In this episode, Markus welcomes Dominik Wittenbeck, Group CTO of SNP Group, to explore the company’s multi-decade journey from an SAP consulting service to a global automation software provider. Dominik shares insights into the challenges and inflection points that shaped SNP’s evolution, highlighting how they tackled SAP’s complexity, embraced automation, and empowered both internal teams and external partners with flexible, modular tools.

Listeners will learn how SNP scaled its platform by focusing on repeatable patterns, reducing project risk, and enabling non-technical users through intuitive design. Dominik also reflects on how generative AI is influencing the next chapter of transformation by accelerating onboarding, reducing manual tasks, and surfacing new opportunities across the enterprise landscape.

Whether you're leading a digital transformation, modernizing legacy systems, or exploring GenAI’s enterprise use cases, this conversation offers actionable guidance and hard-won lessons from a leader who's lived the journey.

Timestamps

00:00 Episode Start

02:50 How SNP Group accelerates time to value

07:15 Moving from consultation to transformation

16:00 Automation is inevitable

18:05 What GenAI unlocks for all enterprises

21:40 The importance of human guidance

25:45 Why democratizing tool sets should be your highest priority

29:45 Reflections from Dominik's career

33:10 Don't boil the ocean when automating

38:20 Thinking about automation differently

41:10 Final thoughts

Episode Key Takeaways

Culture determines automation success: Without a culture that embraces experimentation and failure, even the best tools will stall. Leaders must encourage learning, iteration, and low-friction change.
Let the field drive platform evolution: SNP’s most successful tools were shaped not by top-down requirements but by consultants building on real-world problems. Innovation thrives where freedom and feedback loops exist.
Process ownership must be distributed: A single team or department can’t scale automation alone. SNP’s evolution proves that shared ownership enables faster problem-solving and continuous refinement.

Top Quotes

“In a dream of mine that hasn't come true yet, you're sitting there in a workshop with a customer, they tell you requirements verbally, you note them down, you take the transcript of basically what you have, and it automatically reflects in the software. With agentic behavior and function calling, this is actually quite possible, and it can bring the learning curve down quite a lot.”

“You will become the best engineer in automation if you are a subject matter expert. And what we’ve seen is that when we give our consultants the tools and the freedom to experiment, they come up with practical solutions we in R&D would’ve never imagined. That’s why democratizing toolsets should be your highest priority.”

“From a culture perspective, you need to build a company where failing and learning is an integrated part of the process, it’s not a flaw. If your thinking is always ‘when will this be delivered’ or ‘when will it be done,’ you miss the chance to find new opportunity. The best improvements come from failures you’ve actually made.”

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