Walldorf Dominik Asam doesn’t get much time to get used to it. At the beginning of March, he succeeded Luka Mucic as CFO at SAP. On Friday, the 54-year-old manager will present the software manufacturer’s quarterly figures for the first time together with CEO Christian Klein.
A fundamentally new orientation of the finance department is not to be expected within this short period of time, especially since the main features of the strategy have been set: the software manufacturer wants to become a cloud company that sells its products as online services. However, the manager should set new accents.
Like his predecessor, Asam sees himself as a generalist who wants to penetrate the operative business. “Costs are important to me,” emphasizes the manager. “It’s like brushing your teeth, you have to work on it all the time.” After the shock of the corona pandemic, cash flow also has a higher priority.
The costs at SAP have been an issue for years, and the software manufacturer only announced job cuts at the beginning of the year. But the engineer wants to make the group even more efficient. This comes as no surprise to financial analysts: In his previous job as chief financial officer at Airbus, Asam’s focus was heavily on costs and cash flow, they say.
This message should go down well on the capital market, since SAP has promised to become significantly more profitable again after investing heavily in the conversion of the business model, despite the uncertain economic situation. In some areas of the group, however, unpopular decisions could be made.
At the intersection of finance and technology
Asam emphasizes that he is not just a numbers person: He has always had an affinity for technology, he recently reported in a discussion with journalists. “I earned my very first money at the age of 16 with programming, when I was a bit frustrated at my PC, printing documents and having to wait.”
He wrote a script that routed documents to the printer in small packets, freeing up memory. A computer magazine printed the code for 200 Deutschmarks.
This interest was helpful in professional life. Asam made a career at the interface of international finance and – more analog than digital – technology: After studying mechanical engineering, he was hired by the investment bank Goldman Sachs in 1996 and then went into industry.
Costs are important to me. It’s like brushing your teeth, you have to keep working on it. Dominik Asam, SAP CFO
His positions included the management of controlling at RWE and the top position in the financial services division of Siemens. In 2011, at the age of 42, he took on his first board position and became CFO at Infineon. He joined Airbus in the same capacity in 2019.
>> Read here: SAP presents product package for medium-sized companies
Asam convinced the supervisory board as a manager who has managed companies with high investments in technology, even through upheavals such as the corona pandemic. In addition, there is his experience with the capital market – an important qualification, since internally one considers one’s own appearance towards shareholders and analysts to be in need of improvement.
Although the share price has recovered significantly since mid-2022 and is currently quoted at EUR 116, it is still more than 20 percent away from the peak just before the strategic realignment.
At SAP, Asam initially wants to spend a significant part of his time getting to know the product portfolio: his philosophy is to “immerse yourself deeply in the operative business”. As CFO, he has to do that in order to be able to make decisions about investments. “If you don’t understand anything about the technology, it’s difficult.”
Asam has not yet given details of exactly what that means. However, insiders expect, for example, that he controls development projects much more according to key figures than has been the case up to now. It is said that this has long been standard in other sectors such as the semiconductor industry. The ongoing discussion about resources is likely to be different at SAP in the future.
New medium-term forecast is expected soon
Thorough induction is also useful for another reason: managers who come from outside often find it difficult at SAP: the organization is complex, the product portfolio broad, the culture special. HR manager Sabine Bendiek recently announced that she would not renew her contract – in corporate circles it is said that she is a stranger to the company.
In the operative business, Asam is also required because of a special feature of SAP: The software manufacturer offers products that are widely used in the finance departments of large corporations – there is therefore an expectation that the CFO himself will become operationally active, for example in customer meetings. Asam is familiar with this perspective, as Airbus also uses numerous SAP solutions.
>> Read here: Qualtrics sale gives SAP financial flexibility
Like its predecessor Mucic, Asam will also assume responsibility for the acquisition of Taulia, which operates a platform for so-called working capital management. On the one hand, it should help that his previous employer Airbus was one of the largest customers and, on the other hand, that he knows the banking business from his time at Goldman Sachs.
After the figures for the first quarter have been published, the next big task begins: SAP has announced that it will revise its medium-term forecast, which predicts sales of more than 36 billion euros for 2025. “Give me a little time, I’ll deal with it intensively,” says the manager.
The announced sale of Qualtrics to the financial investor Silver Lake, from which SAP pocketed 7.7 billion dollars, creates additional complexity. The manager has to calculate the business expectations for the subsidiary, which specializes in online market research. “We’ll get back to you in the first half of the year,” he promises.
More: Head of HR Sabine Bendiek is leaving SAP