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SAP headquarters in Walldorf
Photo: Uwe Anspach / dpa
Europe's largest software manufacturer SAP wants to boost its business with artificial intelligence (AI) in a major restructuring.
The DAX company announced late on Tuesday evening that around 8,000 employees would be affected by the project.
The Walldorf-based company had already cut 3,000 jobs around a year ago in order to concentrate more on the traditional core business of software for corporate management.
“With the planned transformation program, we are shifting more investments into strategic growth areas, primarily in AI,” said CEO Christian Klein.
»We will therefore continue to develop groundbreaking innovations in the future and at the same time improve the efficiency of our business processes.«
Last year, SAP had already introduced its own products such as the AI assistant Joule, which is intended to make it easier for users to complete typical tasks in companies.
Now SAP boss Klein wants to strengthen the AI area again with around two billion euros.
This would involve restructuring the group's structure, it was said.
Volunteer programs and internal retraining will be used for most of the approximately 8,000 affected positions.
Due to investments in growth areas, SAP expects the number of employees to be approximately at current levels at the end of the year.
However, it is not yet possible to predict how many of the 8,000 employees affected by the conversion will still work at SAP.
The job cuts around a year ago did not lead to an overall decline in the number of employees.
As of the end of December, SAP had 107,602 full-time employees, compared to 106,312 a year earlier - although many of the employees affected at the time are no longer at SAP.
In addition, Klein and his CFO Dominik Asam have set their sights on cloud sales and earnings for the current year at a faster pace than last year.
Earnings before interest and taxes adjusted for special effects are expected to grow by 17 to 21 percent if exchange rate effects are excluded.
Almost six billion euros in net profit
A few years ago, the SAP boss focused entirely on the cloud, as is now standard in the industry.
In the future, AI and other innovations at SAP will be reserved for cloud versions of the software; maintenance for certain products of permanently installed software will expire at short notice.
Klein wants to generate more than 21.5 billion euros in sales in this area by 2025.
Last year, the division achieved an increase of 20 percent to 13.7 billion euros.
Overall, SAP increased sales by six percent to 31.2 billion euros.
In daily business, the adjusted operating result climbed by nine percent to 8.7 billion euros.
Net profit rose to 5.9 billion euros, which was more than three times the previous year's profit - mainly due to the sale of the former US market research subsidiary Qualtrics.
fdi/dpa-AFX