back to article SAP stock price crashes 23%, €28bn wiped out as firm warns of Klein(er) revenues, profits ahead due to COVID-19

Europe’s largest software manufacturer, SAP, took a massive hit to its share value this morning cutting its profit and sales outlook for the full financial year, as businesses continued to scale back investments during the COVID-19 pandemic. At the time of publication, it was trading on the NYSE at $114.52, a drop of $35.16, …

  1. Duncan Macdonald

    Why use SAP ?

    With all the horror stories about the amount of disruption that moving to SAP costs a business, the high cost of SAP software and the necessary consultants and the high cost of the required other software (eg Oracle) what is the point in moving to SAP.

    1. DrXym

      Re: Why use SAP ?

      Probably none whatsoever. But enterprise software isn't sold because it's good, it's sold because the salesmen are good.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Why use SAP ?

        I speak from a position of complete ignorance, but it would seem to me that you can either buy licence some software and hire expensive consultants to get it to do what you want, or you can hire expensive consultants to get you an ERM system that is adapted to your actual workflows using a combination off the shelf parts and in-house integration recipes?

        There is no question that ERP is complex, but one way to tackle this is to make sure your employees (at least a majority of them) are literate, which nowadays means knowing how computers work and being able to use them effectively, not just being mere data entry clerks.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Why use SAP ?

          "There is no question that ERP is complex, but one way to tackle this is to make sure your employees (at least a majority of them) are literate, which nowadays means knowing how computers work and being able to use them effectively, not just being mere data entry clerks."

          This is the fundamental issue with the success or failure of ERP systems - they involve a significant change in existing business processes. The majority of mature companies looking for ERP have business processes that are dictated by the staff rather than business/customer/regulator requirements. Conversely, younger companies tend to lack many of the processes that ERP would like to enforce. The success of an ERP implementation comes down to how well the business can adapt to the changes enforced by the ERP system because the chances of the ERP adapting to your business's processes are slim.

          1. T. F. M. Reader

            Re: Why use SAP ?

            There are actually two approaches (and maybe a discrete spectrum between the two): a) Dear Mr. Customer, this is what our software does and here are the assumptions we make, now please spend the next 2 years adjusting your business processes to fit our model; b) Dear Mr. Customer, our software can be adjusted to fit your business processes, whatever they are, we'll just need to write some "workflow" scripts to your specifications - it will be a billable project for 10 of your people and 10 of hours (or we can recommend a consulting company if you prefer) for 2 years.

            The choice is yours.

      2. reGOTCHA
        Unhappy

        Re: Why use SAP ?

        And that's why I quit my cyber security job in a big corp.. even though I loved my team.

        It was not about doing things well once and moving on to improve security posture elsewhere, it was about making sure next year our budget was bigger so we could buy more crap we don't use/need.

        At some point internal test reports and product comparisons were ignored, and the 3rd best (3rd least bad) was bought and half deployed - it would simply not work or conflict with existing infra.

        I wonder if the expensive watch catalogues in the Project Manager office were given by PaloAlto or FireEye or others..

        Back to topic;

        I wish I had bough sp500 indexed stuff on 23 April this year :(

    2. T. F. M. Reader

      Re: Why use SAP ?

      @Duncan Macdonald: Not arguing with you at all, but those horror stories can't explain why SAP drops now. I suspect there is an even more important lesson that is often ignored: there is nothing magical about tech and computers and stuff - well, apart from FB, eBay, Amazon, i.e., mindless fluff keeping your mind off suicide in isolation, desperate last ditch attempts at advertising, and retail tat bazaars. SAP, Oracle, Salesforce don't exist in a vacuum, they provide services (good or not so good - that's a different question - but essential) to real world brick and mortar companies that actually produce really useful stuff. All of those brick and mortar customers are on the ropes these days, their businesses are sharply down, and SAP et al. suffer with them. It does not matter that SAP employees can work from home - doesn't help at all.

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Oh so sad...

    said no one

    How much value have they destroyed in companies where their ‘solutions’ have been deployed?

  3. This post has been deleted by its author

  4. Pascal Monett Silver badge
    Trollface

    Fear not

    I'm sure the Board will find a reason to allocate itself its usual XMas bonuses.

  5. YetAnotherJoeBlow

    High time

    It is a good thing when the market is not kind to advice such as this.

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