Steve Mann has revealed the results of a customer study aimed at helping SAP figure out a new design for ‘experiencing’ its products. The interviewers used a deep dive technique called ethnographics. It’s not a technique with which I am familiar though it sounds an aweful lot like the conversations I have with customers pretty much on a daily basis. I gather the exercise was conducted in the context of sales. I reproduce the entire list because each comment holds interest:
- Get to the point – give me the info I need right away and in a no-BS fashion
- Stay away from the SAPanese
- I want to make a decision on whether to explore further or to go away… and I want to make that decision quickly
- KEEP THE DESIGN SIMPLE
- They threw up all over the content
- Show me exactly what the components are and how much they cost
- Overall, give us a buyer’s view not a technologist views of the world
- As far as the products themselves, tell us what they do right away
- Communities.. get me right into the forums and I want to see references and case studies, events calendar, and they want to be tied geographically to other users and partner offerings
I don’t know why anyone should be surprised at the general tenor of the comments. And definitely not inside SAP. I am surprised that SAP found it necessary to conduct a specific study to elucidate this information.
Surely, their own library of recorded case studies should have provided some insights from the notes made by those who conducted the original interviews? Don’t the bag carriers report back about how customers are feeling? Doesn’t pre-sales get a sense of how customers are responding to SAP? I cannot believe that a company like SAP doesn’t know what’s really going on in the customer base.
I hope I’m not being unfair on SAP. But when its own people are openly critical of SAP’s press releases and where SAPanese means SAPs jargon, there are clear opportunities for immediate improvement at virtually no cost. Similarly, I don’t know how many times I’ve heard/seen Shai Agassi banging on about the size of the SDN community – now up to 750,000 I’m told. But clearly those developers are not in touch with those who write cheques. If they were then these questions wouldn’t arise.
As I’ve said before, SAP is the only global packaged application vendor I know that has such a vibrant developer community. There’s a lot that could be done to make it much easier to navigate around SDN. But I’m willing to give SAP full credit for what it has achieved so far. Especially as much of the information it contains is available on a come-all-ye basis. In other words, SAP is not hiding. Well, not much anyway.
I discussed this with a senior marketing VP in another company. He made an incredibly incisive comment:
Once you’ve sold the functionality, the rest is about the service. The trouble is – and we’re all guilty of it – we forget that customers have real business problems. Instead we try and dazzle them with our technology. Because by then it is all about ME. And not about the customer.
That strikes me as about right. When writing a story, I’ve insisted on speaking with customers for more than 10 years now. To me, a customer’s voice will ‘sell’ 10x the amount of ‘stuff’ that even the best bag carriers might achieve.
Thomas Otter says:
Now this is seriously radical, because it means we are actually, shock horror gasp, starting to ask folks how they would like to be sold to. Clearly with all the stuff going on with new products, we need to figure some new ways to sell and communicate with the market. Reducing cost of sales, yet delivering a better experience is important and not just because it will give Vinnie one less thing to moan about.
I don’t read the customer words that way. Almost none of the remarks are about software per se but about making the buyer’s life easier in the decision making process. However, I do agree with Thomas about the component parts to a potential new way of selling.
I think there are important points that Thomas may not quite see.
- Customers are asking for service which includes references and case studies. In other words they want to ‘see’ and interact with their peers whenever they need. SAP will have to get out the way.
- Its job will be to facilitate discussions.
- SAP may own the network, but won’t control it.
- SAP service will need to be embedded in the sales process. Because they’re going to be dealing with less than perfect news.
- Customers will bitch and moan so get used to it and be prepared to respond.
If SAP is prepared to bite those kinds of bullet, then we will see the start of something innovative and new. SAP has always endeavoured to take the moral high ground with its sales techniques. IMO – this is but one more step in that direction. But to be truly effective, SAP will need to put serious effort into getting the attention of purse holders. That will be much harder than they imagine although there are ways of overcoming that barrier.
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