Democracy requires participation

Long live DSAG e. V. and the SAP community! Following the successful terms of DSAG Chairman Jens Hungershausen, the General Assembly in Cologne—held in conjunction with the DSAG Annual Congress—will elect a new Chairman. A logical successor would be Deputy Chairman Thomas Henzler.

At the general meeting, two people will run for the position of DSAG board chair, meaning the association is once again facing a democratic and spirited „contested election“ after a long time. Democracy requires participation: The operational side of the user association has been successfully and steadily managed for many years by Executive Director Mario Günter. As a result, the general meetings in recent years have been more of an administrative formality than a democratic discourse. Most members preferred to engage in technical discussions in the exhibition area or head off early to the evening event.

This year, democratic engagement is called for in Cologne: Not only will two people be running for the position of DSAG Chair at the general meeting, but the meeting will also determine the organization’s future direction. How will the world’s leading SAP user association position itself vis-à-vis SAP? How might a new Chair define and orchestrate a new role for DSAG in the age of AI for its members?

Alfons Wahlers, the legendary co-founder of DSAG e. V., once chose “critical and constructive” as his informal motto. Many DSAG members remain committed to this motto to this day. Criticism of SAP is important because it can spark a dialogue aimed at improving situations, products, and services. A self-reflective SAP community adds value to SAP. The professional, critical, and constructive exchange of ideas benefits all existing SAP customers.

SAP CEO Christian Klein has always avoided the DSAG discourse. He left the SAP keynote address at the DSAG Annual Congress to SAP Executive Board member Thomas Saueressig, who fulfilled this duty with consummate professionalism but little enthusiasm. Gone are the days when Professor Henning Kagermann delivered the opening keynote and Gerd Oswald the closing keynote at the DSAG Annual Congress. The keynote by Oswald, then a member of the Executive Board, was always particularly enlightening: At the end of his presentation, he showed the final slide from the previous year and summarized what had been accomplished and what still lay ahead—naturally, the assessment was always extremely positive!

A key task for the new DSAG chair will therefore be to foster a vibrant, disruptive, informative, and critical SAP-DSAG dialogue. Democracy requires participation: Not only should more members participate in the upcoming general meeting in Cologne, but there is also a desire to see more active involvement from the SAP Executive Board in DSAG’s work once again. The first step, however, is a full house at the 2026 DSAG General Assembly. (pmf)