As a naive observer from the outside, one could comment: SAP CEO Christian Klein is riding a dead horse with S/4. The head of the DSAG user association, Jens Hungershausen, puts it a little more diplomatically. In a press release, the association comes to the realization that the reticence regarding S/4 is somewhat surprising. DSAG head Hungershausen expected transformation activities in the direction of S/4 to increase this year. Rise with SAP cannot provide the necessary push, according to the association. As DSAG, it wants to take on the task of supporting the association members even more strongly in the transformation and providing them with assistance. To this end, the association has already founded three S/4 focus groups this year, which deal specifically with the three phases of the transformation.
The user association does not elaborate on the three-phase S/4 conversion, but things seem to be particularly sticky at Rise. Skepticism among DSAG members remains high, according to another finding of the Investment Report 2022 of the German-speaking SAP User Group e. V. (DSAG). In addition, the investment report revealed that knowledge about Rise is also still expandable. 60 percent of respondents have heard of it, but are not familiar with the offering.
The values are correspondingly clear when asked about the use of Rise: 57 percent of DSAG members consider it very unlikely and rather unlikely to consider Rise. 21 percent are neutral on this point. In the opinion of the user association, transformations are volatile, moving processes that encounter IT systems in a wide variety of release statuses and expansion stages in companies. Thus the association demands in its press release: SAP needs more clarity and a holistic understanding of the individual circumstances of existing customers. The goal should not be business transformation as a service, but business transformation at eye level, according to DSAG CEO Jens Hungershausen.
For SAP CEO Christian Klein, the result of the DSAG investment report is a bitter defeat, and there was no official statement from SAP on these findings up to the E-3 editorial deadline. Apparently, SAP is trying to come to terms with the inevitable: Rise was an innovative idea, but was unable to demonstrate any added value to SAP's existing customers over the course of an entire year. From a current perspective, therefore, Rise with SAP seems to be a similar stillborn as the Leonardo framework. The user association wants to come to SAP's rescue and save what can still be saved with focus groups.
Obviously, however, SAP seems to be running out of ideas: After an IoT initiative, Leonardo, Run Simple, Cloud Only, Rise with SAP, then Cloud First again, and since the beginning of this year a return to Cloud Only, there are no innovations or impulses worth mentioning from SAP. In addition to this intellectual void, SAP is losing its long-time CFO, Luka Mucic, only the third CFO in SAP's fifty-year success story. This year will be a test for Christian Klein, and it remains to be seen how the SAP Executive Board will be staffed at the end of this year.
