Social CRM: The Conversation

Paul Greenberg

Salesforce.com Is Into SAP - Ask FinancialForce

By Paul Greenberg | March 26, 2010, 5:25am PDT

Summary: I ran across this rather interesting press release this morning from TMCNet saying: “FinancialForce.com Announces Out-of-the-Box SAP Integration for Sharing Financial Data.” All I have to say in this case is kudos to a. salesforce.com b. and especially FinancialForce.com. This is not an insignificant integration when it comes to the evolution of salesforce.com in particular. Thus, a [...]

I ran across this rather interesting press release this morning from TMCNet saying: “FinancialForce.com Announces Out-of-the-Box SAP Integration for Sharing Financial Data.”

All I have to say in this case is kudos to a. salesforce.com b. and especially FinancialForce.com.

This is not an insignificant integration when it comes to the evolution of salesforce.com in particular. Thus, a brief look is in order.

What Does It Actually Do?

First, it is one of the first out of the box back office integrations of substance that started with force.com that wasn’t a complete customization - such as the excellent supply chain application/service developed by the folks at Vetrazzo. This one is a pure and simple integration that comes prebuilt that will can take FinancialForce.com data a.k.a. salesforce.com generated data and put it into SAP Financials. It actually can take financial data being generated through salesforce.com and pass it from the cloud to SAP Financials which of course is on-premise. Actually solving a problem that has been vexing SAP for quite awhile. Apparently, there is a German company called SKYVVA which specializes in integrating cloud and on premise applications and in particular salesforce.com and SAP, which certainly made for a fortuitous partnership with FinancialForce.com.

SKYVVA seems to be a pretty interesting company who seem to at least say and possibly do all the right things. They are focused primarily on pre-built integration objects emanating from the cloud and designed to hook into on premise applications. Essentially they are the successors to what were the EAI - enterprise application integration - purveyors of the 90s and early millennium. They are a company that I’m going to be keeping my eye on. There are others in the SAP ecosystem who do similar things but they for the most part integrate SAP into the more amorphous “cloud.” So for example, SAP All-in-One is integrated with cloud services. But what SKYVVA and FinancialForce.com did is unique - at least as far as I can tell

What Does It Mean?

This is probably a bigger step forward for salesforce.com than it is for SAP though I won’t underestimate the value of it for SAP either. I don’t know what salesforce.com expects of this partner -driven move. Perhaps there have “devious” reasons for liking this - visibility and penetration into the SAP customer ecosystem which could line up potential customers. I wouldn’t doubt that and its not unusual behavior, nor particularly bad or good. What I think makes this important for salesforce.com is that it both dovetails with their strategy to go upmarket - which is where most of SAP’s customers are and it provides an important step forward in the evolution of the cloud - via recognition that on premise applications are not going away any time soon and represent a serious investment for companies - a legacy investment they are not going to scrap wholesale to replace it with pure cloud based services.

It certainly puts FinancialForce on the map and rightfully so. They have been artful since their beginning and have been perhaps salesforce.com’s most important partner when it came to helping salesforce.com realize a strategic objective they set out a decade ago - to become what they called at the time “the business web” for all businesses running all their applications, regardless of who created the application. This evolved into their current Platform as a Service (PaaS) and cloud strategy - which, while not as agnostic as originally planned - meaning salesforce.com wants things developed on force.com - it is the same thing in play as 10 years ago. FinancialForce so far is perhaps their most important partner in helping them move their strategic needle. Will salesforce.com succeed at their lofty goal. I doubt they’ll do it in the form they envision. I do think they will continue to be successful and eat up a big chunk of market share and do some of what they wanted. But that should be enough to satisfy anyone. This integration is a smart step in the right direction that they can thank FinancialForce and SKYVVA for.

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Topics

Salesforce.com Inc., Back-office, Integration, Operational Accounting, Finance, Paul Greenberg

In addition to being the author of the best-selling "CRM at the Speed of Light: Social CRM Strategies, Tools, and Techniques for Engaging Your Customers," Paul Greenberg is President of The 56 Group, LLC.

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Biography

Paul Greenberg

In addition to being the author of the best-selling CRM at the Speed of Light: Social CRM Strategies, Tools, and Techniques for Engaging Your Customers" Paul Greenberg is President of The 56 Group, LLC, a customer strategy consulting firm, focused on cutting edge CRM strategic services and a founding partner of the CRM training company, BPT Partners, LLC, a training and consulting venture composed of a number of CRM luminaries that has quickly become the authority for the CRM industry.

His book, CRM at the Speed of Light: Essential Customer Strategies for the 21st Century, now in its fourth edition, is in 8 languages and been called "the bible of the CRM industry". It is used by more than 70 universities as a primary text. It was named "the number 1 CRM book" by SearchCRM.com in 2002 and is one of two books recommended by CustomerThink. The Asian edition of CIO Magazine named it one of the 12 most important books an Asian CEO will ever read. Paul has also authored two other books including "E-Government for Public Officials" (Thompson Publishing, 2003).

Paul is also the Chairman of the Advisory Committee of the University of Toronto's Rotman School of Management CRM Centre of Excellence, and the Executive Vice President of the CRM Association.

Paul is considered a thought leader in CRM, having been published in numerous industry and business publications over the years and having traveled the world speaking on cutting edge CRM and topics geared to the contemporary social customer. He has been called "the godfather of CRM", the "Walt Whitman of CRM" and even "the Bob Dylan of CRM" by analysts and organizations throughout the industry. He is known particularly for his work on the use of social media, such as blogs, podcasts and wikis and social networks/communities in CRM as tools and channels for customer collaboration with a company. He is seen often as the "voice of the customer" and is well known within the CRM industry for this work. His blog, PGreenblog has been named the #1 CRM blog every year from 2005-2010 by all industry award providers. He also has a podcast, Experience on the Edge, that has garnered a myriad of industry kudos and his collaboration with Brent Leary on the always funny, often cutting, CRM Playaz" is the most popular broadcast in the CRM world.

Paul was also named one of the most influential people in CRM by CRM Magazine in August 2008. In 2010, he was inducted into CRM Magazine's CRM Hall of Fame.

He is a member of the Destination CRM Board of Experts and the SearchCRM Expert Advisory Panel as well as a member of the Board of Advisors for GreaterChinaCRM for many years. He also sits on the Board of Advisors of the CIE Institute and and multiple other companies.

Currently, Paul lives in Manassas, Virginia with his wife and five cats. To reach Paul, please email him at paul-greenberg3@the56group.com. You can follow him at Twitter or join up with him on LinkedIn or Facebook.