Enterprise software giant SAP SE Chief Executive Christian Klein today promised financial help in the form of extended customer payment terms as a second wave of COVID-19 rolls over the continent and enforces yet more lockdowns.

Speaking to Bloomberg TV, Klein (pictured) said the company will be “reaching out” to customers and service partners that have taken a financial hit due to the ongoing economic crisis. He said his biggest challenge right now is to ensure that SAP’s customers can continue to deliver, and promised not to leave a single customer or partner behind.

“SAP is doing that, not only by the way on helping them to transform their business models [but] also by helping customers who are in financial distress in the crisis. We are prolonging payment terms.”

Klein’s promise of help comes at a time when SAP itself is struggling because of COVID-19. Last week, the company saw its stock price crash by 24% after it cut its full-year profit and sales outlook as customers scaled back their investments. SAP said it now expects full-year cloud revenue of just €8 billion to €8.2 billion at constant currencies, down from its previous forecast of €8.3 billion to €8.7 billion. Cloud and software revenue was also revised to €23.1 to €23.6 billion, down from €23.4 to €24 billion.

Even so, SAP has enough spare change in the bank to help carry the burden for its customers. Although its third-quarter revenue declined 4%, to just €6.54 billion, its operating cash flow for the first nine months of the year came to €5.09 billion, up 54% from a year ago.

Klein also spoke about that decision to cut SAP’s profit guidance, saying this had partly to do with a shift in the company’s strategy aimed at helping more of its customers move to the cloud. He said many customers were asking to move to the cloud because of the COVID-19 crisis, and that SAP would have to take a short-term hit on license revenue in order to achieve this.

“We couldn’t trade the success of our customers, versus the old guidance we had out there in the capital market,” Klein said.

If SAP can keep its customers happy, whatever license revenue hit it takes now will eventually translate to longer-term profits, Klein said. That’s because the company estimates it will actually get more revenue from each customer once they’re up and running in the cloud.

SAP’s new long-term ambition envisions that cloud revenue will account for €22 billion out of an estimated €36 billion total revenue by 2025.

Photo: World Economic Forum/Flickr