SAP Ambassador

Since the DSAG 2024 keynote speech by Thomas Saueressig at the latest, the new SAP dual leadership is official: Christian Klein and Thomas Saueressig. Whether this "dream team" will have a similar fate to the previous dual heads remains completely uncertain and open. E3 Magazine has been researching at the SAP Center in Walldorf and in the SAP community for a year in order to interpret developments on the SAP Executive Board in parallel with the departure of Professor Hasso Plattner from the Supervisory Board.

The departure of SAP board members Julia White and Scott Russell, which came as a surprise to many, was long foreseeable for the E3 editorial team: Julia White was a hard-working marketing manager who successfully implemented new impulses and procedures in customer approach and web administration, including CRM functions. However, she did not delegate these necessary tasks and repair measures to subordinate departments, but took care of the operational implementation herself - she was successful with this, but fell short of the strategic function of an SAP board member. The talented marketing manager was not ready for a board position and was doomed to fail.

There was a secret Supervisory Board plan to not extend Julia White's Executive Board contract and to bid her farewell at the end of 2023. Then, surprisingly, Chief Human Resources Officer Sabine Bendiek announced her resignation from the SAP Executive Board and alarm bells started ringing on the Supervisory Board: If SAP loses two female Executive Board members in one year, the press will start ranting loudly that SAP can't do women (at the time, this would probably have meant Hasso Plattner). So Julia White was allowed to stay on for another year and to keep up appearances, her contract was even extended. She thus found a lucrative farewell from SAP and will probably continue her career in North America.

The catastrophe surrounding Chief Sales Officer Scott Russell also became apparent to insiders in the fall of 2023: The personnel restructuring began with the new SAP Executive Board member Muhammad Alam and Plattner's successor Punit Renjen, who was voted out of office, as well as Thomas Saueressig, who was acting from the background. Manager Magazin author Christina Kyriasoglou summarized the situation in a report as follows: "There was growing concern on the Supervisory Board that the transition to the next phase under Russell was proceeding too slowly. In the medium term, this could be reflected in turnover. It has therefore been suggested to Russell for some time now that he should change his approach, according to the Supervisory Board. But apparently in vain. The growing dissatisfaction with Russell was already apparent in January, when CEO Klein presented the reorganization of the Group. The manager lost half of his organization, and the resulting new department has since been headed by former Chief Product Officer Thomas Saueressig." The new Chief Product Officer is Muhammad Alam, whose inauguration began during the development phase of Punit Renjen.

Staff turnover

At the SAP Annual General Meeting, former Deloitte boss Punit Renjen was elected to the Supervisory Board, where he was to succeed Supervisory Board Chairman Hasso Plattner in 2024. Renjen proved to be an activist Supervisory Board member, which ran counter to both German compliance and the ideas of some Supervisory Board members and Executive Board members. The whisperers were successful and Professor Hasso Plattner replaced his designated successor with a long-time friend at the proverbial last second. At the 2024 Annual General Meeting, Pekka Ala-Pietilä was elected Chief Executive Officer of Germany's most valuable company. The Finn is a technologist through and through.

This meant that there was a lot of turbulence and fluctuation at the front line of the Supervisory Board and Management Board, while in the background Thomas Saueressig was able to wait quietly and calmly for numerous opportunities - and these came steadily and calmly: in the end, he mastered them with flying colors.
A year ago, Thomas Saueressig appeared together with SAP CEO Christian Klein at the annual congress of the German-speaking SAP user group (DSAG). Both gave a keynote speech and successfully passed the ball to each other. Just a few months later, however, Thomas Saueressig was already on his own at the equally important World Economic Forum in Davos and delivered a perfect one-man show. Then came the SAP reorganization at the beginning of 2024, invented and implemented by Christian Klein with the approval of Hasso Plattner. This gave Thomas Saueressig a universal Executive Board mandate: he was able to expand his position with the help of Christian Klein and was given a lot of staff and responsibility from the Executive Board area of Scott Russell, who probably already sensed at the time that his days at SAP were numbered.

In the end, Russell quickly found a new job as CEO at Nice. The publicly traded company specializes in contact center software and artificial intelligence. For the past 14 years, Scott worked at SAP, where he led Customer Success, including global sales, partners and customer engagement, and was responsible for $31 billion in revenue, spearheading the company's transition to cloud revenue.

The reorganization found a surprising continuation in the involuntary departure of SAP Chief Technology Officer Jürgen Müller. Müller, the HPI graduate and BTP strategist, had to leave the ERP group. This means that there is a new power constellation on the SAP Executive Board.
At the beginning of his Executive Board career, Co-CEO Christian Klein was a good strategist. He was a good judge of the mood and reactions of the then Chairman of the SAP Supervisory Board, Professor Hasso Plattner: He ventured forward, schemed against his fellow co-CEO Jennifer Morgan and after a few months of an SAP dual leadership was the sole head of SAP.

