Skip to main content

SAPPHIRE 2018 - The Return of the Suite


SAPPHIRE 2018. In an Orlando convention center, far away from Walldorf SAP holds its annual conference, boldly going where no one has gone before.
But enough of this poor allegation to Star Trek although it reasonably sets the tone. The first two days gave a deep view into the company strategy.
Condensed into two press releases the company laid out its vision of the future of CRM and intelligent enterprises.
And, doing so, shot a few broadsides at the competition, especially Salesforce.

The News

“The legacy CRM systems are all about sales; SAP C/4HANA is all about the consumer … when you connect all SAP applications together in an intelligent cloud suite, the demand chain directly fuels the behaviors of the supply chain” said SAP CEO Bill McDermott.
SAP intends to achieve this link of front- and back office by fully integrating an augmented suite of solutions that base on the SAP Hybris Cloud solutions into the digital core, the transactional back end. This integration is done via the SAP Cloud Platform.
Additionally, it is fusing the new high profile acquisitions Gigya and CallidusCloud into the solution.

C/4HANA; source SAP
The Customer Data Cloud is what has been Gigya.
This model, as well as S/4HANA, will be supported by the SAP HANA Data Management Suite, which is essentially a beefed up Master Data Management Solution around the SAP Data Hub.
The second press release is about AI, IaaS, and more AI. SAP starts to talk more about conversational AI and Leonardo, as well as blockchain get more to the forefront.
Mostly on the back end.

The bigger Picture

The CRM suite is back!
This is an inevitable consequence of the ongoing Clash of the Titans, aka platform war and the realization that customer experience is actually a platform play. Just that the suite now looks different from how it looked like say, 15 years ago, when we saw huge monolithic applications like the venerable SAP CRM, or Siebel CRM.
What stays is where at least Salesforce struggles – a common data model underneath the suite.
I am, frankly, not so sure about Oracle and Microsoft here, but think that they are following a route similar to SAP. And then there is Adobe, which takes the way from marketing into commerce in a pretty strong move. The acquisition of Magento might be game changing, also considering the strong relationship to Microsoft.
Especially Salesforce is forging ahead establishing new abilities for their customers to build new business models by helping their customers and improving internal efficiencies. Being the undisputed number one in the CRM market, Salesforce is the natural target of the other tier one companies. And as I (e.g. here), as well as others, have written: Salesforce is vulnerable.
AI and conversational user interfaces cannot be done without.
Conversational user interfaces are what will change our way of using computers as helpers. They are what makes computing ambient computing. So there needs to be significant investment in this area. There are lots of specialists around, of which SAP acquired one.
Blockchain needs to be covered, anyways.
In my eyes, blockchain is still a topic for the back end. Ledgers, tracking and tracing, and so on. Identity seems to be on the verge, and then there are a number of marketing related ideas that I personally still do not regard as proven enough to be viable. Time will tell. Being a big vendor means that one needs to have a foot in that game.

My PoV and Advice

For the keen observer it was all in the coming. SAP always was a suite company. Even R/2 and R/3 already were suites right from the beginning. While some part of the announcement is achieved by a rebranding the overall picture is strong. It plays to SAP’s strengths of being able to deliver end-to-end.
A caveat is that SAP is still suffering from a loss of mindshare when it comes to CRM. The company is addressing this for several years now, but it is still not where it needs to be. But the picture is improving as the solution suite is strong. Maybe not everywhere as strong as the competition, but the promise of integration and the sheer power behind a determined SAP is certainly convincing. I know of Marketing Cloud wins against Adobe although some, for marketers, important functionality is stronger in Adobe. Similarly are there (pre acquisition) wins of Cloud for Sales/Callidus against Salesforce Sales Cloud and their CPQ. A common denominator here is that customers did not know how easy to use and powerful the SAP software is.
Lacking mindshare, wrong perception.
But, what this says is that CallidusCloud, along with Gigya, have been some of the best acquisitions that could have been made (well, include Hybris here).
Putting the front office applications under the Hybris brand back the day certainly helped, too. After creating momentum there is brand harmonization now, which is a good thing.
Still, my recommendation to SAP is to look for low hanging fruits that are of benefit to the users. It is not all about the consumer. It is also not all about the best possible behind-the-scenes functionality, unless it is of clear benefit to a significant user group.
Win the hearts of the users, too! They are the ones who are craving for having their job made simpler. Helping them might be less headline-worthy, but it will pay off in spades.
This is where the intelligent enterprise, machine learning, and especially conversational user interfaces, come into picture. The announcement about this is relating to the back office but then there are use cases for the front office, too. Build them, talk about them. Some of them are even already there. But when it e.g. comes to AI based opportunity scoring even I think of Clari, not SAP – which is a shame.
Conversational AIs and machine learning have become table stakes. It is good to see SAP productizing SAP Leonardo more and more. So far it looked more like a consulting solution, but this seems to change to the better now.
Offering blockchain services seems to be a must these days. It is refreshing that SAP focuses on the back end side here. I am sure there will be some viable customer facing use cases but these still need to mature. Till then it is good to improve existing grounds instead of trying to disrupt.
As a little side note, and also looking into Gartners 2018 Magic Quadrant of IaaS solutions, SAP is betting on the right horses. IBM shows up for the private cloud solutions only and is partnered for private cloud deployments. Google, AWS, and Azure are available for public cloud deployments. The next IaaS infrastructure to be partnered with for public cloud deployments should be Alibaba Cloud.
All in all, SAP seems on a roll.


Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Last Year's Top 5 Popular Posts

Zoho - How a technology company reimagines business software

The News   On May 4, 2023, Zoho held its Zoholics conference in Austin, TX which included a media and analyst track in addition to the customer track. After all, Zoholics is a customer event. During this event, about 80 participants of the former track had ample opportunity to learn about and discuss the latest news at Zoho. We also had the opportunity to listen to - and question - a panel of customers who gave candid answers about their journey with Zoho and challenges they faced. Of course there was plenty of room for mingling and networking with Zoho executives and, of course, with analysts and customers. In addition to the breaks between the tracks, there was a pre-evening reception, a dinner on the event day and a casual brunch at the Zoho farm just outside of Austin.  As usual for Zoho, the sessions were less about feeding us with PowerPoint (or Zoho Show, to be precise. Why would Zoho not use a Zoho product?) but about giving good information and a genuine interest in getting fe
Post a Comment
Read more

Don't mess with Zoho - A Zohoday 2022 recap

After spending two days in Austin, TX, attending the ZohoDay 2022, it is time for a little recap of this interesting event.  We were 99 analysts and 24 customers and plenty of knowledgeable Zoho personnel. The incredible Sandra Lo and her team organized the event around open and transparent communication. So, there was plenty of access for us to customers and the Zoho team.  Which was very important, as already the keynote session by founder and CEO Sridhar Vembu was quite hardcore. Vembu talked about how strategy and culture need to be one, how culture needs to be the root of strategy, and how Zoho implements this. The Zoho strategy lies on three main pillars ·       Transnational localism, a unique concept that in its essence is about embedding a company into a local community by not only selling into it but also by investing into it. This investment is e.g., by offering high paying jobs in areas where these are scarce, by fostering local education, but also by own local sourcing in
Post a Comment
Read more

SugarCRM explains how the third wave of CRM adds value

The news On October 4 and 5, 2023, SugarCRM held its Connected event followed by an analyst summit in London. The first day – Connected – was targeted mostly at customers while the second day focused on analysts.  The event started off with an intense speech by Katherine Grainger, DBE , a British rowing champion. Her core messages were about team bonding, the importance of communication, continuous improvement, and perseverance (well, at least that’s my take). This was followed by information about what is new in the software and, more importantly, a customer panel.  The main sponsor, Mobileforce , placed some words about the partnership. In addition, the analysts had 1:1s with customers, partners, and Sugar executives. The second day was filled with information targeted at analysts. CEO Craig Charlton and his executive team shared about financial status, strategy and more in-depth product news. Sugar being a privately held, VC backed company, the financials are of course under NDA, s
Post a Comment
Read more

Relevance, reliability, responsibility are key for AI – the SAP way

The News A lot is going on in the SAPverse during October and the early days of November 2023. First, SAP conducted its CXLive event with CX-related announcements, then the company reported good Q3/2023 figures, a new version of its CX software that includes new generative AI capabilities got released and lastly, it executed its SAP TechEd event with a good number of AI-, BTP-, and ERP related announcements. As this is quite a lot, I covered the CX world in a previous post and will cover the TechEd related news in this post.  So, what is new at SAP TechEd ? For one, it is enough to fill a 17-page pre-event news guide that SAP sent out. SAP certainly is able to stack up the news for major events. I took the liberty to ask ChatGPT for a summary of the document, which I slightly edited afterwards. Here we are: AI and Development Environments: ·       SAP introduces SAP Build Code with generative AI, improving application development and testing, while new AI capabilities are integrate
Post a Comment
Read more

How to play the long game Zoho style

The news On February 7 and 8 2024, Zoho held its annual ZohoDay conference, along with a pre-conference get together and an optional visit to SpacX’s not-too-far-away Starbase. Our guide, who went by Chief, and is probably best described as a SpaceX-paparazzi was full of facts and anecdotes, which made the visit very interesting although we couldn’t enter Starbase itself. The event was jam-packed with 125 analysts, 17 customer speakers, and of course Zoho staff for us analysts to talk to. This was a chance we took up eagerly. This time, the event took place in MacAllen, TX, instead of Austin, TX. The reason behind this is once more Zoho’s ruralization strategy, transnational localism.  Which gives also one of the main themes of the event. It was more about understanding Zoho than about individual products, although Zoho disclosed some roadmaps. More about understanding Zoho in a second.  The second main theme was customer success and testimonials. Instead of bombarding us with presenta
Post a Comment
Read more