Eursap's Ask-the-SAP-Expert – Mike Davis

Eursap's Ask-the-SAP-Expert – Mike Davis.

This month, we feature Mike Davis. Mike has led global transformation programs across the world for the past 30 years. Mike is Managing Director of LydianGBS, whose approach to these projects is unique, focusing on establishing clarity, strengthening decision-making, and ensuring execution is grounded in engineering discipline. Mike’s personal experience is impressive, straddling multiple SAP S/4HANA global programmes across the globe.

Hello Mike, firstly thank you for taking the time to talk to us. For the benefit of our readers, please can you introduce yourself?

"Transformation doesn't fail in the system. It fails in the decisions."

I'm Managing Partner at LydianGBS and have spent the last three decades leading large-scale business and technology transformations across multiple industries and geographies. I've been fortunate to work on some of the most complex SAP programmes around the world, helping organisations navigate everything from global deployments and operating model redesign through to programme recovery and transformation assurance.

The lesson I've learned throughout that time is surprisingly simple: technology is rarely the determining factor in transformation success. Most organisations have access to good technology and good people. What differentiates successful programmes is leadership clarity, decision quality, and disciplined execution. That's ultimately what we focus on at LydianGBS.

And how did you first get into SAP and what kept you in the ecosystem when so many people move on?

"SAP isn't software. It's where business decisions become operational reality."

I didn't stay in SAP because of SAP. I stayed because SAP sits at the centre of how organisations run their business. When you're involved in SAP transformation, you're discussing strategy, operations, supply chain, finance, customer experience, governance, data and organisational change. The technology simply provides the platform where all those decisions converge. 

What keeps me interested today is exactly what interested me thirty years ago: helping organisations translate ambition into execution. The software changes; the business challenge remains remarkably consistent.

In our intro, we mentioned your unique approach to transformation. What was the project or moment that shaped how you think about transformation delivery today?

"The most important lesson of my career came from a programme that worked perfectly and still failed."

Early in my career, I experienced a programme that was technically successful but commercially disappointing. The system worked. The project delivered. The business outcome was far below expectations. That experience fundamentally changed my perspective. I realised that successful transformation isn't about implementing technology. It's about creating organisational clarity. If stakeholders are misaligned, decisions are delayed, ownership is unclear, or governance is weak, even excellent technology will struggle to deliver value. Since then, I've viewed transformation as a leadership challenge supported by technology, rather than a technology challenge supported by leadership.

You've moved into a Global Partner role. What changed in how you spend your time, and what do you miss about being closer to delivery?

"The hardest part of transformation isn't solving problems. It's deciding which ones matter."

Today I spend less time solving individual programme problems and more time helping leadership teams understand which problems actually matter. That's an important distinction. Many transformation programmes become overwhelmed by activity. Executive teams are often receiving hundreds of updates, risks and issues. What they need is clarity on the handful of decisions that will genuinely influence the outcome. 

What I miss is the energy of delivery teams. There is something incredibly rewarding about helping a programme navigate a difficult moment and succeed. Fortunately, I still get involved whenever clients face complex decisions or critical turning points.

What drew you to Lydian, and what's different about building a practice there versus a large SI?

"Most firms deliver programmes. LydianGBS improves the decisions that determine whether programmes succeed."

Many firms are structured to deliver programmes. LydianGBS is structured to improve the quality of decisions surrounding programmes. That may sound like a subtle distinction, but it's actually significant. By the time clients engage us, they often already have implementation partners, programme teams and substantial investment in place. What they need is an independent perspective. They need objective insight into programme health. They need experienced people who can challenge assumptions, simplify complexity and help leadership make better decisions.

We deliberately built LydianGBS around senior practitioners because transformation outcomes are heavily influenced by judgement. When organisations face their most critical moments, experience matters.

Where are you seeing S/4HANA programmes go wrong most often, and is it technology, data, or people?

"Most SAP failures are leadership failures with technical symptoms."

The honest answer is none of those. The underlying problem is usually decision-making. Most organisations know they have data challenges. They know process standardisation will be difficult. They know change management is important. Failure rarely comes from not understanding the issues. Failure comes when organisations avoid difficult decisions, delay difficult decisions, or make inconsistent decisions. When we review struggling programmes, we almost always find the same root causes: governance uncertainty, unclear ownership, competing priorities and a lack of executive alignment.

In my experience, SAP failures are rarely technical failures. They are organisational failures.

Public Cloud versus Private Cloud: how do you help clients make that call honestly, rather than following SAP's sales push?

"Choose the business you want to become before you choose the cloud to run it."

The wrong approach is to start with the technology. The right approach is to start with a simple question: what kind of business are you trying to become? Once leadership is clear on the operating model, growth strategy, standardisation objectives and regulatory constraints, the technology decision becomes significantly easier. Public Cloud is the right answer for many organisations. Private Cloud is the right answer for many others.

