{"id":24175,"date":"2021-05-05T05:29:14","date_gmt":"2021-05-05T05:29:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/rbsitsoftwaresolution.com\/blog\/sap-ceo-christian-klein-looks-back-on-his-first-year.html"},"modified":"2021-05-05T05:29:14","modified_gmt":"2021-05-05T05:29:14","slug":"sap-ceo-christian-klein-looks-back-on-his-first-year","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rbsitsoftwaresolution.in\/blog\/sap-ceo-christian-klein-looks-back-on-his-first-year.html","title":{"rendered":"SAP CEO Christian Klein looks back on his first year"},"content":{"rendered":"

SAP CEO Christian<\/span> Klein was appointed co-CEO<\/a> with Jennifer Morgan in October 2019. He became sole CEO<\/a> just as the pandemic was hitting full force across the world last April. He was put in charge of a storied company at 38 years old. By October, its stock price was down<\/a> and revenue projections for the coming years were flat.<\/p>\n

That is definitely not the way any CEO wants to start their tenure, but the pandemic forced Klein to make some decisions to move his customers to the cloud faster. That, in turn, had an impact on revenue until the transition was completed. While it makes sense to make this move now, investors weren\u2019t happy with the news.<\/p>\n

There was also the decision to spin out Qualtrics<\/a>, the company his predecessor acquired for $8 billion in 2018<\/a>. As he looked back on the one-year mark, Klein sat down with me to discuss all that has happened and the unique set of challenges he faced.<\/p>\n

Just a pandemic, no biggie<\/h2>\n

Starting in the same month that a worldwide pandemic blows up presents unique challenges for a new leader. For starters, Klein couldn\u2019t visit anyone in person and get to know the team. Instead, he went straight to Zoom and needed to make sure everything was still running.<\/p>\n

The CEO says that the company kept chugging along in spite of the disruption. \u201cWhen I took over this new role, I of course had some concerns about how to support 400,000 customers. After one year, I\u2019ve been astonished. Our support centers are running without disruption and we are proud of that and continue to deliver value,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Taking over when he couldn\u2019t meet in person with employees or customers has worked out better than he thought. \u201cIt was much better than I expected, and of course personally for me, it\u2019s different. I\u2019m the CEO, but I wasn\u2019t able to travel and so I didn\u2019t have the opportunity to go to the U.S., and this is something that I\u2019m looking forward to now, meeting people and talking to them live,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s something he simply wasn\u2019t able to do for his first year because of travel restrictions, so he says communication has been key, something a lot of executives have discussed during COVID. \u201cI\u2019m in regular contact with the employees, and we do it virtually. Still, it\u2019s not the same as when you do it live, but it helps a lot these days. I would say you cannot over-communicate in such times,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Article source: http:\/\/feedproxy.google.com\/~r\/techcrunchIt\/~3\/ZB-9pPqusmQ\/<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

SAP CEO Christian Klein was appointed co-CEO with Jennifer Morgan in October 2019. He became sole CEO just as the pandemic was hitting full force across the world last April. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[19],"tags":[25],"class_list":["post-24175","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-enterprise-software","tag-enterprise"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t