SAP Volunteers Pack 1,000 School Bags for Children in Need By Kate Dieffenbach

On August 8, 26 SAP employees ventured to Lincoln Financial Field in Philadelphia for the annual Cradles to Crayons “Backpack-A-Thon”.  Cradles to Crayons is an organization that provides everyday essentials, warm clothes, shoes, books, and school supplies to homeless and low-income children.  Nearly 500 volunteers from 22 different companies and organizations worked together to pack a grand total of 20,000 backpacks, filling them with much needed school supplies. The SAP team of volunteers joined forces and packed close to 1,000 backpacks in less than two hours!  The backpacks will be donated to children in homeless and low-income circumstances living in the greater Philadelphia region.
Congratulations and thank you to all of our volunteers!
Watch ABC News coverage of the 5th Annual Backpack-A-Thon.

Five Minutes with Robin Manherz

Five Minutes with Robin Manherz

Head of North America Business Transformation

 

North America News: What projects are you currently working on that you are excited about?

Robin: Anything we’re doing around our North American and Global 2015 business strategy. For instance, we’re looking at how we’ll adapt our go to market model, how we deploy our sales force, finding alternate routes to market and reinventing the SAP brand. I’m excited about all of this because it keeps my skills, the work I do and my outlook fresh. This part of our business requires that I understand the mechanics of the company and allows for creativity and innovation. I like that.  I like having to know the depth of the business and being able to explore the places it can take us. It’s work that lets me engage both sides of my brain.

North America News: Tell us one thing that people generally don’t know about you.

Robin: I’m a mother of six kids, four of whom were adopted from Haiti. I’m a pretty transparent person so people who know me personally, know my family. But for those who don’t, it might come as a surprise. We mimic the Brady Bunch and by that I mean we have two kids who are 12-years-old, two who are 10 and two who are five. My husband is a stay-at-home dad and that makes our family possible. There’s plenty of effort required beyond the traditional with a family like ours. Plus we have two dogs and a cat.

Really, we’re like the Brady Bunch minus Alice! 

North America News: What are some of your passions and hobbies that you enjoy outside of the office?

Robin: (laughs) A family of six kids doesn’t give time for much else! Each one of them has their own interests so we make sure to encourage and support what they want to do. I’m in a life phase where most of my concentration is on my family and my work, but out of that has grown two particular passions for me.

When we began to grow our family five years ago, we wanted to adopt children who might’ve been forgotten or who were otherwise outside the ‘desirable’ criteria; Haiti gave us that opportunity and made me passionate about the awareness of adopting older children. And so often in 3^rd world countries, children are an indication of the status of women. Since learning that—since seeing it first hand in Haiti—I’m very concerned about the plight of women in poor countries. I am involved in an organization that works to ensure women can deliver their babies and receive proper care.

North America News:  What did you want to be when you grew up?

Robin: When I was a kid, I wanted to be an architect.  I’ve always loved art and the intersection of science and art.

North American News: If you could have dinner with anyone (living or not), who would it be and why?

Robin: A quiet dinner away from all the noise and activity with my husband. Truly. I have such a full life, great relationships with my kids, the people in their lives, people I work with…John and I invest a lot in our family and what grounds me are the opportunities we have to reconnect. Having a calm, peaceful dinner with time for reflection, just the two of us, would do that.  

Robin with her family near their Denver, CO home (l to r) Michael (10), Stephanie (10), MJ (12), husband John with Emma (5), John (12) and in front, Ben (5).

Technology Giants Team Up for Olympics

Technology Giants Team Up for Olympics

Faster, Higher, Stronger. It seems, the Olympic motto was on William Lawler´s mind, when he was asked to explain what visitors can expect from the SAP HANA demo at Cisco House in London. “The SmartGrid Analytics demo shows how companies can turn massive volumes of energy data into powerful insights and actions”, SAP´s partner and HANA marketing manager says. “SAP SmartGrid Analytics allows you to make crucial decisions faster…”

With the 2012 Summer Olympics in London as a backdrop, SAP will be on hand at the interactive Cisco House to highlight the SAP-Cisco partnership, and showcase how break-through technology like SAP HANA helps organizations “run better.” The house was created by Cisco as a dynamic stage for telling the company’s story of transformation, for providing a home base for guests during the Olympics, and for supplying business content that aligns with Cisco’s Olympic sponsorships.

Understanding of Big Data

“An estimated 11,000 visitors — including 400 CEOs — will see customer testimonials and smart-grid HANA demonstrations promote exciting transformational opportunities for a wide variety of organizations,” says Michael Craig, Cisco Alliance Director for SAP.  He feels that visitors can get a  high level understanding of Big Data and how SAP HANA is revolutionizing the consumption of large amounts of information in real time.

“Cisco was seeking sponsorship partners and break-through technologies that complemented and helped illustrate the transformational opportunities available for countries, cities and organizations for today and in the future,” says Hernan Marino, head of SAP’s partner marketing organization. “They recognized SAP HANA as an oustanding example of transformational technology — an in-memory database and real-time platform that combines high-volume transactions with analytics to help create solutions that take business performance to the next level.” In addition to SAP, other companies participating in the Cisco House experience include Citrix, EMC, and Intel.

Having opened in April to run for five months, Cisco House will host invited C-level and senior IT executives from customer, prospect and partner organizations. The guest list is a 100% match for SAP’s target market. More than 100 joint Cisco and SAP HANA prospects have already been identified. SAP United Kingdom will use Cisco House as a platform to engage more top customers and partners. These visitors will be able to see first-hand presentations of how new business and service models can reduce costs, increase productivity and deliver a competitive advantage, Michael Craig explains. “Cisco House demonstrates how SAP benefits by offering up yet another tangible proof point to our customers about the power of SAP´s partner ecosystem. It shows that bringing together global technology leaders to collaborate and co-innovate brings forward the types of technology solutions that truly transform how their businesses run.”

Accelerate the HANA pipeline

The Olympics venue provides an unique opportunity to promote the Cisco-SAP HANA partnership. And as Hernan pointed out, “The focus is not on what Cisco House makes, but rather what Cisco and its partners make possible.” Both partners are sure to benefit. “Creating awareness on in memory computing will create and accelerate more HANA pipeline, and Cisco is one of the certified hardware providers for HANA, so this will create awareness and increase their market share of HANA installs on their Unified Computing System (UCS) platform,” says Michael Craig.

And William Lawler adds: “Customers can see the commitment that SAP and Cisco have to together building leading edge technology solutions, and how the sum is greater than the parts when technology giants work in partnership.”

By Michael Zipf

 

Useful link:

• Cisco House homepage with fly-through video