Mahabharata

Punit Renjen becomes Chairman of the SAP Supervisory Board

Punit Renjen was Global CEO of Deloitte from 2015 until his departure at the end of last year. As CEO, Punit Renjen developed and implemented the strategy that grew Deloitte's revenue from $35 billion to more than $59 billion in just seven years. Today, Deloitte is one of the leading professional services firms, employing 415,000 people in 150 countries. Punit Renjen is a member of the Leadership Council of the World Economic Forum (WEF). In 2022, he was named "Global Indian of the Year" by the Economic Times. Born and raised in India, Punit Renjen moved to the United States on a Rotary Foundation scholarship to study at Willamette University. He currently lives in Oregon, USA.

For SAP, Punit Renjen's chairmanship of the Supervisory Board will be a turning point and for the SAP community, an opportunity for renewal. Anyone familiar with the complex Indian epic Mahabharata and speculating that Punit Renjen also knows the story and tales can expect only the very best for SAP. Just as there are balancing answers to many perplexing questions in Greek mythology, there are many instructions in the Mahabharata for resolving complex conflicts.

Professor Hasso Plattner leaves his successor a well-shaped SAP that draws its strength and success from a glorious past. Plattner, who founded SAP in 1972 together with Dietmar Hopp, Claus Wellenreuther, Klaus Tschira and Hans-Werner Hector and has been Chairman of the Supervisory Board since 2003, will be missed by the SAP community, and at the same time a new creative space will open up. Whether Punit Renjen and CEO Christian Klein can fill and shape this space remains to be seen. The aforementioned SAP founders up to CEO Professor Henning Kagermann and CFO Werner Brandt created a strong foundation that even subsequent CEOs Léo Apotheker and Bill McDermott could not bring down. SAP even survived adventurous cloud attempts such as the purchase and sale of Qualtrics almost unscathed - thanks to the prudent work of Brandt's successor CFO Luka Mucic.

Professor Kagermann left SAP a long time ago and has not returned as a member of the Supervisory Board, nor has Werner Brandt. Luka Mucic will also be planning something similar. He was replaced as CFO by Dominik Asam in March of this year. Knowledge of SAP's past successes is fading more and more, and new peaks have not yet been scaled. For ten years, SAP has been struggling to gain acceptance for Hana and S/4 among existing customers.

The Mahabharata is both heroic epic similar to Greek mythology and an important religious and philosophical work. Director Peter Brook adapts these most extensive stories of mankind in his three-part TV movie 1989 (available on DVD and really worth seeing). 

The first challenge for Punit Renjen will be a cultural change in the Supervisory Board. The tasks ahead can only be solved together, like much of the Mahabharata. Under Professor Plattner, only his word was often valid, and many experienced Supervisory Board members went unheard with their knowledge. After the visionary Plattner, a pragmatist who, as CEO, operationally managed a company four times as large as SAP can be a real asset. In any case, Punit Renjen's life experience will make him an excellent addition to the young and still inexperienced board trio of Christian Klein, Jürgen Müller and Thomas Saueressig.

SAP's paths over the past fifteen years have been as convoluted and complex as the story of the Mahabharata, from which the lesson can be learned: There is never just one answer and compromise is real life. It is equally true that because of the successful past years of an SAP, all the answers are already there - it is a matter of finding them. Or as the Mahabharata says: "What is found here can be found elsewhere. What cannot be found here, cannot be found anywhere."

Punit Renjen will need all his wisdom to orchestrate the necessary turnaround at SAP. SAP is at a turning point and needs an organizational and business impetus. On the technical side, Professor Hasso Plattner has done everything humanly possible, and for that the SAP community will thank him forever. With knowledge of a complex mythology such as the Mahabharata, Punit Renjen as Chairman of the Supervisory Board should succeed in overcoming SAP's problems from 2024.