deal architect

Burning Platform: Inflection Time for Enterprise Software

In the 91st episode of Burning Platform, we host Tim Crawford, founder of the research and advisory firm, AVOA. Tim has served as CIO and in senior IT roles with many organizations and brings that pragmatism to his market research.

The conversation broadly covers 4 areas – macro business and IT trends, the buzz around Generative AI, feedback about SAP Sapphire in Orlando that we both attended and round it off with what Tim calls “modernization of the enterprise”.    

Tim covers macro-economic trends and impact on IT budgets and which projects are getting greenlighted. I talk about vertical edge opportunities and emerging global opportunities I am seeing.

On Gen AI, we have a spirited discussion. Tim thinks we have sufficient enterprise data, and actually will do better with targeted data. I say vendor data is often stuck in customer data centers, and that which is in their public clouds, they don’t have enough customer permissions to use to train their machines. We discuss use cases we have seen and “guard-rails” we will need as usage increases. The technology is evolving at warp speed and it will be nice to bring him back in a few weeks to do another gut check.

We then discuss Sapphire. Again, we saw very different things. Not surprisingly there was a lot to unpack with so many product announcements. BTW, I wrote a long note about Sapphire here. https://bit.ly/3Wwlgzb

We finish off with “modernizing the enterprise” and we discuss the role of ERP in that.

It is a longer than the usual episode, but you will find it moves along rapidly and Tim and I bring out a number of varied perspectives on economic and technological fronts.

“Back to the Future” at SAP Sapphire

I skipped SAP Sapphire Celebration night at Universal Studios last week. One of the reasons was that park no longer has the Back to the Future ride. Besides, I got plenty of the juxtaposition of the past, present and future at the event.

On Day 0– the analyst track day that a few of us were invited to, I thought the feel was retro. Julia White, CMO and her team have spent a lot of effort on the new SAP.com site. It is uncluttered, crisp and pleasant and provides a nice index to its portfolio of hundreds of solutions. However,  the jargon on the home page jumped out – ERP, CRM, SCM, HCM. Those are acronyms that my colleagues and I at Gartner had coined in the 1990s. A disproportionate majority of attendees for that track wore Gartner, IDC, Forrester name badges and they keep reinforcing those acronyms with their MQs and Marketscapes. The signage on the show floor magnified those terms in large font. We were given a series of media announcements – under embargo. It all felt very 90s for an event which was themed “future-proof”.

It got better – I knew it would. Clare Henry in Julia’s team had given us a sneak preview of the event. In her session on the day, Julia had given us a preview of CEO Christian Klein’s kickoff keynote and promised it would focus more broadly on enterprise buying centers and sure enough it did.

Some of you have heard me say a switch went off in 2019 and we have seen 4 major (I estimate they will get to over a trillion in TAM each) application markets open up – I had written about them here. COVID, the Ukraine crisis, climate change urgency and massive digital transformations have turned every industry and geography upside down. That is allowing for a new breed of vertical edge and regional applications. Now low/no code tools for domain experts and excitement about Generative AI are morphing the market even more.

You have also heard me say I am increasingly impatient with vendors who just try to spray paint what they had in the bag in 2019.

Sure enough, S/4HANA got plenty of play at Sapphire, with new variants of RISE and GROW. S/4 adoption is finally accelerating – I had predicted it would take a few years to do so in my 2015 book, SAP Nation 2.0 ( I had also compared that to slow maturing and adoption of Oracle, Microsoft, Infor next-gen ERP). 

There was a lot of pleading about keeping the “core clean”. Christian shared a visit with a customer who had lifted and shifted their heavily customized system to the S/4 cloud and added new customizations and ended up with a 30X implementation to software ratio. Walking around the partner booths there was plenty of similar migration project talk.  

So, how do I benchmark SAP in those 4 emerging markets after what I heard at this Sapphire?

Vertical Edge applications

SAP had a head start here. My team helped Thomas Saueressig and Peter Maier research and write the Business as Unusual book and I ran a session with Peter at Sapphire. We discussed many of the “megatrends” in the book and the impact on various industries and the emergence of vertical edge applications like intelligent eCommerce returns and EV charging management and billing. We presented the slide below and several others – you can download them here.

