Mobile can transform relationships, every minute, of every hour, of every day.

Vaibhav Vohra, Head of Product Management, SAP Interconnect

Vaibhav is a highly motivated and experienced VP, Head of Product Management with corporate strategy/operations experience. He has launched Cloud Products that have won 5 awards (including 3 UX/design, 1 big data as a service, and 1 marketing award) at SAP in the enterprise line of business space. He is passionate about delivering delightful experiences to customers ranging from Fortune 500 to SMB’s.

He has launched 4 SaaS and PaaS enterprise line of business products in the last year, co-innovating with some of the largest brands, retailers, and ad agencies in the world. This includes SAP’s first data as a service product line. In addition, he has launched innovative products in a number of areas including authentication, organizational resiliency, geospatial. He has launched Cloud products and services in the area of emergency notifications, authentication, consumer insight, developer ecosystem and tools.

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Key Insights from our Conversation

• Vaibhav has a passion from taking things from laboratory to launch whether it’s a diamond-coated cutting tool or doing a spinal cord injury research for a new treatment. Bringing this lab eureka moment to something that’s commercially viable has become a great passion of his and this is what motivated him all these years. He is also a big fan of deconstructing products like chefs do to food so he loves reducing the clutter to the noise. The unrelenting focus to the problem is something that he is really passionate about and he believes that failure is just a rite of passage.
• In this day and age where care is defined as financial benefits, what if care is using a mobile device to provide this duty that employers need to carry so we can get responses in just minutes? Mobile is the future of work; it can be the tool which can help employees be better taken care of. SAP is primed to do this around the world for various industries.
• SAP is one of the largest software companies and much of their growth is due to the cloud. Vaibhav is part of the group called SAP Digital Interconnect which helps enterprises run better through rich, mobile experiences. It’s the last mile connecting mobile apps, processes and people.
• The SAP Digital Interconnect team focuses on the next line of business applications. They are trying to solve how people want to be connected to and what context are they in and to determine this, communications is the operative word to be able to potentially change a brand or a business. You have to have conversations with your customers and the differentiator between listening and hearing is understanding.
• The product that they are currently working on which enables better experience is SAP People Connect 365. This system aims to bring in HR and Risk Content data and create content workflows to help enterprises reach their employees in the moment of need.
• Vaibhav shares that they found that 90% of the APIs fail in their enterprise initiatives but the 10% which succeeds gets exponential growth. He suggested three major things in able to achieve success: APIs should to be simple to understand; mobile developers should connect with others through repositories and communities and build efficient process; and technology independence. The result of these three would be programmable digital interfaces which will take over the world.
• Products can always be made better as it is an everlasting approach. From a tactical level, think of ways how to expand such as including customers in the design process, personalization and thinking of user experience versus UI.

Rapid Fire Questions

What is your definition of innovation?

Innovation is – once you’ve heard of it, you can’t think of a future without it. In a personal level, it’s your Everest or doing something that you have never done before and claiming a success which will really blast you through your next milestone.

• Would you put more emphasis on the idea or the execution? How would you weigh each of them and why?

The idea is useless in a badly executed product but if it was not for the original idea, the execution may have never happened. I think you need both to innovate but ideas transform products and impact who you are as a human so I’d give 70% for idea and 30% for execution.

• What is your biggest learning lesson on your journey so far?

You only launch once. Always be ready and do not lose sight on who you are launching for.

Promote work-life balance.

• What is your favorite business book?

Creativity, Inc.

• What is your favorite digital resource?

Kindle

Flipboard

Reddit

Trello

Slack

Mixed Panel

• What is your favorite app?

FaceTime

WhatsApp

Camera

Reddit

Flipboard