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SAPPHIRE 2015: SAP, Amazeballs, but you'd never know it, and that's sad

SAP's annual conference has a long lineage and is arguably one of the most important - and very revealing - conferences in the technology world. They are always amazing and always puzzling. Paul Greenberg explains the conundrum.
Written by Paul Greenberg, Contributor

Back in 2007, when I still had imagination and literary skills, I wrote this blog post entitled "SAP, Amazing But You'd Never Know It And That's Sad." Other than the words "SAPPHIRE 2015" and the tilt of the head to a more contemporary pop expression for "amazing", the headline is the same in 2015. Amazing or Amazeballs, depending on which year from 2007-2015 you choose to read this headline. But you'd never know it. Nor does anyone else. Which is très, très sad. Because this is a company with limitless ceiling if it could just figure out how to be less socially awkward.

If you deal with popular perception of SAP, it is that it is an ERP company and that it sells products. This is the way that both the public and many of its employees, senior management, and even some of the industry analysts see it. It sells ERP software, no doubt about that. SAP crowed a few months ago with a definitely overblown but significant announcement of their release of SAP S/4HANA, which they declared as revolutionary, but was viewed as less than that by most of the industry analysts and much of the public. That was ERP redone, more or less. So there is no denying that they actually do sell ERP software.

Also, they declare, they are now a HANA company and we live in a HANA world (more on that in a bit) - which means we live in a world of in memory computing of SAP's stripe and hue. Which of course we don't. But they sell HANA. No doubt about that either.

But, here's the thing. SAP, despite their own perception sometimes, is NOT just an ERP company that sells products. They are a platform focused company that is moving to the cloud rapidly - and pretty successfully too - and they sell a technology ecosystem that covers the spectrum of the enterprise. That means, equally as important as their legacy or if you wish, their classics, which are SAP financials, human resources and supply chain, they sell the front office too - sales marketing customer service. In reality, they are continually building a fairly complete technology matrix for the enterprise, if you take their partners into account. More germane to what I've seen lately and reinforced in discussions, but not in public (RED FLAG! which will be clear later in this piece) they also sell a set of products what are arguably the most advanced version of customer engagement technology I've ever seen. They are called, SAP Digital Customer Engagement (CE).

Of course, as I've said before, they market the best collaboration technology bar none, SAP JAM. But if you listened to the keynotes and the various speeches on the main stage at the conference you'd never, EVER know either of those things. CE was a passing reference. I don't remember a single reference to JAM, though that doesn't' mean it wasn't referenced. I just don't remember it. What that shows is how little emphasis there was on JAM. All in all, the lack of discussion of both of those superb parts of their ecosystem, which are the front side - customer and employee facing - points to SAP's biggest problem. Which I won't get into yet. And it points to SAP's biggest strength. Which I won't get into yet.

Because....

Before I do I want to do what I do for every conference I cover and even those conferences I cover but don't attend. I want to present you with the SAP Conference Scorecard. Again, for those of you who don't know what the hell I'm talking about, here's the full description of the Event Scorecard from my post on the Adobe Digital Marketing Summit, the first one this year with the event scorecard. To summarize, this is a look at the conference itself - the actual event. These conferences are of major league importance and can impact the perception of a company for months to come - often right up to the next conference. Its why there is so much that goes into the planning of a major event and the effort is down to the atomic level - the particle level. When it scales at the level of SAP - around 20,000, I think, in physical attendance, it is particularly difficult to pull off. That is why I lean to the generous side, unlike with the CRM Watchlist where I am just a bastard to the nth degree. I understand how hard it is to plan and execute an event of any size so I emphasize with the planners and those carrying it out. That said, these are fairly hard nosed assessments of the event and how well it did relative to all events I attend and absolutely how it did (meaning regardless of other events). There have been a formidable number of events so far, some of which are reported on these ZDNet pages but not all.

Oh yeah, one change. To be honest, when I say Crowd Energy, I really mean Crowd Engagement. Loudness and "Woot! Woot!" is not a criterion that I use to judge anything, so though the actual criteria for this haven't changed, as of this scorecard, the category name is now "Crowd Engagement."

