In conversation with Nobuhiro (Nelson) Sasaki

I’m thoroughly enjoying this blog series. It’s a great opportunity for me to talk to leaders from across our global SAP practice to bust myths, share successes, and find out what makes them tick. Today, I spoke with Nelson Sasaki, who leads our SAP practice at PwC Japan.

Martin: To kick off our conversation, what SAP myth would you like to bust?

Nelson: For years, many Japanese companies believed that their businesses were too unique or complex for public cloud solutions. This has led to dependence on private cloud and customisation.

However, SAP’s public cloud solution – SAP Cloud ERP – has evolved significantly, and generative AI (GenAI) has advanced rapidly. I believe that by combining SAP Cloud ERP with business process reengineering powered by GenAI, we can challenge and overturn this longstanding assumption and demonstrate that public cloud is a great option for many clients in Japan.

Martin: What excites you most about the PwC SAP alliance?

Nelson: Our relationship with SAP grows ever closer. We’ve established strong, regular communication at a global level, which has created a genuine sense of partnership between our organisations. These interactions go far beyond local discussions between SAP and PwC in individual countries. Teams from Japan actively participate in several global forums each year, sharing our insights and perspectives.

What excites me most about the PwC SAP alliance is the opportunity for feedback from our practitioners on the ground to be reflected in SAP’s products and go-to-market strategies. This feedback mechanism further strengthens the win-win relationship between PwC and SAP.

Martin: What’s the most exciting project you recently worked on?

Nelson: Many companies that rely on on-premise deployments of SAP’s older ECC applications choose a straightforward “brownfield” conversion to the SAP Cloud ERP Private solution (formerly SAP S/4HANA Cloud, Private Edition). The main reason is that they don't want to reinvest in developing reports, interfaces, conversions, enhancements and forms (known as “RICEF” in the SAP world). However, this approach can compromise business agility. As companies running SAP on public cloud benefit from frequent releases of new functionality, such as AI innovations, those with static private cloud environments risk getting left behind.

We’ve launched several exciting projects that take a much bolder, more transformative approach. We’re helping clients truly transform their businesses by reinventing their business processes and migrating directly from SAP ECC to SAP on public cloud. Our method uses GenAI to:

• Understand companies’ business processes and identify opportunities for simplification
  
• Pinpoint areas where we can significantly reduce manual work
• Deduce which business processes can be supported using standard SAP Cloud ERP functionality, and which require customisation on SAP Business Technology Platform (BTP).

This holistic approach delivers far greater rewards than a simple brownfield conversion. It also aligns with SAP’s recommended “clean core” principles (minimising customisation of the core ERP, so that clients can benefit from new functionality as it’s released). It’s an exciting way for clients to transition seamlessly to public cloud – leapfrogging the conventional interim step of a brownfield conversion to SAP Cloud ERP Private.

Martin: Thanks Nelson. Now, over to you. What other developments are you seeing across the SAP landscape in Japan?

Nelson: We were privileged to host the PwC Global SAP Leaders Summit in Tokyo last year. This event helped reaffirm our strategy: simplifying the move to public cloud by combining GenAI with business process reengineering.

To support this strategy, our entire Japanese SAP consulting team completed robust training on GenAI, building on their expertise in business process reinvention. This enables us to deliver genuine business transformation for clients. This is an important competitive differentiator for us, because the other Big Four providers and smaller systems integrators in Japan tend to focus on brownfield SAP Cloud ERP Private conversions.

We’re also creating synergies across our SAP and Microsoft practices. I lead our alliances with both SAP and Microsoft, which is very fortunate, because the two companies are working more closely together. For example, SAP has closely integrated its own Joule copilot with Microsoft Copilot.

Combining our SAP and Microsoft expertise delivers superb value for clients. For example, we can help deliver SAP implementations featuring close integration with Microsoft Teams and innovative GenAI capabilities in Microsoft Copilot.

We have seen a big shift towards public cloud in the Japanese market. One of the most popular approaches is a so-called “two-tier” implementation – running the core business on private cloud, while decentral, smaller subsidiaries or entities sit on public cloud. For example, one of our clients is currently rolling out a global template on SAP Cloud ERP Private covering their major markets such as Japan and Germany, but with smaller subsidiaries in India and South East Asia moving to public cloud.

I believe that the shift towards public cloud will be further accelerated by our new Cloud Express solutions, which deliver exceptional time-to-value and go-live in just a few weeks. We plan to combine Cloud Express with GenAI and business process reengineering to provide an outstanding value proposition for clients.

Internally, we’re moving to PwC’s global template of SAP Cloud ERP. This will enable our Japanese firm to join the 100,000+ PwC professionals across 19 countries already connected on a unified, intelligent ERP platform. This internal use case will also enable us to contribute our first-hand experience to clients’ SAP Cloud ERP implementations.

Martin: We had a great time at the summit in Tokyo last year. It’s wonderful to hear that you’ve made even greater progress since then, particularly around public cloud, GenAI and business process reengineering. I have one final question: When you’re not at work, how do you like to spend your time?

Nelson: I’ve played golf for many years. Although I haven’t improved as much as I would like, I enjoy going to the driving range and I make time to go every week. I began playing golf seriously when I lived in the United States, during the peak of Tiger Woods’ career. At the time, I was living in Silicon Valley and working at Sun Microsystems as a software engineer. My spare time was spent playing golf and I dreamed of becoming as good as Tiger was. But at the same time I had a different thought: Even if I’m not as skilled as Tiger today, if I can maintain my physical fitness over the long term, perhaps one day – when Tiger himself has grown older – I will finally be able to catch up. With that dream in mind, I continue to practise, go to the gym to maintain my fitness, and patiently wait for that day to come.

I thoroughly enjoyed talking to Nelson. I was particularly impressed by his team’s novel approach of combining GenAI and business process reengineering to smooth the journey to public cloud for clients across Japan. And now that I know he’s a golf aficionado, I’ll be sure to pack my clubs next time I meet him.

Stay tuned for insights from more leaders across our global SAP alliance coming soon. As ever, thanks for reading.