In the Integrated Mobility chapter we had talked about the Catena-X auto industry network that SAP is part of. SAP has been evolving its experience around Ariba, Fieldglass, Concur and related indirect expenses and materials into networks which touch on direct materials and tier 1 and lower suppliers. In his keynote, Christian introduced similar plans for 4 other sectors – Industrial Manufacturing, Life Sciences, High Tech and CPG.

Sven Denecken’s session was about “Industry Convergence” and he presented on verticalized CX with examples from Retail, CPG, Automotive and Utilities. His session provided more context to the Farm to Consume show floor where SAP and partners showcased various applications, robotics and sensors with use cases from agribusiness all the way to retail.

Talking of industry convergence, I spent some time with Daniela Sellmann who talked about how Utilities and Energy sectors are blending.

I can confidently say SAP is the most verticalized of the enterprise applications vendors. But I have seen plenty of that with the time I spent with its industry experts as part of the book process. SAP would do well to expose more of that internal talent and industry specific partners at such events – and also invite more industry specific media and analysts

Emerging economies

I spent a month in India earlier this year. The energy and momentum is palpable. More importantly I heard people talking about new trading partners in the Middle East, Indonesia, Nigeria etc. These emerging economies look poised to grow quicker than the Western world over the next decade. They will be major software markets with unique functionality, language requirements and different price points.

Eva Zauke had presented on SAP’s localization efforts in this Analyst Cam episode – SAP has 585 local versions (including support for payroll processing in 104 countries) as it supports 200+ million users globally. At Sapphire, I spent some more time with her and it struck me how MNCs are shifting country commitments at an unusually fast pace – some due to embargoes, others to escape high inflation, still others to balance out their global supply chains. SAP is well positioned to support them in such transitions.

What about fast-growing local companies in these emerging markets – not just subsidiaries of MNCs? I asked Scott Russell, who I first met at an event in Thailand, and has done a lot of business across Asia. His thoughts: “In the Middle East and other regions we have a benefit in that we have (already) scaled out our field coverage. And we operate in a lot of local markets with a lot of local partners with a lot of localization. Our challenge is how do you get an ecosystem to support that local market? We're building across the organization, the digital engagement model, and a tele and remote engagement model, it gives us more ability to reach into those further markets with partners on the ground, and our kind of digital engagement backstop to it. So I'm pretty optimistic about our ability. One of our assets as a company is we're so globally oriented. We get it and we know how to move into remote regions effectively.”

Their growing S/4 public cloud, the emphasis on mid-sized enterprises with GROW and solutions like Business ByDesign also give them an opportunity to compete more effectively on economics in these markets. Sapphire used to be centrally hosted in Orlando in the past. In the last couple of years, it has been split up. This year it is being hosted in Orlando, Barcelona and Sao Paolo (run in Brazilian Portuguese). Another way, SAP can continue to target more regionally.

Custom Development

SAP showcased Enterprise Automation at Sapphire emphasizing Signavio, the Business Process Management tool it acquired in 2021 and Integration and Build components of the Business Technology Platform (BTP). In a nice touch, Julia, a marketing not a development exec, herself ran the demo and talked about “1000s of pre-built integrations, bots and workflows”

Historically, development in SAP world has relied on capabilities of SAP Mentors and SI specialists. SAP would do well to build a Salesforce Trailblazer type ecosystem with a lighter set of admin and developer skills as their answer to the call for more no/low code capabilities.

AI

Given the hype around Generative AI, I found SAP’s somewhat cautious positioning at the event a bit refreshing. They did announce integration of SuccessFactors HCM with Microsoft 365 Copilot and Copilot and Microsoft’s Azure OpenAI Service to access powerful language models. The result could be better job descriptions, learning recommendations and job interview questions. SAP also shared a series of AI enabled use cases in procurement, customer service and freight management among others.

Given SAP’s much more differentiated capabilities by verticals and countries, I would expect a much bigger chunk of use cases to follow. There is of course the pesky question of how much operational data is available with appropriate customer permissions to feed these models.

I have a provocative challenge to SAP and its ecosystem. Use Gen AI to automate a number of SI steps on projects. Thousands of ECC to S/4 migrations have been completed. There are work plans, data conversion code, testing scripts, end user training manuals and countless other artifacts to be mined. With Gen AI, you don’t just automate lift and shift – you can specify specific filters that would tailor them to each implementation.  Time to bring that long awaited productivity to the ecosystem and de-skill the talent needed on these projects.