So, here it is, ladies and gentlemen:

SAPPHIRE NOW 2015's Conference Scorecard

Category Grade Notes
Keynotes (Content) C+ First, the ubiquitous reminder - this isn't an analysis of the actual content or the messaging or the personal style of the speaker. The personal style of the speaker is never addressed, the rest comes later. This is a look at how the content was presented/handled with the tone and the flow etc. There was a lot wrong with the way the content of the keynote was handled. First, there was way too much of the "SAP is great, rah, rah" over the top stuff. Also of the "we are the only ones who..." I automatically turn off - I don't even care what they say next because rest assured unless they've created a new element to add to the atomic table, they aren't the "only ones" who anything. Additionally, there was nothing visionary presented. Also, their very few product announcements were underwhelming due to the stifling desire to declare SAP leading a "HANA World" as we heard in the Q&A and their apparent belief that S/4 is more than evolutionary. For example, there was only perfunctory mention of what might be their most important breakthrough product the $29/month/user SAP Customer Engagement product (more on that in detail later). On the upside, amidst all the salesy SAP is the greatest thing since sliced limburger stuff, there was the kernel of real market alignment (again more on that later) but it was buried in the rest of the thing. Plus the demo of Concur on an iPad was top flight. The second day keynotes with the customers on stage including the incredibly refreshing Karenann Terrell, CIO of Walmart (watch her here), is what got them a better than below B grade here. It was a great move.
Keynotes (Presentation) A- Outside of the Adobe Digital Summit, this was easily the premier event of the year - and likely to remain that way, when it came to staging the keynote. Not only were the screens onstage ultra wide, super HD, but so were the screens throughout the exhibition hall which broadcast the event. The music was contemporary without the boring kitsch of Taylor Swift "Shake it Off" (a refrain at too many conferences where the average age is 2X Taylor Swift) and high enough energy to be motivating. The videos of customers and even the Concur demo video were extraordinarily well produced and the lighting was perfect all around. The only real downside was the lack of "supporting material" on the stage with the keynote presenters - meaning not enough demos. This was a masterful effort at supporting a keynote that, as you can see in the paragraph before somewhat lacking in content.
Tracks/General Sessions A Not only was the content supportive of the themes of the conference, but it generally went to the heart of the "SAP that SAP doesn't see", the enterprise technology ecosystem. There were multiple presentations from thought leaders, SAP staff, customers and they weren't just in the ordinary track rooms, but in theaters across the exhibition hall. They also had Microforum sessions that took place in small venues in the exhibition hall for intimate discussions about particular things i.e. Brent Leary, major thought leader; Joe Hughes EY partner and tech maven, and Johann Wrede of SAP all led a discussion on 2015 finding of the Social Customer Index that Brent works with Social Media Today on each year. The satisfaction level was extremely high and the venues were diverse and the formats really interesting, the content reflective of the greater SAP, not the SAP that SAP shows the world
Analyst/Press Relations B+ This was as always a massive undertaking and generally done very well. A separate media and analyst center which was in a special, slightly too small venue with a lot of support at the front desk was certainly a good central location for analyst and press work. Treating the press, institutional analysts and independents the same - i.e. an influencers program was really important and incredibly valuable for all concerned. The basics were covered - desks, power, and Wi-Fi - at least in principle. Given the large number of analysts and press, there wasn't enough desks, power outlets and as always the Wi-Fi was woeful. One solution to the traditionally horrible Wi-Fi at these centers is to have bandwidth just for analysts and press. That works...sometimes. The number of 1:1s all in all was sufficient but the ability to pick and choose the ones you want not as possible - and a bit short in number. All the right things were done with some glitches - the biggest one being not allowing for the scale, though not entirely ignoring it either. It was just barely bigger than they were able to handle without knots.
Food (VIP) B+ This was good, solid, more than edible basic sandwich etc. stuff. There were no special dinners but there was a reception for the VIPs at the Orlando Hilton which served high quality "hand food" - i.e. bigger than finger food - meaning things like tacos. There was no particular way of dealing with special diets, which should have been taken care of and made apparent, but cobbling something together was possible.
Food (General Session) A- What made this exceptionally good was that the food was there in abundance and even more interestingly, made available in ways that reflected the needs of the attendees. For example, they had a station that looked like those delis at the airport with the glass drinks refrigerators but also the food in the plastic containers by categories (salads, etc.) on shelves to go. That's if you didn't want to sit down for lunch at the tables. Additionally, there was always fruit and coffee stations everywhere - throughout the conference. The quality of the food, given the size of the audience was very good. They did this one right.
Exhibition Hall A+ You literally couldn't get more perfect than this. The best done, most beautiful and functional exhibition hall I have ever seen. The architecture of many of the booths was stunning contemporary work - literally. There was ample room to walk, with wide paths through a giant exhibition center and through the exhibits themselves. The carpets to walk on to the exhibits were soft, almost plush, and comfortable. The lighting was perfect. There were ample locations to rest your weary self. As mentioned above there were 5 theaters where track presentations went on that were in one centralized area. There was coffee, water and fruit constantly at strategic locations. The traffic handling was perfect. You could access the keynote ballroom right from the exhibition hall. Ingress and egress were simple/easy. The booths were organized and easy to find. I'm not one to wax enthusiastic about trade show halls but this one was a work of art and run by science. Truly a paradigm for any company. Salesforce and Oracle take note. Seriously.
Crowd Engagement B+ Professional, engaged, just not that loud. This crowd was far better than last year, though not as energetic, as say, a Salesforce crowd. One reason for that is that SAP is not that kind of energetic company and this crowds skews a bit older than the Salesforce crowd. But in the tracks (according to several random sources - many of whom I don't know the names) they asked questions, they stayed. They remained involved. In the keynotes, they were attentive, though not enthused.
Ambiance B+ Very good. This is a long convention hall with a lot of traveling to do and as such has wide paths to go from the North to the South Hall and to the West Hall. Traffic would get congested on the escalators and occasionally would back up but generally moved really well. The staff manning a fixed post were for the most part, very attentive and handled things like registration well (i.e. at the airport and the hotel) but the security staff often acted overwhelmed and on occasion indifferent. Understandably but.... In all, handled almost as well as could be expected.
OVERALL B+ This was a well done conference with one serious weakness, the keynotes, but also a paradigm for a long time to come, the Exhibition Hall. All the things in the middle worked fine too. I would say this was the best planned and run conference of 2015 (to date). Kudos to the events and program teams and all others concerned. You deserve it.

