Period.
You probably thought I was going to tell you what the message was, after describing it as simple, right? Wrong. “Simple” is the message. In the past, SAP’s products and SAP, the company has been anything but simple. Anyone that follows me knows I am a very big fan of keeping things simple. I spend a good chunk of my time and efforts distilling complex concepts down to understandable …simple terms. So you might think I would be thrilled with this message. But when I walked out of Bill McDermott’s keynote earlier this week, there was something about the message I found troubling. My issue: Business isn’t simple.
No place is this more apparent than in manufacturing, which is sort of “home” for me. But all enterprises face complexities. First of all, all are becoming more distributed. My research shows even the average small company (with annual revenues under $25 million) has 2.2 operating locations. That number escalates to 13.7 in large enterprises (over $1 billion in annual revenues). Increasingly these are global organizations, managing complex, global supply chains. Add to this changing regulatory requirements, the uncertainties of a global economy and the emergence of new sources of competition as well as new markets. There is no magic wand anyone is going to wave that will remove these complexities. And yet with the liberal use of quotable sound bites generated on the main stage, I had visions of SAP’s personnel aggressively promoting and promising “simple business.”
Then I happened to have a conversation with Josh Greenbaum (@josheac) about our mutual reactions to Bill McDermott’s keynote. A remark from Josh made it all click for me. Essentially what he said was: “Simple” is the wrong word. “Simplify” says it much better. Josh is right.
Yes, doing business with SAP could be simplified, both from a partner and a customer perspective, as well as from a supplier standpoint (I can personally attest to the latter – yes, SAP is my customer). The software products and associated implementations scream for simplification. The way innovation is delivered can be made simpler. So can pricing. The same can be said for SAP’s organizational structure. So the real question is: Can SAP deliver on this promise to simplify? There is no single answer. Instead you need to break it down by the many different opportunities for simplification. Here are a few.
SAP’s Organizational Structure
We’ve already seen a few changes here. Obviously with Jim Hagemann Snabe stepping out of the co-CEO role, leaving Bill McDermott as the sole CEO, this, in of itself, could be seen as a simplification. And I think this was a catalyst for creating the focus on “simple.” I am convinced that this is not just a word, a tagline or a marketing message to Bill. He is truly committed to simplifying everything he can. Indeed SAP has already made some organizational moves, but I would say the jury is still out on whether SAP can really deliver on this one.
I gave up a long time ago trying to figure out the organizational structure and who does what in just the parts of SAP that I cover and deal with directly. I have never encountered a more confusing mess of titles, reporting and seemingly overlapping roles. Back when I did try to keep track of all of this… just when I thought I had it figured out, it would change. So rather than waste cycles second-guessing the organizational structure, I have come to rely on the phenomenal analyst relations (AR) staff to guide me. If there is a better AR team in the industry, I haven’t met them. Yet, while they do a fantastic job, I vote for a simpler organization chart, clearer roles and responsibilities and titles that give you a clue as to what the individuals actually do.
One recent change leads me to believe that SAP is trying. This is the recent announcement of Rodolpho Cardenuto as the head of a new Global Partner Operations (GPO) organization. Prior to forming this organization, partners were covered in a very fragmented way. The new GPO organization consolidates these disparate groups, combining the existing Ecosystem and Channels team, with the SAP® Business One business (which is sold exclusively through the channel), the OEM business and all the company’s strategic partnerships around the world – much simpler.
I know there are some other changes underway and I have to believe some of the jobs that were recently eliminated may have been as a result of “simplification” efforts, since SAP execs made it quite clear this week they are in growth mode, and not contracting.
Simpler to Partner?
Speaking of this new GPO organization, partners are becoming increasingly important to SAP. In addition to the strategic decision to sell to small to medium size enterprises (SMEs) exclusively through the channel several years ago, SAP now sees the potential for accelerating growth worldwide by building alternative routes to market through its partner ecosystem, whether this is through added coverage or added capabilities.
