SAP eyes big growth in China

SAP SE sees growth opportunities from cloud transformation, global operations, and sustainable development in the Chinese market this year, and will increase investments in strategically emerging areas like commercial AI, a top executive of the German software company said on Thursday.

Huang Chenhong, global executive vice-president of SAP and president of SAP Greater China, said the company gained "stable momentum" in the Chinese market last year.

"We have been impressed to see that Chinese enterprises have increasingly strong needs in cloud transformation, global operations and sustainable development in the new year," Huang said.

This will help drive a new chapter for the German firm, which specializes in enterprise application software and related services like cloud computing, he said.

"SAP will continue to leverage leading digital technologies and rich industry practices to help Chinese customers move toward high-quality development to become new-type Chinese enterprises," he added.

Huang said new-type Chinese enterprises are expected to make profound use of data, industrial links and green development.

The German company earlier this week announced a strong financial performance for 2023.The company's cloud revenue grew 23 percent year-on-year, with the growth momentum expected to sustain this year.

Huang said the number of SAP customers in China had risen significantly since it set foot here over 30 years ago. Its customers include some leading Fortune 500 multinational companies and a number of small and medium-sized firms with specialized expertise.

In the fourth quarter of last year, a slew of companies, including down jackets manufacturer Bosideng, heavy machinery maker Zoomlion and semiconductor firm Advanced Semiconductor Engineering signed new orders with SAP.

SAP's cloud solution enables customers to achieve a rapid conversion of their existing SAP enterprise resource planning environments to a modern, cloud-based architecture with low total cost and high flexibility, Huang said.

As more Chinese companies go global, they will be in greater need of building global management systems and integrating into the global ecosystem.

"The company is in a good position to help Chinese businesses in compliance, talent, supply chains, marketing and sustainable development for an efficient and compliant digital base," he added.

China has committed to the dual carbon goals of peaking carbon emissions before 2030 and achieving carbon neutrality before 2060.

From 2013 to 2023, China's energy intensity has decreased by 26.4 percent, one of the fastest such reductions in the world.

Huang said these goals actively affect the global economy and environment, and that SAP is willing to contribute to the green transformation of Chinese companies through digitalization.