Interview with SAP’s Chris Salis

Chris Salis joined SAP from Business Objects in January 2010 as VP and Head of Global Sales for Line of Business Solutions for Procurement. His responsibilities? – Global sales and revenue growth, which he fulfilled well and above.

Chris reversed 3 years of declining revenue of SAP, 4-timed the company’s SaaS revenue growth, and went on to get the highest line of business quota achievement 2010-2011.

In the subsequent years and the years to come, he fulfilled the role of Global Vice President & General Manager for Line of Business Solutions for Procurement and Global Vice President & Head of Portfolio for Go-to-Market.

It has been over 14 years since Chris Salis has stepped foot in SAP. So, I caught up with Chris to hear about his award-winning career at SAP, the nitty-gritty, the ins and outs, his experiences there, and other stuff.

Q: Having worked at eBay and Business Objects in your early career, what attracted you to SAP?

A: I’ll be completely honest, open, and transparent here. It was difficult to leave companies such as eBay and Business Objects. It was tough because I was given some crucial roles there to fulfill. However, the biggest reason behind me joining SAP was my vision. I saw an opportunity. An opportunity that would allow us to transform the entire landscape of business applications, the way they work, and the way they will evolve in the future.

Another thing that attracted me was SAP’s reputation. I mean look at the level and the depth at which SAP operates in business applications. There’s no one out there who does that, no company that touches the business applications space like SAP does.

The leadership team of SAP was also great during my time at SAP. Their drive to innovate things, drive to succeed, and collective intelligence – are simply unmatched. What was more phenomenal than anything else was the extensive knowledge the team had. Everything was phenomenal on the team side of things.

Positive organization culture and customer-first attitude were among other things that I got attracted to. I’m really passionate about these two areas. I always wanted to be part of something transformative, something innovative and that’s what I saw in SAP. From the get-go, SAP was in a position to be a revolutionary thing in the business applications space and if you look at it today, the revolution is evident.

Q: How did your previous experience shape your role at SAP?

A: I learned a lot when I was in eBay and Business Objects and the lessons I learned there were what I looked to apply at SAP. I was part of Business Objects holistic transformation – many in-depth things were addressed there, new products were built, and revenue was raised.

The same was my goal when I got started with SAP. I looked into the current engagement models SAP was using, how customers and partners were responding to these models, and what was our approach to the SaaS space. The reason I was able to do all this was that I had prior relevant experience in doing similar things at eBay and Business Objects.

I was focused on things that very people in the company were looking into. The user experience was something that wasn’t that important of thing for companies a decade ago (it is now) but for me, it was. For me, ensuring UV reliability, availability, and product integration was one of the most important things ever at SAP.

The goal was to drive product innovation. The mission was to add value to our customers and partners. The vision was to solve whatever problems they were facing. At the same time, the responsibility was to keep on improving the products and making them more value-based and intelligent.