McDermott and Plattner in line

What does Professor Plattner know about the problems on the SAP Executive Board? What does SAP CEO Bill McDermott report to him on the one hand and Supervisory Board member Gerd Oswald on the other?

At the end of last year, things were looking very good for Gerd Oswald; his long-term strategy seemed to be succeeding:

He himself became a member of SAP's Supervisory Board on January 1 of this year, and Bernd Leukert was on his way to becoming a service board member at SAP.

A very long time ago, Gerd Oswald selected and began training two people, among others, to succeed him as SAP Service Director:
Michael Kleinemeier and Bernd Leukert.

Kleinemeier tried his luck outside the SAP community in the meantime, while Bernd Leukert was determinedly on his way to the SAP Executive Board.

Then came the mishap with "Plattner's foster son" and Chief Technology Officer Vishal Sikka. Plattner and Sikka disagreed on a future Hana strategy.

Overnight, SAP needed a new Chief Technology Officer, and Leukert was on hand. Oswald was left without a successor and had to extend his Executive Board contract.

Colleague Bernd Freytag of the Frankfurter Allgemeine conducted an interview with SAP CEO Bill McDermott in Walldorf at the beginning of April.

McDermott:

"Our Supervisory Board Chairman Hasso Plattner and I are completely on the same page."

Which can only mean: Either Plattner does not want to see the problems at SAP, or McDermott is not informing him truthfully. In Walldorf, at any rate, there is horror at the passivity of Supervisory Board Chairman Plattner.

Why does Professor Plattner tolerate this knowledge drain? SAP CTO and President SAP Cloud Platform Björn Goerke; former Chief Technology Officer and Chief Service Officer Bernd Leukert; numerous Hana and Abap specialists, including an entire Hana lab in California with 250 employees; and now Cloud Business Executive Rob Enslin.

"In the USA, entire sites have been shut down and there was a lack of contact partners overnight. A lot of credit has been squandered.

said SAP Works Council member Eberhard Schick to the Reuters news agency.

Insiders already see parallels with the unfortunate ex-SAP CEO Léo Apotheker, who, like McDermott, was also a brilliant salesman. Apotheker's focus was on sales and new business opportunities.

He was less interested in maintaining relationships with existing customers, the DSAG user association, or his own employees. After just a few months in office, he had to step down and went to HP, where he was no happier.

Bill McDermott acted with more tact for a long time. But hubris led him to take illogical steps: Why did he buy Qualtrics for about 7 billion euros without gaining a unique selling proposition? Qualtrics is a successful company, but at best worth half that, according to many financial analysts.

Why was it not the very experienced Björn Goerke who succeeded Chief Technology Officer Bernd Leukert, but the young and inexperienced Jürgen Müller, for whom even Leukert's footprints are far too large: Traditionally, the SAP Chief Technology Officer leads German Chancellor Angela Merkel around the trade fair stand in Hanover.

This year, board member and chief operating officer Christian Klein had to step in, and he is an excellent financial and organizational manager, but not a technician.

Why did Bernd Leukert have to leave the company from one day to the next? Without warning? Everyone in Walldorf knows that Leukert would have been ideally suited for the new job as Chief Service Officer - much better than for Chief Technology Officer.

After all, he was trained by Serviceman Oswald! At the beginning of this year, Kleinemeier and Leukert jointly presented the goals of the SAP service organization. Michael Kleinemeier reported on the past and planned his retirement for the end of this year.

Bernd Leukert spoke with motivation about future plans. The employees were very pleased - only apparently not Bill McDermott, who didn't even have a few words of praise for Leukert after he was kicked out. Plattner had to take over this task - McDermott remained silent!

Then the aforementioned interview in the Frankfurter Allgemeine, after Cloud Business CEO Rob Enslin also quit.

"When two board members who have worked together for SAP for fifty years plan something new after a long time, that's perfectly normal"

McDermott explained in the FAZ interview.

Together with Björn Goerke, SAP will have to absorb a top executive knowledge drain of 80 man-years if McDermott's calculation is continued.

Fake news: The job cuts and the personnel rochades on the Board of Management are not voluntary, as McDermott claims. There are skeletons in the closet that Professor Plattner does not yet know about.

Wait and see if Bill McDermott survives this year at SAP, because there's a problem on the board: completing the integration of cloud purchases into the SAP ERP core.

Bernd Leukert didn't make it as ex-technical director, Jürgen Müller won't make it, Rob Enslin promised he would, and now the ball is in the court of non-technical director and board member Christian Klein.