Beyond the Spreadsheet: How SAP India’s CMO Rahul Singh Is Rewriting the Rules of B2B Brand Building 

In this exclusive interview, SAP India’s Chief Marketing Officer Rahul Singh articulates a comprehensive vision for modern B2B marketing that balances short-term accountability with long-term brand building, emphasizing the need for integrated strategies that combine rigorous demand generation with sustained investments in customer success and social impact. Singh argues that marketing has evolved from a support function to a strategic driver of growth, earning a permanent seat at the strategy table by serving as the “glue” between product development, sales, and customer service, while leveraging data and AI to accelerate this transformation. He stresses the importance of humanizing complex enterprise technology by shifting the narrative from technical specifications to tangible human outcomes—illustrating how SAP’s solutions enable customers to build better products and experiences—and underscores that authentic purpose, genuine action, and unwavering customer focus form the foundation of long-term trust. Looking ahead, Singh predicts that the future of B2B marketing lies at the intersection of AI-driven personalization and authentic human values, where brands that successfully blend technological precision with genuine creativity and sustainability commitments will ultimately thrive.

Beyond the Spreadsheet: How SAP India’s CMO Rahul Singh Is Rewriting the Rules of B2B Brand Building 

For decades, B2B marketing operated in the shadows of sales—a support function tasked with generating leads, managing events, and keeping the website updated while the “real” business happened in boardrooms and client meetings. That era is officially over. 

When Rahul Singh speaks about marketing’s role at SAP India, he isn’t describing a department that simply supports the business. He’s describing a function that drives it—one that sits at the intersection of product strategy, customer experience, and long-term vision. As the company’s Chief Marketing Officer, Singh represents a new breed of B2B marketing leader: part storyteller, part strategist, and wholly accountable for outcomes that extend far beyond brand recall. 

In an exclusive conversation, Singh pulled back the curtain on how one of the world’s largest enterprise software companies is reimagining marketing in an AI-first world—and what it means for an industry still learning to balance creativity with cold, hard numbers. 

The Accountability Tightrope: Where Vision Meets Spreadsheets 

Every CMO faces the same fundamental tension: how do you justify investments in long-term brand building when the sales team needs qualified leads by Thursday? 

At SAP India, Singh doesn’t treat this as an either/or proposition. “With resources always being limited, it is a fine balancing act to stay both visionary and accountable in terms of delivering tangible ROI,” he explains. The solution, he argues, isn’t choosing one over the other—it’s building an integrated approach that respects both time horizons. 

This means running two parallel engines simultaneously. On one track, there’s the demand generation machine—rigorous pipeline creation programs with well-defined metrics across multiple solution areas and industries. These are the campaigns that feed the sales funnel, the ones where success can be measured in meetings booked and opportunities created. 

On the other track, there’s something more patient. “Sustainable brand building involves a set of key long-term initiatives that we drive around social and environmental impact and customer success,” Singh notes. These investments don’t always show up in next quarter’s pipeline report. They compound over years, building the kind of trust and recognition that makes every future sale slightly easier. 

The magic, according to Singh, lies in the integration. Short-term tactics shouldn’t exist in isolation from long-term strategy. Every demand generation campaign should reinforce the brand narrative. Every brand initiative should eventually translate into business outcomes. It’s not about choosing between poetry and plumbing—it’s about recognizing that great poetry requires excellent plumbing to reach its audience. 

A Permanent Seat at the Strategy Table 

There was a time when CMOs were brought into strategy conversations as an afterthought—invited to “brand the decision” after the real work had been done. That dynamic, Singh suggests, is rapidly becoming obsolete. 

“In the era of modern business, marketing has certainly evolved from being a peripheral, support function to a strategic driver of growth and innovation,” he states. The expectation now is that CMOs will be genuine partners in developing and driving the company’s future vision. 

