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SAP has come out of a bad year in 2009, but the finance sector has offered some crumbs of comfort for the enterprise software giant. 

“In 2009 a new reality hit the roads - financial crisis,” said SAP CEO Leo Apotheker. “It’s in all likelihood also a significant wake-up call for change, and financial crisis beyond it’s being the worst recession in decades, has also significantly impacted the way people look at software. Customers’ buying behaviours changed. We have a more guarded and more delayed investment decisions cycle in 2009.

“Software consumption and implementation patterns have changed as well. People want faster value, and they want to be able to quickly implement these solutions and extract the value out as fast as they can. We responded very quickly. We put into the market an expanded product portfolio. There were products that helped us to deliver very quick immediate ROI. We expanded our customer engagement model to provide customers with more choice, with more possibilities to buy or to use SAP software. We embarked on a lean transformation of the company, which is still undergoing and still underway, and implemented very efficient cost-cutting measures in order to support the margin.”

Things are getting better slowly, reckons Apotheker. “The strong fourth quarter is a proof that we actually responded well to all of this. We had very strong regional execution, in particular in the Americas and Asia-Pacific,” he said. “Globally, the overall climate improved a little bit. Customers were less reluctant to buy software. People understand that in this kind of an environment, sooner or later, we have to do the right thing and that is to invest in some software. That is the best lever that you have in order to start rowing again. We captured these opportunities with a vengeance. “Talking about 2010, 2010 will be a year, I hope of strong growth. We expect a gradual recovery in capital spending. We expect that the consumer outlook will solidify in 2010, plus the fact remains our customers remain cautious. They will continue to seek fast value and shorter ROI.”

Finance adds up for SAP

The finance sector has actually been a sweet spot for SAP. “We had very strong performance in the financial sector,” said Apotheker. “We grew Financial Services by 37%, Banking by 46%, and Insurances by 24%. We are very proud to be able to announce that Deutsche Bank is going to run SAP for its core banking platform. Achmea/Rabobank is a significant SAP customer as well, so is Talanx up in Hannover, Credit Agricole, National Australia Bank and a few others around the world. So, we can see there is a real shift in the attitude of the financial institutions towards the type of software that SAP is capable of providing.”

Apotheker also sees the increased strategic importance of sustainability as playing to one of SAP's strengths. “In this new reality, we are convinced that IT in particular [and] our type of software plays a key role in creating a sustainable future for the world,” he argued. “We believe therefore that there are many opportunities for sustainable growth by providing companies an increased competitive edge, by providing companies more efficiency and transparency, and the active one to go into new markets. There are new opportunities out there such as security, efficient energy, sustainability, management and we are ready to seize these opportunities, I feel already can shape some of them, so that we can create the innovation that is required to drive these industries forward.”

“If you look at what drives the growth for a company like us, it is innovation. You can’t be an IT company; you can’t be a hi- tech company if you don't innovate,” declares Apotheker. “There is no other choice for us than to do this, and we want to do this as well as we can. We have implemented new organisational structure according to new principles that improves how w incorporate customer requirements into our innovation, and at the same time, accelerate the way how we develop, so that we can bring best-in- class innovation faster to the market. But innovation is much more than just having a cool great idea. Real innovation really means that you bring new ideas to the market on time in profits and actually brings value to the customer.”

Apotheker is clearly glad to see the back of the past twelve months and hopes there will be no repetition of what has happened. “I do believe that 2009 was a bit of an exceptional year,” he concludes. “I hope we don’t see another crisis like this for many years to come. I don’t even think we can survive another one, not just SAP, the world as such, but that’s a different story.”