What should SAP do about Business ByDesign?

Now that Business ByDesign is available for general purchase readers will be hearing a lot more from me about this SME solution. It is an extremely important addition to the applications landscape and should be of interest to any practitioner with clients considering an upgrade from existing on-premise applications, clients that are expanding and/or need end to end business process computing compared to accounting by a handful of finance people.

I offered my initial thoughts once the solution was released. I have since fleshed out my opinions based on a deep dive with SAP executives dedicated to BYD. My colleague Zoli Erdos offers a competitive landscape view that inevitably involves NetStuite. Professionals should know there is now a genuine choice in the market but will need educating on the implications for selection and implementation. Don’t for example be fooled into thinking that this is a two horse race. I can think of at least a half dozen other solutions that could fit into the landscape.

The nub of my second post:

Jeff (Stiles, marketing) and I had a robust discussion about this because to be frank, I don’t think they’re looking in the right direction for partners. In similar vein, my colleagues and I had an even more robust contest on this topic. Having more than four years’ experience in onboarding SaaS customers, I have a solid feel for what works  – at least in part. I have to give them credit for creating content that prospects find informative. SAP said that by the time customers reach them, they are well informed and SAP has a good sense where they’re going and how things might fit. That’s a definite step in the right direction.

Jeff was keen to say he is being conservative in his estimates for the market but that should not mean the company will be timid. It will aggressively market. The question is how. My suggestion to SAP? Scrub your marketing brains Brillo pad clean. Marketing for SaaS/cloud is different to anything they have done in the past.

It goes beyond that. In a separate discussion, I learned SAP is what I call carpet bombing anyone in the SME space, regardless of experience or direct relevance. In listening I got the distinct sense SAP thinks it has a huge education job to do. That is misplaced. It has an education job for sure but if it is approaching people that are not doing their own research then SAP is wasting its time and marketing dollars.

SAP will throw marketing dollars at resellers and implementers it is desperate to get on board. The risk is it takes anyone and everyone as it discovers the problems associated with this market but fails to understand how to winkle out the right people. As I explained in my perspective, I was shocked to find that SAP demonstrated limited understanding about innovation in the professional world. It isn’t the kind of numbers game the company perceives yet it can lead to many thousands of potential customers.

These factors may seem of little relevance to professionals yet they are critical. Transparent relationships with software vendors are vital to the health of the SaaS/cloud market. Given SAP’s current state of ‘go to market’ anyone considering expanding their reach into software needs to clearly understand what is on offer. That will require a specific type of dialogue. Right now, the partners SAP chooses to put on public display are doing little more than hoping SAP’s brand equity will win the day. It will carry the company so far but it it won’t get them the breakthrough growth they need for BYD to be considered a success.

There is much to consider but the potential for genuine reward is enormous.

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Tagged as: Business ByDesign, BYD, SAP, sapphirenow