Neesha, in her long review at Amazon of SAP Nation 2.0 says
“One of the critiques I've heard about the author is that he's an outsider. While this may seem like a negative to some, I see it as a positive. He's essentially one of the few independent voices out there. If I was at SAP, I would call him and put him in charge of turning the company around and integrating its different parts.”
I do qualify as an “outsider” because I have not been to a SAP event in 3+ years, I don’t hang out much at SCN and I get most of my perspectives from conversations with SAP customers.
In contrast, DSAG, the user group for German speaking SAP customers, would qualify as an “insider”. This week they sent me a press release about “ERP of the Digital Future”.
I did not know they were conducting the customer survey which is the basis of their conclusions, and I did not share with them a review copy of 2.0 (I had done so with the first book). Yet, we came to similar conclusions based on what we have seen of S/4HANA so far and what we hear from SAP customers.
DSAG says
Looking across all sectors, it is clear that the use of new technologies is merely a means to an end. It is more important for companies to develop individual strategies for the digital transformation, or to think about new business models. There are many possibilities, and companies shouldn’t allow external factors to get in the way of their thoughts and ideas.
DSAG’s encouraging it, and I can see customers "drawing their own circles". I have 9 strategies for SAP customers to get to “Postmodern ERP” – I excerpted several on this blog over the course of the last week.
Like DSAG, I also describe how S/4 needs to evolve in industry functionality, portability across databases, integration of myriad acquisitions, cloud architectures and infrastructure and many other areas.
In the final chapter I write
Much better answers will come over the next few years as a result of the circle that SAP re-draws around S/4 and the thousands of circles its customers are drawing.
Will SAP listen to insiders and outsiders and make its own “circle” bigger? Or will the customer "circles" lead to more diversification on their part? It is a foot race that will be interesting to watch.
