Do we understand Christian Klein?

For veteran employees in the SAP community, the topic of language and communication is a constant source of misunderstandings, errors and stumbling blocks: What one person says, the other doesn't necessarily understand! Under former SAP CEO Professor Henning Kagermann, the virtual idea of a language lexicon was born: how should SAP's statements and specifications be translated into the needs and wishes of existing SAP customers? An imaginary Langenscheidt pocket dictionary could be a solution.

Naturally, SAP's success with R/3 and the reign of Henning Kagermann go back many decades. A German - SAP - German dictionary would currently be more of a large language model than an analog paper book. Even a PDF as an electronic image of „Langenscheidt“ would no longer be up to date. However, the need for a translation tool as an intermediary and mediator between SAP and existing customers is currently greater than ever before. In the cloud and AI discourse, there is more than ever a lack of a common language.

SAP CEO Christian Klein wants to convince ERP users of the advantages and benefits of SAP's AI - or even persuade them. Is he right or wrong? Are Christian Klein's statements accurate or confusing? Are they strategic or just a marketing bubble? We don't know, because we don't understand the SAP CEO! His statements do not match the familiar images of other AI providers: Is Christian Klein thus the lone voice crying in the wilderness, is he the genius AI prophet or just a stray lamb from the flock of AI victims?

Christian Klein presents artificial intelligence as the ultimate IT revolution, which is supposed to bring SAP customers leaps in productivity of up to 30 percent and massive cost savings. However, from an investigative point of view, this course, which is being driven forward under the motto „All-in on AI“, resembles a panicked forward-looking discourse. Driven by the profound fear of the financial markets that autonomous AI agents from providers such as OpenAI or Anthropic could make the classic ERP business model obsolete, SAP CEO Christian Klein has to present investors with a lucrative growth story - an AI narrative in beautiful German - in order to save his own stock market value and ward off the impending AI crash. Klein is promising existing customers a new era of digital „super workers“ and the co-pilot Joule, which are supposed to control complex business processes autonomously and as if by magic. Does anyone understand that?

A new dictionary is probably missing: German - SAP - AI - SAP - German. However, the harsh reality in the SAP community often exposes this rhetoric and the AI narrative as pure marketing sugar-coating: according to user reports, many of the highly praised AI functions are immature, error-prone and do not solve any substantial problems in day-to-day business.