An Interview with Sonia Nash, Head of Business AI, SAP UK&I: AI Adoption and an Unconventional Route into Tech

In our latest senior leader interview, Craig is joined by Sonia Nash, Head of Business AI at SAP UK and Ireland.

Sonia shares her unconventional career journey - from accounts payable into automation, solution advisory and now leading SAP's Business AI focus. She reflects on the mentors who shaped her path, the importance of curiosity, and why you don't need to be a developer to build a rewarding career in tech.

Craig and Sonia also discuss the shift from AI skepticism to genuine enthusiasm among SAP customers, how organisations can get started with Joule and SAP Business AI, and why agentic AI is the most exciting development across the community. They also explore what it will take to attract more women and diverse talent into STEM and SAP careers.

You can access SAP's Discovery Center here: https://discovery-center.cloud.sap/ai-catalog/

To learn more about the UKISUG referral scheme, visit: https://www.sapusers.org/community-referral-scheme

Transcript

 Craig (00:09)
Hallo everyone and welcome to SUKTALKS. I'm Craig Dale, your host, and together with our special guests, we'll take a deep dive into the topics, challenges, and opportunities facing SAP users today. Please make sure you do subscribe so you don't miss any of our future episodes. I'm delighted today to be joined by Sonia Nash, Head of Business AI at SAP UK and Ireland. So welcome, Sonia.

Sonia Nash (00:35)
Thanks for having me, Craig. Lovely to be here on the Monday morning.

Craig (00:39)
Oh, it's our pleasure. It's our pleasure. Yeah, great start to the week, I think. Great start to the week. And in today's episode, which is the latest in our series of interviews with senior leaders in the SAP community to hear about their careers, tips for getting ahead, and challenges they have faced, including a little deviation into the world of AI, no doubt. And just before we get into that, Sonia, I'd just like to ask you, when was the last time you cried with laughter?

Sonia Nash (01:11)
Oh, cried with laughter. Uh, it was while watching a movie, actually. Um, a very, uh, non-PC movie, so I'm not too sure I should mention the title here. But yes, it was a movie that made me laugh out loud to the point of tears. Yeah.

Craig (01:31)
Oh, fantastic. Funnily enough, it was last week. Superb. Mine was last night, actually. We were catching up on Slow Horses. I don't know whether you watch that, but that isn't— that, I, I think, fairly un-PC in a lot of ways it is. But, oh, Gary Oldman's amazing in it, and it is hilarious in, in moments. Absolutely brilliant. Not the kind of boss you'd like to be or you would like to have, but absolutely fantastic. Okay, well, thanks for that, Sonia. Just to start things off, could you give us a little background on yourself, your career, and what led you to working in SAP, please?

Sonia Nash (02:15)
Sure. It's a bit of what I would say an unconventional journey. So that's not the usual. I started about 15 years ago now in accounts payable. So I was someone working in finance and my claim to fame in that role is that I fell asleep on the job. So my job was so mind-numbing and tremendously boring at that time that I actually fell asleep in an open-plan office. Wow. And my role at the time was more data data entry, if you like, than accounts payable truly. I had to look at a piece of paper and type in what I was seeing on the paper in a box in a computer essentially. And I obviously, I thought to myself, this cannot be my life. This cannot be what there is about finance. It has to be a little bit more exciting than that. So this is how I slowly pivoted from being a finance person towards being a more technical person because I looked at what can help us make life easier, what can distract, if you like, remove the noise and the manual labor that doesn't engage many brain cells to really get stuck in with the things that are interesting.

Sonia Nash (03:41)
And of course, tech was the answer and automation and OCR. So, I started working on improvement projects, right? That involved technology. And then with that particular company, I acquired a, if you like, a set of skills in terms of what we used to call IT finance. So, I wasn't truly a finance person. I wasn't truly a technical techie at the time, but I had the understanding of both worlds. So, I pivoted my career towards moving from one company to the next and advising and implementing tools. I have to say it was non-SAP tools at the time. So my journey did not start with SAP. It's the other competitor, the red one.

Craig (04:31)
Okay.

