SAP names Rachel Barger MD of Southeast Asia

Software company SAP has appointed Rachel Barger (pictured) as president and managing director of SAP Southeast Asia. She will report directly to Scott Russell, president of SAP Asia Pacific Japan (APJ).

In her role, Barger will be responsible for driving SAP Southeast Asia’s strategy and execution, leading customer operations, accelerating customer transformation into enterprises, as well as building customer value and success in the region. Based in Singapore, she will oversee SAP’s business across Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam and other emerging markets in Southeast Asia.

Barger was most recently the chief operating officer for SAP APJ, responsible for the development and execution of go-to-market and growth strategies across all industries and portfolios in the region. She brings with her more than 15 years of experience in the software industry across North America, Asia Pacific, Middle East and Europe. Barger has also held several leadership roles managing high performing organisations and teams in enterprise sales, customer success, and professional services functions.

According to Barger, digital technology is permeating every industry, institution, business process, and individual experiences, and that the wide spread digital transformation precipitated by productivity gain and growth opportunity is giving rise to the digital economy in ASEAN.

"I am honoured to lead the Southeast Asia’s business to drive customer adoption, partner and ecosystem development, inspire digital transformation through pre-sales and industry value engineering engagement, and spearhead regional innovation efforts. I look forward to working with more than 4,000 colleagues based in Southeast Asia to take SAP to the next level in this growth region, as we help the region’s governments and businesses achieve their vision of a digital ASEAN,” she said.

Meanwhile, Russell said that Southeast Asia’s digital economy is growing at an unprecedented pace and businesses are accelerating their digital transformation into intelligent enterprises. "While the level of digital readiness varies across Southeast Asia, SAP has the extensive capability to help our customers scale and win in the digital economy. Barger brings with her a wealth of experience and deep industry expertise to drive customer success and innovation in Asia’s next growth frontier. I am confident that SAP Southeast Asia will continue to grow and flourish under her leadership,” he said.

Last October in Singapore, SAP launched a data centre to help businesses in APAC adopt digital commerce strategies to deliver superior customer experiences. According to the software company, Singapore was selected to host SAP’s data centre due to its “geopolitical stability and its adherence to data privacy”. The data centre will be the default data centre for SAP customers in Southeast Asia and India, and aims to help customers deploy SAP’s commerce cloud solution with minimal latency and performance issue to deliver online shopping experience.