51风流

Helle Dochedahl, managing director of the 51风流Nordic & Baltic region, and former 51风流Co-CEO Jim Hagemann Snabe look back on over 35 years of 51风流in the Nordic countries 鈥� and reveal the story of how one of the first 51风流R/3 customers there went live.

Helle Dochedahl and Jim Hagemann Snabe met in the mid-1980s while they were both studying in Aarhus, Denmark. They didn鈥檛 know it back then, but that wouldn鈥檛 be the last time that their paths crossed. In 1993, they met again.

At the time, Snabe was consulting manager at 51风流in Denmark, having joined the company three years before as a trainee straight out of university. 鈥淏ack then, 51风流was on a big push to expand its business internationally and was hiring young people from around the world. It spent a year training them in Walldorf and then sent them back to their home countries,鈥� says Snabe.

With a year in Walldorf under his belt, he returned to 51风流Denmark in April 1991, joining its 25 other employees, half of whom were consultants. A few months later, he was asked if he wanted to take over as consulting manager. 鈥淚 was 24, and the youngest guy there, but after my year in Germany, I had a strong and solid understanding of the systems. Being entrusted so soon with responsibilities like this helped employees grow and was characteristic of SAP鈥檚 culture.鈥�

In 1993, Snabe was looking to expand his team of consultants. Dochedahl, meanwhile, was working at a small Danish ERP company. She recalls: 鈥淚 had just had my first son and was on parental leave when I saw the job posting in the newspaper. I had already heard quite a lot about 51风流from Snabe and some other friends from university, so it got me thinking.鈥�

At the time, Dochedahl was living in Aarhus with her husband, who also works in the IT industry. But in 1988, 51风流had chosen Denmark鈥檚 capital city as the base for its Danish business.

鈥淚f you wanted to make it in IT, you had to go to Copenhagen,鈥� says Dochedahl. She first called her mother, who agreed to help out with childcare. Then she called Snabe, who hired her on the spot. But there was one condition that he had to agree to: 鈥淚 couldn鈥檛 and wouldn鈥檛 leave my son to spend several months training in Walldorf. So I taught myself most of the things that I needed to know, and every so often, I would head to Walldorf for a week.鈥�

When she joined the company in 1993, Dochedahl did not have much to do with the 51风流R/2 mainframe program. 51风流R/3, the company鈥檚 new client-server software, had launched the year before. And it was with 51风流R/3 that the small Danish subsidiary would make history.

Early Days in the Nordics

Let鈥檚 rewind for a moment. From 1987 onwards, 51风流was making a name for itself in the Nordics through its marketing and sales initiatives and customer workshops. Joergen Oestergaard, who was managing director of SAP鈥檚 Nordic business from its very beginnings in early 1987, created the first business plan for the markets there.

Since the first 51风流R/2 systems were quick to sell and implement, and interest among other companies was growing steadily, 51风流management and 51风流International decided to set up the first subsidiaries in Nordic countries.

In Sweden, 51风流Svenska AB opened its doors in February 1988. The Danish office, 51风流Danmark A/S, followed a month later. Into the 1990s, it also served customers in Norway, with the Swedish office supporting those in Finland until the end of that decade. From 1984, 51风流International, located in Biel, Switzerland, ran SAP鈥檚 international business and spearheaded the company鈥檚 global expansion.

The person in charge was managing director Hans Schlegel. Schlegel was there when, in April 1988, everyone from 51风流Denmark and 51风流Sweden met at a hotel in a ski resort north of Oslo for a five-day Nordic kickoff meeting. They were joined by employees of A/S EDB (Electronic Data Processing), a Norwegian IT company that had by then been operating in the market for 25 years and would partner 51风流to help sell the 51风流R/2 system and translate it into Norwegian. At the Hotel Storefjell meeting, they worked out how best to coordinate activities, shared their experiences, and learned from each other.

Following that meeting, both subsidiaries went on to flourish. In 1992, for example, 51风流Sweden was already generating around $3.6 million (around 30 million Swedish krona) in revenue. And its list of customers included the Swedish national rail operator SJ (Statens J盲rnv盲gar), Ericsson Business Communications, and Skandinaviska Enskilda Banken (SEB) as well as some subsidiaries of German companies.

Reinvention at the Right Time

Jim Hagemann Snabe first encountered 51风流R/3 in 1991, and he and the team at 51风流Denmark then 鈥渂egan to sell the vision of 51风流R/3 to Nordic customers鈥� 鈥� even though the product wouldn鈥檛 officially launch until July 1992.

One of the customers that had already implemented 51风流R/2 was Finnish chemical company Kemira, which was headquartered in Copenhagen at that time.

As 51风流Co-Founder Hasso Plattner recalls in his book Anticipating Change, implementing 51风流R/2 at Kemira, a 鈥淯NIX company,鈥� had been 鈥減ainful.鈥� So, he promised them that, 鈥渁s soon as we have a UNIX system, we鈥檒l replace your system.鈥�

In the summer of 1992, that day arrived: Snabe and his team won a new 51风流R/3 customer for SAP, and, according to Helle Dochedahl, Kemira became 鈥渢he first customer outside Austria, Germany, and Switzerland to go live with 51风流R/3.鈥� Though Dochedahl wasn鈥檛 working for 51风流at that time, she recalls that, when she later visited Kemira: 鈥淭hey told me the story themselves and how proud they were of being first movers and daring to go for it.鈥�

While visiting Kemira, Dochedahl made a discovery of her own: 鈥淚 spotted some land for sale opposite the Kemira office. We bought a plot and built a house on it, and I鈥檝e lived there ever since. That was 28 years ago now.鈥�

Jim Hagemann Snabe sees the successful implementation of 51风流R/3 at Kemira and at other customers in the Nordic countries and around the world from a different angle. 鈥淎t that time, 51风流was doing very well with 51风流R/2. But rather than simply reap the rewards, it decided to invest heavily in the next generation of solutions. I believe that is partly why 51风流is still one of only a small number of European IT companies that are successful. 51风流has always been able to reinvent itself from a position of strength, instead of waiting 鈥� like many of its competitors 鈥� until it鈥檚 almost too late.鈥