Sonia Nash (04:31)
That we cannot name. And then obviously through that, I came across actually SAP in a couple of roles and SAP Concur. So I've implemented that, and it was not just from a technical standpoint, but also looking at the change management piece and the training. So once we implement those tools to make life easier for the workforce, the big part of that is also making sure that these tools are understood, well used, and well accepted by the workforce. And actually, that was the bigger challenge as opposed to implementing the tech per se. So that's what I've been doing. And because I've been exposed to SAP and SAP Concur, there was an opportunity for me in 2020 to join SAP. I started my interview process just before COVID and the first lockdown. So I wasn't sure I would get the job at that point because it was literally a couple of weeks before we went into the first lockdown, but We rolled with it and I got started at SAP in April 2020 on the Concur side to work on solution advisory. Because I had that finance background, that's what really SAP was interested in, is to have subject matter experts in finance who could talk, you know, on par with customers and really understand their challenges.

Sonia Nash (06:11)
And about 3 years ago, me being a little bit of a geek, of a nerd, I started looking at what's next beyond automation. And of course, artificial intelligence was starting to really make some strides in the industry. So I pivoted my career from a pure personal standpoint, had nothing to do with SAP at the time. Towards artificial intelligence. And I went to Oxford University to do their AI program. And it was a month before Christian Klein, if you like, mentioned the strategy or first talked about SAP Business AI. So it was a right place, right time for me, really.

Craig (07:01)
Oh, fantastic. So I mean, just going back there, implemented Concur. You liked it so much you joined the company.

Sonia Nash (07:09)
That's it. That's it.

Craig (07:10)
Reminds me of that Remington advert, isn't it? Yeah, I like the razor so much I bought the company. But, uh, that, that what, what was really interesting there, I think, was you, you touched on, I think, one of the, the key elements of utilizing and getting the most out of SAP, and that challenge around adoption, about You know, that is always the key challenge is that we can bring so much in, but how do we get people to love it and use it?

Sonia Nash (07:40)
Yeah. Yeah. It's always the challenge with— forget AI for a minute. What I was doing at the time was not related to AI. It was purchase order systems and invoicing systems that were not necessarily using AI, but you really have to understand your workforce and your employees and what a drastic change it can be in their life. And humans are naturally resistant to change. So, how do you bring about those kinds of changes and make sure they come along with you and get not just forced into it, but enthused by it? That's the key, the key element here. Make sure they're happy with it.

Craig (08:26)
Fantastic. And so you've recently started your role, I think earlier this year, as SAP UK and Ireland's Business AI Lead. So how are you finding that role?

Sonia Nash (08:40)
It's extremely rewarding, extremely challenging in places as well. So it's rewarding because the conversations that we're having with customers across industry are fabulous. Fabulous in what sense? In the sense that we are able to have the real conversations. And it's about, I think we've shifted now between last year and this year. Last year was, I think, the year of skepticism, the year of people being a little bit wary and waiting. 'Let's see what happens.' So conversations were not as open as they are now. I think that a lot of companies, big and small, are now seeing the value of AI. There's still a lot of work to be done, I feel, at RN to really showcase that value to customers. We still have some skepticism there. But those who are convinced now are really opening up their challenges, their aspirations, and we can really have a collaborative conversation. And that is the most rewarding part of my day is being locked in a room for 8 hours with a customer and start ideating and start looking at what can technology do for you, but also maybe AI is not the answer in some cases. So having those open discussions is brilliant.

Sonia Nash (10:14)
The challenge with the role at the moment is, is anybody in my, in my shoes, if you like, at any company is going to have the same problem, is the pace of innovation, the pace of change. How do you get yourself educated on what's the latest? That's, that's obviously a difficult, a difficult piece, but also how do you educate the rest of the workforce? Within this role, my role is not, I'm not in charge of the engineering teams, I'm in charge of the field teams. So, it's making sure that our sales, our customer advisory, everybody is able to articulate the value of AI within each function, within each product. And because this is changing so rapidly, as you can imagine, it's, my role is quite busy. Not a dull day.

Craig (11:08)
I can well imagine. And, you know, you mentioned earlier the right time, right place. You'd gone to Oxford University to do the AI program, and then Christian Klein announced the future strategy of SAP and Business AI. And so SAP is definitely increasingly championing the value of AI, as you've mentioned, particularly with Joule and SAP Business AI. Do you have any advice for those organizations looking to use SAP AI tools on finding that value for them?

Sonia Nash (11:43)
Well, the first thing I would advise is you need to have a conversation with your business. And I know that sounds perhaps a little bit obvious, but what we have seen a lot so far is departments within organizations looking at AI in silos, in isolation. And actually there are a lot, especially when we talk about agentic AI specifically, that there's opportunities to look at end-to-end processes, right? As opposed to look at a very tiny portion of a process and see what AI can do within this. So obviously for larger companies having an AI governance and start looking at holistically what, where can AI make a difference in our company and how can we leverage AI to re-engineer some processes? So I would say the first step is to have those conversations internally before you even start considering, okay, what tools are we going to be using? And once you have a good handle as to what you're trying to achieve, then it's a question of speaking with, with obviously your SAP Account Executive, getting started with AI is actually less difficult than some people might think. It doesn't take, you know, 2 years, very complex implementation programs to get started, right?

