People think HR is bad at doing layoffs when the reality is it's just the opposite. There are smaller, more controlled layoffs all the time. When SAP can't hide it due to scale (e.g. requirements under the WARN Act or other US state laws supplementing it), you get numbers, but they try to obfuscate the impact so you don't know. People in divisions who were laid off generally feel that this is a sign that their area is "dead" and don't want to share the knowledge; people who were laid off on teams where most of the team survived don't want to admit that out of fear as being seen as being the "weakest link".
HR does this on purpose, they do it so that people (particularly reporting to a manager with many people under them) don't necessarily notice the true impact of the layoff, they do it to try to contain overall morale, they do it so parties both within SAP and outside SAP have more difficulty in understanding the strategy behind the layoffs. When it's opaque, it's hard to tell if it targeted anyone (e.g. years or wage) or if it showed that, despite public statements, SAP was cutting investment in an area (so existing customers don't bail or get worried).
They do the layoffs in the least emotional most robotlike fashion so they can say they told you of everything that was required and there's as few grounds as possible for a lawsuit. They read from a script, everything is checkboxes. They (managers) book the meeting with you and the HRBP separately so you don't know what to expect coming in and they'll book them as private appointments in outlook to hide what they are. They will generally refuse to ask any questions of substance you have (e.g. why was my position eliminated and not the 10+ other people on the team doing the same job; how many people were eliminated in the division; why will 6+ colleagues per quarter continue to come from overseas on rotation where they are paid original (lower) foreign salary if the area was no longer relevant).
The cited examples by @Y5SrKGz-2wux - either bug on the windshield in terms of corporate strategy and the guillotine coming down (whole team is cut), or a way to remove a more costly employee to replace them with someone younger and/or lower salary. That employee at the funeral home? Maybe they're in california where the law is 60 days minimum under WARN act. Want them out the door as soon as possible and don't want any lawsuits that some employees got more of a head start on open jobs then others because they were notified first. Orgchart changes from HR perspective (all relevant internal systems) occur on the 15th or the 1st so we have to get it out before we have to add another 1-14 days to that!
They give lip service about how employees can upskill into new jobs. The reality is if their skillset matches and someone wants them badly enough, you get an interview. Most employees especially in the heavily cut areas won't, because the replacement jobs to match their skillset will not exist locally, because SAP eliminated the teams wholesale. Especially when the end point of the layoff is to make up for a licensing/sales shortfall and cut costs in the wake of an overpriced acqisuituion (Qualtrics).
SAP HR is not bad at doing layoffs. They are exceedingly good at it, to the point of minimizing SAP's legal liability, appearing as blameless as possible to non-internal parties who weren't directly impacted, looking good in the public face (it's a fitness exercise! it's transformation!) if it has to be publicly visible, and disassociating the managers and the HRBP from the person with pre-made scripts and minimizing human interaction.