What concerns me is when organisations select a deployment model before they've aligned on the business decisions that should drive it. Technology decisions should serve business objectives, not the other way around.

How much of a successful S/4HANA programme really comes down to data quality and master data, and do clients take that seriously early enough?

"Data problems are yesterday's business decisions showing up in tomorrow's system."

Data is one of the most accurate leading indicators of programme success. The challenge is that data issues remain largely invisible until late in the programme, which makes them easy to underestimate. At LydianGBS, we often say that organisations don't migrate data; they migrate business decisions. Every duplicate customer record, inconsistent product hierarchy or conflicting master data definition represents a historical decision that has accumulated over time. The organisations that succeed are the ones willing to address those decisions early rather than treating data as a technical workstream. 

Stabilisation and audit work suggest a lot of programmes land badly. What does a "rescue" usually look like?

"You can't rescue a programme until everyone agrees on reality."

The first thing we do is establish whether leadership has a shared understanding of reality. That may sound obvious, but it's surprisingly uncommon. Many struggling programmes are operating with multiple versions of the truth. The executive team sees one picture. The programme team sees another. The implementation partner sees a third. Before discussing solutions, we focus on creating clarity. In my experience, most rescues are not technology exercises. They're leadership exercises. Once organisations understand the genuine root causes, align around priorities and regain confidence in decision-making, the technical path forward is usually far easier to identify. 

With 2027 and 2030 maintenance deadlines, are customers moving with purpose or in a panic?

"The leaders see S/4HANA as transformation. The laggards see it as migration."

A bit of both. The organisations creating the most value are treating S/4HANA as an opportunity to modernise how they operate. Others are understandably feeling pressure from deadlines. The risk is that urgency drives migration thinking rather than transformation thinking. The most successful organisations aren't asking, "How do we move to S/4HANA?" They're asking, "How do we become a better business and how can S/4HANA support that ambition?" That's a very different conversation.

We have to mention AI in an IT discussion obviously! From Lydian's perspective, how is AI, especially agentic AI and Joule, going to change what an SAP consultant actually does day to day?

"AI will commoditise execution and amplify judgement."

AI will automate a great deal of what consultants spend their time doing today. Documentation, testing, analysis, monitoring and aspects of design will become faster and increasingly automated. What becomes more valuable is judgement. For twenty years people have predicted that technology would replace consultants. What actually happens is that technology removes routine work and increases the value of expertise. I believe AI will follow exactly the same pattern.Technology can generate recommendations. Technology can generate options. What organisations will continue to need is experienced professionals capable of deciding which option should actually be pursued.

Clean core is SAP's big message. Is it achievable for most customers, or an ideal they'll only partly reach?

"Clean core isn't a technology challenge. It's a governance test."

I think the industry sometimes frames clean core incorrectly. Most organisations don't have a customisation problem. They have a governance problem. Every customisation exists because somebody approved it. Every deviation from standard has a business rationale behind it. The real challenge is learning to differentiate between genuine competitive advantage and historical complexity. 

Clean core isn't primarily a technology discipline. It's a decision-making discipline.

A difficult question now: if you look ten years ahead, what does the SAP partner ecosystem look like, and where does a firm like Lydian fit?

"As delivery becomes automated, judgement becomes premium."

I believe we're entering an era where expertise becomes more important than scale. AI will inevitably automate significant portions of delivery activity that have traditionally relied on large teams. As that happens, clients will increasingly seek partners who bring experience, independence, assurance and strategic insight. I think the market will place a premium on organisations that can help leadership navigate complexity rather than simply provide implementation capacity. That aligns strongly with where LydianGBS operates today.

We are intentionally building a business around judgement, experience and transformation confidence rather than delivery volume. 

And the question we always like to ask our gurus: What skills should SAP professionals be building now to stay relevant in five years?

"Technology expertise gets you into the room. Business judgement keeps you there."

The future belongs to people who can connect technology to business outcomes. Technical expertise will remain important, but it won't be sufficient on its own. The professionals who will thrive are those who understand strategy, process design, data, AI, organisational change and executive decision-making. As technology becomes easier to deploy, the ability to navigate complexity becomes increasingly valuable. The career opportunity isn't becoming better at technology. It's becoming better at helping organisations make better decisions.

And a final thought from me… After more than thirty-five years in transformation, I've come to a simple conclusion: organisations rarely fail because they choose the wrong technology. More often, they fail because they struggle to make clear decisions and execute them consistently. Technology has never been more capable than it is today. The real differentiator remains leadership, clarity and disciplined execution. That's the challenge we help clients solve and overcome at LydianGBS every day.