He was just as clever in gathering other board members around him, above all Jürgen Müller, who made a sensational career at SAP under Hasso Plattner's protective umbrella. In this way, Christian Klein was not only able to position a harmless and hardly experienced fellow board member, but also did Professor Hasso Plattner a favor. Christian Klein had an equally lucky hand with his fellow board member Thomas Saueressig, who initially appeared pale and quiet. However, Saueressig very quickly developed his management skills. He triumphed at the World Economic Forum in Davos and was able to conquer more and more strategic fields at SAP. Currently, Thomas Saueressig is regarded as the most important and strategically best-positioned member of the SAP Executive Board - the potential for a new, perhaps unofficial, dual leadership is opening up.

The recent history of the SAP Executive Board resembles the story of the three musketeers plus D'Artagnan. At SAP, these were the three Executive Board members Christian Klein, Thomas Saueressig and Jürgen Müller as well as the former SAP CFO Luka Mucic. For a long time, it seemed as if this constellation had a solid foundation and a clear division of responsibilities. CFO Mucic wanted more. However, he neglected the SAP share price and lost the goodwill of Hasso Plattner. Mucic had to go.

Thomas Saueressig always wanted to be less one among many. He developed his management skills and gathered more and more strategic SAP tasks around him. While SAP CEO Christian Klein is increasingly managing the ERP group and leading the share price to an all-time high, Thomas Saueressig is positioning himself as the future hope of SAP. Saueressig currently appears to be the face of SAP, at least as SAP ambassador in Davos and Leipzig.

Handelsblatt author Christof Kerkmann called the changes made to the SAP Executive Board at the beginning of this year the innovator's dilemma: "Since the beginning of April, a new department has taken over all tasks relating to customer support, known as Customer Services and Delivery. Almost 30,000 employees are moving to the new department, many of them from Sales - an organizational tour de force even for a DAX-listed company. Thomas Saueressig is in charge of the department. The task is to bring the innovations to the customer as quickly as possible. The hope is that if the solution for finance is successful, the IT managers will also introduce Ariba for procurement, for example, or expand their SAP systems via Business Technology."

The new Boys Club

Following the surprising departure of Chief Technology Officer Jürgen Müller, the current SAP Executive Board now has a new boys' club: Christian Klein, Thomas Saueressig and Chief Financial Officer Dominik Asam. They all work well together and have found a solid working agreement. CEO Christian Klein and Dominik Asam manage the ERP Group and maintain the share price, while Thomas Saueressig takes care of the strategic direction.

It therefore seems obvious that Thomas Saueressig could soon take over the helm of SAP from Christian Klein following the departure of Jürgen Müller. When the SAP metamorphosis and restart are complete, SAP will probably need a new CEO or a completely new dual leadership team. The first dual leadership at SAP was a makeshift solution by Professor Hasso Plattner. SAP ex-CEO Professor Henning Kagermann did not want to see Chief Technology Officer Shai Agassi as his successor. Agassi was an invention of Plattner's, but the Agassi mentor bowed to Kagermann's wishes. The solution: Chief Sales Officer Léo Apotheker was to lead the global ERP group together with Henning Kagermann for a transitional period. Shai Agassi then left SAP at relatively short notice. Kagermann went to Berlin as an advisor to Angela Merkel and Léo Apotheker became SAP CEO for a short time. He was then CEO of Hewlett Packard Enterprise for an even shorter period.

The next dual leadership was more successful: Jim Hagemann Snabe and Bill McDermott jointly led the global ERP market leader into the cloud age. SAP's successes encouraged McDermott to take the helm alone. Snabe, a loyal and conciliatory European, left SAP and subsequently became Chairman of the Supervisory Board at Siemens in Munich. Bill McDermott bought one cloud company after another and then also left SAP at the height of a cloud chaos.

The subsequent dual leadership of Jennifer Morgan and Christian Klein had the honorable task of untangling the acquired cloud conglomerate, but there were disputes about the right strategy. Klein had the better relationship with Hasso Plattner and became CEO. He quickly found suitable support in the form of Jürgen Müller and Thomas Saueressig, while SAP Supervisory Board Chairman Professor Hasso Plattner benevolently oversaw everything.

Regardless of the turnover on the SAP Executive Board, this year Plattner said his final farewell to the company he founded with four colleagues over fifty years ago. It is a turning point for SAP and also means a new sense of freedom for Christian Klein. Together with the new SAP CFO Dominik Asam, he achieved a unique feat: during a difficult transformation, he took the SAP share price to an all-time high. Christian Klein enjoys a great deal of recognition and respect as SAP's conductor and course setter. After Bill McDermott, Christian Klein consolidated and harmonized the global ERP group. However, SAP is currently represented externally by Thomas Saueressig, so there is rightly talk of a new dual leadership.

A highlight of the unofficial SAP dual leadership was October 2024, when Christian Klein, together with SAP CFO Dominik Asam, brought the company's own share price well above 200 euros and at the same time Thomas Saueressig presented the ERP world market leader to over 5,000 delegates at the annual congress of the German-speaking SAP user group. A new dual leadership, in which Christian Klein is obviously responsible for the internal values and Thomas Saueressig for the external presentation.