SAP has also actively encouraged partners to develop their own “value-add” in terms of industry-specific functionality and other add-on capabilities. The development of new platforms (the HANA Cloud Platform) and an online marketplace directly supports this.
Of course the formation of the GPO organization is one step in the simplification process in dealing with partners. Before, different groups dealt with different types of partners (e.g. systems integrators, global VARs, strategic partners, etc.) However, more and more, partners have taken on multiple roles. Systems integrators also became resellers; global VARS also became strategic partners and co-innovators, etc. In the past that meant they had to deal with different groups within SAP, and those different groups all worked differently.
The formation of the consolidated GPO organization is therefore one more step in the continuing effort to make it simpler to partner with SAP. Of course some of these partners are large companies, like Cap Gemini, Accenture and Deloitte and are well-equipped to deal with complexity. But then there are thousands of partners that are themselves small businesses. Think what it must be like for a small Business One reseller to deal with a company like SAP. I first saw these simplification efforts get underway about 4 years ago when Kevin Gilroy came on board. One of his first tasks was to simplify contracts. Don’t quote me on the page count, but I think before Kevin arrived, the contracts were upwards of 30 pages or more. He proudly brought a two-page contract to Bill, who promptly told him to get it down to one.
The partner management team has made great strides already in making it simpler to partner with SAP, and this week I saw a new partner portal that will likely make the life of a partner much easier. It is a single point of entry, easily searchable, to access all the assets and resources SAP provides. This is free, but for an added fee, partners can also sign up for the SAP Learning Hub, which brings additional virtual educational directly to the partners.
Bottom line: I think the simplification efforts have been successful and will continue to make it easier for partners, which will in turn allow them to spend less time figuring out how to deal with SAP and more time servicing the customer.
Easier to Do Business With?
But what about the customers that deal directly with SAP or even indirectly through partners? Often questions of ease of doing business boil down to pricing. One analyst in a press conference this week asked about simplifying pricing, citing Oracle’s policy of publishing its price list for all to see. I would caution anyone against confusing transparency with simplicity. Oracle might publish prices, but good luck in trying to figure out what anything will really cost, because its pricing is far from simple.
In all fairness though, any ERP vendor struggles with this, particularly those with broad portfolios. SAP has already taken steps to further simplify its pricing structure, particularly around the bundling of HANA, but any prior efforts were dwarfed with one announcement this week: Fiori apps are free. Here is the announcement:
SAP AG today announced that SAP Fiori user experience (UX) and SAP Screen Personas software will now be included within underlying licenses of SAP software. For existing customers [those who already purchased], SAP will provide a software credit redeemable against future software sales. In addition, SAP will offer a portfolio of UX services, including design, rapid deployment and custom development, to enhance customer engagement. SAP users can now take advantage of a next-generation user experience based on modern design principles setting a new standard in the industry.
This announcement is huge, for a couple of reasons. First of all, it really does help to simplify the pricing because there is no price. From the moment Fiori was released with a modest price tag, the hue and cry from customers and industry observers was that it should be free. This perception was largely based on the fact that the first 25 Fiori apps simply changed the user experience and added no new features and functions.
A new user experience adds “value” in of itself but no further value was added, so it is understandable that customers would expect their maintenance dollars would pay for this. In addition, because Fiori largely just delivered a new user interface, many customers and industry experts alike lost sight of the fact that they were indeed developed and delivered as apps. They thought SAP had just gone into the presentation layer and changed the user interface, as it would have for an upgrade. That was never the case and now the Fiori apps that are being developed go well beyond changing the user interface. The SAP Smart Business Cockpits being developed now are changing business processes and delivering very significant added features and functions.
These cockpits address a variety of functions and roles throughout the organization, including:
Cash management
Sentiment analysis
Bank analyzer
Demand forecasting
Bulk pricing scenarios
Mass execution of availability checking
Transportation asset management
MRP cockpit
Transportation management
Purchasing
PLM Variant configurations
An accounting hub
An “exposure” hub
These will be delivered over the next year or so. I am sure I have missed a few, but you get the picture. What does this have to do with simplicity? All of these are being developed as Fiori apps, which means there won’t be an SAP salesperson knocking on your door to sell them to you. They are released on a quarterly basis and they are free. And because they are delivered as “apps” and not as traditional “enhancements” you don’t have to go through a complete upgrade cycle to get the one (and only one) you are interested in. You just implement that one app.
