Could SAP be right for you?

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I’ve just spent a whirlwind 30 hours in London as the guest of SAP talking to the Business By Design people, SME customers and channel partners. It’s been interesting. Over the next few days I’ll post some videos of customer reactions to using SAP products and services aimed at this segment. As a taster, here’s a few things I learned:

• SAP’s brand recognition across Europe is a lot stronger in the SME market than I thought. It is often a significant determinant when making a purchasing decision
• The ability to become part of the SAP ‘family’ matters in some industries where large business partners may be SAP customers
• Fast track implementation is possible. It doesn’t need to take forever nor does it necessarily imply an army of consultants if you make good use of best practice templates in SAP vertical market industries
• The cost of acquiring and maintaining SAP in the on-premise world can offer significant payback for growing businesses of around 50 people
• Companies that use SAP throughout the business can gain a high degree of value especially through rationalized IT costs but also in reduced administration both now and into the future
• A typical 50 person business in manufacturing where SAP All-In-One is deployed everywhere in an on-premise environment can have an amortized TCO of €60,000 pa or €1,200 per user pa. That is about the same price you’d pay for Business ByDesign at current list prices for the same number of users. Depending on requirements, you therefore have an immediately comparable choice
• SAP is working hard to onboard By Design customers and is doing a good job so far
• Though you’ll likely never find any customer who is seriously ticked off at such events, I was surprised at just how confident customers are that they are achieving value
• SAP doesn’t have much clue how to tell SME success stories!

Pause for thought? Here’s one more. During the day, SAP arranged a number of interviews for us. We were not chaperoned and had plenty of opportunity to ask as many questions as we wanted both in private meetings and in general sessions. Neither SAP nor its customers fought shy of anything we wanted to know. That’s a refreshing change for those who know what it’s like to be caught up in the PR thought control machine.

Tagged as: BusinessByDesign, BYD, SAP AG