SAP on the Cloud

SAP to Accelerate Cloud Strategy with Acquisition of SuccessFactors – will talk more #SAPSummit

December 3, 2011 by Sven Denecken

SAP AG (NYSE: SAP) and SuccessFactors, Inc. (NYSE: SFSF) today announced that SAP’s subsidiary, SAP America., Inc., has entered into a definitive merger agreement with SuccessFactors, the market-leading provider of cloud-based human capital management (HCM) solutions.

Image via CrunchBase

Thanks for your comments, below my favourites  - we will have chance to talk at #sapsummit in Boston the week after next or just follow me @SDenecken

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Social Enterprise Applications – already here

September 1, 2011 by Sven Denecken

Facebook, Twitter, and other popular networks have become symbols for a new generation of web applications, which are characterized by so called “social features”. There certainly is a lot of buzz around the term “social” these days – just check #DF11 this week here in San Francisco. While the concept is right – and we see this trend as well – it still misses some key elements to deliver true value and to reduce the “noise level”.

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Co-Innovation 2.0 at SAP – A User Centric Approach with Lean Thinking to meet Customer Needs

July 1, 2011 by Sven Denecken

White-paper 2 of 3

The primary goal of each development process is to develop a solution, which meets customer needs.

This is as true for software as for any other product or service. Unfortunately, this goal has often not been met in software development in the last few decades judging by the low success rates.[1] Often the development process takes too long, the delivered software does not meet customer requirements or it includes too many bugs.[2]

The fast changing environment and large variety of stakeholders often makes it difficult to meet customer expectations. This often leads to major changes in the requirements, scope or technologies of the software.[3]

To overcome these problems – and to match customer expectations – software requires a special development process.  It should be rapid and flexible without sacrificing quality.[4] In addition, the development process should avoid errors from the beginning and concentrate on customer value.

Since January 2009, SAP has been using lean methods within the solution development processes.  The results have been very positive. This is essential in the development of on-demand solutions due to rapid innovation cycles. In this fast changing environment, Co-Innovation is the ideal model to assure success on both sides – customers and solution providers.

Having driven Co-Innovation in traditional on-premise and on-demand environments, SAP sees a paradigm shift in more agile methods of development. On top of this, there is the potential to accelerate and improve the outcome.  This is especially true via early Co-Innovation and Design Thinking (see White-paper 1 of 3 CO-INNOVATION 2.0 AT SAP – Design Thinking and a User Centric Approach to Meet Customer Needs[5]). Last but not least, the speed of innovation in an on-demand environment reduces the layers between developers and end-users while adding tremendous advantages through faster release cycles.

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On-Demand for Line of Business – an informative discussion @SAPPHIRENOW 2011

May 23, 2011 by Sven Denecken

Thought you might benefit wit a discussion I had (on stage) with Nicholas Cumins, SVP LoB OnDemand on the story behind Line of Business On Demand at SAP. Of course there will be a recording, will let you know as soon as available. But you will already find here what we offer, how we co-innovate with customers and what the result is in respect to our solutions.

And this is what happened at broadcast center studio 3 on Wednesday…

Nicholas: Welcome everyone, thank you for attending this session.

Sven: Our objective today is to present our portfolio of on-demand solutions for lines of business, but also our vision of business applications designed from the person up, not the enterprise down. We will also reserve a few minutes at the end to answer your most pressing questions. <by the way, feel free to post them in this blog>

Nicholas: Let’s start with the introductions. My name is Nicholas Cumins, I am part of SAP’s on-demand unit and I am in charge of Product Management.

Sven: My name is Sven Denecken, I am also part of SAP’s on-demand unit and I am in charge of co-innovation with customers and partners.

Nicholas: Everyone must be wondering what co-innovation is… we hear the word quite often.

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CO-INNOVATION 2.0 AT SAP – Design Thinking and a User Centric Approach to Meet Customer Needs

April 19, 2011 by Sven Denecken

Whitepaper 1 of 3

The word Innovation stands for creative and new ideas transformed into new products, services or processes, which successfully penetrate the market.[1]

Therefore, it is not enough to have a good idea. The customer must demonstrate that the invention can solve his business problem. To support this, it is recommended to integrate the customer into the development process from the beginning.  In other words, you should involve the customer in the thought process when you plan a new solution.[2] Instead, traditional R&D departments often try to find innovative solutions in isolation. They don’t show the solution to customers until it is nearly finished; or the fundamentals are fixed. R&D departments deploying co-innovation, on the other hand, use an iterative process of building, testing and evolving[3] which integrates the customer and end-users. Leveraging knowledge from different sources, as opposed to focusing on the company’s internal knowledge, is an important ingredient for great innovations. [4]

The main focus of SAP’s Co-Innovation approach in On Demand for example, is to support the development of products, which better meet the needs of customers. We do this by integrating customers in the development process[5] and placing their specific needs at the center of development. Providing a collaborative and cooperative environment where customers and external experts together with product engineers and designers share their needs and ideas enables software vendors to develop true innovations. Furthermore, these innovations are far more likely to meet market requirements faster and in a more targeted fashion.

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Co-innovate with Influencers – feedback is key!

April 5, 2011 by Sven Denecken

Co-innovate with Influencers – feedback is key!

Just thinking back to a by invitation only event with some 20 of the most important influencers in Boston (and right into Cebit, SAPInsider, Gartner CRM,…), thrilled by the momentum we had with positive and constructive feedback from this group.

What did we want to achieve?

We wanted to articulate our LOB On-demand vision and offer an early preview of Sales OnDemand as the first representative of our collaborative and person-centric solutions, built on the ByD platform. More important, we wanted to incorporate their feedback into our co-innovation process.

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