With almost 30 years of experience in the SAP industry, Christopher M. Carter founded Approyo to provide full SAP service technology with extensive capabilities in hosting and managing services, upgrades, and migration of its clients, running any SAP-supported core functionality. With more than a thousand SAP environments under management around the planet, Approyo supports businesses from production to landscapes to migrations onto SAP S/4 HANA.
As an SAP partner, Approyo offers its solutions as a service to its clients and partners across the planet. While many Managed Service Providers are likely to provide several forms of ERP systems to expand their services portfolio, Approyo only deals with systems related to SAP directly. While the organization offers integrative services with several other ERP providers like Microsoft Azure, AWS, etc., Approyo’s primary focus is still on SAP.
The Steadfast Leader
Chris attended The Georgia Institute of Technology during his college days, where he found his love for technology. After graduating, he shortly started working with SAP and later worked in a California-based start-up, where he was responsible for running day-to-day sales and marketing activities. He then served in multiple executive positions in the SAP ecosystem. At this point of time, he founded his own business, which was sold at a later stage. After selling his company, Chris retired for a few years until one of his old friends called him to inform him about the latest release of SAP HANA. Soon after that day, he was convinced to dive back in and flew to Germany to start working and learning about SAP HANA. Later in December 2013, he founded Approyo to provide global leadership for SAP directives.
Greatest Accomplishment
As the organization’s leader, Chris is proud of the team he has been able to develop at Approyo. Chris and his team have brought in some of the best talents on the planet by expanding the firm’s reach into Brazil, the UK, Spain, and India. Presently with offices being developed in several other parts of the world, Approyo no longer must worry about resources, as it ensures the company has the right resources for its clients anywhere at any time.
Chris says, “It’s a game changer for us, and it’s a great accomplishment for our team these men and women are our incredible staff members, and we’re blessed to have them here.“
Tackling Challenges
Chris is 100% up for tackling challenges. He considers himself fortunate to be controlled and prepared to lead Approyo to new challenges and heights. He says, “I have an incredible staff around me who supported my decisions and helped me make those decisions so we could accomplish greatness for our customers. It’s all about them and my staff we want to support our customers in their needs that’s why we did some of the most unprecedented support activities during the pandemic to help them, and we will continue to support them on a global stage.“
Chris feels his biggest failure was the fact that he had to put one of his companies into a bankruptcy situation; although it came out of the situation fine, it was a very sad, challenging, and heartbreaking time for him. However, he came out of the situation with a lot of knowledge and understanding of several things and what he could do differently.
Leadership Principles
Chris’s primary leadership principles;
- As the organization’s leader, Chris trusts his team to make the necessary decisions to support customers and keep them on a proper lifestyle, as they don’t want interruptions.
- He believes in training his staff and increasing their skill sets as he wants them to become the next managers or executives of Approyo.
- Lastly, he wants Approyo’s customers to sleep well at night. Chris wants them to have the ability to lead the lifestyle or workstyle they deserve, and they should not have to worry about the landscapes of their systems, people, and applications.
Implementing New Ideas
Approyo is implementing its AI-based monitoring and support tool on every client the firm acquires. This tool provides the opportunity to proactively understand what’s going on with the system and how it will run in the coming weeks. This also provides valuable information on how security is being enacted in case of any vulnerabilities. It is a true AI tool that helps the company by providing everything it needs to be proactive and hyper-aggressive in supporting its clients.
Picture of the Future
Chris says, “Our future, I feel, is quite bright. We have plans with our AI-based tools to support and provide the managed services and details companies need to run their SAP and other landscapes with our managed service provider organization. We also feel that our best-in-breed SAP migration and support will continue to revolutionize the ecosystem.“
By combining Approyo’s tools, people and processes, Chris feels that the company is second to none in this ecosystem, and it’ll continue to strive to provide for our clients on an ongoing day-in and day-out solution basis.