Forged in Fire: Leadership Lessons from Transforming DXC's Europe SAP Business Group

Imagine this: Your organization spends months crafting an elaborate "strategic" plan—filled with colorful slides, ambitious targets disconnected from ground realities, and detailed budgets. It's shared far and wide. Sound familiar? This is the comfort trap of planning: a great sense of activity, a great sense of speed—but little to no progress.

Planning is inherently comfortable. It focuses on what you control, like allocating resources or scheduling activities. For example, you draft initiatives like expanding a sales team and you keep hiring and releasing, launching a marketing campaign in a PUSH mode forgetting Services Industry is all about PULL, or investing in locations and creating labor location "strategy".

All good activities. But without a coherent strategy tying them together, they often result in scattered efforts that don't lead to any meaningful outcomes.

True strategy involves making integrative choices, crafting bold hypotheses, testing relentlessly, and adapting.

This philosophy turned our vision as a team into progress, redefining the trajectory of DXC Europe SAP Business Group. A transformational journey that started with a call by the pool we've embarked on together last 2 years with this incredible DXC Europe SAP Business Group TEAM! 🏆

Today, DXC Europe SAP Business Group is company's by far the largest SAP practice, fastest-growing practice among all practices across the globe, outpacing the SAP services market growth 2x.

Over the last two years, leading DXC Europe SAP Business Group and its 1,250+ client-facing professionals, I've been reminded of a defining truth and here's how we did it, where we are, and where we are heading:

01People, People and Again People

We built a purpose-driven, performance-oriented, and principles-led organization. It was through hands-on leadership and it was a collective work and a hard work.

Our leadership wasn't about administering people and sales governance tools like Workday or Salesforce and updating excels. It was about hands-on, demanding yet fair leadership, rooted in authenticity and expecting "0.0%" politics and hard work. It was about being in front of clients and teams, leading by example, and empowering decision-making. Not writing nice newsletters, putting arm-length distance, and claiming all the good while pointing others for the difficult. It was about being on the ground for me and every single leader in my organization and co-owning the good and difficult!

Diversity, Equity, Inclusion

We celebrated diversity as a driver of performance and resilience. We leveled the playing field, addressing systemic biases, and ensuring that everyone has a fair shot. Easier said than done.

Trust & Authenticity

It isn't built overnight—trust is nurtured through transparency and genuine care, whether with customers, employees, or partners.

Competence & Expertise

Passion, curiosity, and continuous learning matter more than job titles. Do you really know what you speak about? Have you done this before? If yes—here is the system, here is the project, here is the client!

Leadership Hiring

Personally engaged hiring the right leadership fitting to the new culture, embracing the change, 0.0% politics, no overly long diplomacy killing momentum and as we grow, all of them get engaged into productive work.

Breaking Silos Globally

Teams from Europe, India, and the Philippines collaborated seamlessly, dissolving barriers.

02Leading Cultural Change: Ownership & Entrepreneurship

I personally do not much believe in industry veteran jargon. I am a deep believer in entrepreneurship associated with ownership, especially in today's high-paced industry where everyone needs to reinvent themselves every 5–7 years with increasing frequency.

Ownership and entrepreneurship were central to our transformation, we did not hire "veteran" leaders in Europe.

Entrepreneurship? Lets made simple. How? I would ask the team about the problems they faced, followed by what solutions and actions we should take. Finally, I'd ask, "What's stopping you from doing it?" More often than not, the response was silence, followed by "Nothing." My conclusion was simple: "Then just do it!"

One of our key transformations was introducing the SAP Business Runners model, shifting from cost-center thinking to an entrepreneurial, end-to-end ownership structure. This unlocked a culture of accountability and client-centricity.

03Integrated SAP Practice: A Business Group – Systems Approach

Not everyone in the team agreed on what the problem was at first or what the line of causality was for success, BUT we were able to understand one another's positions well enough to discuss different interpretations of the problem and work together to tackle it.

We treated our business as an interconnected system, aligning every function—sales, delivery, presales, and operations—under one umbrella. No more misaligned sales, presales, and delivery goals. Priorities were realigned quarterly, eliminating redundant initiatives and focusing on what truly created value.

When we saw anyone trying to make their numbers in a zero-sum fashion by undermining their colleagues, they soon found out there was no place for them to grow. We said we should be able to grow, deliver, and enjoy the outcome collectively and fairly.

04VELOCITY: Our Strategy Program

It's essential to align every action with your arenas, differentiators, vehicles, and pacing. For DXC Europe SAP Business Group, every initiative aligned with this principle, turning strategy from an abstraction into measurable, actionable success.