Side note – my former colleague at Gartner, Andrew Dailey recently asked me if I still had a copy of a report we had written about ERP SIs in 1998. I found it in my archives and smiled when I read the opening para. “”Michelangelo should not charge Sistine Chapel rates for painting a farmer’s barn” once ruled a U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Although the ruling in this case related to lawyer’s fees, it might well have related to systems integrator fees on an application implementation project.” Amazing how labor intensive and overpriced the SI world still is – another throwback to the 90s

Much more

There was plenty of other product focus during the event including a Green Ledger which combines financial and environmental data at different points across business processes and an Open Data partnership with Google Cloud. In conversations with other analysts I got the feedback that this event appeared to have much more product focus than in the recent past.

Summary

Over 50 years SAP has sheltered its over 400,000 customers through multiple recessions and architectural transitions. Christian Klein and his young management team have navigated the pandemic extremely well. They now have the opportunity to start looking more into the future and distance themselves from the competition in these new markets I described.

They can start thinking about the next 50 years, not just leveraging the product portfolio they already had in 2019. In other words, become more ambitious about the event’s theme of “future-proofing” the customer base.

Burning Platform: a pivot point for Enterprise Software

In the 90th episode of Burning Platform, we host Bob Evans, founder of Cloud Wars and co-founder of Acceleration Economy

We discuss the state of enterprise software in the middle of 2023 with the end of the COVID pandemic and the return to in-person events, the excitement around Generative AI and the realization that both SAP and Oracle in different ways have bounced back very nicely. We also discuss my observation that we have entered a new stage with vertical edge applications, with emerging global economies, with more custom development with low-code tools and with the infusion of AI.

We also discuss our observations from 4 industry events we participated in - SAP Sapphire, Workday’s Innovation Summit, Truly Zoho and Oracle’s Application and Database summit.

A nice summary of the state of enterprise software as it goes through yet another pivot.

PS - I have a longer analysis of the SAP Sapphire event coming up

 

Burning Platform: Zoho – humble beginnings, ambitious future

In the 89th episode of Burning Platform, we host Tony Thomas, one of the co-founders of Zoho.

On this blog we have covered many aspects of Zoho – its unique culture, its vertical integration, its business model, its commitment to rural revival. In this episode, Tony describes the long journey the founders including the CEO, Sridhar Vembu have endured. Sridhar had provided his perspective in this blog post

They were humble back then – Tony says “we didn't know anything about business, we were technology guys having fun building something.”. They are humble even now “we realize things are never as bad as they seem, things are never as good as they seem. So realizing that there will be ups and downs, and looking ahead to better days is the way to be.”

We also discuss growth markets for Zoho – emerging economies, verticals, AI infused in their products.

Not surprisingly he ends on a positive note “It’s a great time to be technologists building solutions…..Technology is the answer to many of our problems, like solving climate change to other problems facing humanity. I'd say allowing teams to build with technology and continuing that is where I see the optimism for the future.”

30 minutes of wisdom. In his blog post, Sridhar had described Tony “as my personal daily Buddha”

A must watch – you will get another perspective on what makes Zoho tick.

Building on the Salesforce Stakeholder Impact Report template

It’s the time of the year for annual reports and shareholder meetings. I recently watched Warren Buffett preside over the annual Berkshire Hathaway shareholder meeting. Berkshire owns over 60 companies and has major shares in hundreds of others.  30,000 attended the meeting in person and millions more watched it live for several hours. It ran against the stiff competition of the coronation of King Charles in London that day.

That intense level of interest in corporate governance and the minutiae in annual 10-K and corporate filings that Buffett’s teams routinely parse reminded me to read the Salesforce FY23 Stakeholder Impact Report (for the year ending January 21, 2023).

Salesforce has an expansive definition of “stakeholder” to include “shareholders, customers, employees, partners, the planet and the communities in which we work and live”

CEO Marc Benioff is quoted “When we focus on stakeholder value as well as shareholder value, our companies will be more successful, our communities will be more equal, our societies will be more just, and our planet will be healthier.”

In an interview with Business Insider, Benioff’s definition of a stakeholder was even broader, “Yes, our investors are our stakeholders. Our employees, our customers, the homeless in San Francisco we've advocated for. Our public schools are a stakeholder. Our planet, and journalists — you're key stakeholders also. And I have to manage for all of them. And that's what it means to be a modern CEO today."

