SAP jeopardizes the digital transformation

CIOs complain that digital transformation is too often seen only as a technical task, then it is said from the management:

"Our technicians and engineers will make it work!"

Most CIOs and CCoE leaders know better: digital transformation is getting down to the nitty-gritty. This is where business processes and models change. Thus, the entire C-level of a company is challenged. Dumping it on the shoulders of the CIOs is short-term, unfair and certainly not sustainable.

But SAP is trying to convey precisely this image, that digital transformation can already be mastered with a few software tips and tricks from Walldorf.

Enough Fiori apps, some cloud computing from HEC and HCP, "real real-time" with Hana - as ex-chief technology officer Vishal Sikka would have the community believe - and of course S/4 Finance and Logistics.

If you want to hear more advice, SAP CEO Bill McDermott has a "run simple" that will get Simple Finance and Simple Logistics up and running for sure.

SAP is trying to solve a business and organizational problem with technical innovations. "Real time" is not the answer for business process management and reengineering.

The SAP community needs NetWeaver, SolMan and Hana as IT platforms for Big Data, algorithms and machine/deep learning. C-level management needs new business processes and models for digital transformation.

The name is misleading - which is often forgotten: Digital transformation is not a path to the digital. The task is therefore not to digitize existing processes, because many functions and processes are already controlled by servers, PCs, tablets and smartphones - in other words, by digital devices and their algorithms.

The task is to network the digital islands and adapt the traditional organizational and operational structure - business processes and business models - to the existing digital infrastructure.

Simplified

In many cases, the CIO has already done his homework together with SAP. Business Suite 7 has been customized, NetWeaver Master Data Management and the associated compliance have been implemented, SolMan 7.2 and Hana are ready to go, and perhaps S/4 is still to come - all in all, most existing SAP customers have a robust and successful SAP landscape.

In recent years, the tasks of consolidation, harmonization, virtualization and automation have been satisfactorily solved. Other C managers should now be responsible for the digital transformation, naturally with the involvement and cooperation of the CIO.

The problem is the confusion of cause and effect: The cause is a digitalization of the world. What used to be analog and singular is now digital and networked.

Computers, the Internet and smartphones are the cause. The effect is a world that is coming apart at the seams in many places - which is why improvements must be made with new business processes and models: Reengineering!

The "digital transformation" is triggered by the digital infrastructure. SAP is building this infrastructure. But SAP's claim to be a solution to the cause is false.

In an illuminating moment a few years ago, Professor Hasso Plattner and ex-SAP Chief Technology Officer Vishal Sikka explained in Palo Alto, USA, that Hana can be the cause of "real time" for business applications - what SAP's existing customers make of it, i.e. the effect, is naturally their responsibility.

SAP supplies the world's best tools; digital transformation is the users' task. Unfortunately, this clear language is no longer found at SAP today. Nevertheless, the digital transformation will succeed, but the SAP community should emancipate itself from SAP.