SAP Connect 2025 - can we (finally) break the silos that block end-to-end thinking? Heartland Dental says yes

If we're not vigilant, events become routine, and routine becomes (very) stale. This week in Las Vegas, SAP tried to shake things up with SAP Connect. 

This is the first SAP event to bring together practitioners across lines of business, from HCM to spend to supply chain to finance to CX (SpendConnect, CX Live, and SuccessConnect are three examples of separate SAP events now brought under this umbrella). 

It's an ambitious goal. SAP Connect gave SAP the opportunity to release another meaty news guide, as well as a standalone press release. This news, which includes specialized Joule Agents, role-based Joule assistants, and BDC enhancements, builds on the so-called "flywheel" of data, apps, and AI that SAP promoted at SAP Sapphire in May. 

SAP argues that it is in a unique position to deliver impactful AI to its customers due to this "flywheel." And, by the way, that means SaaS/Business Suite applications are absolutely not dead, but an integral part of this reconfigured value proposition. 

Is SAP right about this? Time will tell - a debate for another time. And: will customers on older releases have access to this flywheel strategy - and if so, how? (I asked this question at the Tuesday press Q/A, but if you want hot takes and instant reactions, check out the SAP Connect Watch Party replay of the opening keynote I hosted with Josh Greenbaum and Bonnie Tinder, with Thomas Wieberneit joining for a keynote postgame wrap). 

Heartland Dental takes on the LOB silos - back to the intelligent enterprise? 

A different hot topic is on my front burner. 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?

During a strong opening keynote (a phrase I rarely use), SAP customer Heartland Dental shook things up - and raised that event bar. During an onstage interview with SAP's Jan Gilg, Heartland CFO Travis Franklin said the spark for Heartland Dental's end-to-end thinking goes back to an older SAP tagline: the Intelligent Enterprise.

It was about five years ago we had the opportunity to attend an SAP Sapphire event in Orlando. As we were going, we were thinking about all the problems and opportunities we had as a business, and how we were thinking about putting in the strategies to go solve those problems with technology and with data. 

And so we walk in, I'll never forget. It was one of those big digital dashboards, and we walked in, and at the top it said "Intelligent Enterprise," and then it showed a visualization of SAP HANA in the middle, which was the brain that fed all of these different applications and all of these business use cases end-to-end. 

The end-to-end breakthrough - 'we solved all kinds of business issues'

For Franklin, this end-to-end framing changed everything. 

What we do in that dental office that you saw, we'll go in and provide 30-plus different services. You think about all those different applications, and then being able to bring that data back into the organization, and truly to be able to understand that data end-to-end, department by department - breaking down the silos of data, breaking down the silos of operation, and really thinking about pulling all that data together and telling a different story: an end-to-end story that created massive value for our customer, which was the dentist.

Things moved fast: Heartland Dental adopted a suite of SAP applications: Ariba for buying and invoicing, Concur for travel, SuccessFactors for performance management, and so on. On stage, Gilg asked: where are you seeing the biggest breakthrough from this end-to-end approach? Franklin responded: 

When we started executing on the strategy, the breakthroughs were ones we didn't even think about at the time we were doing this. But by setting up this tech strategy and data strategy the right way, in my opinion, it gave us the opportunity to solve all kinds of different issues in the business, issues we didn't know and issues we we did know. Many of the breakthroughs came through a lot of different enhancements... In our industry, we have some solutions that are industry leading, and that create a competitive advantage.  

Yes, end-to-end thinking invokes workplace culture changes. But as Franklin explained, that's a good thing:

One of the other core enablers that we found was when we think about things end-to-end, and we bring data and we bring the technology with it, what it translates into, from a culture standpoint, is a unified data platform. 

Solving things end-to-end actually brings your business together, and it creates a collaborative environment. We have a saying at Heartland Dental: work hard, work smart and work together in a collaborative environment. It's amazing all the problems you can solve, and all the opportunities you can take advantage of.

Decision intelligence must move beyond the CFO

Then there is another crucial aspect: decision intelligence. Towards that goal, Heartland Dental is using SAP Analytics Cloud to change how they forecast, model, and hopefully drive growth. As Franklin told attendees: 

When you pull all the data together - and we do leverage SAP HANA - in addition, we do use SAP Analytics Cloud, and so that's our ability to take data and insights those different applications or all of those different business units, and we're able to then distribute that data, or that best thinking and data science and all these things go into segmenting out the business, finding key trends and insights in the business, 

But as Franklin said, the CFO's job is not to distribute that data in any way the business needs: 

Being able to distribute that information and visualize that data in a way where a dentist, or a key stakeholder in the business can consume it, whether it would be through an app on your phone, whether it be on your iPad, a laptop or even a desktop, any way that customer or that ultimate end user wants to see that data and visualize that data, we're able to distribute.

These insights give us a much better ability as we sit down each year and plan our business out, to provide real data insights and become a true partner in the business, to help all of the folks in our business deliver consistent outcomes that actually exceed most of the market type returns. 

Gilg asked: any advice for other CFOs on this end-to-end pursuit? Franklin: 

I've been asked this question a lot. There's two or three things I would want you guys to lead with. Number one is: spend the time to truly understand what your biggest opportunities and biggest problems are to go solve. Think about things end to end, write your process out. A lot of people lead with it. Technology is going to solve everything. It will solve a lot of things, but if you create a bad process, you're going to automate a bad process. 

So take the time do the planning. Truly think about it from a work hard, work smart and work together [perspective]. The more people you can get involved in that solutioning and actually laying out that process actually gets them to buy in to the change that's about to come with the innovation you're going to drive through the business. In addition to those those pieces, when you're thinking about when you transfer to end to end, you think about pulling data in, governing data - creating the enablement to go solve all these problems becomes key and critical. 

When you distribute trusted data to the people who need it - in a form they can easily consume - good things happen: 

We spent a lot of time on procuring the data up into HANA, so that we can distribute it out to all of these different applications. You can now create a collaborative environment where everybody has similar data, has procured data and has proper data definitions around that data. In our example, we had seven definitions of a new patient. Today, we have one definition of a new patient. 

It's examples like that I think are key, and critical to get the biggest success. I would say that these are the core enablers, the foundations you're building to not only solve problems today, but well into the future, and we picked up a lot of efficiency and a lot of great results by being able to create that enabling tech and data strategy, and actually get that implemented into our practices, and into our business.

My take - the less silos, the better your AI

I see potential in an enterprise approach to AI agents - and some customer use cases are now live. But I also worry: if we get caught up chasing the next thing, we can lose track of the value already provided by modern applications, supported by the data right strategy and mindset of change. 

Heartland Dental is a vivid illustration. A will to change, backed by an end-to-end data pursuit, brought a big organizational result. And this happened before SAP ever announced BDC, or specialized Joule agents. 

I believe organizations like Heartland Dental will also derive the biggest gains when they look to BDC and AI agents. Without that organizational groundwork, I question how much these new technologies can help - we'll see. 

Keynote segments have limitations; I would have liked to learn more about how Heartland Dental grappled with the tougher moments of the change process. But there is still time left at this show to dig into this topic.

Will SAP Connect prove to be a successful format? Will the end-to-end tone of the first keynote be embraced by customers - and SAP itself - as the event unfolds? That's a topic I'm pursuing now, alongside a long list. One thing that impressed me: though SAP has never had a dedicated supply chain track before, there is solid attendance from supply chain professionals here. That's a fruitful overlap with the spend management attendees, not to mention an excellent tie in to the front end CX announcements. When CX, supply chain, and even workforce planning become part of the same conversation, count me in. Next up: customer AI adoption.