This shift reflects a broader recognition of what marketing actually does. In an age where customer expectations evolve overnight and competitive advantages disappear within quarters, the function that maintains the closest connection to the market becomes strategically indispensable. Marketing doesn’t just communicate value—it helps define what value means. 

“As businesses aspire to become resilient, agile and intelligent enterprises, marketing as a function can be the glue that integrates the front and back offices—from product development to demand generation, sales, distribution and customer service,” Singh explains. 

This isn’t just organizational theory. When marketing sits at the strategy table, product roadmaps become more customer-responsive. Sales conversations become more sophisticated. Customer service interactions become more consistent with the brand promise. The entire organization moves in the same direction because the function responsible for understanding the market is helping to chart the course. 

And technology is accelerating this evolution. “With sophisticated data and AI technologies, this evolution will accelerate like never before,” Singh predicts. When CMOs have access to real-time insights about customer behavior, market trends, and campaign performance, their voice in strategy conversations becomes not just welcome, but essential. 

Humanizing the Invisible: Making Enterprise Technology Relatable 

Here’s the challenge of marketing enterprise software: your product is invisible, incomprehensible to most people, and purchased through a decision-making process that can take 18 months and involve dozens of stakeholders. Try making that exciting. 

SAP’s solutions power supply chains, financial systems, HR processes, and customer relationships for the world’s largest companies. But as Singh points out, “8 out of 10 cars on Indian roads are made by our customers.” The technology itself may be invisible, but its impact is everywhere. 

This insight forms the foundation of SAP India’s narrative approach. “While our solutions deliver tremendous value to our customers’ businesses, the more compelling story is how they leverage our innovative solutions to make a difference to the lives of their customers, partners and employees.” 

In other words, don’t talk about the software. Talk about what the software enables. 

This human-centered approach transforms how audiences perceive enterprise technology. A supply chain optimization tool becomes the reason products arrive on time. An HR platform becomes the engine of employee satisfaction. A financial system becomes the backbone of business growth. 

“In the world of B2B technology, decision-making is typically based on hard data points such as price-feature-functionality, total cost of ownership, long-term business value, etc.,” Singh acknowledges. These factors matter—they’re the price of admission. But the most compelling stories operate at a different level. They connect technical capabilities to human outcomes, transforming abstract business value into tangible human impact. 

The Authenticity Imperative: When Purpose Meets Profit 

There’s a widespread skepticism about corporate purpose—and for good reason. Too many brands have discovered social causes only to abandon them when they became inconvenient. Too many mission statements read like they were written by committees trying to offend no one. 

But Singh sees something different happening with the current generation of consumers and business buyers. “The new age consumers are increasingly basing their purchase decisions around their personal values and beliefs,” he observes. This isn’t just about B2C purchases—it’s increasingly true in B2B contexts, where procurement decisions reflect organizational values and individual decision-makers bring their personal convictions to work. 

Research supports this shift. Purpose-led brands that authentically align with customer values are experiencing faster growth and higher loyalty. But the key word, Singh emphasizes, is authentically. 

“The key here is for brands to stay authentic, integrate these values in their business strategy and back it by genuine action.” This means purpose can’t be a marketing campaign. It has to be woven into how the company operates—how it treats employees, how it sources materials, how it measures success, how it shows up in communities. 

For SAP, this manifests in initiatives around sustainability, diversity and inclusion, and social impact. These aren’t just talking points—they’re strategic priorities backed by investment and measured by outcomes. When marketing communicates these commitments, it’s not creating messages. It’s reporting on reality. 

Trust in the Age of AI: Fifty Years of Credibility 

SAP has been serving customers for over five decades. In an industry where companies rise and fall in years rather than decades, that longevity represents an extraordinary asset. But it also represents an ongoing responsibility. 

“The foundation of this long-term customer trust and credibility lies in our unwavering focus on customer success,” Singh explains. This isn’t just a platitude—it’s an operating principle that shapes how the company approaches everything from product development to marketing communications. 