Sonia Nash (13:19)
So it's fundamental to just take the plunge, take the plunge. That there are things like Joule that can be activated relatively quickly. This can be implemented in sandbox. We've got customers that are saying, well, we don't want to implement something just yet in our production environment. We want to test it. We want to look at it and then build our adoption plans internally around it. We can easily, easily do that.

Craig (13:51)
Thank you. And how can customers access SAP's different AI innovations?

Sonia Nash (14:00)
So there's a link that I will send you, and you'll probably be able to advertise it somewhere where we've got the Discovery Center. This is a one-stop shop, the Discovery Center, with all of our AI innovations. So what I recommend always to our customers is bookmark this and keep an eye on it because this is where we release a lot of that information. Of course, they'll receive some information from their account executives. But I think the main thing for me would be work with your SAP team because there's a lot, right? One of the feedback that we're receiving from customers is when you open, of course, our Discovery Center, you see 300 use cases. Wow, that's— where do I even start with this? And you've got activation guides, you've got some information, but it could be a little bit overwhelming, let's be honest. You open that page. So, work with your account executives. The getting started would be there. Get advice from them as to where you need to go, because some use cases are going to be tremendously easy to activate, right? And it's only a couple of steps, if you like. Some of them are not costly at all, actually.

Sonia Nash (15:20)
And can get you live with some of those use cases very quickly. Some others will require, obviously, a little bit more configuration, a little bit more time. So the best place to go is look at the AI Discovery Center. Look at the missions. There's an area of missions as well that explains how you can activate. But when in doubt, always, always go to your account exec.

Craig (15:46)
Oh, thank you for that.

Sonia Nash (15:47)
We know our community, but we don't know yours— yet. Why not share the benefits of your UKiSub membership with those who don't know about us? The UKiSub referral scheme rewards you for helping to grow and develop our community. You can check out the link in the description to find out more about how you can get involved. Terms and conditions apply. We hope you enjoy the rest of the podcast.

Craig (16:14)
Now, one of the key things you, you've mentioned quite a lot about is, is the value and, you know, customers finding the value involving the business end-to-end processes, looking at where they can really drive the value in their business. And one of the things I think we find when we talk to customers is often customers wait to see other customers go first. You know, they don't want to be right at the bleeding edge, as they say. So what What are some of the most, I suppose, exciting AI use cases you're seeing emerge within the SAP community?

Sonia Nash (16:52)
I mean, it sounds a bit marketingy, but the agents, AI agents and agentic AI is probably the most exciting piece. But I'll tell you why I feel from my perspective it's the most interesting technology today is it's one that can go across processes. So what we've seen so far within the world of AI at large, not just in SAP, is what I would call surface-level little tools, little productivity widgets. You turn this on here and you may gain 2 minutes there. It's great, right? We want to gain productivity, but A lot of processes start somewhere else beyond where you are now. So if you think, you know, my old loves of accounts payable and procurement, it's called purchase-to-pay. When an accounts payable person receives an invoice, it's never initiated within accounts payable. It comes from a buying process that lives completely elsewhere. In the organization, it's a different department, and it's also a different module potentially in SAP or whatever tool you're using. So Agentic AI has got the power to look beyond the efficiency that you will gain in your own little silo. And that's the piece that is interesting for users, but also for companies at large.

Sonia Nash (18:25)
Because if you can get automation and improvements across the piece, that, that's where the big return on investment is, is going to be beyond productivity.

Craig (18:38)
No, thank you. And, you know, we, we'll move on from AI now and, uh, back, back onto you, if we may. Uh, just, you, you mentioned there when you went to, uh, Oxford University to do their AI course, that was something that had piqued your interest. And I suppose It shows your curious side. Have you always been a curious person?

Sonia Nash (19:03)
Yes. Yes. I'm one of those, one of those children that spend their life asking why, why, why does it work this way? Why this? Why that? You know, boring your parents to death. But it's— yes, I think curiosity is a major part of what has driven my journey. I don't like the status quo. I like to see, well, is there a better way? That's what is always driving me. Is there a better way of doing this? And if so, what tools are there? And I try to understand the technology. I'm not a developer. I never will be. If you like, I know a bit of Python and I can build agents, but I'm not at the core a developer, but I, decided to learn that technology to try and understand the capabilities and how far can we go with those technologies, because I like to understand how, how things work.

