Describe your current job role and a summary of the business model of the organisation?
In her dual role as Vice President of Customer Advisory and Solutions, and SAP’s Sustainability Ambassador, covering SAP Middle East South, Rahma leads the teams that help enterprises to leverage technology to achieve their business and sustainability goals.
This is her tenth year at SAP, having worked across multiple SAP geographies and diverse business areas including transformation services, the innovation lab, and pre-sales, which has helped to inform her leadership style and approach to her current role.
SAP is a global leader in enterprise applications and business AI, delivering cloud and on-premises solutions on a one-time, subscription or consumption basis through SAP Services or an ecosystem of trusted partners.
What are the strengths and abilities that you brings to the above role?
In addition to leadership and collaborative skills, Rahma says her passion, constant curiosity and thirst for knowledge are vital as her role is not a conventional 9-to-5 position. Sustainability is a cause very close to her heart, while she also gets immense satisfaction from analysing and solving customers’ problems.
I am able to make effective decisions thanks to my natural curiosity in speaking to customers and investigating how they operate and the impact they make, while also finding out more about people on my wider SAP team and their viewpoints, strengths and career aspirations.
Please describe the expectations of the end customers that you address. What are their pain points today?
SAP provides tailored solutions for its customers, and pain points tend to differ geographically. For many countries in her region, particularly the UAE – cloud, AI and Generative AI are top of mind today. Rahma says customers want to know what these technologies can do to future-proof their individual businesses, including how they can leverage AI effectively and responsibly; the implications for their workforce and training needs; and how their competitors and industry are approaching AI.
While AI has been around for many years, Rahma believes the recent increased interest and significant uptick in SAP customer queries are a result of the launch and growing popularity of Generative AI tools, including ChatGPT and SAP’s Joule Generative AI copilot. She adds that this interest in AI is apparent across all sectors and company sizes, from the smallest offices to large multinationals.
Which generic technologies and innovations can make a difference to your end customers’ business?
Cloud enables customers to achieve scalability, streamline and automate processes, and reduce costs, while achieving a clean core by eliminating infrastructure problems in aging on-premises systems. Cloud also enables businesses to rapidly assimilate and leverage AI technologies effectively for immediate and future benefits.
Businesses also need to consider the financial, workforce and training implications of technologies such as AI. In the case of SAP, the aim is to support customers to leverage specific AI and Generative AI tools that will be meaningful and effective in the context of their business, implemented in an ethical and responsible way.
Which non-competitive business in the region do you admire for innovative usage of technology?
Rahma has been particularly impressed with how the public sector leverages innovative technology in the UAE. The public sector has been leading the way by fostering an ecosystem that drives innovation across both the public and private sector.
From creating the world’s first Ministry of AI in 2017, and introducing smart services, block chain and paperless transactions, to launching the UAE’s Zero Government Bureaucracy Programme and leveraging technology to support ambitious sustainability goals. In other parts of the world, it is rare for the public sector to play such a leading role in innovation, she adds.
Rahma also highlights the innovative focus of SAP’s regional partners. SAP has been collaborating with leaders in the AI space, as well as regional customers and strategic partners, to advance AI and its applications, using technology to innovate and co-create industry solutions to pressing challenges.
Which aspects of your role do you find rewarding and which challenging?
As SAP Sustainability Ambassador, Rahma has enjoyed working with UAE ministries and companies as well as foreign stakeholders during COP28, to exchange knowledge and collaborate on long-term sustainability initiatives.
In terms of her customer advisory role, Rahma says one of the most rewarding aspects is seeing the impact her team is making, and seeing customers thriving thanks to implementing the right set of technology solutions to meet their own and their customers’ needs.
As for challenges, there is a certain amount of stress inherent in meeting deadlines and ensuring you are always up to date with rapidly evolving technologies and trends, but this a good type of stress to have.
How do you best like to de-stress and re-charge off work?
Rahma loves exercising, especially with her family, for example going on bike rides, and usually travels by bike on weekends. She also enjoys networking with diverse groups of people and hearing different viewpoints, so she belongs to many clubs such as university alumni circles, mentorships organisation, business leaders from Tunisia – her homeland – and France, among others.
Do you have any tips for women working in the field of technology?
As an executive sponsor of the SAP Businesswomen Network and a founder of the London Business School alumni club’s Women in Business group, Rahma’s advice for women entering the technology world is not to be shy in making their voices heard. Be open to challenges, make your viewpoints clear, and do not create self-limitations. There is no reason women cannot excel in this field, and it can be helpful to find a woman mentor to help you.
