I saw something earlier this week that I never expected to witness in my lifetime: an SAP dashboard that allows an experienced, but non-geeky, user like me to access and extract valuable information from the enterprise system within seconds with little or no special training. It's not that the complexity isn't there--SAP's new Business ByDesign offering is a complete, end-to-end solution with all the ERPy, CRMy, business processey goodness that enterprises expect from the Wizards from Walldorf; it's just that most of the gnarly stuff is under the hood, hidden away from us simple humans, as it should be.
"We had four objectives in mind when we began development," SAP CEO Henning Kagermann said. "The first was to not compromise on the product; this is a total SAP solution. Second, we wanted to dramatically simplify the user experence. Third, we wanted to reduce costs and, fourth, we wanted to create something that was future-proof, a solution that could be adapted to accomodate our customers' future business needs."
At first impression, SAP Business ByDesign delivers on those promises. SAP spent more than four years and some $300 million building and refining BBD as a complete enterprise solution for companies with 100 to 500 employees that goes well beyond the standard promise of the nascent on-demand market which is to deliver software more cheaply. SAP wisely recognized that cheaper is not a deal closer in the enterprise space--completeness and the potential for competitive advantage are.
Josh Greenbaum, whose opinions on enterprise software I value highly, calls it "one of the most significant enterprise software announcements in recent memory." Certainly, BBD--with its service-oriented, event-driven, open standards architecture--combined with SAP's reputation, will provide a major shot in the arm for the SaaS model.
SAP believes the 100-500 employee market is a unique $15 million niche but its biggest challenge is try to keep BBD from cannibalizing sales of its Business One offering for smaller businesses and it high-end offerings for large enterprises. This may be a problem, some executives privately concede, but it is a success problem because it gets SAP into the SaaS game with a clear market niche and if on-demand becomes the delivery model of the future, they're already there.
SAP Business ByDesign has at least one major social software element--an online user support and e-learning community--that allows users to help each other as well as get company support and training.
SAP says it aims to add 10,000 new customers with BBD by 2010. With a $149 per user per month price, built in service and support, a revolutionary try-it-before-you-buy-it offer and a solution that trumps its competitors on completeness, SAP has clearly transformed the enterprise software landscape.
"We had four objectives in mind when we began development," SAP CEO Henning Kagermann said. "The first was to not compromise on the product; this is a total SAP solution. Second, we wanted to dramatically simplify the user experence. Third, we wanted to reduce costs and, fourth, we wanted to create something that was future-proof, a solution that could be adapted to accomodate our customers' future business needs."
At first impression, SAP Business ByDesign delivers on those promises. SAP spent more than four years and some $300 million building and refining BBD as a complete enterprise solution for companies with 100 to 500 employees that goes well beyond the standard promise of the nascent on-demand market which is to deliver software more cheaply. SAP wisely recognized that cheaper is not a deal closer in the enterprise space--completeness and the potential for competitive advantage are.
Josh Greenbaum, whose opinions on enterprise software I value highly, calls it "one of the most significant enterprise software announcements in recent memory." Certainly, BBD--with its service-oriented, event-driven, open standards architecture--combined with SAP's reputation, will provide a major shot in the arm for the SaaS model.
SAP believes the 100-500 employee market is a unique $15 million niche but its biggest challenge is try to keep BBD from cannibalizing sales of its Business One offering for smaller businesses and it high-end offerings for large enterprises. This may be a problem, some executives privately concede, but it is a success problem because it gets SAP into the SaaS game with a clear market niche and if on-demand becomes the delivery model of the future, they're already there.
SAP Business ByDesign has at least one major social software element--an online user support and e-learning community--that allows users to help each other as well as get company support and training.
SAP says it aims to add 10,000 new customers with BBD by 2010. With a $149 per user per month price, built in service and support, a revolutionary try-it-before-you-buy-it offer and a solution that trumps its competitors on completeness, SAP has clearly transformed the enterprise software landscape.
