(SAP’s Etosha Thurman at Spend Connect 2024)

Let’s face it: enterprise events come and go. We note the high points - and yes, the low points - and move on to the next. But one theme has staying power. No, not AI - not exactly. Rather, it’s** how AI compels action from stagnation - action on data silos, process silos, and yes, people silos**.

I covered data and process in my 2025 project review. But the best events of 2025 provoked the people side of this conversation as well: better enterprise AI requires better collaboration.** Will that hold in 2026? **And what did we learn on how to spark that dialogue?

Breaking end-to-end people silos - a spend/finance view

On event that stirred the pot: the debut of SAP Connect. Gathering spend, finance, supply chain, HR, and CX professionals under one roof is a big enough job - getting them to talk across those roles is a whole different challenge.

The debut of SAP Connect brought the issue of functional work silos to a head. As I wrote in October:

Prior to the event, I asked SAP: will this event truly live up to its name, and foster dialogue across lines of business? Can we help customers develop the cross-functional collaboration that is so often lacking, the kind of human collaboration that successful AI, by the way, often needs? Are we going to bring silo-busting to life, or will we get stuck in the marketing theater of unrealized ideas? [SAP Connect 2025 - can we (finally) break the silos that block end-to-end thinking? Heartland Dental says yes].

Heading into an already-hectic 2026 event calendar, these are the kinds of conversations I want to see on the ground again. To get a handle on what we’ve learned, I looked to Etosha Thurman, and her expanding purview inside SAP. Already a part of SAP’s Spend leadership, Thurman has now taken on finance, with the new title CMO, Finance & Spend Management at SAP (Madeline Bennett also profiled Thurman in her diginomica ‘What I’d say to me back then’ women in leadership series).

With those multiple hats, Thurman was my perfect foil for talk of silo-busting. As she told me:

I picked up finance, as under my remit, in April... We’ve been really shifting our focus. We still have the business process focus, but we’re really starting to consider the market from the persona view and multiple persona view, which is great for us. In spend, we always had to do that, but corporately, we’re doing that. It’s a different way for my team to think: how does a Category Manager, a Sourcing Manager, or an AP Manager, look at this process, or this solution?

So what happens when you stir things up at SAP Connect? Thurman says that** crossing job boundaries is exactly what spend and finance people need to do on their projects as well**:

This was our first time doing this event, so I was a proponent. In the real world, procurement doesn’t work on procurement things by themselves. Finance doesn’t work on finance things by themselves. But what I noticed is when we had Ariba Live or Spend Connect, the conversations we had always stopped or started at exactly where procurement lives.

But the reality is,: when you do that, then every procurement solution is equal. But when you start to show, ’Hey, these are the priorities that your finance colleagues are facing,, and this is how we’re easing that, and here’s what your supply chain colleagues are facing, and this is how we’re addressing that - it opens up the conversation about how procurement needs to shift, and how we can help.

But with AI, a data conversation gets provoked as well. Thurman:

It’s especially powerful when you start talking about the data. Then when you add in a pace of rapid innovation, and AI - even before SAP Connect, I was interested in: how do we bring these stories closer together? How do we expose to procurement: ‘Hey, if you have Fieldglass,, are you connecting this to SuccessFactors? Are you doing planning collaboration on the network? If you have IBP, are you talking to the folks who use Integrated Business Planning in your company?’ And you know, eight out of ten times, they’re not.

A cross-functional event raises similar challenges as a cross-functional project. Example: need to hit the SAP Spend sessions to bring that know-how back to your procurement team. But you’re also drawn to sessions that are not in your procurement track - and conflict timewise. What to do? This event brought surprises:

I really love the concept, but now, there’s things we’ve got to work on. As an example, there were some spend participants who were like, ‘I’m not sure what to do. I mean, I want to go to the Spend sessions, but I want to go pop into the HR session, or this session, and I’m missing out. I want to learn more, but I also came here for this function.’

That’s something as an events team, we need to think about from a sessions view: how do we do this? How do we create this space for bridging these personas? It’s going to require a different level of orchestration for us.

