Balash 
BUSN3200 MW11
Dr. Marilyn Blau
Tamerlan Hajizada
SAP Is Counting on Organizational Change to Boost Revenue Growth
1. Which of the forces for change are causing SAP to undertake major organizational change? Explain.
There are various forces that are making SAP undertake the organizational changes, however the biggest one is the market change. The core business of SAP is business applications. SAP is threatened by the attack of their competitor-Oracle. According to the data in the text the market share of SAP has fallen dramatically from 15,5% to 14,8% in the year of 2010, when the market share of their competitor Oracle has risen from 9,9% up to 10,7% in the same year. This was one of the main reasons why SAP started worrying about their organization.
2. Which of the four targeted areas of change is SAP focusing on? Provide examples.
There are four main areas, which SAP has identified as those, which need to be changed: people, technology, structure and strategy. However they focused mainly on technology. SAP is trying to achieve a competitive advantage based on cheaper memory chips in the servers with the purpose to make business calculations faster, so the companies can make something that usually requires a lot of time within several seconds. If SAP will manage to achieve this competitive advantage they will be able to revolutionize the business computing.
3. To what extent has Hasso Plattner followed the four steps for fostering innovation? Do you think he could have done more to accomplish step 3? Explain.
Recognize problems and opportunities and the devise solutions: Since the industry is full of many rich and big competitors, Plattner has come up with the thought that unless SAP does something dramatic and big, they will sink in the industry as a whole. As an example when SAP has been losing the market share, when its main competitor Oracle has been more successful.
Communicating the vision and gaining the allies: The corporate research and
Dr. Marilyn Blau
Tamerlan Hajizada
SAP Is Counting on Organizational Change to Boost Revenue Growth
1. Which of the forces for change are causing SAP to undertake major organizational change? Explain.
There are various forces that are making SAP undertake the organizational changes, however the biggest one is the market change. The core business of SAP is business applications. SAP is threatened by the attack of their competitor-Oracle. According to the data in the text the market share of SAP has fallen dramatically from 15,5% to 14,8% in the year of 2010, when the market share of their competitor Oracle has risen from 9,9% up to 10,7% in the same year. This was one of the main reasons why SAP started worrying about their organization.
2. Which of the four targeted areas of change is SAP focusing on? Provide examples.
There are four main areas, which SAP has identified as those, which need to be changed: people, technology, structure and strategy. However they focused mainly on technology. SAP is trying to achieve a competitive advantage based on cheaper memory chips in the servers with the purpose to make business calculations faster, so the companies can make something that usually requires a lot of time within several seconds. If SAP will manage to achieve this competitive advantage they will be able to revolutionize the business computing.
3. To what extent has Hasso Plattner followed the four steps for fostering innovation? Do you think he could have done more to accomplish step 3? Explain.
Recognize problems and opportunities and the devise solutions: Since the industry is full of many rich and big competitors, Plattner has come up with the thought that unless SAP does something dramatic and big, they will sink in the industry as a whole. As an example when SAP has been losing the market share, when its main competitor Oracle has been more successful.
Communicating the vision and gaining the allies: The corporate research and