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SAP must save

The mood is subdued as SAP CFO Luka Mucic turns to the red pen to help Christian Klein repair cloud and "integration." But repair service behavior has never been a good idea.
Peter M. Färbinger, E3 Magazine
May 25 2021
Editorial
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This text has been automatically translated from German to English.

There are always two possibilities: You can patch a bursting pipe, or analyze why the damage occurred. Patching the hole in the pipe is necessary - it is called singular repair service behavior if it remains the only action. Thus, after the damage is repaired, it is important to analyze what triggered the disaster: overpressure, material defect, incorrect operation, obsolescence.

At SAP, the path to the cloud is imploding: Rise with SAP is a disaster. The SAP community was expecting an Embrace 2.0, a Hana 3.0 or a completely new S/4 with the logical name R/4 Enterprise. Instead, SAP CEO Klein presented a "Rise with one face to the customer" and had to row back eloquently only a short time later. Christian Klein wants to make the arduous journey to the cloud as easy as possible for his existing customers. He promised a concept, a contract, a license, an answer to a thousand questions - and SAP was to stand behind it all.

The outcry from the SAP partner scene was not long in coming. Should partners in the future only be stooges for SAP and stand in the second row with repair services? In the current cash crunch, general contracting is naturally a possible lottery jackpot for SAP, but the partners won't play along, as an online conference held by the hip partner association IA4SP impressively demonstrated.

Another presentation of the Rise-with-SAP concept was followed in the IA4SP online conference by the logical question about the future role of partners in the SAP community. The SAP presenter briefly explained a few partner programs that hold out the prospect of revenue for all involved.

"Good", was the response of one partner: "But what is new now?" Again, the SAP employee patiently explained the partner options. Again the answer: "Fine, but we've been doing all of this with partners for many months and it's working, but what's new about Rise with SAP now?" Silence, long silence, very long silence - that's how it was! Another partner came to the aid of the duped SAP and an amicable discussion began about how to perhaps do things better in the future.

Back to the topic: CFO Luka Mucic currently has to save money wherever he can! SAP CEO Christian Klein needs every euro to slay his two construction sites, cloud computing and cloud integration, with money - as an SAP insider from Walldorf put it to E-3 Magazine. The mood at SAP is tense because Christian Klein needs a lot of money to sort out the cloud problems and the still missing integration of all SAP clouds.

SAP CEO Klein is not to be envied at the moment, because half of the company is flying around in his face: The stock market price is moving sideways instead of making a significant upswing like the competition.

In the meantime, SAP is doing so badly that even the news about Alphabet as a new FiBu customer has a positive impact on the stock market price. The news that the internal finance department of Google's parent company is now using SAP's accounting program is roughly equivalent to the realization that a sack of rice has fallen over in China.

SAP's FI/CO is probably the best financial software in the world and is therefore used thousands of times. Conversely, it is shameful that a company as successful as Alphabet is only now switching to the best possible financial software.

Some experts refer to SAP software as an accounting program - not disparagingly, but from the experience that SAP has the best financial accounting and controlling software, but can offer little else.

It is important to know that double-entry bookkeeping was invented by the Italian mathematician and Franciscan friar Luca Pacioli in Venice in the late 15th century, and SAP has continuously surrounded itself with leading financial experts since its founding days.

There is no challenge from the infinite field of financial accounting that cannot be solved with SAP - and that worldwide. But why the SAP share price is rising because Google is doing the same thing that thousands of successful companies have done before remains a mystery. Even if Google appears to be prominent, the fact that this name-dropping is boosting the SAP share price is irritating.

SAP needs to save to fund repair service behavior, and the press and analysts hail FiBu customizing at Alphabet. Rise upsets partners and confuses existing customers. It is high time that Christian Klein makes a crystal clear announcement. The upcoming annual general meeting would be a good opportunity.

We want to know!

Do SAP's existing customers want cloud computing? What drives the success of a digital transformation? Where will the Intelligent Enterprise take place?

With the analysts from PAC/Teknowlogy, we are organizing the largest market and opinion research in the SAP community. The answers will provide guidance and insight for all. The Executive Summary will be written by the PAC analysts and published exclusively here in E-3 Magazine.

As of Monday, April 26, we will be online. For our mutual benefit, please participate in the survey on www.pac-survey.com

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Peter M. Färbinger, E3 Magazine

Peter M. Färbinger, Publisher and Editor-in-Chief E3 Magazine DE, US and ES (e3mag.com), B4Bmedia.net AG, Freilassing (DE), E-Mail: pmf@b4bmedia.net and Tel. +49(0)8654/77130-21


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