SAP NOW AI Tour, London: David Santiago, Fairmarkit

The SAP NOW AI Tour balanced customer spotlights, solution demonstrations and expert presentations, creating opportunities for attendees to engage directly with SAP specialists and partners.

From a procurement perspective, a series of fascinating sessions examined AI’s increasingly crucial role in finance and spend management. 

Procurement Magazine caught up with David Santiago, Senior Channel Sales Director at Fairmarkit, discusses the buzz surrounding agentic AI and the immense value of the SAP NOW AI Tour.

Can you introduce yourself and tell us about your role?

I'm David Santiago, Senior Channel Sales Director at Fairmarkit. Like a lot of partner workers or leaders, you do a bunch of different things, but I spend most of my time with SAP.

What does working with SAP entail on a daily basis for you?

SAP is a massive organisation, so it's about spreading the word about Fairmarkit, making sure the right people know what we do and figuring out what accounts and customers we can work together on to provide the best solution.

For anyone less familiar with Fairmarkit, what's your specialism?

We're the automated sourcing platform, essentially for all the types of spend you want competitive sourcing on, but where you don't want your team to spend a lot of time on it. 

How does AI play into what you do at Fairmarkit?

I think with AI and all new technology advancements, there comes new challenges in implementation and there’s a bit of a learning curve there. But I also think it's an opportunity to make those implementations a little bit easier and go a little bit faster. That’s something we try to do at Fairmarkit. Everyone has some battle scars from bad implementations or deliveries, so we try to do it in about a 12-week process and use AI to help get a quicker time to value.

Are you seeing real buzz around agentic AI on the ground?

Absolutely. I think every software provider out there is talking about agentic AI, as they should be, which is really exciting not only for people like me in the provider space, but also for customers as well. It opens up the door to a lot of new possibilities and functionalities that they'll be able to take advantage of.

How crucial is AI readiness before companies embark on AI implementation?

I think it's important, but I also think it's important not to have analysis paralysis as well – you have to start somewhere. What I've seen work successfully is starting small, identifying a use case, seeing what works and what doesn't work and then building off of that – versus 'we know we want AI, so let's have the whole thing solved before we jump in'. The key is finding something that works, seeing some results and expanding from there.

How valuable are events like SAP NOW AI Tour London?

I think it's fantastic. You have a lot of conversations that you normally wouldn't have in your day-to-day work. Hearing from different thought leaders, attending the breakout sessions and with the foot traffic at the booth – you can learn a lot even from a one-day event like this. The conversations are really impactful. You get a picture of the different challenges organisations are working through and the areas where Fairmarkit or SAP could possibly help.