Hasso Plattner the bridge builder

Expectations were high, and the desire for consistent and transparent end-to-end integration of the many SAP purchases into the core ERP/CRM system was even greater.

The entire SAP community anticipated Sapphire 2019 in Orlando as a redemptive moment that the integration of SuccessFactors, Ariba, Concur, Fieldglass, Callidus, Qualtrics, etc. had succeeded.

For months, existing customers were promised that C/4 would be the ultimate integrated, consistent CRM suite. Media discontinuity was an issue with the competition, they said. At SAP, the highest virtue is integration of all silos. C/4's Experience Management with O and X data is supposed to get by without interfaces - true E2E integration!

Just a few weeks ago, an SAP executive admitted the integration shortcoming in a confidential conversation, but promised improvement and a solution soon: The Sapphire would have been the best possible moment to finally bring SuccessFactors, Ariba, Concur, Callidus and all other purchased cloud solutions into the HEC (Hana Enterprise Cloud).

But all 30,000 Sapphire attendees were bitterly disappointed in Orlando. SAP Data Hub currently remains the only solution for building E2E scenarios manually and individually.

DSAG CEO Marco Lenck summed it up in a statement on the occasion of Saphire and this missed opportunity: "Ariba, Hybris, Concur, Fieldglass, Callidus and most recently Qualtrics: SAP's acquisition policy in recent years has led to a massive need to merge systems and master data.

We see that the solutions purchased from SAP still involve certain integration difficulties. We have communicated to SAP that the integration of the components is not yet satisfactory."

SAP CEO Bill McDermott thus mentioned the critical topic of "integration" only in passing and not voluntarily. In his keynote, he brought Executive Board member and SAP Chief Operation Officer Christian Klein on stage, who now had the task of negotiating the topic of integration more poorly than well in front of the Sapphire audience.

Klein struggled for credibility because, as a non-technical person and former financial officer at SuccessFactors, he is considered a shooting star on the SAP Executive Board, but ultimately he now has to do the job of Chief Technology Officer Jürgen Müller, who was not allowed on the keynote stage in Orlando.

After the disappointing performance of Bill McDermott and Christian Klein, people in Orlando were eagerly awaiting the second day with Professor Plattner's keynote. He did not disappoint. Hasso Plattner is an expert at making clear announcements. With Plattner, nothing is left hanging in the balance. He takes a crystal-clear stand and thus gives existing customers security and confidence.

Hasso Plattner solved the issue of "integration" in his typical way: There is no such thing as the issue and there is no such thing as the problem, he said, to the surprise of the Sapphire visitors. His solution: There are excellent interfaces and tools in the SAP system, making it easy to build the necessary "bridge" from SAP ERP/CRM to Qualtrics, for example. Professor Hasso Plattner the bridge builder!

Solving the integration problem by building bridges has a lot of charm from a technical point of view, even if it defeats years of effort by ex-Technical Director Leukert.

However, as a result of this "bridge initiative," it became clear to everyone involved that no one would trust the difficult integration task to an inexperienced non-technician like Christian Klein. Jennifer Morgan is also unlikely to succeed, and Chief Technology Officer Jürgen Müller has gone into hiding.

Building bridges means that SAP's existing customers can or should take a best-of-breed approach. This new SAP logic also fits well with Plattner's other statements in Orlando. He pleaded for a "fresh start."

Plattner argued that old ERP concepts from an R/3 world should be discarded and existing customers should adapt to the SAP public cloud or at least a Hana-S/4 greenfield approach. This concept is also in line with the restructuring measures of a Bill McDermott and CFO Luka Mucic.

SAP plans to lay off about 4400 employees worldwide - mostly experts with traditional ERP knowledge who are obviously no longer needed in a cloud era.

In any case, Sapphire visitors were able to observe how finely and precisely the strategy between Hasso Plattner and Bill McDermott is coordinated. Here the executive chairman McDermott, who is laying off experts worldwide; there the strategic chairman of the supervisory board Plattner, who recommends the SAP public cloud and a de facto greenfield approach without legacy.

With Hasso Plattner's proposal to build bridges in the future, many things could now change, because bridges can also be built to competitors and many times one hears in the SAP community that the implementation of C/4 and other components is just as time-consuming and expensive as the installation of an alternative product from competitors.