SAP Nation 3.0, which was published last year, took me 6 months longer than I had planned. When I looked at the first draft, it was dominated by S/4HANA. I told Stacey Fish, who was helping me navigate SAP I needed more coverage of other parts of SAP. In the end, the book has plenty of case studies and executive profiles around AIN, C/4HANA, IBP, ML, Qualtrics, SuccessFactors and other SAP products. Which created another problem - my editing team told me all the acronyms were confusing. You think? So we added a section upfront titled 'Do you speak SAPese?" which includes a taxonomy of TLAs, an index to the case studies by country and industry, and a listing of a wide range of customer strategies like ring-fencing and third party maintenance we describe in the book
The challenge has been to get SAP itself and its partners to speak "SAPese" in this broader vernacular. In my opinion, there has been too much focus on terms like "Intelligent Enterprise" and selling the big S/4HANA upgrade.
I have seen a glimmer of hope in the last few weeks as SAP has shed light across 6 analyst briefings on other segments of its portfolio.
The most emphatic was in a presentation that Greg Tomb and team delivered Tuesday on what they call their Amplify initiative - watch the replay here. Greg said the pandemic has led customers to ask SAP to ask for "bite size projects" and "immediate value" around "problems they face today." Focus on areas like "learning" given WFH, digital commerce, smart sourcing etc. He used words like "implementations in days and weeks". "flexible licensing", "Big SIs selling $50 to 100K projects" I have not heard often in my three decades covering SAP. Importantly, it has encouraged SAP to show off many of the products that do not get as much exposure.
Of course, most of what Greg described is horizontal, cross-industry functionality. In interviews I have done with Peter Maier here and Bob Stutz here you also get a feel for industry specific functionality from SAP.
If anything, in the last 4 months, I have seen an explosion of interest in what I call vertical "edge" applications - PPP loan processing, mobile banking and digital mortgage processing in fintech, telemedicine in healthcare, distance learning in education, ecommerce fulfillment and last mile delivery in retail, drive thru and home delivery for food service, shop floor and warehouse automation as customers re-examine supply chains and many more. Many more opportunities for SAP to explore.
I have heard similar from SAP's competitors about their new, often, bite-sized offerings. Workday using its planning and HCM capabilities and leveraging IBM Watson has developed a solution to help companies safely reopen sites. Salesforce's Neeracha Taychakhoonavudh described to me their vertical "edge" applications, often with partners on the Force.com platform, in this conversation.
As with everything in this phase, the question to ask is "how far will the bungee snap back?" When the economy starts to recover, will these vendors and partners go back to big "elephant hunting" and large, on-site projects? Importantly, will customers allow them to?