Enterprise events need to stir the process pot

Yes, those are logistical problems - but, I’d argue, the kind of problems you want to have. I was worried that this event would really be a collection of siloed groups under one roof. You know me; I always want to give event design a big push. I heard CX customers talking about supply chain; I heard spend customers intrigued by CX demos. That’s the kind of big picture stir we can all benefit from.

I conducted several customer deep dives at SAP Connect (the most fascinating of these was an inside look at an early SAP Ask my Payslip AI project, where we got into the guts of AI use case design.

I also talked with a customer in Thurman’s wheelhouse, a long time Ariba user. This customer has developed internal spend competencies, and new procurement efficiencies. But they’ve also done their share of process silo-busting, across finance teams and more (this company has since been acquired, which can bring changes to project teams, so I’ll leave the names out of it until we get those updates).

This customer onboards hundreds of customers into Ariba each week. They needed to streamline this process, making onboarding easier and standardized across regions - with risk management built in for any new practice. With 50,000+ suppliers in their system, reduction in supplier volume was also crucial. For example: redundant suppliers listed by different names or regional addresses. Here’s some of their bullet point lessons on procurement-based collaboration:

• To manage global-scale procurement changes, a business transformation office was created, as well as an internal center of excellence.
• Change management initiatives stemmed from these efforts; objectives were shared openly across teams, and given campaign names to rally users.
• A major reduction in the vendor database was bolstered by the automation of invoice processing.
• "Our company’s strength is we have a very strong SAP Center of Excellence."
• "We have better visibility of our onboarding timelines. We meet our SLA from shared services perspective."

Collaboration with finance teams was a key aspect of project success:

• In the early phases of the project, shared service leaders connected with finance leaders; the teams socialized around shared "continuous improvement" goals. Ambassadors from these teams brought the transformation/collaboration message to different regions.

At the time of our talk, the customer was also building a more enhanced AI search, to provide better/deeper access to vendor records, combining their own vendor data with Ariba data for vendor search.

As always, there are process improvements needed - both inside the customer and with SAP. The customer told us that automating end-to-end processes was high on the wish list: "I’m looking at how we can automate business processes which are not happening inside SAP."

On the procurement side, the customer wanted to press for easier onboarding for new suppliers, particularly smaller suppliers that would appreciate a more intuitive corporate supplier system, from a user experience standpoint. (This is a big talking point from SAP’s spend team as well, e.g. the central Ariba launchpad announced in November 2025). The customer would also like a dashboard to view the status of vendors in the onboarding process, to spot any that might be "stuck," and get them moving forward again.

My take - AI versus organizational silos... Something has to give

Obviously, one annual event doesn’t solve team collaboration. Nor is AI the cure-all for the people and process issues inside organizations. We’ve needed to work across organizational silos for years; I won’t give AI too much credit for making this finally appear non-negotiable.

That said, the** opportunities to apply AI add a welcome incentive to wade through organizational politics**. AI is an accelerant: bringing AI into well-run organizations is very promising. Bringing AI into poorly run companies with sloppy data and tech debt - not so much.

As for SAP, the end-to-end tone set at SAP Connect is exactly the right one for 2026. But SAP now raises their own internal bar: "seamless" integration between apps, easier integration with non-SAP data, and the ability to build "intelligent apps" on top of all that. It’s a promising enterprise strategy, but a formidable challenge. Pulling this off will require a lot more from SAP beyond a RISE migration push - or even Business AI itself.

These data/people/process themes aren’t going away; customers are starting to realize they won’t get to good AI without it, that "plug and play" is pretty limited when it comes to AI excellence. That sets up a very interesting 2026.

But will we hear open talk about this on the keynote stage, or will vendors continue to make the big agentic AI pitch? Customers are already sold - but they need to ask the hard questions, and establish trust in new ways of working. Which vendors will foster that atmosphere? Stay tuned...

Note: for my context on the 2026 outlook at the highs (and lows) of 2025, check my hot seat video appearance on CRM Konvos.