Now on to the thing that analysts do...have an opinion, for better or worse.

What's goin' on? Ooooo, what's goin on'?

In a way, I already told you in the overview above. But let me elaborate a bit.

For the last 8 years I've seen SAP do things that no other company on the earth, innovative or not, by reputation or actually or not, has done. Years ago, they had this social listening tool called T-Rex before social listening was called, well, uh, "social listening." They have the best field service application that I've ever seen with a visualization engine if I can call it that (SAP, what can I call it?) that works in all portable formats to take apart engines or whatever other SKU it wants to disassemble. I've seen the use of SAP drones for gathering up electrical usage information in rural areas hard to reach. But most germane to this post, they have a customer engagement platform that can genuinely be called a customer engagement platform that is reinventing (or at least reformatting) CRM in the way that it should be for 21st century customers.

Yet, if you read this, I guarantee that most of you:

  1. Have never heard of T-Rex
  2. Have never seen the field service application or were even aware of it.
  3. Know very little if anything about what might be a breakthrough enterprise level customer engagement effort.

Why is that? Okay, let's hearken back to a slightly modified but still true to the spirit and nearly to the letter version of something I wrote in that March 2007 post on SAP's lack of public spirited revelation:

"The consistent refrain that I heard from customers, partners, and SAP personnel was that...they were looking for something fresh and new - something that told them that SAP was a "happn'in' organization." They didn't hear that but they still respected SAP as well they should. SAP needs to be respected for being the old gentleman it is."

Sigh. A company that emphasizes S/4 and ignores its own actually exciting breakthroughs is an old gentleman. Even though they are old, their (in) memory is strong, HANA, and it is, without any doubt, an important part of SAP's current evolution. But, it isn't the be all and end all of the universe or even the SAP cortex. What it is, is the engine that drives the capabilities that SAP provides that enable the outcomes that customers are looking for. HANA is NOT those capabilities. Those capabilities are enabled by HANA. The capabilities then enable the outcomes that the buyers are looking for to help them achieve their goals. Yet, SAP spends all its time with such silly ad hoc statements (not messaging) as "It's a HANA world!" Give me a break. First, to state the obvious, its not a HANA world. SAP has in memory computing, a legitimate important technology. They call it HANA. They power most of what they are doing via HANA. Fine. No problems there. Makes sense for them. It certainly benefits their customers. Additionally, though late to the game, they are moving most of what they are doing into the cloud, slowly but steadily and pretty successfully. They are attuned to the market they need to address with that one.

