Thread regarding SAP layoffs

Why do they have to ruin the term "next level". The only level SAP is going is to the "previous level".

SAP has been led from the top for decades by the Sales organization ( i.e McDermott. Enslin, Morgan...) And prior to the Sales organization it was led for even more decades by technical folks ( i.e. Hasso, Dietmar).

The problem is that SAP is run much like a franchise operation. Each Board Area runs however it wants, spend what it wants, push its own agenda, etc (it's how extravaganza's like Winners Circle come back year after year after year...) All of this isolated decision making with basically no involvement from "which ever' group happens to be sitting in the "C" suite into the affairs of one of the other Board Areas. It's the classic "free for all".

So can someone please tell me when it comes to the 'lift and shift" we hear so much about, "who" really will be deciding on what functions stay and what goes to low cost?

Is there ANY real expertise at Board level who has an "overall" vision of what should happen as it relates to gaining efficiencies by transferring jobs in and out of countries. and then bring execution from all parts of the company to deliver against this strategy?

Or do we just get more of the same, where at the end of a Board meeting it's discussed that there needs to be a 12% or 15% reduction and then all "franchises" decide how this will be sliced up?

I don't know but what we seems to make sense is that don't need is to be run by Technical individuals, or Sales individuals, who know nothing about the other - but rather we need to be run by "qualified" C level individuals who have the respect of the organization because of their industry leadership skills and experience vs just being hatched from one Board Area or the other.

@1qa+1w7vKIr7 All the SAP core software, almost anything BTP. The only "cloud native" software SAP has is in the acquired LOB's and they are desperately trying to ki-l them all of and move it to the junk that is BTP.

1np+1w7vKIr7 - what portion of current “Cloud” revenue is really on-premise technology stacks hosted by hyperscalers?

@@1np+1w7vKIr7 - what portion of current “Cloud” revenue is really on-premise technology stacks hosted by hyperscalers?

@7mrn+1w7vKIr7 sap is a sales company burdened with a software engineering department. You can feel it at every single all hands. It comes from a very inefficient on prem mindset where sales are humongous deals that take months or years to negotiate. This is antithetical to a "cloud" company and is sinking sap. Without drastic reduction in the size and importance of the sales board area to focus on ease of adoption and allowing companies to quickly experiment with small best of class services sap is going to continue to circle the drain in the same way IBM did and will end up as an also ran that relies on its old onprem name to sell to the few nation state size organisations, and that also doesn't need a sales org just a few execs who know who to talk too.

The move to low cost locations like India is NOT just limited to back office services.

Sales functions for Cloud/AI will also be shifted to places like India. SAP has an overabundance of Sales personnel who come at a high cost - currently Sales Board area has the most number of employees of all Board areas - this by itself should tell you that in a world of low margins, this will be coming to an end. This combined with very expensive (but useless) events like Winner's circle ( which comes with a $50MM budget) that do nothing but create a divisive atmosphere in the company, making the high cost of having a plethora of Sales people a figment of the past highly profitable ERP Business.

In the future state, we will be selling our products via a multitude of "on line" stores, cust x demos, virtual engagements, etc. all done by very inexpensive personnel in low cost locations.

Technology will replace the need for many positions, and f2f sales will also be one of them

CK himself has made it clear - SAP will hire over proportionally in India.

Within 5 years - all Labs related services and development services along with Customer Support will be run from India.

Today Labs org has 21 WW locations and 47k employees these locations will be closed or reduced greatly in size ( depending on customer facing requirements).

For the very small margins Cloud biz offers, high cost locations will no longer be able to house these functions and will only be supported in country for specific customer installations ( where the customer is paying) - otherwise all of these services will be co-located in India.

It is the future of SAP.

@4rye+1w7vKIr7 Did you hear that the China Country Manager was laid off? They are NOT hiring in China, they are terminating employees there. That country is in a deep recession with a real estate bubble popped.

India time and again has been bragged by the board as the future of SAP. Go check the LinkedIn posts from the board. You will know what I mean.

@4rye+1w7vKIr7 You are mistaken. There are no news reports or rumors indicating that SAP is hiring in China. In fact, they are actually reducing headcount there. Your claims are not based on reality and appear to stem from racism.

SAP will become a third world company at this current rate of lifting and shifting high cost employees from EU and NA to India. Where these people are paid worse than the minimum wage, give half-a$$ efforts and are woefully unreliable in their services. Look at the innovations that are happening across the company now.

