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Ex-Salesforce exec Bob Stutz takes the reins of SAP C/4HANA
Ex-Salesforce Marketing Cloud CEO Bob Stutz, known for jump-starting stagnating CRM and CX software at Siebel, Microsoft and SAP, returns to SAP to bolster C/4HANA CX cloud.
Bob Stutz, the former CEO of Salesforce Marketing Cloud, will become co-president of SAP customer experience. Stutz will split the role with Paula Hansen, who will remain chief revenue officer for CX.
Hansen and Stutz will replace Alex Atzberger, who left SAP less than two weeks after CEO Bill McDermott's abrupt departure. Atzberger has not said why he left the company.
SAP co-CEOs Jennifer Morgan and Christian Klein, who replaced McDermott, wrote late last week in an employee email that leadership changes at the company stem from a "refocusing, reinvestment, and recommitment" to the C/4HANA platform. Stutz will be responsible for the development of C/4HANA and the expansion of its customer base.
"[Stutz has] been shaping the customer experience technology arena for his entire career," Morgan and Klein said in the email. "And not only does he know this industry, he knows SAP."
Stutz has a history of jump-starting demand for CRM applications, including Siebel CRM and Microsoft Dynamics, said R "Ray" Wang, founder and principal analyst of Constellation Research.
"Bob Stutz put Microsoft Dynamics CRM on the map," Wang said. "I expect him to be doing that [with C/4HANA] at SAP."
Bob Stutz
At Salesforce, Stutz put together software acquired from several different companies and organized it into Marketing Cloud, which Wang described as "a mess" at the time Stutz took the helm.
At SAP, he will have a similar challenge unifying within C/4HANA the Hybris e-commerce platform, Qualtrics survey tools and Callidus Cloud configure-price-quote pricing automation.
Stutz will have to make the C/4HANA cloud CX platform appealing to SAP customers with on-premises IT operations, Wang said. He will also have to target customer growth outside of SAP's traditional strongholds.
SAP's strengths are in software for field-service management, and order management from initial marketing campaigns to sales and shipping. The company also has a significant number of manufacturers using its on-premises S/4HANA ERP.