In practical terms, this means listening continuously to customers, aligning every action across the customer journey toward their success, and maintaining transparency even when the news isn’t perfect. Trust, after all, isn’t built by perfection. It’s built by consistency, honesty, and demonstrated commitment over time. 

This becomes particularly critical in moments of technological transition—like the current shift to AI. SAP’s approach, which Singh describes as “AI-First, Suite-First,” focuses on delivering “relevant, reliable, and responsible ‘Business AI'” by integrating it into core business processes. 

The message to customers is clear: we’re embracing this technology, but we’re doing it thoughtfully, with your success and security in mind. It’s a positioning that leverages decades of trust while signaling readiness for the future. 

The Ecosystem Multiplier: Partners as Growth Engines 

No enterprise technology company succeeds alone. The complexity of modern business systems requires networks of partners who implement, customize, integrate, and support solutions across thousands of customer environments. 

“Our partner ecosystem is one of the most critical components of our growth strategy,” Singh states. This isn’t just about channel sales—it’s about creating a virtuous cycle where partner success drives customer success, which in turn drives SAP’s success. 

The approach involves partners across the entire customer journey: selling solutions, implementing them, providing managed services, and delivering industry-specific expertise. The goal is to create “win-win” scenarios where partners build profitable businesses while ensuring customers receive comprehensive, effective solutions. 

For marketing, this means thinking beyond direct customer communications. It means equipping partners with the tools, messaging, and insights they need to represent the brand effectively in their own markets. It means telling stories that showcase joint innovation and celebrate partner contributions to customer success. 

The Future of B2B Marketing: Where AI Meets Authenticity 

Ask ten marketing leaders where the industry is headed, and you’ll get ten different answers. Singh doesn’t pretend to have a crystal ball, but he does see patterns worth watching. 

“There are too many trends at play in technology and consumer behavior to pin down a single definitive shift,” he acknowledges. “The key trend lies in a combination of these factors.” 

Specifically, he points to the convergence of two powerful forces: AI’s capability to deliver hyper-personalization at scale, and sustainability’s resonance with value-driven buyers. These aren’t separate trends—they’re increasingly intertwined. 

“Brands that can authentically blend AI-driven precision with genuine human creativity and values will be the ones most likely to succeed.” 

This formulation captures something essential about where marketing is headed. The technology exists to know customers intimately, to anticipate their needs, to serve them relevant content at precisely the right moment. But that technical capability means nothing if it isn’t deployed in service of genuine human connection. 

AI can personalize. It can’t be authentic. That part still requires humans—humans who understand their brand’s values, who can translate data into meaning, who can ensure that every interaction reflects not just what the customer wants to hear, but what the brand truly believes. 

The New CMO: Visionary, Accountable, Indispensable 

If there’s a through-line in Singh’s perspective, it’s this: the CMO role has fundamentally changed, and the organizations that recognize this change will have a significant advantage. 

The modern B2B CMO must be both creative and analytical, both visionary and accountable. They must understand the numbers well enough to justify every investment, while never losing sight of the stories that make those numbers possible. They must sit comfortably at the strategy table, contributing to decisions about product, sales, and service while ensuring that the brand remains consistent across every touchpoint. 

At SAP India, Singh is building a marketing function that meets this standard—one that drives short-term results while investing in long-term relationships, that communicates technical capability while emphasizing human impact, that leverages cutting-edge technology while maintaining authentic human connection. 

It’s a demanding brief. But as B2B marketing continues to evolve from support function to strategic driver, it’s also becoming the new baseline. The CMOs who thrive in this environment won’t be the ones who choose between creativity and accountability. They’ll be the ones who insist on both—and build organizations capable of delivering both, day after day, quarter after quarter, year after year. 

In Singh’s words, that’s not just the future of marketing at SAP India. It’s the future of B2B marketing, period. And it’s arriving faster than most organizations realize.