SAP Hires Salesforce Exec as Chief Product Officer for Customer Experience

WALLDORF, Germany — SAP is welcoming a former Salesforce executive to drive product development for its customer experience (CX) portfolio.

SAP hired Ritu Bhargava as chief product officer for SAP Customer Experience, effective Nov. 15, according to SAP last month.

SAP said its CX vision is to help companies enable a cohesive customer experience across the entire customer life cycle. 

With its CX portfolio, SAP is bringing together customer, experience, and operational data to “deliver 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, SAP. 

“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.”

Most recently, Bhargava headed sales cloud engineering as an SVP at Salesforce, where she held various technology leadership positions over the past 10 years.

Previously, she started her career working as an SAP developer, before she went on to work at Oracle for 10 years, responsible for financial applications in various roles. 

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Bhargava co-chairs the West Coast Advisory Board for Asian University for Women, a Bangladesh-based nonprofit dedicated to women’s education and leadership development.

She holds a bachelor’s degree in economics and psychology from Lady Shriram College, Delhi University and an M.B.A. in finance and IT from the University of Lincolnshire, U.K. 

“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, a member of the SAP Executive Board. 

Bhargava is taking over from Bob Stutz, 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,” Saueressig said. “There is hardly another tech leader who has shaped CRM and CX in such a unique way over the past 25 years.”

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