What Surprised Me About SAPPHIRE Now Madrid – Day 1

After attending every SAPPHIRE in the United States since 2005, I attended my first SAPPHIRE in Europe today.  Here are the things that surprised me:

SAPPHIRE Now Madrid is Huge

Covering 10 different halls and co-located with TechEd, it seems much bigger than the SAPPHIREs in Orlando.  I have had to walk between halls and it can take up to 15 minutes.  It also seems the preferred dress is a dark blue suite with tie.  Much more formal than the US SAPPHIREs.

Bill McDermott Remote

Due to the unexpected death of his niece, Bill was remote in Utah.  Imagine how difficult it is to do a keynote in person to 6,500 people but instead at 1 AM local time standing in front of a brick wall.  The technology/lag was non-existent and Bill did a great job connecting with the audience.

Social Media Was One of The First Topics Covered in the Keynote

With 82% of buyers using Social Media as part of their purchasing decision, SAP has invested heavily in providing social media solutions.  One example covered was 

OfficeMax which uses SAP Jam to bring together the sales team for cross selling and up selling their customers.

SAP has 17 Million Users on The Cloud

When I started with SAP in 2004, SAP was primarily an on-premise ERP company.  Today everything SAP does is on the cloud.  It is amazing how far SAP has come to have so many cloud users.  For a strategy moving forward, SAP will focus on customers, suppliers and money.

SAP 360 Customer Experience was Announced

This solution gives our customers comprehensive, 360 degree real-time insight by combining their customer data from transactional system (CRM/ERP/SCM) with social web data.  By doing so, organizations can personalize each customer engagement through any channel to build loyalty and trust.

If you were at SAPPHIRE Madrid Live or Remote, what surprised you?