David Carter has a take on SAP Business One but I think he misses the opportunity to address several key points:
Globally – SAP has 10,000 customers (thanks Thomas) spread among 2,000 distributors. That’s not a huge presence albeit the price point means it’s not a totally insignificant income stream.
Comment from Philip Steele notes:
- Legal/fiscal functional deficiencies for the UK market
- 200-300 customers – I’m not sure about this data point as everything I see suggests the number is more likely 150-200. (Anyone got a current number?)
- No real support from SAP UK/all handled by the channel – that is a problem I’ve seen others complain about.
Neither does David talk about SAPs commitment to the market. I’m told that internally, there is a rift between those who would prefer to see B1 or its possible SaaS replacement developed internally while others would prefer to partner/acquire as a fast track way to market.
Philip also mentions Sage MMS – 2,600 customers – interesting because I’m hearing that MMS is selling but it ain’t exactly a wonderful piece of kit. This is important because what’s not being addressed are the specific requirements for manufacturing/distribution businesses at the SMB level. Instead, both SAP and Sage are making the mistake of assuming an ‘all you can eat’ approach that is much more attuned to the customising-mid-range than the ready-to-go small end. Where SAP has attempted to address this is through the ability to create individual user panels but it still seems a half-baked answer.
Suppliers who want to automate the supply chain really have to think about the lowest common denominator. The back street guy who makes rubber wiper blades for Volvo, Ford etc. How for instance might vendors make it easy for these kinds of supply chain participants to link to their next partner up the chain? What about their own bulk suppliers? What about the document exchange element which is an area that could add huge business value at relatively low cost?
To me, this seems such an obvious case for creating innovative SaaS solutions but we’re nowhere near that today. Instead, we have pieces of the solution which look more like ASP than SaaS. QXLite for example is focussing on the procurement and warehousing elements with elementary customer management and financials using a sort of SaaS that features a proprietary yet strong security model born out of aerospace requirements for track and trace. Interestingly, financials is seen as an incidental part of the overall service.
Another example is myRMA.net which deals with the horrific complexities of the customer returns and reparation process in an elegant ASP/on-demand fashion. Again, this is an important but partial solution to wider business issues in the SMB part of the supply chain. (I’ll be picking up on this later in more detail.)
We’re a long way from serving the needs of SMBs as part of the overall supply chain in a manner and at a price point they can swallow. When this is addressed, then we’ll start to see massive cost efficiencies coming through.
Technorati Tags: innovation, QXLite, SaaS, Sage MMS, SAP Business One