The acronym ESG (for Environmental, Social, and Governance) has become synonymous with a broad stakeholder focus. It was first coined by the United Nations in 2004. It has gained momentum in investing and related reporting, but not as much as you would expect over two decades. It is still controversial because much of the guidance comes from the United Nations and entities like the World Economic Forum with no jurisdictional authority. While some companies are still asking “why bother?” the reality is there is only inconsistent guidance on “how do we proceed”. I think the Salesforce template can guide in answering the “how” question

The road is long

Salesforce has been publishing its Stakeholder Impact Report for over a decade now. The FY12 report primarily focused on Sustainability and every year since it has steadily grown in scope. Salesforce’s founders had an even earlier start. A decade prior, they launched their 1-1-1 model, which commits 1% of their equity, technology, and employees’ time toward charitable initiatives. We should expect most ESG initiatives will evolve on a similar, gradual path.

Don’t try to boil the ocean

The United Nations has 17 broad Sustainable Development Goals each with many targets (169 in total at last count).

Throughout its report, Salesforce helpfully points out which of the UN SDGs a particular section meets.  Salesforce does so with its solutions like Net Zero Cloud, Net Zero Marketplace (see their presentation in this Analyst Cam episode), and contributions to entities like 1t.org, a global tree movement they co-founded in 2020 to conserve, restore and grow a trillion trees by 2030.

Salesforce also shares how it decides what to prioritize.

No law requires you to volunteer for all these goals and related targets – or indeed any. There are plenty of activists and regulators who are only too happy to guilt you about each of the goals. Decide on goals where you can contribute the most impact. For example, as a chemical company you are likely to have a much larger emissions footprint than a software vendor does.

Commit to data rich initiatives

Here are some of the highlights from the Salesforce report:

The Salesforce FY23 summary report runs 21 pages, and has another 24 pages of detailed schedules (and includes data on Scope 3 emissions, Sustainable Aviation Fuel certificates and data on Underrepresented employee groups among others) and audit commentary from the independent accounting firm, Ernst & Young.  The more you collect, certify and share specific data the more trust you will create that you are not just “virtue signaling” your commitment to a certain goal or target.

Negotiate more disclosures from activists and politicians

Part of the resistance we hear about ESG is that it is about one-way transparency. Many politicians, NGOs, charities and activists do not appear to be that open to debate or disclosure. Charities should better explain their program expense ratio. In many cases the executive compensation is too high and takes away from funding designated for their mission. Similarly, politicians demand plenty of reporting from businesses, but don’t often reciprocate. Many are banning combustion cars with aggressive timetables. They should, in turn, be able to show whether local utility grids will be able to support the transition needed for regular charging of EVs. They should be able to show the vehicle makers who sell in their jurisdiction have negotiated sufficient supplies of lithium, manganese and other critical materials needed for EV batteries. The Ukraine crisis has shown us energy independence is just as important as a focus on emissions. We have a right to see and debate if their transition plans from point A to B are well thought out. 

Summary

Not every company will take as expansive a definition of stakeholders or ESG as Salesforce has. However, their Stakeholder Impact Report provides a nice template for every company to review and adapt to their more limited commitments. Just as importantly, as a society it also allows us to seek similar accountability and transparency from those who are setting the “rules” for such commitments.

Business as Unusual – Conversation with Peter Maier at Sapphire Orlando

At SAP’s Sapphire event in Orlando this week, ASUG kindly invited Peter Maier and me to present themes from the Business as Unusual book at their Hub on the show floor.

We covered how the book came about, discussed some of the megatrends in the book – Everything as a Service, Circular Economy, Resilient Supply Chains, Integrated Mobility - and also wove in some of the announcements made at the conference about Industry Networks, AI and others.

We announced that SAP Press has a Sapphire promotion till the end of May. Purchase the ebook or hardcover here and enter the promotion code of SAPPHIRE23 at checkout to qualify for a 22% discount of the list price.

It was a very busy floor and there were multiple parallel sessions so we could not video the conversation but I did manage to record an audio file – we made the conversation interactive with the audience, with free book giveaways and the audio quality is not that great – and I also share below the slides we used.

Here are the links to the

Audio MP3 – about 50 minutes

PDF – 16 slides

 

 

Burning Platform: SAP Sapphire 2023 Sneak Preview

In the 88th episode of Burning Platform, we host Clare Henry of SAP. Nice of her to take time out of a hectic week with last minute prep to provide us a curtain raiser on the Sapphire event next week in Orlando.

