AI Partner Strategy: From Implementation to Outcomes | Mark Wheeler, NTT DATA

Is your SAP partner truly ready to deliver the autonomous enterprise, or are they repackaging traditional implementation work with an AI label? Mark Wheeler, Global Head of Product Engineering and AI Customer Success Delivery Operations at NTT DATA Business Solutions, gives a candid answer. He describes a three-strand delivery framework, called Cloud ERP Elevated, that separates partners who are genuinely industrialising AI delivery from those who are not. And he names the three reasons AI transformation fails: misaligned business economics, underestimated technical feasibility, and users who were never brought on the journey.

Wheeler shares concrete outcomes from NTT DATA customer engagements: 90% touchless supply confirmations for a manufacturing customer and 98% straight-through processing for unstructured sales orders at a UK chemicals company. He explains why human-centered design still matters even as AI capability accelerates, and closes with the single question he asks every CIO before any tactical decision: what is your platform strategy? The answer, he argues, shapes everything that follows for an autonomous enterprise.

Episode Chapters
00:00 – Introduction: SAP Autonomous Enterprise Podcast
00:54 – Guest introduction: Mark Wheeler, NTT DATA Business Solutions
01:33 – Is the partner ecosystem ready to deliver the autonomous enterprise?
03:10 – Cloud ERP Elevated: three strands of AI delivery (ready, template, custom AI)
06:17 – Customer outcomes: Leinmuller and Synthema use cases with concrete results
09:56 – Why AI transformations fail: economics, feasibility, and user adoption
14:24 – How to identify where to start and which use cases are ready to scale
16:29 – Partner business model transformation: from billable days to outcome delivery
19:51 – Human-centered design in an AI-first world: the SAP App House alliance
22:49 – Final question: the one thing a leader must get right for autonomous enterprise
25:02 – Outro

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