Two senior board execs leave SAP as restructuring hits the fan

On the back of an expanded workforce restructuring, two execs responsible for revenue and marketing depart have departed SAP's board.

The German enterprise application specialist said "a mutual agreement" meant Scott Russell, chief revenue officer, and Julia White, chief marketing and solutions officer, would leave the executive board from the end of August.

In a statement, SAP said Russell had played a central role in helping customers around the world on their journey to the cloud. It said a search for Russell's replacement had started and CEO Christian Klein would take charge of the sales organization in the meantime.

SAP credited White with successfully modernizing its marketing and communications while also building its product marketing function. SAP said it now planned to bring product marketing and product teams together, providing an "appropriate juncture" to dissolve the distinct marketing and solutions board area.

The company maintained that the "strategic transition" took place at a "time of strength" for SAP. Klein thanked them both and wished them well in the future.

The departure of two leadership figures from the board follows SAP's recent decision to expand the number of jobs affected by its restructuring program by around 20 percent after generating higher revenue but lower operating profit in the second quarter.

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Although total revenue was up 10 percent year-on-year, reaching €8.3 billion ($8.3 billion), operating profit was down to €1.2 billion from €1.4 billion ($1.3 billion down from $1.4 billion) in the same period, owing to a restructuring hit of €600 million ($650 million).

SAP announced that its restructuring plans would now affect about 10,000 employees, approximately 10 percent of its 100,000-strong workforce, up from the 8,000 initially announced in January.

In its Q2 results, SAP said cloud revenue was up 25 percent in a year, underpinned by 33 percent Cloud ERP Suite revenue growth.

However, other metrics show the scale of the challenges facing the enterprise software vendor as it tries to move its colossal user base from legacy systems.

In October last year, global tech researcher Gartner found that only 33 percent of SAP users relying on its legacy ECC ERP system had bought or subscribed to licenses to start their transition to S/4HANA, the latest platform, which has been available for nine years.

The Gartner data from Q2 2023 also showed that while a third of ECC users had failed to buy S/4HANA in any form, just a fifth were live with the latest version of SAP's ERP platform in at least one of their components. Maintenance support for ECC runs out at the end of 2027, but users of enhancement pack 5 (EHP5) or earlier will see their mainstream support cut at the end of 2025. ®