While both SAP and Volkswagen have embarked on their own cloud journeys, embracing respective technological development as the future of their businesses, purchasing different SAP solutions – S4 HANA vs. RISE – for a variety of different projects in a large company requires both flexibility as well as a proactive business enabling role of IT Procurement. The presentation highlights the main challenges of current SAP procurement at Volkswagen and demonstrates how IT Procurement can successfully support large digital transformation projects. While different business units may require different solutions, the presentation argues that in the case of large vendors a good way to be optimally prepared for additional purchases, contract renewals, etc. is to follow the vendor´s own strategy. Being able to anticipate technology trends such as further developments of specific software products, enables IT procurement to forecast and efficiently assess the need for additional services, e.g. integration partners, thus being able to avoid potential bottlenecks and reduce cost. In this sesssion you will learn 

• How to optimize IT procurement and adjust it to both the strategic needs and decisions by your own business as well as to the technological evolution of your vendors
• How to deal with large projects and mega vendors such as SAP
• How to solve the discrepancy between technological advancement and commercial aspects of ongoing or upcoming projects
• How to find the right balance technology, requirements of large projects and make the right purchasing decisions 
• How to decide which SAP solutions – S4 HANA or RISE – is a better fit for your organization and projects
• Why closely observing the changes in a vendor portfolio and even rethinking previous decisions can be crucial.