SAP caught in the ERP paradox

The fast-paced world of ERP requires compromises

There is a famous paradox about speed and the inability of a fast runner to overtake a slower one who has started with a head start. The Greek philosopher Zeno came up with the story and Aristotle wrote it down in his treatise on physics.

Zeno's paradox is about a race between the fast Achilles and a slow tortoise. Both start at the same time, but the tortoise is given a head start. Although Achilles is faster, according to Zeno he can never catch up with the tortoise. His argument is based on the assumption that Achilles must first reach the point from which the tortoise started.

While Achilles was covering this distance, the tortoise also moved forward, giving Achilles a new target. He quickly reached this point as well, while the slow tortoise also moved forward. This game goes on indefinitely. Again and again, Achilles quickly reaches the points where the tortoise was previously standing—an infinite series with increasingly smaller quotients.

SAP is racing ahead, and existing customers are trying to catch up with the organizational and technical level of the leading ERP provider. While ECC 6.0 (SAP Business Suite 7) is being customized, SAP is developing the new S/4. While existing SAP customers are customizing SoH (Suite 7 on Hana), SAP is presenting the Rise concept.

While users are trying to understand Rise with SAP, SAP is coming out with a new Business Suite and Cloud ERP. The drive forward and departure into an infinite ERP cosmos is a paradox of SAP. Existing SAP customers have had to make many expensive compromises in recent years in order to keep pace with SAP's requirements.

ERP compromises mean transformation debt

Many complain about the lack of and slow pace of digital transformation. However, the reason for the lack of ERP transformation is often trivial: dealing with the organizational, technical, and licensing aspects of the SAP universe requires a lot of resources and a high financial investment. This leaves no capacity for further development of content. Dealing with SAP becomes an end in itself and paralyzes digital transformation.

Every company has IT debt – from start-ups to large international corporations. Existing SAP customers often consciously accept this „debt“ in order to accelerate technical ERP developments or meet schedules (release end 2027/2030). However, the situation becomes critical when technical debt jeopardizes the existence and actual business content of existing SAP customers.

When things have to be done quickly, poor compromises are often made. These can be unintended weaknesses in the ERP logic, but also inadequate end-to-end processes. Of course, systems with monolithic or outdated ERP architectures are usually difficult to update. But legacy issues from the Z namespace (ABAP modifications) must be evaluated and orchestrated.

The keynote speech by SAP board member Thomas Saueressig at the DSAG Annual Congress 2025 in Bremen completely missed the point: Customizing an S/4 system on a „greenfield“ site as a new ERP without legacy issues is a piece of cake for DSAG members. Instead, Thomas Saueressig should have presented a complex clean core project demonstrating how to handle and master old Abap code.

SAP remains unrivaled in the ERP universe

SAP CEO Christian Klein is forging ahead with cloud and AI, working with SAP CFO Dominik Asam to maintain the company's stock price. However, this drive and determination is increasingly proving ineffective: existing customers are falling behind and SAP's share price is falling steadily.

It's a paradox: SAP relies on successful IT buzzwords, but existing SAP customers can no longer keep up with the global ERP market leader. SAP presents itself as innovative and enters into partnerships with the largest and most successful IT companies, but financial analysts do not appreciate the work of Christian Klein and Dominik Asam and send the share price plummeting.

Technical ERP debt is often unavoidable, but existing SAP customers should pay attention to the IT areas in which it arises and ensure that the debt mountain (ABAP modifications) does not become too high. After all, technical IT debt not only increases the effort required to maintain applications and systems, but also poses serious business risks. Perhaps it is time for existing SAP customers to say goodbye to the race and the time pressure. A paradox can also be resolved by existing SAP customers turning to other ERP providers.