Speed is about going fast or slow. VELOCITY is about going fast and in the direction of your "choice". You can't win everywhere or with everyone. Making hard trade-offs is essential for focusing resources effectively on your chosen targets.

To anchor our strategy into action, we launched VELOCITY, a comprehensive European SAP strategy program that we co-created during a three-day offsite workshop in Istanbul, refined it in Barcelona and most recently in Madrid. Working alongside my leadership team, we defined:

Strategic Arenas, Vehicles, and Pacing

We co-created actionable plans during a three-day offsite workshop in the bustling city of Istanbul.

Client-Centric Value Propositions

We obsessed over understanding client needs and addressing them better than anyone else.

This wasn't an annual or quarterly exercise but a perpetual evolution rooted in a hands-on understanding of client needs, competitor strategies, and market shifts. We have a lot more to do here.

Make a Good Hypothesis

For instance, you might hypothesize that customers will pay more for speedy delivery or personalized service. Employees might be willing to work for slightly less if they enjoy flexible remote work options and career development opportunities.

Test and Learn

Introduce these initiatives, measure their effectiveness, and adapt as needed. A hypothesis may fail, but a true strategic organization uses each failure as fuel for refinement. Pivot intelligently, experiment constantly, and commit to a learning process.

05Why Clients Choose You (Or Don't)

A critical gap in most strategic plans is a lack of clear understanding of client purchase criteria and the inability to understand that your customers are in flux and do not have all the answers. Why do clients buy from you? What do they value most? And importantly, how do you compare to competitors on those criteria?

Differentiation is meaningless and is one of the most misused business jargons — unless it is translated into concrete capabilities and made real, without fooling yourself or trying to survive the month, quarter, or fiscal year.

For example, if your clients prioritize velocity and responsiveness — does your team consistently outperform competitors in this area?

Near Shore Centers for Responsiveness

New centers in Eastern Europe and North Africa elevated our agility.

If they care about high-touch service with deep industry understanding, how are you investing in scalable, authentic engagement that drives loyalty?

Client-Centric Engagements

We moved from transactional sales to consultative, pull-based solutions.

If they care about reliable delivery, proof points of your capability, innovation initiatives — how are you bringing those?

Reference Customers, Success Stories

We created compelling, tangible case studies that not only attracted top clients but also built credibility with principal consultants and analysts alike.

Show More & Tell Less

We show people, show configured systems, show methodology in action, show proof points connecting client with clients. We show expertise in SAP's newest products rather than the products of the past — BTP, Business AI, EWM, TM, IBP. Show proven accelerators like data migration and agile delivery.

SAP AppHaus Alliance

BTP and Business AI co-innovation with SAP through the AppHaus Alliance. AI is no longer a choice, it is a necessity — and we drive it!

06Delivering Impact

These outcomes highlight our collective effort and my leadership team's relentless focus:

By re-engaging and redefining client partnerships, we closed deals that marked milestones in our history, including resurrecting "lost" contracts. We generated more orders than delivered, kept Book-to-Bill consistently above 1, and achieved significant overhead reduction with sharp client centricity — leading to multi-million-dollar savings on top of contract margin improvement with delivery excellence. Sharp market segmentation across geography, industry, account, and service segment helped us make a market start-up in Southern Europe, which will be extended further.

07Our Way Forward

We're not stopping here.

AI as a Competitive Accelerator

AI is transforming how we deliver value, improve agility, and differentiate ourselves — expect our AI transformation the way we deliver services.

New Arenas

Advanced analytics with BDC, further diversification of industries, and geographies to fuel our growth.

Laser Focus on Execution Discipline

We are committed to maintaining execution discipline.

Give Back

To society, people!

Did we fail along the way? Absolutely. Was it smooth? Not at all. Very rough! But we welcome every challenge and met with resilience, adaptability, and a relentless focus on two simple things: TALENT and CLIENTS.

This journey wouldn't have been possible without the enablement and support of Brian Miller, the spark from Michael Corcoran, and the sponsorship (and challenges) of Juan Parra, Jennifer Ragone, Pat McClanahan, and Howard Boville.

I am immensely grateful to every member of #Europe #SAP #TeamDXC for their relentless drive and commitment. All this happened with the trust and recognition of our clients! #ThankYou

Let's see what the next phase of this career journey has in store! I am excited, passionate, confident, and as well open! I've enjoyed every moment of it so far!

If you're looking to contribute to something impactful, now's the time to join the DXC Europe SAP Business Group movement! Come join us at DXC Technology Europe SAP Business Group!

Best wishes.
Ceyhun