David Vallejo's Journey in SAP's Digital Supply Chain

SAP’s purpose is to help the world run smoothly and in doing so, to improve the lives of others. 

The German company was founded as Systems, Applications & Products in Data Processing in 1972 and is now based in Weinheim with offices across the world, from Venezuela to Vietnam, the Netherlands to Nigeria. In each of them, SAP supports businesses to function in the best way that they can. 

Over in San Jose, California, David Vallejo is responsible for product marketing for SAP’s global digital supply chain. Over the rocky recent years, he has led his team of experts to develop forward-looking strategies for the digital supply chain.

Product marketing is responsible for articulating to the outside world SAP’s strategy, what SAP offers to companies to evolve their supply chain and road map. But even more importantly, SAP listens to the market to understand trends and what is needed for the future. 

“We talk with customers, industries, councils, analysts and more to understand what SAP should do,” David begins. “We’re essentially the conduit of the market back into SAP’s development organisation.”

In that capacity, David and his team help to determine what innovations that they should prioritise, what partnerships to pursue or strengthen.

“In close collaboration with SAP’s product innovation teams, we bring the digital supply chain to life,” he continues. “Then, we also share that strategy with customers, partners and analysts.”Manufacturing Digital sits down with David to discuss AI, SAP’s supply chain and how he has learned to show strong leadership through uncertainty in manufacturing.

Supporting customers and showing effective leadership  

David joined SAP in 2014 as Senior Director Product Management. Over the past decade, he’s moved up through the ranks, being promoted to Vice President in Global Head of Digital Business Planning in 2019, where he steered his team through the impact of COVID-19. David was then promoted to Vice President Global Head of Supply Chain Planning, Manufacturing and Logistics in 2022, overseeing the fallout of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and SAP’s exit from Russia and Belarus. 

Now, in his current role as the Global Head of Digital Supply Chain, David is tasked with showing strong leadership and preparing for whatever comes next. 

“Motivating by purpose is the number one principle I aspire to,” he says. “I have a high-performing team of subject-matter experts, so I help my team understand the purpose of what they do, articulating the value of what we’re doing for our customers. I try to lead by example and be highly collaborative because we’re so networked within the organisation with touchpoints externally and internally that we have to be highly collaborative to be effective.”

Back in 2014, David knew that AI capabilities were growing, from robotics becoming more prevalent in factories to virtual assistants used to keep households organised. Now, AI is one of the biggest strategic elements of SAP’s innovations. 

“For our customers, we embed business AI into our portfolio. In my day-to-day work, I use GenAI most frequently, often to help articulate or summarise topics and create a narrative,” David explains. “My team and I use AI in meetings, asking questions which frequently result in insightful responses that can help us shortcut the thought process. For example, we may ask what challenges customers are facing or to what an impactful agenda is for a specific group of personas. It’s that additional worker in the meeting.” 

Partnerships and innovation in supply chain management with SAP

David sees successful supply chain management as an open ecosystem, which needs plenty of partnerships to function. 

“In business planning, for example, we bring in outside data about signals like the weather, traffic, market economics, consumer trends and risks from partners like Google, Everstream Analytics and Alloy.ai,” he explains.  

That data then complements the customers’ business data and is used to derive insights or improve forecasting and risk management. 

He adds: “On the manufacturing side, we have partners like Kinexon to bridge physical machines with our enterprise systems.”

This alliance uses Kinexon's advanced understanding of automation and IoT, with SAP’s Digital Supply Chain portfolio and vast suite of tools.  Together, Kinexon and SAP aim to advance how manufacturers approach efficiency and sustainability in the age of Industry 4.0.  Their united goal is to improve supply chain and production operations, as well as upgrade business process innovation and intelligent enterprise development, as outlined in RISE with SAP. 

In addition to this, SAP has achieved phenomenal results from its additional partnerships:

AMD

In collaboration with Deloitte and SAP, AMD has created a GenAI solution on SAP BTP to reduce the impact of supply chain shortages: The GenAI Supply Chain Troubleshooter which offers insights into sales order confirmations and spots potential problems and suggests corrective action.

Blue Diamond Growers

Blue Diamond Growers uses SAP solutions’ to build an intelligent, data-driven cooperative, with software including SAP S/4HANA, the SAP Transportation Management application and SAP Business Network for Logistics. 

Microsoft

Microsoft invested into SAP’s Integrated Business Planning for Supply Chain solution for its planning transformation. This connects various IT systems to allow Microsoft stronger visibility through its operations and predictive planning capabilities for data-driven insights, helping it to minimise supply chain risk.

Richemont

Richemont International was facing limited supply chain visibility with its manual procurement processes. But with the SAP Business Network and SAP Business Network for Supply Chain, Richemont has gained greater insight into its ethically sourced materials.

Over the next year, SAP plans to continue to help improve customers’ business performance by making their supply chain their innovation engine. 

“To do that, we are focusing on expanding AI and GenAI capabilities across our digital supply chain portfolio,” David says. “We are also helping our customers to move their supply chain footprint into the cloud, along with their broader enterprise management software portfolio. This will help our customers to maintain the pace and level of innovation that the cloud enables, especially in conjunction with their ERP, through our RISE and GROW with SAP motion.”

**************

Make sure you check out the latest edition of Manufacturing Digital and also sign up to our global conference series - Procurement & Supply Chain 2024 & Sustainability LIVE 2024

******

Manufacturing Digital is a BizClik brand.