chief Technology
Advisor – and a 24-year SAP veteran – I’m
incredibly proud to be part of SAP’s mission
to ‘help the world run better and improve
people’s lives’.
After three-and-a-half decades in the IT
industry, I can say for certain that there’s
never been a more exciting time to be
working in this field. We have never seen so
much progress in as many different areas as
we are seeing in this digital revolution.
One of the challenges this brings is simply
trying to stay abreast of developments
and to make sense of them. In this regard
I’m grateful to be at SAP, not just because
we are a leader in areas like AI, IoT and
Blockchain, but also because we leverage
our own solutions to foster collaboration,
content management and continuous
learning. If you are curious and love
intellectual stimulation, there is no better
place to be.
Working across 52 African countries isn’t
easy and it has its fair share of challenges
– pre-eminent among those being visas
and flight schedules. Travelling Africa has
brought home to me just how much friction
there is, impeding progress, when it comes
to intra-African commerce and industry.
However, the rewards outweigh
the hassles and I love working with my
colleagues across Africa, meeting and
supporting our partners and resellers as
we work with business owners, managers,
public-sector agencies, innovators and
start-ups, helping them to exploit the right
technologies to accomplish their vision and
thus make Africa a better place for everyone. Over the last 36 years of my career I have
seen quite a few. One that is close to me is
when I joined SAP Africa in 1994 just as R/3
was beginning its ascendancy as the world’s
ERP system of choice.
Back then we had two products, 32
staff, about 100 people in our SI ecosystem
and seven customers in South Africa. It
was wonderful to be part of a relatively
small company and able to directly see the
outcomes of one’s efforts, to know I had
made a direct contribution to bringing a new
company into the SAP family.
Today we have a digital business
framework that encompasses over 2,000
products, including leading SaaS and PaaS
solutions, 3,500 customers across Africa,
about 650 local staff and over 3,000 Africans
making their livelihoods in the SAP ecosystem.
It’s been a wild ride and a huge privilege to be
part of an amazing growth company.
It’s also really humbling to see how many
admirable and well-run companies entrust
their ability to innovate, grow and profit to
SAP solutions. But the aspect I’ve valued
most of all is the opportunity to work with
smart people inside SAP, our customers and
across our ecosystem.
INTELLIGENT TECH CHANNELS
Issue 19
Simon Carpenter, Chief Technology Advisor,
SAP Africa
What made you think of a career
in technology?
Like many, I got into IT accidentally.
When I first arrived in South Africa from
Zimbabwe in 1982, I was intent on becoming
a management trainee with one of the
large consumer products companies. But I
met a local entrepreneur who had recently
launched a start-up, Vanguard Computers,
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