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SAP Africa names new head of education

Sibahle Malinga
By Sibahle Malinga, ITWeb senior news journalist.
Johannesburg, 11 Aug 2017
Goutam Dev, newly appointed head of education for SAP Africa.
Goutam Dev, newly appointed head of education for SAP Africa.

SAP Africa has appointed Goutam Dev as its new head of education for Africa.

According to SAP, Dev has been with the enterprise services company since 2005, having held various leadership roles in services, sales, strategy and general management across a range of geographies.

SAP Education helps global organisations keep pace with technological changes by building a collaborative learning culture, providing the latest digital transformation solutions, and delivering customer and partner enablement globally.

Dev points out the digital skills gap on the continent is cited as one of the top barriers to digital transformation among SAP Africa's customers and partners.

"As a business, it is our stated objective to help companies with their digital transformation initiatives. By combining SAP's broad range of knowledge offerings in both a classroom and digital setting, we aim to focus on driving a comprehensive, rapid, and easy-to-consume learning and enablement strategy, which we see as being key to our customers' success and growth in Africa.

"Further, by extending the reach of enablement across the continent, we are able to unlock the tremendous growth potential in Africa, which is the largest market for SAP Education in the EMEA region."

In his role as head of education, Dev says he will support SAP's transformational initiatives on the continent, which entail helping enterprises and governments to use SAP's technology to fuel growth and innovation.

"Recently, there has been a marked increase in interest around our digital platforms and solutions developed to help customers on their digital transformation journey. During the adoption phase, most organisations have requested specific standard classroom training in order to upskill their talent.

"However, what we've discovered is that the core issues are far more complex and budget spent on training does not help tackle the real issues involved. I have therefore instructed my team to embark on an in-depth discovery exercise that involves the customer in order to fully understand the underlying issues and design a solution that really addresses their specific training needs challenges," he explains.

With the advent of technologies like virtual and augmented reality, machine learning and artificial intelligence, the organisation of the future will learn and consume information in a vastly different way, adds Dev.

Interim SAP Africa MD Claas Kuehnemann says: "With the increasing complexity of the business environment, and rapidly evolving technology, tomorrow's knowledge worker will need the ability to constantly upskill to meet new business challenges. We see the appointment of Goutam Dev as a great opportunity to help our customers derive maximum return on investment with the help of our SAP Education software and service portfolio."

Prior to his new role, Dev served as chief of staff to the office of the SAP Africa CEO, where he was responsible for the execution and strategic decisions of the CEO across all lines of business and across 54 African countries. In this capacity, he was also responsible for providing advisory services to the business, especially around direction and impact of strategic decisions.

Dev has also held business consulting roles with major corporations across a range of industries in mature markets like Japan and US and emerging markets like India and Middle East, according to SAP.

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