SAP Caught in the ERP Paradox

The fast-paced world of ERP requires compromises

There is a famous paradox about speed: a fast runner cannot overtake a slower runner who has started with a head start. The Greek philosopher Zeno came up with the story, which Aristotle wrote down in his treatise on physics.

Zeno's paradox is about a race between speedy Achilles and a slow tortoise. They start at the same time, but the tortoise is given a head start. Although Achilles is faster, Zeno argues that Achilles 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 moved forward, setting a new target for him. Achilles quickly reached this point, while the tortoise also moved forward. This game goes on indefinitely. Achilles repeatedly reaches the points where the tortoise was previously standing—an infinite series with increasingly smaller quotients.

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

While users try to understand Rise with SAP, SAP comes out with a new Business Suite and Cloud ERP. SAP's drive forward and departure into an infinite ERP cosmos is a paradox. In recent years, SAP customers have had to make many expensive compromises to keep pace with SAP's requirements.

ERP compromises mean transformation debt

Many complain about the slow pace and lack of digital transformation. However, the actual reasons behind the lack of ERP transformation are often trivial: dealing with the organizational, technical, and licensing aspects of the SAP universe requires significant resources and financial investment. This leaves no capacity for further content development. Dealing with SAP becomes an end in itself, paralyzing digital transformation.

Every company has IT debt, from start-ups to large, international corporations. SAP customers often accept this debt to accelerate technical ERP developments or meet deadlines (e.g., release by 2027 or 2030). However, the situation becomes critical when technical debt jeopardizes the existence and actual business of SAP customers.

Poor compromises are often made when things have to be done quickly. These compromises can manifest as unintended weaknesses in the ERP logic or inadequate end-to-end processes. Systems with monolithic or outdated ERP architectures are usually difficult to update. However, legacy issues from the Z namespace (ABAP modifications) must be evaluated and managed.

SAP board member Thomas Saueressig's keynote speech at the DSAG Annual Congress 2025 in Bremen missed the point entirely: customizing an S/4 system on a greenfield site as a new ERP system without legacy issues is easy for DSAG (German-speaking SAP User Group) members. Instead, 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 technology, collaborating with CFO Dominik Asam to maintain the company's stock price. However, this drive and determination are proving increasingly ineffective. Customers are falling behind, and SAP's share price is steadily falling.

It's a paradox: SAP relies on successful IT buzzwords, yet SAP customers can no longer keep up with the global ERP market leader. SAP presents itself as innovative and partners with the largest and most successful IT companies. However, financial analysts do not appreciate the work of Klein and Asam, causing the share price to plummet.

Technical ERP debt is often unavoidable, but SAP customers should pay attention to the areas in IT where it arises and ensure that the debt (ABAP modifications) does not become too high. Technical IT debt increases the effort required to maintain applications and systems and poses serious business risks. Perhaps it is time for SAP customers to stop racing and feeling pressured by time. One way to resolve this paradox is for SAP customers to turn to other ERP providers.