Liam Ryan, SAP Ireland. Image: © Connor McKenna/SiliconRepublic.com
Episode four of The Leaders’ Room’s season two features outgoing SAP Ireland managing director, Liam Ryan. This series is created in partnership with IDA Ireland.
Season two of The Leaders’ Room podcast again sees host Ann O’Dea get up close and personal with the Irish-based leaders of some of the world’s most influential technology, health-tech, software and engineering companies with operations in Ireland.
As well as getting their insights on the nature of good leadership and the strategies that define success in some of the world’s most influential companies, the series also gets their expert views on the big trends that are shaping their sectors.
In this episode, we speak to Liam Ryan, just ahead of his retirement as managing director of SAP Ireland, to get his invaluable insights on a long and illustrious career in tech.
SAP started out in Germany in 1972 as a small five-person business. Today, it’s a multinational with approximately 110,000 employees worldwide and its products are so widely used that 87pc of all global transactions touch an SAP system.
SAP develops enterprise application software, to help run businesses of all sizes. It has 21 labs around the world, and one is based here in Ireland.
Ryan joined SAP in 1999, when the Irish team consisted of just 33 people. Since then, he has overseen the growth of SAP’s operations here, to a team of 2,400 people today, based out of Dublin and Galway. I was delighted to have an opportunity to reflect with Liam on that time and indeed on his long and storied career.
Ryan says the three Fs theory – Be fair, firm and friendly (he’s adapted the latter to approachable these days) – has served him well through his career, having first come upon them right back in his days as a corporal in the FCA (Ireland’s old voluntary army reserve).
Notwithstanding our regular discourse on how leadership has changed in recent years, it’s a theory that can still underpin any good people strategy.
Ryan has long had a very inclusive approach to leadership and spoke on stage for us on his work with Specialisterne back in 2016. Working with them, Ryan has fostered a highly successful programme that involved the hiring of workers with autism at SAP’s operations in Ireland.
Today they have 20 colleagues, and Specialisterne has placed 600 talented autistic people throughout Ireland.
It’s remarkable really to think that some 87pc of global transactions touch an SAP system at some point. It’s a reminder that some of our big tech players as they become so pervasive in our lives and businesses, really do have incredible power today, and Ryan certainly takes that very seriously indeed, describing it as a “hell of a responsibility”.
Looking to the future of his sector, Ryan thinks AI is going to be a serious enabler for a lot of businesses, in that it can help them transform. It can be hard, he says, for established companies who have been doing things in much the same way for 20 years or more to transform, but he believes AI will go a long way to having people think differently and transform how they operate.
And he says that will go for other crucial concerns like sustainability and supply chain management. As Ryan says, it all comes back to data – at the core of enterprise applications is the quality of the data – and there are no AI shortcuts for that.
We’re extremely grateful to all our interviewees for taking the time to come into the studio and share their insights and their intelligence again for season two of the podcast. And big thanks as ever to our partners IDA Ireland who have made this series possible.
The Leaders’ Room podcast is released fortnightly and can be found by searching for ‘The Leaders’ Room’ wherever you get your podcasts. For those who prefer their audio with visuals, filmed versions of the podcast interviews are all available here on SiliconRepublic.com.
Check out The Leaders’ Room podcast for in-depth insights from some of Ireland’s top leaders. Listen now on Spotify, on Apple or wherever you get your podcasts.
