Plattner takes control of SAP after shake-up

09-febrero-2010

When Léo Apotheker, the former chief executive of SAP who resigned over the weekend, met the Financial Times recently, he was in buoyant mood. Asked about the closure of Opel’s Antwerp plant, the multilingual manager who grew up in Belgium recalled his experiences as an 18- year-old night-shift worker in the factory. "It was a hard but well paid job – and it paid for my first car,” he recalled smilingly, adding that the closure of the plant would hit the city hard. Two weeks later, and Mr Apotheker himself has been hit hard by the unwillingness of SAP’s supervisory board to extend his contract, forcing him to resign. Instead, Bill McDermott, an American, and Jim Hagemann Snabe, a Dane, will take over as co-chief executives, reinstating the group’s traditional joint leadership structure that was abandoned last May when Mr Apotheker took over. The sudden move by the world’s largest business software maker caught investors and analysts by surprise. But in retrospect, the crisis was a long time in the making. “There has been an erosion of trust and momentum for the company in the past year,” said Paul Hamerman, analyst at Forrester, the research group. SAP’s revenues, software licence fees and profits have been falling in the past year. The company’s attempt to increase maintenance fees also caused an outcry, particularly among domestic customers, and end-users have complained about a lack of innovation from the company. But above all, a recent employee survey highlighted a loss of trust in SAP’s top management. Only 50 per cent of the company’s employees gave a vote of confidence in the executive board. As a consequence, the supervisory board of Germany’s only software maker of world rank decided that Mr Apotheker would not be the right person to repair battered morale at the company. Despite the appointment of two co-chief executives, Hasso Plattner, co-founder and chairman of the company, will seek to play a dominant role in putting it back on track. “Mr Plattner will need to be more visible and hands on now,” Mr Hamerman said. Indeed, it was Mr Plattner who sought on Monday to explain the management changes and outline the company’s strategy. Mr McDermott and Mr Snabe merely listened in to the conference call with analysts and journalists. “We have lost here and there the track and I am totally committed with the team that we will change this and change this quickly,” Mr Plattner said. “We are a company that has to make profits. But to be profitable, we will have to be a happy company and our customers have to be happy as well. I will do everything to make sure that SAP will become a happy company again,” he added. Mr Plattner said that the co-chief executive structure was a long-term solution, pointing to SAP’s own history and to other companies, such as Microsoft, which have used such structures in the past. But analysts were more doubtful. “I am not convinced that the co-CEO structure is for the long term. Once the company is back on track a new CEO will emerge – either from the existing two or an outsider,” Mr Hamerman said. Despite doubts about how long they will stay and about the extent of their power, the new management team won some praise among analysts. “These are very complementary personalities that will hopefully manage to get the company back on track,” Mr Hamerman added. Mr McDermott, who has been described by associates as energetic and charismatic, has been instrumental in gaining a good chunk of market share in the important US market. Mr Snabe, a trained mathematician, has been entrusted with the delicate task of rolling out new software for small and medium-sized companies, which has been hampered by delays. The management’s main task will be to realign product development and customers’ needs. But how they will achieve this remained uncertain after Monday’s announcements, as Mr Plattner said there had never been a strategic divide within the board. “There was no difference in opinion between Léo and myself,” he said. Fuente: www.foroinnovatec.com

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