SAP SE has appointed Christian Klein as chief operating officer (COO) and Thomas Saueressig as chief information officer (CIO).
Effective April 1, Klein’s new role at SAP is to ensure the optimisation of the organisation’s end-to-end business processes, supported by a highly automated and integrated IT landscape. In his role as SAP chief controlling officer, he is also responsible for SAP’s group controlling, overseeing the company’s current five-year growth and profitability strategy (2015-2020).
Klein was previously head of SAP corporate controlling for just under three years and chief financial officer, SAP cloud, SuccessFactors for just over four years. Klein, 35, joined SAP as a student in 1999 and has a degree in international business administration from the University of Cooperative Education in Mannheim, Germany, specialising in finance/controlling.
Effective May 1, Saueressig’s new role is leading SAP’s IT organisation, reporting to Klein in his new role as COO. Saueressig, 31, is the youngest CIO at SAP or at any German DAX company, having joined SAP as a student in 2004. He was previously global head, IT service. He has a diploma in business information technology from the University of Cooperative Education in Mannheim, a bachelor’s degree in business information technology from Open University in London and a joint executive MBA from ESSEC in France and Mannheim Business School in Germany.
