With your back to the wall

A year ago, the young SAP CEO Christian Klein presented Rise with SAP; in retrospect, it was the classic own goal. The SAP CEO wanted to lead the way with a holistic concept and was not only let down by his own team, but also faced a lot of headwind from the community.

The past year has clearly shown how isolated Christian Klein is at the top of SAP. As was his duty, his colleagues on the Executive Board and executives took up the issue of SurpRISE with SAP, but convincing and committed advocacy and support look different. Christian Klein was left standing in the rain, turning a "code word attack" into a regrettable Rise and Fall with SAP.

A relaunch of Rise with SAP in the middle of last year received little attention. The topic was dead. My E-3 interview partners last fall were unanimous: I was allowed to ask anything, but not to expect answers about Rise.

One of my informants summed it up vicariously: I simply don't know what to do with this topic - no questions about Rise with SAP, please.

It was common knowledge that Christian Klein had his back to the wall at the beginning of last year, and that Rise with SAP was to be the theme with which he would push himself hard off this wall and storm forward - similar to the way Manager Magazin now put it: code word attack.

This attack turned into a Waterloo for SAP, and the editors at Manager Magazin obviously recognized this and changed the title on the online portal to "Die Abwehrschlacht des SAP-Chefs," which corresponds pretty much exactly to the current state of affairs in Walldorf. The text itself corresponds to the print edition.

SAP's Supervisory Board and Executive Board have closed ranks at the turn of the year. No messages have reached the outside world for weeks. Officially, the reason for the silence is the hectic pace of year-end business and preparations for Fkom (SAP's field kick-off meeting is now called the Custommer Success Summit). But the fact is that SAP has no answers, no narrative to the attacks from Salesforce, Workday, ServiceNow, Oracle, Snowflake, UiPath and Celonis.

Christian Klein can almost feel lucky if the companies mentioned still see him as a challenge. UiPath founder Daniel Dines no longer even perceives SAP as a competitor, but at best attests to the ERP world market leader a sufficiently necessary back-office function as an ERP database.

Christian Klein no longer has his back to the wall, but is on the verge of the abyss, which is coming ever closer. It is thus, as Manager Magazin correctly writes, a race against time - a fight against the eruption. There is a danger that competitors will pull the rug out from under the ERP market leader. Why?

Christian Klein was confronted with numerous legacy issues, conflicts and construction sites at the beginning of his tenure - and he made the right decision: He listened to his existing customers and learned where the biggest problems were. He took on these challenges in a very disciplined, consistent and also successful manner and has solved most of them sufficiently well to date.

What he overlooked: During his busy work in Walldorf, his conducting of his own team, his tinkering and discussions with existing customers, the competition was overtaking him left and right. SAP was 100 percent focused on its own problem solving - repair service behavior - so no one noticed the surrounding market dynamics. SAP was also somewhat complacent: We solve our problems, what do we care about the competition?

Now a battle against time begins. Christian Klein is in a defensive battle and board member Julia White, responsible for marketing, remains silent. The image cultivator doesn't dare come out of hiding.
The highlight of her board career so far was a video interview with Supervisory Board Chairman Professor Hasso Plattner on Sapphire 2021.

As early as last fall, many SAP employees expected a verified and fundamental marketing plan and a sustainable communications strategy - to possibly also breathe new life into Rise with SAP. But the ex-Microsoft manager and now member of the Executive Board at SAP remained silent until today.

Hope dies last. Internally, too, many SAP executives hope that somehow it will still work out. But S/4 will soon be celebrating its tenth anniversary - an eternity in fast-moving IT, see also Johannes Szalachy's commentary on page 18 of this issue. According to the plan, the last existing SAP customers should have migrated to S/4 in 2030, by which time this ERP technology will be 15 years old. Whether SAP has or is planning an S/4 successor is not known. The future of existing customers is being played with here - responsible action looks different!