This essentially paves the way for SAP to reinvent the Business Suite from the outside in, without causing a major reimplementation along the way. I think this added value was overshadowed by the declaration of victory by ASUG in having won the battle over charging for Fiori apps and the fact that many are still thinking Fiori is just a new user interface.
A Simpler Solution?
Which brings us to how the “Simple” or “Simplify” message pertains to the SAP products. The best example of the impact is probably the introduction of a new product, “Simple Finance.” Don’t let the name fool you – it is not just for small companies that might have simple accounting requirements. SAP itself made the transition to this product and is now running its financials with it. And I heard it made that transition over a weekend.
I myself don’t have as clear a picture of this as I would like, since my packed schedule at SapphireNow often conflicted with sessions and discussions on the topic. So I will turn to the dynamic duo of Jon Reed (@JonERP) and Dennis Howlett (@dahowlett) to add some insight since they spent some one on one (or two on two?) time with Hasso Plattner and new head of development Bernd Leukert on the topic. Den and Jon published this to better explain SAP’s cloud strategy, and indeed Simple Finance was developed as a cloud offering. But this excerpted section is perfect for the point I am trying to get across:
Plattner and Leukert confirmed that the freshly-named ‘Simple Finance’ is part of a broader rewrite/re-imagining of SAP ERP, with HANA and cloud as the enablers. Referred to as the ‘simple suite’ or the ‘S system,’ Leukert said that the monstrous ordeal of rewriting 400 million lines of business suite code was not necessary, because of a “massive reduction in code” resulting from the simplification HANA allows and in particular, the elimination of bulky aggregates which account for a significant percentage of current code.
This simple suite, currently focused on the Simple Finance area also includes an aggressive paring down of software accounting complexities, a now-familiar talking point of Plattner’s.
While anyone can see the value of massively reducing the amount of code required, the non-technical person might not immediately appreciate the significance of the elimination of aggregation. Forgive me for over-simplifying, but think of it this way. Traditionally accounting solutions have accumulated all sorts of totals. Some are for periodic reporting (monthly, quarterly, annually, etc.), while other aggregates are used to gain insight into different parts of the organizational structure. This aggregation enables reporting without having to sort and calculate totals across a potentially large volume of transactions. Sounds simple and effective because you can gain access to these totals through a simple query. But there were some drawbacks.
Not only is there embedded code to maintain these aggregates, but sometimes these totals are not updated in real-time, and instead are calculated with batch runs. That means you are looking at a snapshot in time and not the “real” number. Secondly, what happens when you want to change the organizational structure and report in a new way? Those pre-calculated totals are now meaningless. If you can instantly slice and dice and calculate on the fly using any criteria, you don’t have to do any of this aggregation and you get complete flexibility.
This flexibility and speed is the real value HANA brings to the business, along with improved, faster decision-making. If SAP can deliver this simpler suite through a combination re-writing code and adding Fiori apps, I believe the SAP products will undergo a dramatic transformation.
Of course, even if this happens, SAP’s competitors won’t let go of the message that SAP is big, clumsy and complex any time soon. They will still be inserting that FUD (fear, uncertainty and doubt) in the minds of prospects as long as there is a shred of truth to it. That only makes it more of a challenge for SAP.
Conclusion
SAP will never deliver Simple. But it can Simplify. These are just a few of the ways. While I believe SAP has already made progress, it still has a long way to go to deliver simplification. But I do believe it is committed at the very top of the organization. But the buy-in has to permeate throughout the ranks. I believe some of the SAP folks will need a frontal lobotomy to make this transition, but many more will be breathing a sigh of relief. They, like SAP partners and customers, will say, “Finally.”