The SAP Nordic Leadership Team

Chief Operating Officer for the Nordic and Baltic region since October 1, 2019 Helle Dochedahl leads SAP Nordic’s strategic customer and market development and oversees all customer-centric operations in the Nordic and Baltic countries. A +25 year SAP veteran Helle Dochedahl has held several positions in SAP Presales, latest as Vice President EMEA South heading the Center of Excellence and Presales. Danish by origin, Helle has travelled extensively to broaden her horizon, getting closer to employees and customers across the world. A true believer in people’s leadership, coaching and mentoring capabilities it is important for her to support others in orchestrating their own transformations.

Christian Pedersen is leading the Nordic CFO office and he supports local management in the modernization and development of regional infrastructure in financial services. Christian brings along a broad financial background with more than 30 years of experience in several finance roles.  Christian first joined SAP in 1999 and has during this time been interim CFO for different countries in the Nordic region and has a good sense of country specific topics and market requirements. He also understands that the requirements of a CFO today means being a partner to the business in terms of transforming, enabling and driving business. Christian holds an Executive MBA from Copenhagen Business School. 

Pekka Makkonen is the HR Director for Nordic & Baltics at SAP. He re-joined SAP in 2017. Earlier, he worked at SAP from 2003 until 2011.  

Pekka’s responsibility is the overall leadership of the HR Agenda in the Nordics. Together with the Nordic HR team, Pekka’s mission is to ensure the first-class employee experience and to support SAP’s transformation into the most innovative cloud company. Focusing on the word We instead of Me, he is a true believer in collaboration and sharing of information across all borders. 

Pekka has more than 20 years of HR leadership experience in international high-tech companies. He has built and developed international HR teams and helped multiple organizations in their business transformations. He holds a Master’s degree in Social Sciences from the University of Helsinki.

Jorn Jacobsen has the overarching responsibility for SAP’s operations in Denmark as well as Danish software sales across all customers, all solutions and all industries. As member of the Nordic Leadership Team he supports the Nordic execution of SAP’s strategy to provide customers with simple solutions to complex business challenges and enabling our customers’ digital transformation journey and innovation roadmaps. 

Jorn Jacobsen returned to the position as Managing Director for SAP Denmark in January 2018 after rejoining SAP as Nordic Head of Innovation & Technology (DDM) in December 2016. Jorn is an experienced and passionate executive who successfully lead SAP Denmark as Manging Director before (2011-2014). From 2014 to 2016 Jørn filled the position as Managing Director at EMC and is known for his value-centric approach with customers and his inspiring leadership style. Jørn has a proven record of accomplishment from senior leadership and management positions within executive search and other IT companies like Oracle, BEA Systems and CA and he knows how to lead people and teams towards developing and delivering large and complex solutions of high value to clients. 

Taira Tepponen leads SAP Finland as Country Manager. She has the full responsibility of our Finnish sales business across all innovative SAP platforms and solutions.With more than 20 years of comprehensive experience in the IT industry, including 13 years with SAP in various Sales positions as Account Executive within Retail, Consumer Products, Public, Financial and Services industries as well as Global Account Director for Nokia and Nokia Siemens Networks, Taira has a profound knowledge of the software business and the Finnish market. For the past three years Taira has successfully driven our Strategic Customer Program (SCP) on Nordic level managing customer relations with SAP’s top 16 customer accounts.

Ari Pussinen heads the Nordic Ecosystem & Channels organization who works together with the whole ecosystem around SAP to drive increased customer value and revenue growth.Partners and Alliances of various sizes in the Nordic and Baltic countries are a key element of success for SAP, and the importance of channel business ranks very high in the SAPs strategy going forward. Ari, who joined SAP in 2011, has a university degree (MSc) in economics and finance and almost twenty years of experience within information technology and software, having had various management, sales and business development roles in companies like BEA Systems and Oracle.

Stefano started at SAP as Nordic Head of Innovation autumn 2015. April 2016 he moved on as Country Manager Norway, where he strives to unlock the business potential of the SAP platform and cloud offerings in an economically challenging environment. He believes the combination of innovation and simplification is the best way to improve customer processes and success. His passion is applying technology to solve real business challenges.

Before coming to SAP, Stefano led HP’s software division in Norway, Finland and the Baltics. Prior to that, he has held several management positions at IBM software division. With more than 20 years of solid experience from the IT business covering roles from developer and technical manager to business developer, sales and marketing, he has a solid understanding of what makes the business run better. Stefano holds a Master of Science in Industrial and Systems Engineering from Ohio University.

Per Alm was appointed Managing Director for SAP Sweden mid March 2019. A seasoned executive in the IT-industry and with 16 years of experience from all business areas in SAP, Per sees as his mission to offer Swedish companies the opportunity to become truly intelligent enterprises to succeed in the experience economy. At the heart of his interest is how to enable small and large companies to evolve their enterprise systems to be fueled by smart data and allow for improved customer experience, facts-based decision-making and develop sustainable business.  He holds an informatics degree from the University of Gothenburg. .

SAP is constantly sharpening its services and solutions to deliver smarter value in a faster way, and we are the only solution provider covering customer experience and value chains end-to-end. We do this by embedding all exponential technologies, like AI, machine learning, blockchain, IoT and advanced analytics. As a company to transform your business to build on smart data, you need a strategic partner that covers all aspects of a business, from running core operations to expanding into new business areas and collaborations – at the same time. And that is what SAP can do for companies today.