Does SAP prove the rule that Europe can’t scale tech companies?

Because while investors in America (and the increasing of China also) have many large and fast technology companies that you choose from, in Europe, there is only one company that can compare the likes of the alphabet, Amazon, Maitha, Microsoft, Nvidia and Tesla. This is SAP in Germany, or as it is sometimes known, Der Eine (one).

The company is not a specialist in the ERP resource planning program (ERP) in the back office-the largest technology company in Europe, it is also the most full value company on the continent, where the market value approaches 300 billion euros, after the former Danith Pharma Noordisk has exceeded in March.

Standing in 450^Y A place in the Fortune Global 500 menu, 109,000 people work in more than 130 different countries and features a wonderful list of customers with 98 of the 100 largest companies in the world.

One of the secrets of the success of SaP is an understanding that in technology, there is no time to rest on your glories. “We remind ourselves every day that technology is the most competitive industry on Earth. With every new wave of innovation, technology space is redefined, new companies appear and you have to prove yourself again. I’m very happy with that.”

The latest change in the SAP is to transfer its own and those of its customers’ equipment away from the traditional (and expensive) databases, which is allocated to the site to the cloud. The axis began in 2020, and – although some criticism was the delay in the party, which came with a 30 % decrease in the share price – it has proven it a very smart step. The Cloud Migration is to win the priority that reduces pre -costs and speeds up implementation of users, with new stable and predictable revenues generating itself for SAP itself.

It is also evidence that although wisdom receives the opposite, it should not always be from the early adoption to win technology.

“You have to remember that the ERP system is the most important software asset for any customer. There is a lot of confidence in running this system,” says Steinhauser. If CRM [customer relationship management software] It does not work for an hour or so, it’s uncomfortable. But if the planning of institutions resources stops working, your work is still completely. ”

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The result is that SAP customers generally prefer a solution installed as followers on the advanced but not mere edge.

SAP estimates that the completion of cloud transformation will confirm the continuous growth of revenue until 2030, providing a welcome runway to prepare for the next wave of change – AII. “It is called our main display of Rise’s cloud deportation with SAP. It is really a transformation that begins to move ERP to the cloud. The entire trip is also related to simplifying commercial processes, building artificial intelligence use and expanding our integrated suite to avoid cost and building business capacity,” says Steinhauser.

In terms of artificial intelligence, he sees the greatest opportunities, both for SAP or Europe as a whole, in application rather than development. “There was a wave of experimenting with artificial intelligence, but now the real challenge is to adopt artificial intelligence and create value,” he says. So, with artificial intelligence technology maturing, the competitive advantage will be less than those who have the best technology and more than who gets the maximum benefit from his data. “The real distinction in the context will be the rich data you can fed.”

SAP already has a lot of great data-which leads to all of them so that artificial intelligence agents can work in extracting value to its customers is what is around deals such as Databrics Data Intelligence Platform. “It is the ideal example of our strategy. We share the best technologies there and then apply them to solve the most urgent work problems,” says Steinhauser.

Gary Duchensky, professor of strategy and entrepreneurship at London College of Business, says the SAP story may lack Silicon Valley Glitz to re -invent corporate technology such as Apple and Microsoft, but it is no less extreme. “March SAP amazing insight into some of the strategies they have developed, and they have also been able to re -invent themselves two or three times. This is something that many other companies failed to do.”

Besides, the real real SAP competitors are not from the huge seven (many of whom are SAP users themselves), but rather institutional service providers such as Oracle, Servicenow and Monday.com for the back office office and automation of workflow, as well Customer.

Steinhauser says excessive competition requires no intuitive attention. “In the end, you are not interested in what this competitor or this competitor does, because this is not what makes the SaP unique. I am much more interested in how customer expectations develop with technology.”

Technology giants in Europe lost

Why not more competing companies in European SAP? The answer to stocks is that European companies are not simply ambitious, but this is very simplified for Doshensky. It highlights structural differences such as the massive contrast in the financial power available in the United States and Asia, compared to Europe.

This makes promising European companies to be obtained by the United States before they can go globally from the opposite. There is another related difference in the tendency of the American founders to reject potential two instead of surrender to them: the presence of the nerve to say “no” when the tempting width is on the table.

“Mark Zuckerberg said no, Sergey Brain said no. Around the world, people who are able to build these large organizations are people who want to build, instead of wanting to sell,” Dosenitsky notes.

Instead of blaming companies, Steinhauser says this is the environment in which they work in this need to pay attention. “I am an emotional European, Europe has all the ingredients. Some of the best talents, the best universities and the best research in the world in Europe.”

But the continent loses in other ways. For example, as shown in the European Competitiveness Report, technology companies that are looking to expand throughout Europe must negotiate at at least 100 software regulations and 270 organizational bodies. “We would like to see another five SAP, but unfortunately I think [in Europe] “We are still more focused on creating barriers in front of innovation,” says Steinhauser.

Ultimately, Steinhauser can hinder that the focus is too much on the questions of origin and the location can hinder instead of facilitating growth aspirations. “I think part of the SAP has achieved the scale that we have is that we have never identified ourselves as German or Europeans, but as a global technical company has to compete with other global technology companies, 99 % of which sit in the United States.”

Europe is behind the United States and China in the main growth sectors due to expensive energy and suspended market reforms. This series of articles explores how technology, organization and innovation can revive its competitiveness.