Craig (20:02)
Oh, fantastic. I think curiosity is a great trait because, you know, what you said there— can we do this better? Is there a better way? I think there's always a better way. You just have to find it. Sometimes it's only just a tiny tweak that, that'll give you, uh, that X percent of increased productivity or making your life easier. It's just always there, and it's just finding it. And who, who've been the most influential mentors or role models in, in your career or life, and what lessons did you take from them?

Sonia Nash (20:42)
But back in, back in the days when I was in, in a bit of a rut in accounts payable and, and feeling that what I was doing wasn't the most optimal way. I had the privilege of working with people who were consultants at the time, external consultants to the company, that were willing to show me what tech could do. So, you know, in a way, I do owe where I am now to this bunch of people who just thought, well, we'll take this little lady here, this little accounts payable lady who's asking too many questions, and we will show her. We will, 'we'll take her under our wing and show her.' So, I owe them a lot. Role model within my career, I have to say, you may or may not have come across Richard Allen in SAP. So, he was my boss at SAP Concur. So, he heads the solution advisory, and it's the best, he is the best leader I've ever had in terms of having the ability to get the most out of people. Before joining Concur, I did not, I didn't even know what solution advisory was. You know, I was a doer.

Sonia Nash (22:05)
I was someone working on the business side and implementing tools, if you like. I was never in an advisory role. And, Thanks to his leadership, I am where I am today. And I think being a great leader is what really is needed to get the, if you like, get the best out of your employees. And he did that by fostering a culture of innovation and curiosity. So, asking why was always the number one priority, and he also let us, innovate, right? What tools do you need to do your job? And there was, as you can imagine, so many new tools on the market that we could explore inside SAP, but outside of SAP, and it was a go and explore, go and explore and bring back your findings and see if this is something that could help us as a team, that could help you do your job better. So fostering that culture of innovation and what was really, you know, something I aspire to. And if I'm a leader at the moment, obviously I'm leading a function, but not giant teams, if you like. I used to manage teams in accounts payable, not within SAP per se.

Sonia Nash (23:28)
It's the person I'm looking up to. Yeah.

Craig (23:31)
Oh, wonderful. Thank you for that. And for somebody perhaps looking or considering working in the SAP space, what would your advice be to them?

Sonia Nash (23:43)
I suppose there's various pieces of advice. You don't have to come from a pure tech background to be welcome, to be useful. I don't think it's the right word I would use, but that's the one that comes into my mind. I think a lot of people think to work in tech, you need to be a through and through techie. And I'm the embodiment of the contrary, right? I started in finance, I'm not a developer, and I am where I am because I've got a different set of skills. So don't be intimidated by the industry label tech. You have something to bring into the party, right? And it's how do you showcase what you have to bring to the party. You would be surprised how, conscious SAP is of the fact that we need both kinds of people, technical people, but we also need people who understand the customers, understand the business process behind it, right? Because a lot of the time, very technical people might know the why this button is created there, what table it relates to, but they don't know why a user would want to go and press that button.

Craig (25:05)
Right?

Sonia Nash (25:05)
Because you need to know the business process behind it. So, my advice would be, first of all, apply for jobs. And there's an interesting piece of information around that. I think as of today, women specifically only apply for roles if they can fulfill 90% of the criteria that are listed. On a job description, while males would tend to apply even though they only have, for example, 40-50%. So, there's a big issue specifically around women and attracting women into tech. I was looking at some stats before obviously joining you, but the World Economic Forum reported in 2023 that women accounted for just 29% of all, you know, science, technology, engineering, math workers, you know, what we call STEM, the STEM workers. So this is a problem, right, that we need to fix.

Craig (26:18)
And how do you feel, you know, perhaps the industry can do to appeal to people from a more diverse background? I know we have our Women in SAP community, which is looking to get more and more Women in, into our community. SAP has the Business Women's Network, I believe. And so, so what can industry do over kind of initiatives like that to get more, a more diverse background of people into, into the—

Sonia Nash (26:52)
Well, I think it's, it's a lot of podcasts and talks like this help promote, obviously, not just SAP as a place to work, but having those conversations that, that we're having and reassuring assuring people is a great way to start. We're doing a lot of events, we're partnering with universities. So again, make sure that people from diverse background know that there is a pathway and that there is a varied pathway into SAP, right? If you look at the vast majority of job postings at SAP, it doesn't say, you know, developers, coders. It's not just that, that kind of, of pathway that you've got into tech. So making sure we educate at that level. A couple of years ago, I volunteered for the STEM-Ed group where they brought young girls between 11 and 16 years old into the SAP offices. And I was the keynote there to, try and help motivate, you know, motivate the teams, the young people to say, hey, there are some really cool jobs that you could be having at SAP and, you know, technology companies at large. So, yeah, so that's the kind of stuff that we can do. Educate at a young age.

