Digital transformation

SAP is trying to leave the Abap past behind with S/4, but ERP/ECC 6.0 also in the form of Business Suite 7 is a heavy burden. SAP's European existing customers have invested a lot in R/2, R/3 and the Business Suite.

Innovative business processes based on NetWeaver and ECC emerged. Provided with Abap modifications and add-ons as Z-functions, many users are satisfied with their SAP's ERP and a database from Oracle, IBM or Microsoft.

But it is probably not enough for the digital transformation. SAP has correctly recognized the signs of the times, but misinterpreted them. Replacing SAP Business Suite 7 with a little Simple Finance and Simple Logistics and a few Leonardo innovations and some Design Thinking and making it obsolete is too cheap a trick.

The "release change" will not be an easy one: Streamlining the old Abap tables from the Business Suite with Hana is well-intentioned, but far too little. The "Leonardo" sugar coating won't help either.

Taking the old problems lightly and simply continuing as before is not the answer to digital transformation. Even with the new Fiori design, most existing SAP customers are still stuck in the old business processes.

This combination of traditional ERP knowledge based on the fast database Hana and the buzzword S/4 will not bring SAP's existing customers any closer to digital transformation.

If not SAP, then who?

SAP has achieved great things with R/2, R/3 and ERP/ECC 6.0. It is not for nothing that the software group from Walldorf is the ERP world market leader. The core ERP modules are beyond reproach, and there are also many good things to be heard about the new Simple Finance from the S/4 collection.

But digital transformation doesn't work like that: Lifting the legacy onto a new platform and racing toward the future is not enough. The Hana speed rush of ex-SAP Chief Technology Officer Vishal Sikka will not solve a single transformation problem.

Digital transformation is a business challenge that goes far beyond ERP. SAP has also recognized this, but here it lacks knowledge and tradition.

Other IT providers can do the many building blocks of a digital transformation much better. One would like to shout at SAP: "Cobbler, stick to your last!"

SAP is recklessly squandering its core ERP expertise and getting bogged down: SAP does not have a unique selling point in cloud, blockchain, AI and IoT. Other companies have been on this path for longer and have more experience and knowledge.

And some existing SAP customers are investing more resources in AI than SAP itself. This is where SAP will take a beating and digital transformation will fall by the wayside.

Hasso Plattner is at the helm and the direction is right, but the vast majority of digital transformation issues are in the hands of other IT providers.