Competence contest

I have a perfect team here at our main site and also in the branch offices. For a central CIO, the personnel issue is even more crucial than on-demand or on-premise. The best technology doesn't help if you have a high staff turnover.

We have a very good working atmosphere! Who disturbs? SAP. There used to be a central contact person who knew our history and contracts and could organize meetings with the board members if necessary.

Today, I hear a lot of complaints from departments because new "SAP faces" keep popping up who have little experience and ultimately just want to meet their own quota.

It is tedious for my team to establish a basis for discussion with the changing SAP sales team and to discuss our requirements. But in the meantime a pattern is emerging.

There are the entrenched SAP employees who have already experienced multiple course corrections and supervisors. For whom the annual trip to the SAP Field Kick-off Meeting (FKOM) is already routine.

Many of them no longer understand their own group. In the past, it was all about solving problems and working together as partners. Today, only sales and quotas count. SAP has become a sales machine.

The classic SAP sales force is now trying two ways to meet the revenue targets set by superintendent Bill McDermott: first, with dubious license measurements and shoddy interpretations of license agreements; second, with unnecessary and unfinished products that no one needs but help the sales force meet its quota.

License measurements and the resulting re-licensing seem to be the revenue generators at the moment. Some sales representatives have probably already saved their quota with the "indirect use" lever.

There are no limits to the imagination here: an amnesty regarding "indirect use" is very easy to get if you sign a "cloud contract" as an existing SAP customer in return.

Our SAP regulars' table has already considered publishing a manual on how to survive the "license survey massacre" and also make the sales representative happy, because not all SAP employees have yet succeeded in making the jump (golden parachute).

What is offered and sold is what brings quota! If there is no history, no relationship management, no confidence-building measures - then SAP sales tries to sell every product, no matter how unnecessary and useless.

With thousands of products and changing metrics with just as many announcements and discontinuations, chaos is perfect - and so is the ability to talk the customer into yet another license.

Our "favorite topic" at the SAP regulars' table is the competition for competence. SAP has long since abandoned the IBM virtue of "one face to the customer. As soon as SAP takes over a company, all sales employees receive new SAP business cards and are let loose on existing customers.

What happens next is ripe for the fifth season! At one door, the classic SAP sales force walks out with a few re-licenses, while at the other door, "new" SAP employees from Ariba, Hybris, Concur, SuccessFactors walk in to further increase product diversity and license chaos.

The "new" sales force from the SAP acquisitions has no idea about ECC 6.0, the ERP history and old license agreements. This competition for competence between SAP classic and the young guns from Fieldglass, BusinessObjects and Callidus is remarkable and yet very simple-minded - in the end, it's all about the quota.

To ensure that Bill McDermott and Luka Mucic can generate the right amount of revenue, my friend Bernd Leukert has now also put a stop to some interesting and necessary developments if they are expected to generate too low a contribution margin.

This sad situation reminds me of days long gone, when ex-SAP CEO Léo Apotheker had the SAP Business School in Klosterneuburg (Austria), headed by Professor Wolfgang Mathera, which I hold in such high esteem, closed down. This important educational institution was not generating a double-digit contribution margin!