Sonia Nash (28:21)
So partnering with the right, organizations like STEM-Ed, for example, as a group that's promoting these kinds of topics for women and children of all backgrounds, to be honest. So yeah, I think that's one way, one way of doing it. And then for people individually, going back to your point of being curious, be curious that there's so much you can learn today via a lot of learning platforms. But not only, right? Through courses, you know, free courses through LinkedIn, etc. There's many things that you can do to get started in there and acquire what you don't have today.

Craig (29:09)
Thank you. And kind of looking back, we just come off the back of the SAP Now AI tour in the UK and Ireland, in London. And were there any any key takeaways or lessons you'd like to share with our audience from the event?

Sonia Nash (29:29)
Yeah, it was a really good event. And you probably think, well, of course I'm going to say that. I'm SAP. I'm a bit biased. But no, it was a really good event in the sense that I alluded to it at the beginning of the call. What my key takeaway was is that we've really seen a shift this year compared to last year. Last year was pretty much the year of skepticism, the year of, yeah, AI can help us a little bit, but we're not taking the plunge. We're going to wait and see what happens. This year, the vast majority of the conversations I've had with customers at SAP NOW is how do we get started? So there is, we've passed the barrier of skepticism, the fear of change now. And companies of really all sizes and industries are coming to us and say, okay, we want to do this. How do we make it a reality? So that was a key shift for me where, you know, we sort of leaving behind the skepticism. So that was one of the key things. The importance of cloud computing and data readiness. Is something that is finally, I feel, sinking in, in the consciousness of most companies.

Sonia Nash (30:57)
There's only so far you're going to go with, you know, legacy systems and a patchwork of systems and being on-prem. So, I think that that was a key takeaway from that area or from that event, sorry. But yeah, most importantly was the enthusiasm. There was a real enthusiasm on on embracing AI. So that, that was my, my key takeaway, which was really positive.

Craig (31:27)
And finally, as we come to a close, if you looked into your crystal ball, what do you think will be the biggest changes we'll see in AI in the next 5 years?

Sonia Nash (31:39)
In the next 5 years? Well, I'll give you a bold, bold prediction. My, my role should not exist. In 5 years. So I'm, I always say I actively work to make myself redundant. The reason being is that today we still talk about AI in isolation, like this own entity. It's almost like a product if you think about it. And really in 5 years we won't be talking about this. The analogy I often use is, You don't worry what AI Netflix is using to recommend the next series. You just like the fact that it recommends your series, right? The next one to watch. It's a similar process here where we will not talk about AI, I feel, in the future. We'll talk about this is the way the tool works. This is the way you do finance. This is the way you do supply chain now. So that's what I mean by working towards making my role redundant is that AI AI should be part and parcel of the product and we won't look at it or treat it in isolation. I think in 5 years' time, one thing that will be perhaps different is the way we will be looking at AI.

Sonia Nash (33:07)
And what I mean by that is we're looking at it today as a society, as companies, as What can I do to embed AI into what I do? So it's in a way, you know, shoehorning AI into existing processes. Where there will be a shift, I feel, in 5 years is that we will build with AI in mind. So we're not trying to bring AI in. AI will be the starting point and will be fully embedded into things. In, you know, in terms of work, but also outside of work. So we will imagine the world of work very differently, I feel, in 5 years. It will be with AI first in mind and using AI to re-engineer processes as opposed to we have our process, how do we bring AI in? I think that, that will be the biggest. The biggest shift. Absolutely.

Craig (34:10)
Excellent. Thank you, Sonia. Thank you so much. Thank you for your time. Thank you for your insights. And I think most importantly, because I know how much of a struggle it would have been for not falling asleep.

Sonia Nash (34:25)
Now, this is a very stimulating conversation. I can talk about AI all day without falling asleep. So that's all right.

Craig (34:33)
Thank you. Appreciate that, Sonia. Thank you very much. And to our listeners, thank you for listening. We I hope you enjoyed the conversation and found it valuable. Please make sure you do subscribe so you don't miss any of our future episodes. And until the next time, stay safe, stay well, and be curious.