Sarah Nakamura, MBA

• Role at Lab: Operations and Implementation Reviewer (pending confirmation)
• Prior: VP Product, SAP SuccessFactors (9 years); Senior Director, Workday Customer Operations (6 years)
• Education: MBA, Northwestern University, Kellogg School of Management
• Certifications: Certified SAP SuccessFactors Consultant; Workday Financial Management Certified Associate

Biography

Sarah Nakamura is an independent enterprise software advisor with 19 years in product management and customer operations at two of the world's largest enterprise software companies. She holds an MBA with Distinction from Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management and holds certifications as a SAP SuccessFactors Consultant and Workday Financial Management Specialist.

At SAP SuccessFactors, Sarah served as Vice President of Product for nine years, overseeing the product roadmap for enterprise modules serving organizations with 10,000 to 250,000 employees. In that role, she led the design of SAP SuccessFactors' Customer Readiness Assessment Framework, the internal methodology used to evaluate whether enterprise clients had the organizational prerequisites for successful implementation before contracts were signed. That framework is now in use across more than 1,200 SAP implementation projects globally.

Prior to SAP, Sarah spent six years at Workday as Senior Director of Customer Operations, leading a team of 62 engineers, implementation specialists, and customer success managers across the Workday Financial Management customer base. She developed Workday's Operational Proof Standard, the internal framework used to classify which customer success claims were backed by documented outcomes versus which were aspirational targets, a classification directly analogous to Market Proof Lab's proof classification methodology. Since leaving SAP in 2023, Sarah has worked as an independent enterprise software advisor to six private equity-backed portfolio companies on technology platform selection and implementation risk.

Areas of expertise

• Enterprise software implementation: what operational prerequisites determine whether an enterprise software deployment succeeds; understanding the gap between vendor capability claims and realized deployment outcomes
• Operational readiness assessment: evaluating whether an organization has the data quality, process maturity, and change management capacity to achieve the outcomes a vendor claims its platform produces
• Vendor evaluation from the buyer side: designing proof-of-concept and pilot programs that generate independently verifiable evidence about vendor performance before contract commitment
• Implementation proof standards: identifying which vendor implementation claims require documented evidence versus which are theoretical capabilities that may not transfer to specific organizational contexts
• Decision scenarios for enterprise software: translating general evaluation criteria into practical decision frameworks for different organizational sizes, sectors, and technical environments

Review scope at Market Proof Lab

Sarah reviews Market Proof Lab's implementation criteria, operational readiness frameworks, and decision scenarios from the perspective of someone who has overseen thousands of enterprise software deployments from the vendor side. Her review confirms that implementation criteria reflect genuine operational prerequisites, that decision scenarios match real organizational contexts, that trial and verification methodology gives buyers actionable steps that generate real proof of operational fit, and that risk factors capture the implementation risks that commonly cause enterprise software deployments to underperform or fail.

Credentials and professional standing

• MBA, Northwestern University, Kellogg School of Management (Technology Strategy and Operations)
• Certified SAP SuccessFactors Consultant (enterprise HR implementation certification)
• Workday Financial Management Certified Associate
• Advisory board member, Enterprise Software Implementation Consortium (ESIC)

Conflict and relationship disclosure

Sarah Nakamura left SAP and Workday in 2022 and does not hold current employment, equity, or ongoing consulting relationships with either company as of June 2026. Both SAP and Workday are vendors that may be covered in future Market Proof Lab research. If a specific research output covers SAP or Workday, Sarah will recuse from reviewing that output and this will be noted on the relevant report. She does not hold equity or financial interests in any enterprise software vendor covered in Market Proof Lab's current or planned research. This disclosure is reviewed before each new review engagement.