Her key points and some of my comments:

• The event theme is “The Future-Proof Imperative”. That certainly resonates given the repeated shocks from COVID, Ukraine crisis, climate change urgency and massive digital transformations that most enterprises have been through in the last few years. It certainly came through in the Business as Unusual book we helped Thomas Saueressig and Peter Maier research and write last year.
• CEO Christian Klein will be joined by CMO Julia White and customers, for Tuesday’s opening keynote. The show floor will play a big part in that session and will feature Farm to Consume scenarios. That should allow SAP to showcase its strong agribusiness, commodity trading, CPG, sustainability, traceability and supply chain credentials.
• Thomas and Juergen Mueller will keynote the innovation keynote Tuesday afternoon. I am especially looking forward to what they will share about their approach to AI throughout the SAP portfolio.
• Scott Russell will keynote Wednesday morning. I look forward to an update on the RISE with S/4HANA initiative. Knowing him, sure it will have wide global coverage.
• Serena Williams will keynote Wednesday afternoon. She is such an accomplished athlete and now an entrepreneur, mother and overall role model.
• Clare promises virtual attendees are in for a “first class experience”. Sounds like the events team has put a lot of thought into digital experiences. They will be competing with the closing celebrations on Wednesday at nearby Universal Studios!

It was also nice of her to ask me to share some of my experiences from previous events. See if you smile at my reminiscing.  Of course, I am an amateur compared to folks like Paul Kurchina who can draw on 30 consecutive years of Sapphires. In a side note, I told him I am just a padawan – I will bow to the Jedi Master when I see him😊

Clare has a useful reminder for in-person attendees. Pack some comfortable shoes for walking up and down International Drive and the convention center. Also as someone who lives just 90 minutes away, I would recommend some sunscreen and light wear. The mornings and evenings have been comfortable for May but the afternoon humidity is already stifling.  

Finally, I too have a reminder. I am hosting at the ASUG booth on Wednesday 1 pm, a conversation with Peter Maier about the book mentioned above, Business as Unusual.

Hope to see many of you in person! In the meantime, enjoy this session with Clare. Her excitement shines through and should get you psyched for the event.

Analyst Cam: SAP Verticals – Public Sector

As we have moved to virtual briefings, I have increasingly been excerpting short video segments (with permission) as part of my Analyst Cam series.

This time it is Ulrike Kleifeld, VP Strategy, Global Public Services and Chris Atkins, VP Global Digital Transformation at SAP.

Ulrike starts off with some of the challenges government bodies face in nearly every country. The COVID pandemic accelerated digitalization in every industry but also exposed how much the public sector lags. This was followed by the Ukraine war and other geopolitical crises. We have economic burdens from the pandemic, and the energy crisis has only added to that. Disruptions have been coming in waves and governments are struggling to adjust to that “new normal”

They also address the loss of trust in government. I ask if it is lack of trust in politicians v  government agencies. They say there is a view that government is not agile or farsighted. Ulrike says “on the one hand we want governments to be cautious and risk-averse with tax payer funds, but we also need to help them accelerate their execution capabilities.”

Chris walks through the functional scope of their solutions across the value chain from policy and planning to public finance to supporting programs and services – the citizen facing part. He shares several customer examples. About the State of Arkansas he describes the amazing outcomes the project delivered: “they were able to achieve a 95% reduction in accounting processes, from a time perspective, going from four weeks to one click for many of their processes, a 91% reduction in cost allocation process from six months to 10 days. And, yes, you heard this right, a 1,150% improvement in creating their budget reports, what used to take days now take them minutes. And for the first time ever, they were able to submit their federal quarterly reports on time.”

I like that he represented multiple countries and the “end to end value business model for how they deliver value to their citizens”

Talking of different countries, they all have their own demands around data sovereignty, security clearances etc. Ulrike mentions one “In the US, we have the NS2 cloud, which is on US soil run by US personnel in a special secured environment that is FedRAMP certified.”

They do a really nice job covering a lot of ground about this complex but vital sector in about 20 minutes. 

Burning Platform: Org agility, global talent, Generative AI in HCM

In the 87th episode of Burning Platform, we host Steve Goldberg and Pete Tiliakos of GxT advisors. We discuss a wide range of HCM topics. Between them they have 7 decades of HCM experience in a variety of roles.

