The Best-Run Businesses Run SAP

Reporting live from TechEd/Sapphire Beijing: Jennifer Schulze

 As a first time visitor to China, I had no idea what to expect from SAP SAPPHIRE/TechEd Beijing. I arrived and quickly became part of the crowd wave at the China National Convention Center – at least 10,000 strong — all ready to hear about what SAP is doing and eager to learn.  Everything here is big, the show venue, the crowd and the level of energy.  Even if I was lost in translation much of the time, my time here confirmed this audience is serious, has done their research and is ready to talk real business. (more…)

Guess what – after months of prep, this awesome event is really HAPPENING!

As they always say – a picture is more than a thousand words –> so here are a few thousands of them:)

The venue is huge, starting with the 4-story tall “welcome” sign at the entrance (more…)

Recently I had the opportunity to speak with SAP’s Senior VP of Mobile Strategies, Nick Brown to get a preview of the “mobility” announcements planned for SAPPHIRENOW + SAPTechEd, co-located in Madrid this week. As anyone that follows SAP knows, mobility is one of its three hottest topics, the other two being cloud and in-memory computing. Since May 2010 when SAP announced its intended acquisition of Sybase, the mobility buzz has been about an integrated platform and application story. (more…)

A lot has been written lately about moving from transactional systems to engagement systems, including one of my own blog posts. There is something to be said for better engagement with customers, but I don’t see this as a “from-to” transition. Recording transactions isn’t optional. Whatever tool you use to create your system of record (whether it is ERP or accounting applications or something else) is a necessary foundational tool and some Small to Midsize Enterprises (SMEs) struggle to provide that solid foundation. (more…)

HANA is effectively bringing companies into the 21^st century, where business is conducted in real-time.  Small and midsized businesses are turning to HANA to free themselves from their archaic 20^th century business processes, which are no longer capable of maintaining a competitive advantage in today’s market. They are also leveraging HANA to put information into the hands of the business users, giving them the freedom from having to rely on IT.  Given that most  (more…)

For Immediate Release

Oct. 27, 2011

Newsbyte:

SAP Delivers Business Improvements With New Version of SAP® Business One Application

SAP NEWSBYTE — Oct. 27, 2011 — SAP AG (NYSE: SAP) today announced an update in its portfolio of on-premise and hosted business management solutions for small businesses with the 8.82 version of the SAP® Business One application. With this new release, SAP continues to demonstrate its (more…)

 If only there was a Snopes for enterprise software – the definitive reference source for urban legends, myths, rumors and mis-information.  Alas, it doesn’t exist, so allow me the pleasure of busting a few myths about enterprise software for midsize companies in the wholesale distribution industry.

Everyone wants to grow their business, right? If not, then why are you in business? Small, niche software providers will approach you with a very tailored (more…)

How technology can create entrepreneurs at the bottom of the economic pile

Two completely unrelated facts caught my attention the other day. One,  there are about 4 Billion people on the planet who lie squarely at the bottom of the economic pyramid, eking out a marginal existence on about US$2-3 per day, give or take. Two, there are over 825 Million mobile phone subscribers in India and poor rural subscribers have them just as much as their urban richer counterparts. On the face of it, there is little to connect these 2 disparate facts. But if (more…)

Ever since I heard a (bootlegged) cassette recording of Casey Kasem’s “American Top 40” as a teen growing up in India several decades ago , the notion of the counting down the most wonderful songs or listing the best attributes about a particular topic has stayed with me. So, when our corporate strategy and brand marketing teams recently released the “Top 10 reasons why customers buy SAP,” it was obvious that we needed something similar – a document that counts out why small businesses and midsize companies (SMEs) buy SAP.

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This year’s SAP TechEd was the first to feature an SME (Small to Midsize Enterprise) track. As we wrap up Las Vegas (next stop Madrid), it is time to reflect on the real relevance to SME of the themes and messages presented at TechEd. Much of the event was an excellent presentation of technology, followed by some ideas and examples of how you might use that technology.  That is the way IT departments in large enterprises might approach their IT strategy and budget. And, after all the intended audience for the event was IT in general and developers in particular. But typically there aren’t any developers in small companies and most SMEs have very limited IT staffs. So really the SME audience at TechEd was the partners that service those SMEs. (more…)