Multiple senior decision-makers have independently identified the same issue with how Matthias's profile is perceived:
"You are, from my point of view, 25 years SAP. You are an SAP guy. That's how I see it. I make about no business with SAP. Now I'm hearing you that you were at SAP doing everything except SAP. You never wrote a line of ABAP code. You never installed an S/4 system. You did all the other stuff. You are the guy who does everything that the people in SAP could not do. And the same thing is true for when you were at Business Objects. You never created one single report. You made the engine work for everything where it was normally not supposed to work. So basically, you developed the business into areas where they weren't. You are the opposite of what an immediate read of your CV would reveal."
Same observation - the CV reads as "SAP veteran" when the reality is the opposite. This led to the creation of the elevator pitch.
Same feedback pattern. Positioning is unclear.
4 Deloitte rejections through the portal. Likely the same pattern - recruiter/ATS scans, sees "SAP 25 years", categorizes as SAP consultant, rejects for AI/consulting roles.
Matthias is NOT: An SAP consultant who installs S/4HANA, writes ABAP, creates BO reports, or implements standard SAP modules.
Matthias IS: An enterprise AI transformation leader and business developer who happened to work at SAP for 10 years. He built platforms, created new business areas, led teams, and delivered at scale - in domains that SAP's own people couldn't handle.
BusinessObjects (pre-SAP): Consultant of the Year. Never created a report. Built BOInterface - made the engine work where it wasn't supposed to. Developed business into new areas (UBS, Credit Agricole, Nestle). 150%+ utilization.
SAP Inside Threat Agents (2015): Built AI agents for insider threat detection before LLMs existed. Won intrapreneurship program. Secured EUR 15M funding. Business development from idea to funded program.
SAP Tenant Cleanup (2019-2022): Identified opportunity, brought Deloitte in, grew from 1-person to 25-person Deloitte engagement. EUR 250M savings. 1.8M tenants. Deloitte Project of the Year 2024. Pushed AI adoption in the team 3 years before it was fashionable.
SAP CCEM (2020-2025): Built entire platform from scratch. EUR 8Bn revenue processed. 42+ days to under 2 for quote processing. 6,000 hours/year savings. Built in one day what Harmony team estimated at 3 years.
PAI / AIBroker / SeriousLetter (2024-present): Production multi-agent AI systems. Not decks - running code. Governance, orchestration, persistent memory.
The thread is NOT "SAP career." The thread is: "I find opportunities where others see impossibility, build platforms and teams around them, and deliver transformative results." This happened to take place at SAP. It could have happened anywhere.
Every job application already gets a tailored CV summary. The base narrative in that summary needs to shift from:
Current implicit framing: "Senior SAP executive with AI experience"
Required framing: "Enterprise transformation leader and business developer. Built and scaled AI-driven platforms processing EUR 8Bn+ in revenue. Created three new business units from scratch. Delivered Deloitte's Project of the Year. Hands-on builder who writes production code daily. 10 years at SAP as the person who did what SAP couldn't do themselves."
When writing cover letters for consulting firms (Deloitte, EY, McKinsey, etc.): - NEVER lead with SAP tenure - Lead with the business development / transformation pattern - Mention SAP as context ("while at SAP") not as identity ("as an SAP professional") - Emphasize: teams built, revenue generated, savings delivered, awards won - The "I build things in a day that others estimate in years" story is a differentiator - The "I paid for ChatGPT out of my own pocket for the team" story shows initiative
When writing for tech companies (NVIDIA, Cloudflare, MongoDB, etc.): - Lead with the technical builder angle (PAI, AIBroker, production AI systems) - SAP is just scale proof ("managed platform for 1.8M tenants") - Emphasize hands-on coding + architecture, not management
When writing for Swiss corporates (ZKB, Swiss Re, Nestle, etc.): - Lead with Swiss client portfolio and domain expertise - "Since 2004 in Switzerland" establishes local roots - Trilingual (DE/FR/EN) is a key differentiator - SAP platform expertise IS relevant here - they use SAP
The LinkedIn headline and summary need to be reconsidered. If recruiters see "SAP" first, they stop reading. This is a separate workstream but critical.
At senior level, "who do you know" matters as much as "what can you do." Six years in a corporate role means the consulting network went stale.
Captured 2026-04-04. Sources: Marc Beierschoder meeting feedback, Frank Reichsteiner feedback, adesso recruiter feedback, ATS rejection pattern analysis.
