Mark Smith stands at the critical intersection where cutting-edge AI meets the messy reality of enterprise SAP environments. While others architect solutions in idealized conditions, Mark operates on the front lines—deploying Nova's AI agents into live production systems, diagnosing the unexpected, and turning field insights into product improvements that make the entire platform stronger.
What sets Mark apart isn't just his technical depth—it's his rare ability to see both the forest and the trees. Having led global SAP Business Technology Platform initiatives at Implico Group, Mark understands what executives need: measurable business value, manageable risk, and transformation that actually works. But he also knows the ground truth: the quirky legacy code, the undocumented customizations, and the real-world constraints that can make or break an AI deployment.
This dual perspective makes him invaluable. When Nova's AI agents encounter something unexpected in a customer's SAP landscape, Mark doesn't just troubleshoot—he translates those discoveries into systematic improvements. Every challenging deployment becomes an opportunity to make the platform more robust for the next customer.
At Nova Intelligence, Mark serves as the essential bridge between innovation and implementation. He takes sophisticated multi-agent AI systems and makes them work reliably in environments where "move fast and break things" isn't an option. His work ensures that Fortune 500 companies can confidently deploy AI-powered SAP transformation, knowing someone with deep enterprise experience has validated every step.
He configures workflows that respect the complexity of real SAP environments—understanding that every enterprise has unique patterns, accumulated technical debt, and business logic that can't simply be replaced. His rapid diagnostic capabilities mean that when high-impact issues arise, they're resolved quickly, keeping transformations on track and customers confident.
Mark's journey through the SAP ecosystem reads like a masterclass in comprehensive technical growth. He started deep in the code—building Fiori applications, modeling complex CDS views, architecting cloud-native solutions on SAP's Business Technology Platform. He mastered not just ABAP, but the modern SAP stack: Cloud Application Programming Model (CAP), RESTful Application Programming (RAP), SAPUI5, and beyond.
But Mark didn't stop at technical excellence. He progressed into leadership roles, mentoring development teams, driving technical strategy, and eventually leading global BTP initiatives. This progression gave him something rare: the ability to write sophisticated code and align that code with enterprise business objectives.
His time at NIMBL and Mindset Consulting wasn't just about building applications—it was about understanding how SAP transformations succeed or fail. He led "Fit-to-Standard" sessions, managed data migrations, trained users, and navigated the political and technical complexities of moving enterprises from legacy ECC systems to S/4HANA. These experiences taught him what textbooks can't: how real organizations actually adopt new technology.
Mark's role goes far beyond traditional customer engineering. Every day, he synthesizes insights from live deployments and feeds them back into Nova's core system. When he discovers a pattern that could trip up future customers, he doesn't just document it—he ships code improvements. When he identifies a workflow optimization, it becomes part of the platform. This continuous improvement cycle, grounded in real-world validation, makes Nova's AI agents increasingly sophisticated and reliable.
Mark brings a comprehensive mastery of the SAP technology landscape:
He understands legacy systems—the ABAP code written decades ago that still runs critical business processes. He knows modern cloud architectures—designing secure, scalable applications on SAP BTP. He's fluent in data integration patterns—from OData services to complex migration strategies. And he excels at user experience—building interfaces with SAPUI5, Fiori, React, and Flutter that people actually want to use.
This breadth means he can meet customers where they are. Whether they're still on ECC, mid-migration to S/4HANA, or already cloud-native and pursuing Clean Core, Mark has lived those scenarios and knows how to make AI-powered transformation work in each context.
Mark's commitment extends beyond technical excellence into building inclusive, high-performing teams and giving back to his community. His certifications in diversity, inclusion, and belonging programs reflect a belief that better teams build better technology. His work fighting gender bias and creating organizations people don't want to leave demonstrates values that shape how he approaches both engineering and leadership.
His service on the Board of Directors for Project PAVE shows dedication to creating impact beyond the enterprise software world—bringing strategic thinking and operational excellence to organizations working on social challenges.
Perhaps what makes Mark most effective is something harder to quantify: he genuinely understands that behind every SAP system are people trying to do their jobs. When he deploys Nova's AI agents, he's not just thinking about technical success—he's thinking about the developers who'll maintain the code, the business users who'll interact with the applications, and the executives who need to trust the transformation.
This empathy, combined with strategic vision and deep technical capability, makes him the ideal person to ensure that Nova Intelligence's revolutionary AI technology translates into real-world enterprise success. He doesn't just make the technology work—he makes it work for people.
Based in Albuquerque, New Mexico, Mark embodies Nova's philosophy that the most powerful AI is the AI that reliably delivers value in the complex, imperfect reality of enterprise environments—not in idealized demos, but in production systems where it matters most.
