First Thing Monday

I attended my first SAPPHIRE in 1991 in New Orleans. Since then, I have only missed the 1995 US event and two European SAPPHIRES, including last year’s conference in Paris (it overlapped with our annual Supply Chain Executive Conference. Speaking of which, make sure you check out FTM’s sister blog and newsletter, Chain Reaction).

Barring a last minute un-invite, I will be in Berlin for the European SAPPHIRE in mid-May. Looking back to this week, I offer two suggestions for improving the event:

First, move Business Objects CEO to a core time slot

Whose idea was it to have John Schwarz speak at the end of the day?

Here was the flow of the keynotes on Tuesday: SAP co-CEO Henning Kagermann opened the program with a keynote that went from 9-11 AM. He was greatly aided and abetted by Ian Kimbell’s skillful/hilarious demos which played to a near full house. Mr. Kimbell did a great job of integrating various Business Objects products into SAP scenarios.

When the keynote concluded, attendees were free to wander the vast exhibition area or attend break out sessions.

For some unknown reason, the other Tuesday keynotes were in the afternoon. Co-CEO Leo Apotheker spoke to a large crowd from 2:00 to 3:15. While there were product demos, much of his presentation was built around testimonials provided on stage by CIOs from Procter & Gamble and Harley-Davidson who talked about the importance of SAP software to their operations.

For some inexplicable reason, there was a 75-minute break between Mr. Apotheker and John Schwarz. By the time Business Objects’ CEO took the stage shortly after 4:30, the crowd was maybe a quarter of the size of the earlier keynotes. Given that C-level customers want to gather as much information as possible into a concentrated amount of time, I think SAP lost a major marketing opportunity.

Mr. Schwarz opened by talking about some of the cool things that Business Objects has done for customers. He should have continued on this path. Instead, I sensed that he was trying to blend his pitch into the classic SAP executive style, right down to the template. It didn’t come across as natural.

I had seen a Business Objects executive present at an Accenture-Oracle conference in March 2007 in Miami. It may have been Mr. Schwarz. If so, he was also the victim of poor timing there as Oracle had just made its bid to acquire Hyperion, his arch-rival in the business intelligence/performance management space. Nonetheless, the Miami audience was treated to a bold, insightful presentation. I suspect the SAPPHIRE attendees would have preferred that, too.

Second, adopt terminology that is more intuitive to business people

Before Mr. Kagermann took the stage, the audience was greeting with a very clever video that was several minutes long. The video showed a group of young people passing a soccer ball to each other against a rapidly changing global backdrop. It fit in perfectly with the themes of collaboration and globalization for “Business Beyond Boundaries.”

If only SAP’s product messages could be so simple. I think it’s time for the company to move beyond geek-speak or “SAPanese” as they say internally.

Over the last couple of years, customers have had to learn what SAP means by “Business Process Platform,” “EhPs, “SOA by Evolution/SOA by Design,” and “Enterprise SOA” (how does that differ from regular SOA which few business people understand). These terms are great for analysts, who own the secret decoder rings, but do they mean anything to the increasingly important line-of-business buyer?

For example, if you attended SAPPHIRE, did you understand what they meant by “side-by-side innovation”? Again, this is a great concept for analysts, but what does it mean to a CFO or a vice president of marketing? Exactly what is on the other “side?” Where does it come from? How much does it cost?

For a company that does so well with corporate branding, SAP needs to invest more in product branding. One man’s opinion. Leave comments about my thoughts on how SAPPHIRE should be run, and on the full column in this week’s newsletter.