Looking at SAP, it is clear that the company is actively working on adapting its AI solution portfolio to the far-reaching changes in business, government and society. The roadmap presented by Saueressig in Leipzig at the DSAG annual congress already includes the gradual integration of AI functions into business processes under the name SAP Business AI. However, the fact that the focus is primarily on the cloud provided material for lively discussions between DSAG CEO Jens Hungershausen and SAP Executive Board member Thomas Saueressig
via the connection or use of the corresponding results in the on-prem systems as well.

The Generative AI Hub of the Business Technology Platform (SAP BTP) - another of Thomas Saueressig's favorite topics and areas of responsibility - enables access to large language models such as those from Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google or Microsoft. The advanced algorithms and AI models can come from the partners, while SAP continues to contribute the company-specific business data. At the DSAG Congress, Saueressig announced up to one hundred use cases for artificial intelligence by the end of 2024. "It will be exciting to see to what extent this announcement can be realized. After all, there needs to be clear added value in the form of viable business cases for each of these use cases. We are in very close contact with SAP on this," says DSAG CEO Jens Hungershausen.

AI and cloud visions

The bottom line is this: SAP needs to communicate the existing and planned options for using AI even more transparently. Reference architectures, best practice guides and standards for integration scenarios and technologies, including uniform regulations for the integration of AI models in SAP applications and the use of data, must be developed and made available accordingly. One thing is also clear: despite all the emerging possibilities and the associated euphoria, human intelligence will continue to be a central factor in the interaction of AI models. Jens Hungershausen summarized to Thomas Saueressig: "The digital transformation is happening and user companies, SAP and partners have to deal with it. The field is prepared, much is already possible and much is in the making. It is up to us to shape the transformation successfully."

Companies need clear answers, e.g. on how they can utilize the added value of cloud solutions or on the flexibility of the operating model. As the SAP Executive Board member responsible for Customer Services and Delivery, Thomas Saueressig needs clear perspectives, especially for products that will be phased out by 2027. New solutions that may be migrated to then must be appropriately mature. What applies to the S/4 private cloud must also be available for S/4 on-prem with an identical scope of services, is one of Saueressig's demands. On-prem customers must not be disadvantaged by innovations exclusively for the cloud products, says DSAG board member Jens Hungershausen. Existing and planned options for using AI must be communicated even more transparently. Thomas Saueressig was therefore confronted with many requests regarding optimal SAP customer support in Leipzig.

Another highlight for SAP ambassador Saueressig at the DSAG Annual Congress 2024 was the announcement of a partnership with the IT and digital division of the Schwarz Group: Schwarz Digits and SAP, Europe's largest software company, announced their partnership in the cloud at the most important meeting place for SAP user companies in German-speaking countries. Schwarz Digits will offer Rise with SAP via its data-sovereign cloud solution StackIT on its own infrastructure.

Existing SAP customers will also have the opportunity to operate their S/4 environment on the data-sovereign StackIT cloud. In addition, Schwarz Group companies will move their entire ERP landscape to the StackIT cloud via Rise with SAP. At Sapphire in Orlando in 2023, SAP and the Schwarz Group companies announced their partnership to protect both SAP's IT infrastructure and customer-specific cloud services and Rise with XM Cyber. With XM Cyber's cybersecurity platform, companies can see their IT systems through the eyes of potential attackers, automated 24 hours a day.

"Both private-sector companies and public-sector organizations are increasingly recognizing how important it is to position themselves confidently and securely in the context of digital transformation. They are faced with the challenge of finding a suitable partner that not only fulfills the legal requirements, but also has a vision for true sovereignty," explains Rolf Schumann, Co-CEO Schwarz Digits. "With SAP, we can translate our vision of digital sovereignty, which we defined in our latest white paper, into concrete solutions."

Christian Müller, Co-CEO of Schwarz Digits, adds: "ERP applications and systems have become indispensable for handling core processes, for example in the areas of finance, production, human resources, logistics and procurement. In these business-critical processes, companies must retain sovereignty over their own data without compromise and must not become dependent on large international corporations whose understanding of data protection differs from that in Europe." SAP Executive Board member Thomas Saueressig: "We are delighted that Rise-with-SAP customers will have the choice of operating their ERP systems on the StackIT cloud in future. With Schwarz Digits, we have gained a strong infrastructure partner that enriches our range of services in the private cloud."

A partnership between Schwarz Digits and SAP was born at the end of 2023 in connection with the German AI company Aleph Alpha, see founding photo with Thomas Saueressig and Rolf Schumann. This cooperation has now been expanded to include Rise. Rise with SAP offers companies a holistic business transformation. It includes an AI-enabled cloud ERP that is managed and optimized by SAP, as well as services and tools based on SAP's clean-core approach. This enables on-prem systems to be migrated, business processes to be transformed, innovations to be used in the best possible way and complexity to be reduced. This means that Thomas Saueressig's SAP Customer Services and Delivery division will face numerous challenges in the coming years, which can probably only be adequately resolved by a dual leadership team.

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