SAP

SAP's website exists in that peculiar late-stage capitalism purgatory where actual human communication goes to die¹, replaced by the kind of algorithmic corporate-speak that makes you wonder if we've already been colonized by an alien species that learned English exclusively from LinkedIn posts and McKinsey white papers. The homepage assaults you with phrases like "intelligent enterprise" and "experience management"—terms so semantically evacuated they achieve a kind of anti-meaning, like verbal dark matter². It's the digital equivalent of those nightmare mall food courts where every restaurant sells the same flavorless chicken but calls it something different, except here the chicken is "solutions" and the different names are all variations on "cloud-enabled synergistic optimization frameworks." The worst part? You can practically feel the dozens of committees and focus groups that birthed each tortured sentence, each phrase focus-grouped into oblivion until it means everything and nothing simultaneously.

¹Because apparently we needed a website that makes filling out tax forms seem emotionally nourishing by comparison. ²Which, fun fact, comprises roughly 85% of enterprise software marketing copy, according to studies I'm making up but feel confident about.

Navigation through sap.com feels like being trapped inside a Franz Kafka fever dream co-authored by a sadistic UX designer who clearly peaked during the Bush administration³. The site's information architecture—and I use that term with the same bitter irony I'd apply to calling a strip mall "urban planning"—seems designed by people who've never actually used a website, only heard them described secondhand by consultants. You click "Products" and get seventeen sub-menus that spawn like digital hydras, each promising to solve problems you didn't know you had with solutions you can't understand. The search function operates on what I can only assume is spite-based technology: type in "pricing" and it returns 847 results about "customer success stories" and a PDF from 2019 about cloud migration strategies. It's like the website is actively hostile to the concept of users finding what they're looking for, as if the mere act of seeking information is somehow gauche in the rarified world of enterprise software procurement.

³The first one, obviously, because this level of user contempt requires genuine historical precedent.

The pricing structure—or rather, the complete and willful absence of anything resembling transparent pricing information⁴—represents perhaps the most honest thing about SAP's entire digital presence, which is to say it perfectly embodies the company's apparent philosophy that money is too vulgar a topic for public discussion. Instead of prices, you get "Contact Sales" buttons scattered across the site like digital landmines, each one presumably connected to some poor sales rep whose job involves explaining why a basic CRM system costs more than a decent used car. The few pricing hints that do exist are buried beneath layers of "custom solutions" and "enterprise-grade scalability" nonsense, because apparently stating that your software costs actual dollars rather than abstract "investment in digital transformation" would somehow cheapen the experience. It's pricing as performance art, where the medium is opacity and the message is "if you have to ask, you probably can't afford our contempt."

⁴Which, in the enterprise software world, is like a restaurant menu that just says "FOOD: Call for details" next to pictures of empty plates.

But perhaps most soul-crushing is the relentless cheerfulness⁵ that permeates every pixel of this digital wasteland, the aggressive optimism of stock photography people pointing at whiteboards covered in incomprehensible diagrams while presumably discussing quarterly synergy metrics. The testimonials read like they were written by AI trained exclusively on performance reviews and motivational posters: customers don't just use SAP software, they "transform their businesses," "unlock innovation," and "accelerate digital journeys" through landscapes of pure corporate abstraction. Every case study tells the same story of miraculous transformation through enterprise software adoption, as if installing SAP is less like purchasing business tools and more like joining a cargo cult that worships at the altar of "operational efficiency." The whole thing radiates the desperate energy of people trying very hard to convince themselves that what they're selling isn't just elaborate database management wrapped in enough buzzwords to justify charging BMW prices.

⁵The kind of relentless institutional cheerfulness you typically associate with cult recruitment materials and North Korean tourism brochures.

After spending what felt like several geological epochs trying to extract basic information from this digital tar pit masquerading as a website, I'm left with the distinct impression that SAP's web presence perfectly captures the essential absurdity of enterprise software marketing: it's simultaneously over-engineered and completely useless, like a Swiss Army knife made entirely of handles⁶. The site succeeds brilliantly at its apparent primary function, which isn't to inform potential customers or facilitate business relationships, but rather to generate qualified leads for a sales team whose job involves translating corporate hieroglyphics into actual human language over the course of six-month procurement cycles. In that sense, sap.com is less a website than a very expensive business card that happens to exist in browser form—it tells you almost nothing about what the company actually does, but it does convey, with crystalline clarity, exactly what kind of people you'll be dealing with if you're unfortunate enough to need enterprise software solutions.

⁶Which, coincidentally, is probably how most SAP implementations feel to the people who have to use them daily.