Six out of ten existing SAP customers would not buy SAP software again
Is the monolith Business Suite 7 with AnyDB or Hana really the philosopher's stone? A research note from Nucleus Research says that six out of ten existing SAP customers would not choose SAP software again.
That's a clear message and a bold statement from the analysts, but it's not surprising: It feels like almost half of the SAP community says that SAP is a disappointment, that the software is of poor quality, and that the maintenance and licensing fees are far too high.
If there is deep bitterness towards SAP on one side, there are hardly any alternatives on the other side - not yet! Both sides combined: He who grumbles, buys!
With its unique business, organizational and technical knowledge, SAP created a monolithic IT system with R/2, R/3, ERP 6.0 and Business Suite 7 to which there was no alternative.
At the end of the day, there were always more arguments in favor of SAP than against it. To list all the positive arguments in favor of SAP software here would fill the entire E-3 magazine and not just this page.
What was courageous, right and logical in the past does not necessarily apply to the future. In the coming years, not going to Walldorf to SAP, but in exactly the opposite direction, to the SAP community and SAP partners, is probably the better path.
Why this about-face?
SAP itself has planted the seed for this and will be surprised by the result in the coming years: Breaking up the ERP monolith and promoting platforms, in-memory, mobile and cloud computing, open source and best-of-breed is, from SAP's point of view, a marketing-driven act of desperation, but nevertheless completely correct in the matter itself.
It just doesn't work when the wine merchant recommends drinking water and the butcher lectures on vegan living.
Nucleus Research has located the dissatisfaction of SAP's existing customers who, with current experience and knowledge, might decide differently - and SAP itself wants users to decide differently now: in favor of the cloud!
This is a logical step, but SAP has not thought it through to the end. Only if SAP currently had the best (hybrid) cloud offering would the step be reasonable - as when SAP had the best ERP system with R/3.
But SuccessFactors, SAP's HCM cloud, has had a disastrous six months with numerous failures and accidents. HEC is too expensive and HCP is immature (Hana Enterprise Cloud and Hana Cloud Platform).
What happens when existing customers take SAP's advice seriously and move into a new ERP era with hybrid cloud and hyper-converged infrastructure systems? How long will it be before other platform and software providers dock alongside an S/4 Finance with Hana via OpenStack and Cloud Foundry?
The dissatisfaction of SAP's existing customers found no outlet in the R/3 black box. With the new IT architectures - open source, hybrid clouds, hyper-converged infrastructure - SAP opened up a new dimension for the community and left itself at the mercy of the competition.
The monopolist from Walldorf will have to learn to face market competitors and prove that it still writes the best business software in the world.
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1 comment
Christian Podiwinsky
Mich wundert schon lange, dass die großen Bestandskunden, die in Summe einen Megabetrag an Wartungsgebühren an SAP zahlen, nicht aufmucken, weil die Gegenleistung schon längere Zeit nichtmehr das Geld wert ist, was da eingezahlt wurde.
Hasso Plattner hat in der Zeit, als ihm SAP noch mehr am Herzen lag als HANA die Wartungsgebühren immer wie folgt – und meiner Meinung nach plausibel – so erklärt: „Ihr gebt uns Geld und wir machen daraus zweierlei: 1.) Wir bauen den besten Fehlerbearbeitungs- und Software-Servicedienst der Welt auf und 2.) entwickeln wir die ERP-Software laufend weiter und halten sie technologisch und funktional immer am neuesten Stand (stat of the art) – und das gemäß einer Hauptmaxime , deretwegen Ihr SAP-Gekauft habt: Integration – flexible Parametrisierung – Redundanzfreiheit.
Heute werden um das Geld der SAP-Kunden Firmen in Milliardenhöhe zugekauft , die mit dem SAP-Kernel nie und nimmer nach obigen Gesichtspunkten integrierbar sind, die kaum noch die Kernanforderungen der SAP-Bestandskunden abdecken – das bringt die Bestandskunden weder funktionell noch technologisch weiter und man entfernt sich immer mehr von den Maximen , warum SAP gekauft wird.
Meiner Meinung nach ist es nur mehr eine Frage der Zeit, dass sich große SAP-Kunden von den Amis nicht mehr blenden und von den Indern nicht mehr in nutzlose technologische Richtungen drängen lassen wollen.
Vielleicht wäre es eine sinnvolle Entwicklung, dass sich große SAP-Kunden im Kern-SAP-Regionen (Europa) zusammen tun und der SAP die ERP-Entwicklungsmannschaft von Walldorf abkauft und dann bestimmt, wie ihr teures Wartungsgeld nutzvoll für die klassischen SAP-ERP-Anwender eingesetzt werde soll