SAP's Business ByDesign: Explaining the Delays

Business By Delay - You don't know, what you haven't experienced: Phil has a great post on the topic on his blog that makes the point that after validating the market, the are now acknowledging its harder than they thought. After spending nearly three years in the Office of the CEO at SAP and now two years at Appirio working with Google and salesforce.com, I can fully appreciate the degree of change needed at SAP requires a massive DNA change in all parts of the business. While they can simply try to be a fast followers of salesforce.com on the externally visible parts of the model (free and easy trial editions, trust.salesforce.com, etc.) the more hidden and subtle parts of the equation will be impossible to internalize until they launch. Operational processes around the product are on thing (the current delay), but how you generate leads, inside sales, high volume sales processes, culturally serving the customer every month (support & sales), quickly iterating the product while retaining longer term dev objectives, etc. will only become problems you can solve after a broad release. Planning out the Xs and Os is critical, but there is nothing like being in the game for really understanding what is needed. I expect similar hiccups from SAP in these areas after broad release (in 12-18-24 months).; Posted by: Narinder Singh Posted on: 05/02/08 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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