March, 2009

Keeping the talent, and finding the time, for strategic SAP projects

Amidst the rumors of the onslaught of layoffs at IBM, I am reminded of a theme that keeps resurfacing in my talks with analysts and customers — the importance of holding on to IT talent.

 Projects like ERP benefits realization demand a company’s most skilled IT professionals.   For instance, strategic projects like SOA have enormous potential for payback, AMR’s Derek Prior told me in a recent interview. They’re a big reason it’s important for companies to keep the clever Basis technical staff and the architects, in order to understand the broader complexities of NetWeaver and understand how the applications are configured.

Perhaps your own teams have been affected by layoffs, and some of your better people were in the mix. As a result, maybe your day-to-day tasks aren’t leaving you with a lot of time for these types of strategic projects that may be needed to really optimize the systems.

 Your issue now is freeing up, or finding, the time to work on these projects.

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It’s a buyer’s market for software

Here in New England, for the last couple of years, a large furniture store chain called Jordan’s Furniture has run a clever promotion — if the Red Sox win the World Series, you get the furniture you bought during a certain time period for free.

I’m starting to wonder whether we’ll soon be seeing a deal like that from the big software vendors, who seem to keep getting more and more aggressive with their discounts.

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Who wants SAP on the iPhone?

iPhones are cool. I don’t have one, but people in my office have been kind enough to let me use theirs. I love that app that picks a restaurant for you when you shake the phone.

But that’s what I associate with the iPhone — fun, not business. I know people who use the iPhone to access corporate email. And I’ve heard of companies piloting the iPhone as a business tool, but they’re still relying primarily on a BlackBerry.

It seems like others share my sentiments. About a month ago, CIOs on a panel organized by SAP for the launch of Business Suite 7 shared their thoughts on the iPhone for business — so did SAP CEO Leo Apotheker. Apotheker said demand for SAP’s CRM application is much higher on the BlackBerry than it is on the iPhone.

Most said they didn’t use the iPhone for business very much. One CIO even went so far as to say it wasn’t a business tool, according to one blog.

But things are not always what they seem. The BlackBerry may have started out as a business tool — but consumers wanted more. Now you can get many comparable iPhone apps (granted, most aren’t as cool) on the BlackBerry. You can look at your Facebook page, check your Gmail or jump on YouTube for a quick laugh — all between using it to log into CRM to check your company’s sales goals for that month.

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What will SAP’s sustainable software look like?

SAP named Peter Graf its first chief sustainability officer Monday. He’ll oversee development of so-called sustainable software for customers, as well as lead the vendor’s own ambitious sustainability efforts.

SAP has pledged to cut its carbon footprint in half (currently 513,000t CO2) by 2020. Among other things, the company will focus on virtualization in the data center, and cut back on business travel, replacing it with the company’s telepresence system from Cisco.

But the announcement came with less clarity around exactly what these sustainable applications would look like or when they would be available.

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