More opportunities for added value: Customers expect innovative and holistic support

Lars Janitz is Executive Vice President in charge of Global Business & Managed Services. He joined NTT DATA Business Solutions in 2011 and was recently appointed Chief Managed Services Officer. Since the start of his career, he has worked intensively in the field of managed cloud services in the SAP landscape and in global transformation projects, predominantly in management positions.

NTT DATA Business Solutions has two major business areas: Consulting and Managed Services. How is innovation changing these two areas?

Lars Janitz: These fields are growing closer together. It used to be that the customer would choose an IT solution, we would implement it and then run and manage it. Optimization was needed from time to time, which would mean another consulting contract, depending on the situation. But it wasn’t steady business, it was more like event-driven cooperation.

And how is it today?

That kind of classic approach still exists, but it’s getting rarer. Greater choice, higher complexity, shorter innovation cycles, and also demand for uniform platforms in the cloud are key challenges for companies. That’s where we come in. The key phrase here is advisory services, which involves working with the customer to define the best possible solution, encompassing industry requirements, platform strategy, and software solutions. This means that Managed Services and Consulting are increasingly working hand-in-hand. That way we strengthen our position as a strategic partner to companies.

What exactly does that involve?

We start off by sitting down with the customer and discussing their current situation, their framework, and the requirements that derive from those. Then we identify the matching services we have to offer and the respective value added. Customers thus receive advice regarding the selection and planning of the IT landscape at an early stage, which then forms the basis for more intensive joint service engagements.

Modular services and state-of-the-art payment models are making it easier for customers to change platforms and service providers. How do you handle this risk?

By leveraging the opportunities of technical development. We call it proactive customer success management: For example, we monitor customers’ systems in real time to identify, avoid, or quickly solve potential problems early on. We also offer our customers webinars, providing them with sound insights into innovations and their economic potential as well as the dedicated benefit for their sector and their specific circumstances. This is a basis for jointly making the customer’s existing solution even more efficient or stable if necessary. In addition, we have long-term collaborations with technology partners enabling us to offer our customers the best-possible combination of technology and processes from a single source.

How do companies and their IT departments feel about a closer partnership?

The technology ecosystem today is defined by agility, flexibility, and faster innovation, and the pressure on IT departments is growing all the time. That’s why customers increasingly expect us to provide proactive and holistic services – and because they are often no longer able to individually manage a separate provider or supplier for every task. Thanks to our growth in recent years and the networking with our affiliates in the NTT DATA Group, we can satisfy their requirements – and not just in Germany, but on a global scale.

Does focusing on SAP place limitations on that?

We stand by our SAP strategy in principle, and the customer’s IT should be fundamentally focused on SAP as well. But there’s far more potential in today’s ecosystem than before: Because we’re thinking and working in a much more modular fashion, the opportunities that we can offer customers are expanding all the time. In addition, the trend towards streamlined and dynamic projects opens up far more opportunities to generate new business.

NTT DATA Business Solutions is increasingly relying on proprietary software and other strategic partners. Why is that?

Until around five years ago, you could have defined our strategy as “SAP only”. We have since opened up, for example to the Microsoft Azure platform or the Service-Now ecosystem. Once again, this is because it is what customers expect from us. But the solutions still always have to fit with the SAP world, because that’s at the core of what we do. In addition, SAP has streamlined its portfolio in connection with its clean core strategy and further honed its focus. This gives partners even more opportunity to enhance the benefit of the overall solution for customers with add-ons, which are frequently tailored to a specific industry, and value-added services. SAP’s Business Technology Platform (BTP) provides the integrative foundation. With our specialist expertise, for instance in life sciences, pharma, the manufacturing industry, or consumer products, we can offer significant added value.

To what extent does GenAI (generative artificial intelligence) play a role in the development and management of new solutions?

GenAI is central for us, in both our portfolio for customers and our internal processes. Let me give you an example: Within our managed cloud services, we receive around 100,000 alerts per month. However, only a fraction of those are really relevant and, above all, critical. GenAI helps with the automatic pre-assessment of alerts so that customer service employees can focus on the actual challenges. That has a positive effect on the quality, and also the cost efficiency, of our services.

And how does GenAI improve products and solutions for customers?

Here’s another example: As you know, more and more companies are having to produce sustainability reports. Compiling all the information is a huge effort: The data tends to be put together manually. So, working with SAP, we’ve developed a GenAI tool that helps to produce sustainability reports. Data is automatically aggregated, checked, and made available – which significantly reduces the workload for sustainability managers and employees. That’s just one example of the many things that GenAI can do.

How do you decide which of the ideas should be taken up and developed into finished solutions?

By striking a balance between top-down and bottom-up. For instance, we sound out which innovative solutions are being worked on at our local branches, which incidentally is often done in collaboration with local customers. At the same time, we monitor developments on the global stage. In addition, we’ve set up our Innovation and Portfolio Management separately to allow a creative approach to developing new innovations without pressure from hard performance indicators as in the case of portfolio management. What’s just as important is that new developments and expertise that enter the company by way of acquisitions have to find their way to the customers of the group as a whole. And this has to happen wherever they can add value. Both aspects are part of the exciting and challenging mandate of the global divisions that Nicolaj Vang Jessen and I are in charge of.

How do the two of you coordinate things?

It’s crucial to have a constant, bidirectional dialog between global and local units. For example, we provide enablement sessions on new subjects with our staff from Sales and Presales at country level, we have internal websites, and we define points of contact for the respective issues. We have also established business advisory boards for the individual service segments, in which we listen very closely to feedback from representatives from the local units. What helps us with customers is that we no longer have to turn up on site all the time, as digital meetings are becoming more common. This allows us to scale our competences far better across national borders. And it shows that the latest innovations are leading to as much progress for us as for customer organizations.