“We may have taken one or two years too long to resolve the integration issue,” said Christian Klein, member of SAP’s executive board, in an interview with Handelsblatt, a German magazine.
At Sapphire 2019 in Orlando, Florida, however, Hasso Plattner, chairman of SAP’s supervisory board, contradicted him. He said that the integration issue was not an issue at all. He believes that SAP offers enough suitable tools to build bridges between S/4 Hana and Qualtrics.
So, is the integration issue finally resolved?
Far from it. Hasso Plattner might have found his own way to deal with it, but SAP customers see this challenge differently than him. Building bridges might be possible, but why choose SAP, then? Most customers decided on the software because of its once seamless integration, after all.
Even customers and groups usually very benevolent towards SAP are wary of the integration issue. For example, DSAG, the German-speaking SAP user group, voiced their concerns regarding SAP’s recent acquisitions and what they would mean for customers.
Marco Lenck, chairman of DSAG, said, ““Ariba, Hybris, Concur, Fieldglass, Callidus, and most recently Qualtrics: SAP’s acquisition policy has led to a massive need in recent years to bring systems and master data together. We are aware that the solutions purchased from SAP still involve some integration difficulties. We have already informed SAP that the integration of the individual components is still unsatisfactory.”
Unfulfilled dream
SAP CEO Bill McDermott chose Christian Klein to resolve the issue of integration. Unlike Hasso Plattner, he said that he does see the problem, and he wants to fix it. How? Well, at Sapphire 2019, he had nothing more than a vision and some predictions on when it might probably be finished.
E2E integration of all of SAP’s cloud acquisitions will therefore remain an unfulfilled dream of SAP customers. Maybe Hasso Plattner was on to something with his bridge building idea after all.
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