SAP faces breakdown in trust over innovation plans

Ever since SAP CEO Christian Klein (pictured) told financial analysts in July that the company would only offer its latest AI and “green ledger” innovations to customers running its flagship S/4HANA ERP platform through its subscription-only, cloud-based Rise with SAP offering, the company has been on the back foot.

The move may have played well with shareholders, as Klein led them to believe it would drive a shift to Rise, increasing revenue and cutting SAP’s development costs. But for the majority of SAP’s customers, who still run older versions of its software, or run S/4HANA on premises or in hosted environments, it’s a slap in the face.

At its annual meeting in September, the German-speaking SAP User Group, DSAG, called on SAP to make green ledger carbon accounting tools a feature of all SAP environments, not just S/4HANA in the cloud, and pay more attention to customers running its software on premises.

And last week, Paul Cooper, chair of the UK and Ireland SAP User Group (UKISUG), made the focus of his opening keynote speech at the organization’s Connect conference about what he called the “breakdown in trust” resulting from SAP’s treatment of customers.

“Through our subscriptions, licenses, and maintenance payments, we’ve clearly continued to invest in SAP,” he said. “However, that investment has to yield a fair return for customers as well as shareholders.”

SAP should’ve realized that affected customers wouldn’t presume they were a minority and keep quiet. Although the company doesn’t publish details of what proportion of its customers have moved to S/4HANA in the cloud, user organizations do, and their member surveys reveal little appetite for Rise.