ExxonMobil and SAP on AI-Ready Transformation | SAP Sapphire Orlando 2026
📅 May 15, 2026SAP8 MIN1340 VIEWS17 SEGMENTS · 3 SPEAKERS
ExxonMobil is simplifying processes, standardizing data, and modernizing with SAP to build a stronger foundation for AI.
In this SAP Sapphire Orlando 2026 conversation, SAP welcomes Bill Keillor from ExxonMobil to discuss how one of the world’s largest energy and chemicals companies is rethinking its operating model for a more dynamic future. As ExxonMobil adapts to new market realities, the company is focused on becoming more nimble, simplifying its organizational structure, and making decisions faster.
The discussion highlights ExxonMobil’s business-led transformation with SAP, including a...
Questions asked in this interview
1
7:55And Thomas, what's your key takeaway from the Exxon story?
So ExxonMobil operates at extraordinary scale, and what was happening in the business that made it clear the company needed to rethink its operating model? And how did simplifying processes, aligning technologies enable that?
Yeah, it's a really great question. And you're absolutely right about the scale we operate in. Everybody thinks about the gas station, and my first car was a Renault, by the way. Not many people will know what that was in this room. But we do so much more, truly global company. Not only do we have the oil and gas business, we have the plastics business. We have a lot of innovation in our products. And what we have been seeing over the last several years is our industry is one that is seeing a lot more change in its future than it's had in its past. So we've been around 150 years essentially doing the same thing very, very reliably, very efficiently. But as the energy transition takes place, we're looking to different business models, different decisions that have to be made.
And when we stepped back as a corporation and thought about how we would actually operate in that environment, we realized that we needed a fundamental strategic shift to become a much more nimble organization. Simplify the organizational structure within the corporation that had grown up over the years. And then once you do that, to aid the decision-making, we also had to do something with our processes and absolutely with our data, which was fragmented and difficult to get. And every question was a science project, as I'm sure some of us have shared here on the couch. And so that was kind of the rationale. We want to be able to get to decisions faster so we can react to the market faster, and so we can pivot as we see the world evolve around us.
And that is really why we started this transformation, business-led transformation to fundamentally revisit our processes and revisit our data. Now, we've been around a long time, 150 years, and we had been really good at building IT systems, and we have a long partnership with SAP. And so we had a very large installed base of SAP, which we had improved significantly with customizations. And I discovered earlier this week, actually, Jan is responsible for some of those customizations in a—
So now he's helping us get rid of them. But yeah, I mean that is what fundamentally drove the need to do a true transformation at scale across all of ExxonMobil.
Yeah. I mean, Bill, it's actually interesting when you talk about these years of building these systems and customization, but you also mentioned you want to become more nimble and everything, which also led, when you had the clarity where the business wanted to go, a lot of focus on simplification and standardization, including all the work what you did with the processes, consistent processes, the clean core activities. How did SAP help you on that journey?
7 more exchanges in this transcript
Sign in free to read the rest of this interview. No card required.
Saueressig, T. (2026, May 15). ExxonMobil and SAP on AI-Ready Transformation | SAP Sapphire Orlando 2026 [Interview transcript]. SAP. CEOInterviews.AI. https://ceointerviews.ai/interview/1338678/
MLA
Thomas Saueressig. "ExxonMobil and SAP on AI-Ready Transformation | SAP Sapphire Orlando 2026." SAP, 15 May. 2026. Transcript, CEOInterviews.AI, https://ceointerviews.ai/interview/1338678/.
BibTeX
@misc{saueressig2026_1338678,
author = {Thomas Saueressig},
title = {ExxonMobil and SAP on AI-Ready Transformation | SAP Sapphire Orlando 2026},
howpublished = {Interview transcript, SAP. CEOInterviews.AI},
year = {2026},
month = {may},
url = {https://ceointerviews.ai/interview/1338678/},
note = {Speaker-attributed transcript with timestamps}
}
