SAP Hires Ritu Bhargava as Chief Product Officer for SAP Customer Experience; Bob Stutz Retiring After a Trailblazing Career in the Tech Industry

WALLDORF — SAP SE (NYSE: SAP) today announced that Ritu Bhargava will join SAP on November 15, 2021, to become chief product officer for SAP Customer Experience.

SAP’s vision is to help companies enable a cohesive customer experience (CX) across the entire customer lifecycle. With its CX portfolio, SAP is bringing together customer, experience and operational data to deliver unique value to customers.

“During the last months, all businesses have been challenged with the need to reinvent the experience for their customers — to make it personalized, seamless and outstanding”, said Christian Klein, CEO of SAP SE. “Companies understand that if they are not competing on experience, they don’t stand a chance. Delivering meaningful experiences at scale has become key to stay competitive.”

“Ritu brings extensive experience in the enterprise applications and CX space, a strong market focus from both a business and an engineering perspective, and an employee-focused and customer-first mindset,” said Thomas Saueressig, member of the Executive Board of SAP SE. “I couldn’t think of a better match to strengthen our stellar CX team.”

Bhargava joins SAP from Salesforce, where she held various technology leadership positions over the past ten years, most recently heading Salesforce Sales Cloud engineering as a senior vice president. She started her career working as an SAP developer before she went on to work at Oracle for ten years, responsible for financial applications in various roles. Bhargava holds a bachelor’s degree in economics and psychology from Lady Shriram College, Delhi University, and an MBA in finance and IT from the University of Lincolnshire, UK. She co-chairs the West Coast Advisory Board for Asian University for Women, a Bangladesh-based nonprofit dedicated to women’s education and leadership development.

Bhargava is taking over from Bob Stutz, one of the world’s leading experts on customer experience and recognized by Ad Age as one of the Top 25 Marketing Technology Trailblazers, who is retiring after a career of more than 25 years in the tech industry.

“Since Bob rejoined SAP in 2019, he has done a tremendous job in driving our CX business forward,” said Saueressig. “There is hardly another tech leader who has shaped CRM and CX in such a unique way over the past 25 years. His visibility in the tech industry and his passion for making every customer experience a great experience is unmatched. We are very happy to have had him onboard over the past few years, and I’m incredibly grateful for everything he has done for our customers and the entire ecosystem.”

Visit the SAP News Center. Follow SAP on Twitter at @SAPNews.

Media Contact:
Marcus Winkler, +49 6227 7-67497, [email protected], CET
SAP Press Room; [email protected]

Any statements contained in this document that are not historical facts are forward-looking statements as defined in the U.S. Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Words such as “anticipate,” “believe,” “estimate,” “expect,” “forecast,” “intend,” “may,” “plan,” “project,” “predict,” “should” and “will” and similar expressions as they relate to SAP are intended to identify such forward-looking statements. SAP undertakes no obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements. All forward-looking statements are subject to various risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from expectations. The factors that could affect SAP’s future financial results are discussed more fully in SAP’s filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”), including SAP’s most recent Annual Report on Form 20-F filed with the SEC. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements, which speak only as of their dates.
© 2021 SAP SE. All rights reserved.

Author Information

As a detail-oriented researcher, Sherril is expert at discovering, gathering and compiling industry and market data to create clear, actionable market and competitive intelligence. With deep experience in market analysis and segmentation she is a consummate collaborator with strong communication skills adept at supporting and forming relationships with cross-functional teams in all levels of organizations.

Sherril holds a Master of Business Administration in Marketing from University of Colorado, Boulder and a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology from Rutgers University.

