SAP is exceeding expectations in 2023 and hopes that AI will continue the positive trend this year and next. Customers have to follow this whether they want to or not.

German ERP specialist SAS announces its financial results today. With quarterly sales of 8.5 billion euros and a net profit of 2.5 billion euros, SAP exceeded expectations. But that doesn’t mean SAP will rest on its laurels: the company is announcing an ambitious restructuring to focus more on AI. Something more and more companies are saying these days.

SAP is serious: According to initial estimates, the reorganization will cost two billion dollars and affect 8,000 jobs. SAP wants to compensate for this as much as possible through internal retraining measures and voluntary exit programs. There is no intention to reduce the number of employees too much: the number of employees should remain approximately the same through investments in other areas. SAP today employs over 100,000 people.

According to SAP, the investments will pay off quickly: the company expects to increase its net profit to ten billion euros by 2025.

Forced into the cloud

The focus on AI is the next step on a path that SAP has already taken. Last year, the company announced a significant expansion of its AI offering: the launch of its own generative AI chatbot Joule is proof of this. The AI ​​fun is reserved exclusively for those who ditch their on-premise infrastructure and follow SAP to the cloud.

Customers who choose to stay on-premises are not always happy with the preferential treatment the cloud receives. However, SAP remains consistent in its policy, but will of course continue to offer support to on-prem customers. But those who choose on-prem are missing out on a lot, without SAP ever saying that the choice between their own hardware and the cloud was also one between new (AI) functions or not. This puts the ERP specialist in trouble for many of its customers.