Published on the 10/02/2016 | Written by Beverley Head
SAP’s two new business units targetting public services sector in Australia and financial services in Australia and New Zealand telegraph its 2016 priorities…
German software giant SAP has set up specialist business units to serve the needs of two of its largest customer segments in the region.
The question is, why now – and what has it been doing in the past?
SAP already counts multiple federal and state agencies among its local customers, and claims that 92 percent of Australian banks ‘in the Forbes 2000’ use its software.
The company meanwhile announced in 2014 that it would invest $150 million to set up the SAP Institute for Digital Government, which opened its doors in Canberra late last year.
Its highest profile financial services gig in Australia – to help Commonwealth Bank overhaul its core banking platform – concluded in 2012, though the companies maintain an ongoing relationship.
It seems a little tardy to only now be setting up special business units to meet the needs of these sectors locally.
On face value the announcement seems largely cosmetic. A spokesman for the company said only that SAP had identified these two areas as the clear focus for the year ahead which explained the restructure and timing.
Damien Bueno, SAP’s long term federal public services head will lead the public services business unit and have an expanded remit to sell also into state and local government. He will also join SAP’s global public services leadership team.
Tony Armfield, who joined SAP in 2013, has moved across from working the cloud side of SAP (he’s ex Salesforce) to head the newly formed business unit focussed on the ANZ financial sector. He also will have input to SAP’s global financial services and insurance group.
The company seems to have had a decent 2015; Australia got a brief mention in the most recent release of SAP’s annual results for its return to “double digit” growth in its software business. The biggest growth for the company in the region however is in cloud, which grew 55 per cent during 2015 in APJ.
Internationally the company recorded an 18 per cent improvement in revenues to Euro 20.7 billion while profits dipped 2 per cent to Euro 4.25 billion.