But a HANA world? Massive overstatement and missing their own point. Why would you tell analysts this anyway? You want to "rah, rah" the troops, sure, say that. But you want to convince analysts and the general public about SAP? DON'T say something so devoid of content and so not attuned to what the public wants. They don't want in memory computing. They want to get the outcomes they are looking for faster and be more effective in the results that they get. SAP provides an ecosystem for an enterprise that enables that.

What works then? For example, last year, they announced, wisely that Fiori, their beautiful and easy to navigate user interface, was going to be given away with all SAP applications, rather than be a premium product. Even though this was a table stakes move, it was a great announcement because it impacted the outcomes that businesses wanted and for the company, it corrected a weakness. It was applauded. You can see the results in the Concur applications (look down for more on that) and even more germane to this post, the Customer Engagement applications. Each of them has a terrific Fiori user interface, making the customer experience (UX) a truly "useful pleasure" (my own name for it).

So how do you have to think about this at a conference like SAPPHIRE? How do you say, SAP is NOT an ERP company. SAP is a contemporary beast that has a market-aligned technology matrix that scales from an individual all the way through the largest enterprise?

Let's begin.

One very bright spot (though not my wheelhouse particularly) was the one demo that was shown during the day one keynote - Concur's expenses solution via the iPad - and it was brilliantly done. But it was randomly shown. It wasn't situated in any context. It was just...shown. It was the equivalent of someone saying "I'd like you to meet my nephew", without acknowledging that the nephew is part of a family of geniuses. Thus, he seems to be this random smart guy who stands out in the family of ordinary folks. Concur is an exceptionally well executed application that works for industrial strength T&E but is easily navigable and usable by a single person, even if they aren't horribly tech savvy. But they are one of many in this enterprise ecosystem which combines native tech with partner developed integrations and tech. Not a solo player.

SAP, in the day one keynote especially since it always is the most important table setter for any conference and thus the table setter for the year ahead, should have emphasized its ability to service customers with the above mentioned ecosystem and shown multiple demos to prove the point - demos aligned to markets - e.g. a vertical, a mobile, etc. that showed back and front office so to speak. If you are one of a handful of companies who can do that - you should do that, rather than just hype a function or oversell the company itself.

From my perspective, and indicative of the self-identification of SAP as an ERP company, what I found as probably the most disturbing aspect of SAPPHIRE is their treatment of something that I thought was utterly remarkable and barely got a mention.

They announced a $29.00/month/user device-agnostic or more accurately all device ready sales and service engagement application/suite/platform. Holy...COW!

Yet it was barely even a footnote in the keynotes or the analyst Q&A getting only a mention by Chief Digital Officer, the excellent Jonathon Becher during the Q&A and a brief mention by CEO Bill McDermott in the keynote. No demo. So, in 2015, they have a product that can be potentially market changing - SAP Customer Engagement, with an extraordinary price point and it barely gets mentioned. I won't reiterate it, but it goes to the heart of the SAP self-identity issue.

So, I'm going to do two things. First, I'm going to ruminate a bit on why I think this is the case and what I think SAP has to do to simply showcase itself properly - since it has much of the technology it needs to. Then since they don't seem that committed to talking about SAP's Customer Engagement products, I'm going to talk about it. If SAP doesn't want to overcome the years of misrepresenting its own possibilities and prefers to be an old gentleman, well then, I'm going take up its cause and show that they are more Imagine Dragons than Glenn Miller. Though there is nothing wrong with Glenn Miller.

Ruminations...

Let's start by repeating something I just said. SAP thinks its an ERP company. SAP thinks it sells products. To be fair, SAP does sell ERP products. But despite their narrowly confined thinking, they are much more than a company that sells ERP products now. Between R/2 and S/4 has been R/3 but also the evolution of the company to one of the most important enterprise technology providers in the world and one that has been the backbone for many companies when it comes to their...ERP needs. But in the process of being that, they have been becoming a company that has built a technology ecosystem, now driven by the cloud (not HANA per se) that provides a lot more than ERP. They have all the CRM capabilities - well, not all - that any of the best CRM providers have. They have a partner network that has built a significant group of strategic additions to the ecosystem that can drive business from either the front end or the back end. They have provided some of the most forward thinking technologies in the world as evidenced by their Internet of Things group who are doing the sensor based hardware driven by new kinds of SAP software. For example, I saw a demo of a drone that had software embedded to monitor electric power utilization in rural areas that are hard for human beings to service. That is what is now called not the IoT only but the industrial internet - the business applications that are part of the overall digitization of the world that is going on full tilt. In other words, not only does this company have a technology matrix that combines the best of partners and native applications but at the same time they are aligned with the cutting edge of the changes in the world - in their thinking at the thought leadership level and in execution.

