SAP declares war on the “CRM Experiment” – Or does it?

In a press release on Sep 22, SAP announced that “The CRM experiment has failed. Today’s empowered customer requires a new model for engagement”. What SAP is referring to is its launch of multiple solutions in the digital and social arena. There is no doubt that the story is compelling. Enterprise customers everywhere are looking at ways to simplify their technology landscape while providing contextual, real time information to their employees and customers. All functions including sales, marketing, service and supply chain need to come together to enable that experience. And what’s different about the new SAP solutions is that they seem to now come together to leverage the same underlying information across all functions. The user experience is obviously much better, and more contemporary. By the way, sorry SAP, but its really the same as what others have been touting. But there are 2 primary challenges underlying all this marketing hype from all the big vendors like Salesforce, Oracle, SAP and Microsoft: First, enterprise clients are still implementing solutions in silos without an enterprise roadmap story. This means that departments or even smaller business units will deploy these solutions even as the rest of the organization evolves separately. While the product vendors would positively love to provide a singular solution, the magnitude and complexity of that engagement is huge. And it requires a resounding nod from the top, which may be too much of a battle for the CEOs. After all, no one wants to see such an initiative fail in execution. Consider the social […]