Latest Insights:
Conduent's $447M Refinancing Clears the Path for AI-Led Growth
October 24, 2026
Article
Article

Conduent's $447M Refinancing Clears the Path for AI-Led Growth

Conduent closed a $447 million refinancing deal, extending credit facilities and reducing financial risk while enabling execution of its ASCEND 2026–28 strategic plan to become a premier AI-led business process partner....
Cadence AuraStack
October 23, 2026
Article
Article

Nokia Designs Network Hardware 5x Faster on Cadence's Agentic Supercomputer

Brendan Burke, Research Director at Futurum, shares his insights on Nokia deploying Cadence's AuraStack AI Super Agent on the Millennium M2000, why the on-premises system sale answers Synopsys Autopilot, and what a...
OpenShell agent security
October 23, 2026
Article
Article

SUSE OpenShell Agent Security: Enforcement Is Table Stakes, Proof Is Not

Vikram Rathnam and Mitch Ashley of The Futurum Group share insights on SUSE's OpenShell agent security news and why proof of what an agent did, not enforcement, will separate the enterprise Linux...
Google Cloud Marketplace Can It Become Gemini's Front Door to the Enterprise
October 23, 2026
Article
Article

Google Cloud Marketplace: Can It Become Gemini’s Front Door to the Enterprise?

Alex Smith, Analyst at The Futurum Group, shares insights on how Google Cloud Marketplace is becoming the commercial engine for Gemini, industry agents, and agentic ISV solutions....
Latest Research:
The Storage Squeeze How Smart Organizations Are Funding Their AI Future
October 20, 2026

The Storage Squeeze: How Smart Organizations Are Funding Their AI Future

In our latest Thought Leadership Brief, The Storage Squeeze: How Smart Organizations Are Funding Their AI Future, completed in partnership with CTERA, Futurum Research examines how unmanaged data growth drains...
Closing the Enterprise Context Gap
October 16, 2026

Closing the Enterprise Context Gap

In our latest thought leadership brief, Closing the Enterprise Context Gap, completed in partnership with Teradata, Futurum Research examines why autonomous AI agents stall before reaching production and outlines the...
Delegating Outcomes: How a Universal Agent Changes the Way Enterprises Work
October 15, 2026

Delegating Outcomes: How a Universal Agent Changes the Way Enterprises Work

In our latest thought leadership brief, Delegating Outcomes: How a Universal Agent Changes the Way Enterprises Work, completed in partnership with Google Cloud, Futurum Research examines why first-generation agent programs...

Book a Demo

Welcome

The vision behind everything in Futurum’s Custom Research practice is this: research should show you what is happening, what comes next, and what to do about it. It should be personal to each audience, easy for people to grasp, and structured so LLMs can reason over it accurately. And it should be fast and turnkey; you want answers now, not another project to carry for quarters.

Whether you are defining business, channel, or go-to-market strategy; evaluating vendors or justifying ROI; or commissioning research to fill an emerging market need, we have your back, with a program that answers your questions with the objectivity and credibility to drive real decisions.

To do it, we bring unmatched data to bear: Futurum research, surveys, and market projections; validated market feeds; ETR’s 15 years of insight from 10,000 technology decision-makers; G2’s buyer and user data; and what our analysts hear every day. Add leading primary collection, from AI-moderated voice interviews to surveys and analyst-led interviews, all turnkey, and every project comes out credible, nuanced, and actionable.

And we don’t just drop the results in your lap. For internal work, we provide analyst-led sessions, interactive dashboards, and a range of formats. For market-facing work, Futurum delivers turnkey activation and amplification that actually gets seen, by people and by LLMs, through our media and share of voice. This is research that moves decisions and markets.

We will meet you wherever you are, from a fast-turn brief to a multi-year program, and shape the work to your goals, timeline, and budget. The right program for your moment.

If any of this is useful, I would love to talk.

Benjamin Brown, VP Custom Research, Futurum Research

Benjamin Brown

VP, Custom Research · The Futurum Group

Newsletter Sign-up Form

Get important insights straight to your inbox, receive first looks at eBooks, exclusive event invitations, custom content, and more. We promise not to spam you or sell your name to anyone. You can always unsubscribe at any time.

All fields are required






Thank you, we received your request, a member of our team will be in contact with you.