Yet, they persist on saying things like It's a HANA world" and "we are the only company who...(whatever they say next is not true since there is always someone doing the something that they are claiming to be the only ones doing)" and throwing public barbs at their competition like Salesforce that are ridiculous and demeaning - to SAP for saying them - and at the same time absolutely reinforcing the idea in public that they are an ERP HANA company and only giving lip service to the rest of what they do. They also think their message is "Run Simple." There is NOTHING simple about SAP technology whether they have really nice Fiori interfaces or not (which they do). What it should be if you need a message like that is SAP helps you "Run Right." No one but SAP thinks or believes that SAP will ever make them run any simpler than they are. That doesn't rule out "better," though.

Let me give you an example. There is a technology company called Clarabridge that could well have the best text/sentiment analysis capabilities in the world. The only complaint I ever hear about it is that they are a bear to set up. Hard, complex. But the results? OMG. The customers LOVE the results. Love, love, love the results, so they are willing to handle the complexity of the setup. Complexity isn't the issue. Getting the best results effectively is. There is nothing wrong with trying to run things more simply, but that's not really anything anyone thinks SAP can do.

SAP Customer Engagement

Actually, we are dealing with four products - or maybe three of which one has two related versions. In any case, they are:

  1. SAP Cloud for Customer which is the enterprise level customer engagement platform
  2. SAP Digital for Customer Engagement - which I would ordinarily characterize as the small business version but it is really a version that is for one and scalable to many - not really SMB.
  3. SAP Cloud for Customer vertical solutions - the beginning of their flexible, customized industry templates - 10 now and 10 in the pipe
  4. SAP Cloud for Customer Wearables - their version for the Apple Watch.

The solutions that are market and customer ready and released are focused around sales and service. Led by SVP of CEC product development, Nayaki Nayar, the developers have done some truly excellent work in putting together a product that is not only functionally valuable but also has the user interface to make navigation and flow - and personalization for the user - actually enjoyable and while not entirely intuitive, addresses the parts that aren't through a sophisticated and relevant help system via the SAP partnership with Walkme (a CRM Idol 2014 contestant) There is also a marketing platform in the works under the command of Charles Nichols that holds similar promise.

What makes this product set so good? On the surface its capabilities seem like a lot of other ones in the CRMish world. On the sales side of Digital for Customer Engagement (D4C), they have account and contact management, lead management, opportunity management, CPQish capabilities around pricing/products; with Cloud for Customer (C4C) it escalates to things like territory management, CPQ - not ish - quote and order management, planning and forecasting etc. For the service side D4C has only really service ticket management; it gets exponentially more substantial with C4C adding things like knowledgebase/knowledge management, a support portal, and contracts, warranties and entitlements which presumably (though I haven't confirmed this) means that it can handle Service Level Agreements. The power ultimately lies in it being a platform though leaving room for major customization at the enterprise level.

All of that is well and good, but what makes this what I think is the best operationalization of customer engagement technology I've seen to date is its flow, which takes all of what you see and actually organizes to work as a contemporary employee would actually need it to work. It is roles-based, it is scalable and it is easily navigable yet has the power of the data and the usability that companies that want it wish for. I'm going to include an image here to show you what it does and how it flows and you can see why it works from this trio.
D4C
SAP Digital for Customer Engagement (D4C)
Source: SAP CEC

You can almost see what I'm talking about - the power and the flow that fosters engagement because it meets the criteria of the 21st century customer who is, duh, also the 21st century user of technology like this. These are all shots of dashboards that are provided by both D4C and C4C - all with the power of the always-among-the-market-leading analytics (which are driven by HANA, to be fair) - that produce them - regardless of the device that the dashboard is being viewed on. This meets the key requirements of 21st century usability - customized and/or personalized data, visual clarity, easy access, a workflow that succeeds as a continuum of activity, portability, and easy navigability. We've talked for years about the consumerization of IT - in fact, I had a discussion with Blackberry's then CEO about it in 2006 - this is the realization of that as an operational tool for customer engagement.

