SAP Ariba President Shares Insights on Building a Digital Business

You might have felt the buzz around "digital transformation" is a vague promise, yet many companies have successfully digitized their core. Take Amazon, which evolved from an online book retailer to a dominant cloud provider, or Netflix, which shifted from DVD rentals to streaming revenue.

According to Barry Padgett, president of SAP Ariba, the first step for any enterprise—whether deploying IoT, automation, blockchain, AI, or a blend—is to refine and optimize existing processes before adding technology. “If you automate a flawed manual process, you simply get a flawed automated process,” Padgett cautions. “People are solving for business process needs, not for the allure of new tech.”

Padgett echoes a common mantra from athletes and coaches: “Keep the main thing the main thing.” In procurement, it’s easy to be dazzled by AI, deep‑learning pattern matching, or blockchain provenance. Yet the real focus must stay on driving cost, risk, compliance, or other core objectives.

Industrial IoT World takes IIoT from inspiration to implementation, supercharging business and operations. Get your ticket now.

In the digital era, emerging tech tools make problem‑solving more efficient. SAP Ariba began in 1996 by harnessing the Internet to streamline procurement. Like Amazon, Facebook, and Google, which built platforms that attracted massive ecosystems, Ariba now offers a mature platform that invites thousands of third‑party developers, suppliers, and partners to add value.

Padgett emphasizes that as a CEO of a billion‑dollar SaaS company, his focus is on the core business, not on delivering every niche solution. “Instead, I leverage an ecosystem of partners and developers to handle specialized needs, freeing us to push forward on the main priorities,” he says. “Solve something big, make it future‑proof, and keep the main thing the main thing.”