In this blog series, I sit down with leaders from across our global SAP practice to bust myths, share successes, and find out what makes them tick. Today, I talked to Chris Sun, who leads our SAP practice in China.
Chris Sun, PwC China Consulting SAP Practice Leader and Central China Consulting Leader
With 20 years of consulting experience under his belt, Chris is passionate about supporting clients’ business transformation through digitisation. He specialises in advising CIOs and implementing ERP applications and customer relationship management (CRM) systems.
Fun fact: Chris has run three marathons. He jokes that his personal best is “awful”.
Martin: First off, what SAP myth do you want to bust?
Chris: The biggest myth I face is that SAP is a cure-all for every management problem. It’s simply not realistic to expect this from an ERP system. Deploying SAP is about going on a business transformation journey, so you need an experienced partner who can guide you not only through the technology decisions, but also all of the other aspects like your processes, data, business model, operating model, and organisational structure. The most successful SAP implementations ensure that all of these different pieces of the puzzle fit together beautifully.
I am a keen believer that SAP is essential infrastructure for your business. The aim is to build a strong foundation to achieve your company’s future goals, such as enhancing decision-making, strengthening digital intelligence or boosting overall efficiency to drive growth. I also believe that continuous improvement is a powerful way to create lasting success.
Martin: What excites you most about the PwC SAP alliance?
Chris: The PwC SAP alliance is so much more than a typical sales partnership. There’s a powerful end-to-end synergy between SAP’s innovative solutions and our high-quality professional services. Together, we help clients build a solid digital core that’s prepared for the era of AI. This enables companies to embrace data-driven decision-making and achieve their long-term goals, including operational efficiency, scalable growth, global expansion and intelligent transformation.
Martin: What’s the most exciting project you recently worked on?
Chris: We recently implemented SAP at a Chinese pharma startup that has an exciting new cancer treatment in late-stage clinical trials. It’s expected to become one of the top medicines in the world. The company’s plan is to use the SAP applications to support sales and production operations once they’ve passed clinical trials and are looking to scale up. We’re so lucky and proud to be involved in this journey and make even a small contribution towards finding a cure for cancer.
Martin: Thanks Chris. Now, over to you. What other developments are you seeing in the SAP market in China?
Chris: China is a very exciting market to work in. It’s extremely competitive, and there are many strong companies developing very quickly. For example, we work with leading companies across diverse industries, such as medical devices, energy, solar power, electric vehicles and batteries.
Our aim is to deliver expertise and value for clients and grow with them. The top Chinese companies want to expand to Europe or North America, so PwC is in a great position to support their ambitions. For example, if we deliver a strong SAP implementation with positive business impact early on, this naturally leads to other opportunities to do more work for the client in the future. I believe this long-term view helps us build close relationships with clients and support their success, while strengthening our own business resilience.
One interesting thing about the Chinese market is that most clients still opt for private cloud SAP implementations, so that they can customise the ERP to meet their own specific requirements. It feels like public cloud is still some way off becoming dominant here.
My conversation with Chris was enlightening. Most of the leaders I’ve spoken to during this blog series are seeing a sharp uptick in public cloud adoption, so it’s interesting to hear that Chinese clients are taking a more conservative approach. It was also inspiring to hear about PwC China’s contribution to new developments in the pharma industry.
Thanks for reading, and stay tuned for insights from more leaders across our global SAP alliance coming soon.
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