Does this engage the customer per se? No, it engages the user. What SAP has done here is reimagine CRM for a customer engagement technology ecosystem so that it aligns with users who service customers' needs. That is what the technology is supposed to do in a world undergoing a business transformation that has been driven by a communications revolution unparalleled in history, with the exception of the creation of language. J Kudos to SAP, and the innovators they are.

What makes this even more compelling is that the D4C product is only $29/user/month - first, incredibly reasonable given the capabilities offered; second a new way for SAP not to just realize revenue, but approach pricing in the market that is subscription based, affordable and scalable. Something that SAP is not known for.

Is this a complete solution? No, not quite, in fact far from it. But that isn't a bad thing. As I've discovered in the course of writing my book on customer engagement, when it comes to the components of customer engagement technology (we are not talking strategy or programs here), there are 18 categories of tech that would/can be involved in a complete customer engagement technology ecosystem. At least 18 I've found so far. There is a list of 17 of them in this post. The additional one not in that post is customer lifecycle management. For the purposes of their specific solution and platform, some possible additions to the platform via partner most likely, native addition secondarily could be for example:

  1. Customer journey management which at this point would be the most important missing piece with the exception perhaps of the marketing platform's completion and integration.
  2. Success management as a bridge to sales, service and the customer directly
  3. Rapid integration of the marketing platform when it is finished.
  4. Perhaps as a secondary motivational feature, gamification. But this one is just a random thought, not me coming up with some really intelligently thought through idea.

The other thing that is really exemplary about this platform is that it is a platform that is focused on its ability to rapidly and effectively customize. So, given that one of the greatest strengths of SAP is its industries and given that there is a revivification of SAP's industry group led by a new wave of execs there like Industries COO Denise Broady and others, Nayaki's team already created and released ten industry specific solutions on the C4C platform. They are, in no particular order; High Tech, REX, Utilities, Chemical, Insurance, Healthcare, Professional Services, Retail, Wholesale and Travel. They also have customers to back it up. AND ten more industries in the pipeline.

What this shows is how flexible the platform is.

Finally, they've released something that I would consider interesting but not world shaking. They have created D4C for Wearables i.e. the Apple Watch. While this is without a doubt, very cool, and kind of meets the criteria laid out by those customers in 2007 who wanted SAP to be more "happn'in," like all other Apple Watch functions before it, its dependent on its iPhone. Nothing wrong with it, it does well what the Apple Watch does well, notifications and is cool to see in action. But in the grand scheme of things at the moment and with the limitations of the watch itself, its somewhat incidental, as dope as the Apple Watch is.

If you think I'm the only one who thinks this, take a look at ubër influencer and subject matter expert Dennis Howlett's pre-SAPPHIRE take on the D4C app on his (and his partners) superb site Diginomica. He also outlines a few more of the functions that D4C has than I've referenced. BTW, Diginomica is a great resource for intelligently rendered and analyzed intelligence on what is going on in the tech world)

Of course, the great conundrum, and one of the reasons for the title of this post about SAP, is how come this important app/product/suite/platform was barely given the time of day at SAPPHIRE 2015 when it was unequivocally, the new star of the show?

Summary

So how do we sum all this up?

SAP is a company that overestimates itself and underestimates itself. It overestimates itself with its somewhat hyperbolic messaging around themes that resonate with the late 90s and early part of the 21st century to some extent. It assumes it does things better than anyone else - and at times, it actually does.

But worse, it underestimates itself. It can make an argument that it is the most innovative technology applications company in the enterprise space and maybe win the argument. It seems to think, however, that it has to function to some internal rhythm of "we are an ERP product company" when it has far and away superseded that retrograde vision a long time ago. Its proven that with the release of their customer engagement platform - which it barely acknowledges. It is a company that, as an ecosystem thinker, as a provider to the end to end flow of business, as an enabler of outcomes that are needed by users to achieve goals, can do far more than it has done - and that's sad. Its keeps being sad again and again, and has been every year since 2007. This is a company that is ready to breakout and the only thing that stands in its way is...SAP.

Know what though? Next year, with all that this paradox and paradigm of a company has at its disposal, and some of the many "new wavish" intelligent and market aligned leaders and thinkers like the aforementioned folks and Sameer Patel (JAM SVP), Jamie Anderson (SVP Hybris Marketing) and Volker Hildebrand (VP CEC Product Marketing) and several others who I don't have the space to name, I expect that maybe, just maybe, it will be happy.

Editorial standards