Surprise

It has become a tradition at SAP to present completely pointless products and strategies almost out of nowhere. SAP's latest magic trick goes by the name of Rise and was presented by Christian Klein and his fellow board members Jürgen Müller and Thomas Saueressig in a virtual studio with the participation of partners like Microsoft and existing customers like Siemens.

Yes, this time it wasn't quite as embarrassing as the legendary S/4 presentation in New York City at the stock exchange. Back then, Professor Hasso Plattner, SAP CEO Bill McDermott, Chief Technology Officer Bernd Leukert, and the CFO of chemical giant Bayer, a longtime SAP customer, were on stage.

While Plattner, McDermott and Leukert tried to make the case for a release change from ERP/ECC 6.0 (SAP Business Suite 7) to Hana and S/4, Bayer's CFO raved about R/3: After ten years of customizing, SAP user Bayer now had a global R/3 system and thus perfect reporting without Excel.

This CFO was a really happy SAP existing customer - but his enthusiastic and honest talk was also the biggest topic miss. The goal was the generation after next! The current SAP CEO Christian Klein has now continued this SAP tradition of flopped announcements at the end of January.

Surprise: He presented a solution whose problem has long been known to many existing customers - otherwise they would not be successful. Perhaps IDS Scheer's Aris wallpapers are not the optimal solution, but Professor Scheer has further developed the concept and thus tamed the meter-long wallpapers.

Those who only later encountered the challenge of business process reengineering found a good solution partner in Celonis many years ago. Celonis was not only promoted by SAP, but is also on SAP's price and conditions list.

To the surprise of the community, Christian Klein presented the acquisition of the Berlin start-up Signavio on the topic of process mining. What now, Mr. Klein? Customize Celonis because it's on your price list, or give Signavio a chance because you acquired it for a lot of money?

Well-intentioned is not good enough, and SAP's existing customers have never been satisfied with cheap magic tricks. Even under Léo Apotheker, Jim Hagemann Snabe (see illustration) and Bill McDermott, supposed sensations were repeatedly conjured out of the cylinder.

Concrete answers, such as to the question about the future license status of AnyDB after a switch to Hana and S/4, on the other hand, have remained unanswered for years. Even the user association DSAG capitulated to this question and has apparently resigned itself to silence from Walldorf.

Existing customers and the SAP community are dissatisfied because Rise is not a final answer after Run Simple, Asap, and Conversion. The analysts and journalists are dissatisfied because a future story is missing. Shareholders are dissatisfied because the share price of competitors is rising steadily, while SAP has a clear sideways movement. Ex-SAP CEO Bill McDermott has seen ServiceNow's share price nearly double since the Corona crash in March last year.