There was a time when business stakeholders could actually get something out of attending the SAP Summit. How about this year? Here is what was described as a keystone slide from the event:
Yup.
No mention in two days of “business process improvement” or “measurable business benefit” or the old saw of “agile business”. As a matter of fact, as best I can tell neither event ever included the term “business” over the equivalent of four event days (two each). In recent years, SAP has made great strides in offering services like Business Transformation Services and tools such as Value Engineering intended to help clients in this regard, there was not a single mention of them, let alone any particular recognition that there’s more to SAP success than wonkiness. By the end of the first day, various Tweets reflected my own frustration. Even an SAP employee noted that there had not been a single mention of SAP’s enterprise support (which normally is mentioned in every third SAP account exec’s breath).
Salesforce’s “Dream” event was an endless parade of merging and emerging technological patches to technological gaps into a technological universe quite far removed from orders to cash, procure to pay, business intelligence, or strategic positioning. Steve Wonder was there. Former president Bill Clinton made an appearance. So how business interested was the content?
Dennis Howlett pretty much sums it up:
“Salesforce on the other hand is not handling a single business critical process. Shocked? Go figure. It is parsing pieces of the pie but it cannot legitimately claim ownership of entire processes.”
These firms only compete in the small to mid-sized market. Much of SAP's event was given over to its emerging Business ByDesign offering which will compete head to head with Salesforce. My sense is that all the Salesforce features and functionality stacked together will not ever compare with SAP’s ability to drive multiple and integrated critical business processes. The question is whether either firm will have the consulting agility (and patience) to efficiently serve the mid-sized market.
While a number of the more technically-minded IT analysts and journalists were over the moon, two recent articles reflected a more grounded reaction.
Contrasting the two vendors is Dennis Howlett in ZDnet: ZDnet http://ht.ly/3nhQt
“Salesforce throws a memorable frat party, SAP offers fine dining. Each has its place but in the enterprise world one has to wonder which represents the ultimate preference of those who sign checks for IT vendors.”
As for innovation, Thomas Wailgum wrote before these events: “The Fallacy of Vendor-Driven IT Innovation” http://snipurl.com/1ne79i
“The term innovative itself is on the precipice of falling into the abyss of meaningless marketing rhetoric: When every new product, every technology iteration, every small step is termed "innovative," then what you have is a collective, irritating din that, conversely, makes anything new and notable exactly the same as everything else.
Let's be honest with each other: Outside of the Internet's impact on businesses (which, by the way, occurred in the mid-1990s), has business really changed that much? “
In the case of Salesforce, the event was totally in line with what we’ve long come to expect from them. In the case of SAP, I admit to disappointment. Going back to Dennis Howlett’s comparison, I do believe that SAP offers fine dining, but this event was far too over-cooked for my taste and the background music was grating.
Just for sake of perspective, let’s remember that in countless surveys, the need for business and IT alignment is at or near the top of the wish list. We can set aside the Salesforce offering which is an “eat it and smile” proposition since clients can’t customize the software and critical business processes are not satisfied. In the case of SAP, however, such alignment is not only possible but, when attained, can yield incredible business benefit.
My hope is that future SAP Summits will be meant to scale the business mountain rather than the range of technical foothills that surround it.
Interesting perspective Michael. I attended both events: DF 2 days, SIS 1 day. I was happy with what I saw at SIS because it was aligned to my agenda. I sense tested with an attendee who saw both days 2 and 3. He said he was happier with day 3 as we got more interaction.
ReplyDeleteLooking back I could sum it up by the message 'we' wanted to hear: The world is changing and this is SAP's response in the on-demand space. We did get to hear from (and question) users about benefit so at least we had some validation of that issue.
There is another way to look at this. SAP is presenting itself differently these days. It's no longer content with putting up mind numbing marchitecture slides but about getting back to some basics. I don't see that as a bad thing.