Disruptive SAP

Divide et impera. Divide and rule. SAP's strategy: The global business ecosystem around Walldorf is divided into friend and foe. Divide and rule is the motive.

The SAP community is split in order to better control the subsets. The subsets are incapable of doing anything against the ERP monopolist.

In every region, in every area, SAP then has an easy game. Divide et impera means to divide a people or a grouping into subgroups so that they are easier to dominate or defeat.

Wikipedia explains:

"The Latin phrase is partly attributed to Niccolò Machiavelli, who in his 1532 book 'The Prince' explains to Prince Medici how he should exercise his rule; partly the phrase is also attributed to Louis XI of France."

More than forty years after the founding of the ERP group and a worldwide IT dominance, there is no global user group. SAP User Group Executive Network (Sugen) is just a fig leaf on SAP websites.

The world's largest and most influential user group, DSAG e. V., is not an active member of Sugen. Put simply, the differences in opinion between the DSAG base and the Executive Network are too great - to SAP's delight!

Here, the division of the user groups has succeeded excellently. Successes have also been achieved in the USA: The annual meeting of the ASUG (Americas SAP Users Groups) is held every year in May together with the SAP in-house trade fair Sapphire in Orlando - a circumstance that is inconceivable in German-speaking countries.

SAP tried to organize a European Sapphire together with the DSAG association, but they didn't fall into the Walldorf trap. In September, there will be another autonomous, constructive and critical annual congress with over 4000 visitors.

In the D-A-CH community, there are many local groups fighting for fairness and openness toward the SAP monopoly. In Switzerland, there is a very potent interest group of CIOs and CFOs.

Bernd Brandl, Managing Director of SAP Switzerland, does not recognize his motivated existing customers, however; for him, there is only DSAG e. V., and he has declined an invitation to the local Swiss meeting.

The concept of divide and rule also applies to journalists and analysts. Press conferences that allow every member of the media to enter no longer exist at SAP - instead, lists of "friendly" media who are invited to dinner with board members and "hostile" journalists who don't even get accreditation to SAP TechEd.

Naturally, SAP does not silence bloggers and reporters in this way, but the system is successful worldwide. With the exception of the German-speaking world, there is hardly any critical and constructive discourse.

U.S. media are sponsored out of SAP's Palo Alto, Calif. office. Independent publishers have not yet ventured into the English-language SAP community.
(2017: The E-3 Magazine already now: www.e3zine.com)

SAP's disruptive approach through divide et impera is also occupying the partner community, at least in German-speaking countries. The user license issue of "indirect use" is ultimately a question of existence for SAP partners.

Every ERP add-on carries the risk of a supplementary and expensive license payment. Instead of working together with DSAG e. V. and IA4SP (International Association for SAP Partners e. V.) to create a satisfactory solution for everyone, SAP is trying to do it with individual agreements (divide and rule) and by not answering inquiries from desperate partners.

In Harvard Business Manager, January 2016, page 76, it can be read that the term "disruptive innovation" has entered the everyday language of many managers.

According to Professor Christensen, Uber is significantly changing the cab industry, but does this represent a disruption? His answer: no. After reading the excellent HBM text, Hana does not seem to be a disruptive innovation either. Nevertheless, SAP's current actions are having a destructive effect on the community.