SAP intentionally layoff high experienced people and during layoff period , they intentionally not posted any positions to apply . This reskilling is bull sh-t and SAP management is fu--ing a-s holes who donot know what they did. As COO, CK scrapped so many internal projects after spending millions of dollars for nothing. This guy as CEO will not run the business in downturn. Now there is recession in Germany, they donot want to hire any one in US, they want to hire fu--ing India and china folks who don't do any service to US Customers. Not sure why SAP and all other fu--ing Companies and ceos are giving so much importance to India and china by scapegoat folks worked in US and EMEA.

I could imagine that CK and Board have planned ahead to run layoffs in 2025. This will allow them to continue with the "expense reduction" mode and gain favor with the investment community thru to next year. It has worked tremendously well for the Board so far to date - while we have been laying off some 15,000 people over the past 1.5 years, the stock has been soaring.

My biggest fear is that this Board has not been tested with poor global economic downturn. Basically everything has been positive while they have been in their positions. But if things start to deteriorate and business turns bad I do not see how the inexperience of this group can navigate SAP thru troubled times. And then we will have a situation where we are cutting to stay afloat and at the same time business is consolidating and burning the candle at both ends. We will see how this unfolds.

I would agree that SAP has sent out mixed information regarding employee reductions.  The numbers are not consistent and as said, there is no way of knowing what ever are the real numbers to date of who was laid off, left voluntary,  etc.. - all we have is to rely on  is what SAP says  ( and this now has limited value).

I don't know if this misinformation is deliberate or not,  maybe it's more of a case of plain incompetence.  But it doesn't speak well that there is a clear and stable plan the Board is working  on towards employee reductions that we can trust in that will at some defined point be over with.  This looks much more like a make it up as you go along plan and that's too bad for all of us. 

All I know is SAP is now fully focused on the Stock price.

It's clear the Board is of the opinion that there are way too many people working for SAP and probably half of the 100,000 employees are in high cost locations. This they will bring an end to and they will cover this with any story they can dream up like the reskilling one.

I don't believe the numbers they are publishing as to how many they want to reduce by. What they have learned is the investors like this form of management and as long as CK keeps the moving target alive as to how many will be let go, the stock price will continue to advance. But we will get to a point that the cuts will not be possible any more and by that time we will have drawn down the level of competence where SAP is no longer a real contender anymore. This is what happens when the company is run on an incompetent basis.

I don't know of anyone who was given the chance to "reskill" themselves, but there are for sure some who would want this.

But I do know of several who were told they were being laid off and they applied for "open positions " that were posted. They got no help from HR in attempting to promote these people over outside candidates and in the end they did not get the positions.

Basically SAP made no effort at all to "reskill" these folks who were already very familiar with the company, its culture, etc but rather they went for new people.

It was all BS when this was announced and it remains all BS - it's a different company today and if you get on the layoff list, you get zero help from SAP to move into another position.

The reskilling was the largest pile of bullsh-t imaginable, I know of multiple teams working on ai projects who where let go. This was all about transferring head count to third world countries where they can get desperate people to do the work cheaper. Problem with this is it never works out, the tallent is where it is

They will not promise or guarantee you anything, they are guided by numbers on a spreadsheet. If things go further south they will cut and hire as needed. The bottom line here is that everyone is demoralised, overworked, looking to jump ship, not being paid enough, anxious about being laid off, no longer see a future with the firm, sick of RTO backtracks, etc. They will continue to cut the workforce down to half if the financials warrant it.

The points are well taken. SAP has pushed out numbers for the past two years about how many will be reduced ( one way or another) and yes the numbers have not been consistent.

Fact is that whether it is SAP or any other company, no one really knows what the "actual" number is that reduced. What makes SAP stand out is the lack of trust and morale that has infested the company. Nobody believes anything anymore. Did you already forget "working from home is the new norm"??

The same applies to German workforce, even more so with 25,000 employees. Go ahead and ask your Works Council (who got bulldozed on these reductions and had no influence at all) ... ask them to produce the list of who all was on VERP, Voluntary Reductions AND WHO have been told they need to find another assignment within a certain amount of time or they will be cut. I know exactly what the Works Council will tell you and that is this information is all Data Protected... and so we are all exactly as said... which is on such topics as this, everyone is in the dark as to what really is happening on employee reductions.

1. No.
2. No.
3. Not from SAP, it is clear that the 3500 are VERPS and voluntary redundancies from 2024.