We start with an area which is Steve’s passion – organizational agility. I like his anticipate, adapt and act framework. Many enterprises invest heavily in listening to external signals, but neglect internal ones from their employees.

We next talk about what they learned from the Unleash event in Vegas a couple of weeks ago (where they presented more fully on the agility topic) and the Zoho event last week. I make the point that Zoho may not be a major HCM player today, but the exemplary bond between employee and employer some of us saw in Chennai in March gives them a significant test bed to try out and package innovative HCM practices.

Pete’s expertise is around global talent pools and related payroll and HCM matters. So we spend time talking about opportunities especially in fast-growing emerging economies.

We next talk about the excitement around Generative AI and some early use cases in the HCM realm

Finally, we talk about the perennial question – how do we make the HR function more strategic to their organizations? Steve makes a strong point. HR is a total enterprise responsibility, not just a functional responsibility.

So nice to spend half an hour with these veterans. Pete is another type of veteran – he is a former US Marine. Both are also fun guys to hang around. You will enjoy their perspectives.   

Time for a pivot in enterprise software

On Saturday, I watched the Berkshire Hathaway annual shareholder meeting. Warren Buffett was less than optimistic: “During the last six months or so, the “incredible period” for the US economy has been coming to an end”

Earlier in the week, in a welcome letter to analysts for the Zoho event in Austin,  Vijay Sundaram , Chief Strategy Officer pointed out

‘The SaaS model, as validated during the pandemic, will stay and thrive. But many providers won't. We believe that the next 10 years will be influenced by the recessionary conditions that have begun. Venture capital will now chase AI—the new shiny object—leaving less capital on the table for SaaS. Valuations will drop for the vast majority of companies that remain unprofitable and cannot feed the growth-at-any-cost monster. The industry will restructure as value shifts back to customers.’

It's hard to argue with either, but I am sure Buffett will find diamonds in the rough even in a challenging economy, and Zoho is doing well with its very different business model especially in emerging economies that are growing even as Western economies are slowing down. As Peter Maier of SAP, who I am moderating in a session at Sapphire next week, would say as his recent book does – it’s time for Business as Unusual.

In the doom and gloom in tech these days – valuations are down significantly; layoffs are up significantly,  there are at least four market segments which still show strong growth potential.

Vertical “edge” applications

A whole bunch of vertical edge applications became viable/necessary as a result of “shocks’ from COVID, Ukraine crisis, massive digital transformations and impact on every sector. They include servitization driven CPQ (to handle product, various services, spare parts, financing etc.) in industrials, smart insurance using new risk analytics, telemedicine in healthcare, curbside pickup and smarter ecommerce returns processing in retail, EV charging management and billing in auto etc. We are tracking over a hundred “edge” application areas. Most of them we could not have imagined 4-5 years ago – industries have been reshaped so rapidly in recent years by those shocks.

Emerging economies

On the recent trip to India I spent time in 7 states across the country. I saw a very different energy and pace. They are in a hurry to make up for lost time during COVID and to match China’s speed. We have long talked about “two-tier” ERP opportunities around subs of multinationals around the world. That opportunity is still wide open. The bigger opportunity now, though, is with fast growing, midsized local enterprises in not just BRICS countries, but also Indonesia, Nigeria, Chile and many others. However, they need different functionality, go to market and price points than selling in the West.

Generative AI

We are still in the first innings of what machines can dream up based on massive data we can train them on. And most vendors are still focused on the plumbing – should we use tools from Microsoft, Google, IBM and others or cobble together our LLMs using open source components. The winners. to me, will come from those who focus on differentiated use cases and gather mountains of relevant data.  All the more reason to invest in industries and geographies which differentiate you.  

Low code custom development

The vertical and geographical solutions I describe above are needed today. Many buyers are not willing to wait years. Others are tired of the cost and pace at which enterprise solutions are delivered.  They have started to arm their domain experts with low code solutions to at least get version 1 of the functionality in place. Too many software vendors think the low code tools are their differentiator. This is a bigger opportunity for service providers – again, those with deep industry and geography credentials.

Each of these markets will require new investments, not spray painting of existing solutions. Does not mean existing ERP, CRM and other markets will go away. But repaving older cow paths does not generate adequate ROI, especially when so many analog processes are screaming for digital innovation.  

Time for a pivot. Time to think Business as Unusual. New frontiers await.