SAP Makes Significant Management Changes and Splits Product & Engineering Organization

Earlier this year, SAP appointed Executive Board Member Thomas Saueressig to the position of Chief Commercial Officer making him responsible for all the company’s customer success functions, the terminology that SAP uses for the sales organization. Saueressig’s new team, called the Customer Value Group, consists of SAP Extended Board members Thomas Pfiester, Head of Customer Engagement and Adoption, Manos Raptopoulos, Global President Customer Success Europe, APAC, Middle East, and Africa, and Jan Gilg, Global President Customer Success and Americas. This change centralized the company’s customer success focus for the first time since Head of Customer Success Scott Russell departed the company in 2024.

Around the same time, SAP also announced that Head of SAP Product & Engineering Muhammad Alam had, for personal reasons, decided that he would not renew his contract in 2027. This gave the company approximately a year to decide how it would manage Alam’s departure, something that became increasingly important with the announcement of SAP Business AI Platform and the Autonomous Suite at the company’s Sapphire 2026 event.

New Product & Engineering Teams

To address these changes, SAP CEO Christian Klein announced significant management changes that would go into effect on July 1st, 2026. This started by thanking Alam for his contributions to SAP and saying that Alam would continue to be on the SAP Executive Board until the end of his term. This included continuing to provide advice to Klein and the Executive Board on the company’s ALL IN ON AI strategy. However, to ensure minimal distractions Klein announced that there would be an earlier operational transfer of some of Alam’s responsibilities.

Part of this operational transfer includes the creation of a new board area for the Business AI Platform and CTO which will be led by SAP Extended Board member Philipp Herzig. The Business AI Platform and CTO organization will bring together the units that make up the unified platform including Data and Analytics, and the newly created Business Transformation Management and Platform and AI units. Klein emphasized that this brings together the core AI teams and parts of the former Business Technology Platform team with the CTO teams.

With these changes, Klein also announced that Michael Ameling, Chief Product Officer for SAP BTP and current SAP Extended Board member, would be leaving the company.

SAP Autonomous Suite

In addition, the new SAP Autonomous Suite organization will be led by Manoj Swaminathan, also a current member of the SAP Extended Board. Just as multiple teams would be brought together to provide consistency across the Business AI Platform, the Autonomous Suite team will bring together the Finance and Spend Management, Supply Chain Management, Human Capital Management, Customer Experience Management, and Cloud ERP Private teams. This is intended to expand the scope of the suite and bring together the different experiences that make it up.

Both Herzig and Swaminathan will report to Klein during the transition phase.

Also moving in the re-organization are the Global Customer Support Organization and Global Security and Cloud Compliance teams which will move from Saueressig’s Customer Value Group to Product & Engineering and will report to Klein in the interim. However, the Product Experience Organization will continue to report to Alam but will work with Herzig, Swaminathan, and the Customer Value Group.

Given the importance of AI and the central role that it plays in industry, SAP will be creating a new Industry AI Unit which will be led by Dominic Metzger and will report to SAP Chief Operating Officer Sebastian Steinhaeuser as part of the Strategy and Operations Board Unit.

The Partner Ecosystem Success Unit, led by Karl Farbach, will transition from Strategy and Operations to the Customer Value Group reporting to Saueressig.

Finally, product marketing teams across the organization will transition to the Global Marketing Unit in the Strategy and Operations board area. Business AI Platform Marketing, Joule Product Marketing, and Autonomous Suite Marketing will all report to Chief Marketing Officer Ada Agrait.

What This Means for SAPinsiders

While these changes are significant from a product and internal reporting perspective, changes to those using SAP products daily are likely to be minimal. While the leader ultimately responsible for the new SAP Business AI Platform and CTO organization has changed, the development teams within that organization simply have a new leader.

The bigger concern is that of distraction. While Klein says that the changes are happening now to be proactive and ensure a smooth operational transition, changes of this magnitude always have the potential to distract employees in affected teams. The other concern for some of these employees may well be further organizational or staffing changes. While SAP has not talked publicly about any significant restructuring, CFO Dominik Asam has spoken in the past about “continuous optimization” of the workforce that could be equivalent to 1-2% of the global workforce. Given that SAP employs nearly 110,000 people, this potentially represents a significant number.

More than anything, SAPinsiders should pay attention to the regular exchanges with their SAP teams. This is where the most valuable interactions take place and are where the company must maintain positive interactions to ensure customers remain valued and engaged. If SAP fails to do so, this is where the impact will be felt no matter that they are moving faster towards an integrated Business AI Platform and Autonomous Suite.