Conventional wisdom dictates that when a software makes a claim – ferget it. You know the thing but if you don’t here’s a great example of vendor BS:
Marginz Tagging Technology is a unique revolutionary new tool that allows a user to design reports in any layout from any information held on the database. The tagging system is quick and easy to use and is unique to the Marginz Online Accounting Package….
We provide the only UK and European realtime online accounting system for the accountancy service sector.
They’re full of it aren’t they?
Anyway – SAP the company I love to hate and then love again (yes I flip-flop sometimes), was recently stung about sales win claims emanating from Oracle. Jeff Nolan, head of SAP’s Oracle Attack Apollo Group was gagged for a couple of weeks but today reproduced an internal email discussing wins/losses. Rather than go into the detail, I’d recommend spending a few minutes studying the contents.
Although the email provides insight, it leaves me dangling slightly. I want more detail. I want to know how the sales count actually works, what it means and how I can meaningfully compare to like for like Orifice Oracle numbers.
For the first time, a software vendor has crept out from behind the corporate veil and named names in an unusual way. The question is this: Does Jeff’s disclosure change my perception of where SAP/Oracle are at?
Yes – because unless SAP has got it’s collective head up it’s collective ass and has a policy of sales persons telling porkies to each other (which could be the case though I doubt it on this occasion) then we’re seeing the start of the type of transparency that eliminates the BS-laden FUD screen so many vendors favour. But the most revealing comment:
I think we shooting it, the analysis that is, pretty straight with a slight lean to favorable to us… partly because it’s difficult to get accurate data on losses as sale executives would rather bury the bodies than talk about them.
It’s by digging up the bodies that the sales guys go from being D students to B+. Another case of process failure. Maybe that explains SAPs last quarter top line sales dump. Maybe, when CEO Kagermann explains the results, we’ll see deal details. Now that really would be interesting. Side effect? No more guesswork about who’s doing what. Or having to pay IDC/Gartner for those numbers.
As a further aside, I wonder if the Sarbanes-Oxley muppets have a view on this form of disclosure from an audit perspective?
