Thank you first of all for taking the time to
read this blog, I am sure you are looking for some nuggets that will help you
in your career or day to day strategic thinking & decision making or just
for good reading.
Let me preface that there are other big vendors
in the DIGITAL race (Oracle, Infor, Adobe etc.) but for simplicity sake and the
2 technologies I am closely associated with, I am going to compare and contrast
these 2 technology giants.
What is DIGITAL?
The combined bucket of all these new technologies
in this decade; Artificial Intelligence (AI), deep machine learning, IOT
(Internet of Things), blockchain, drones, big data, public cloud, mobility,
AR/VR (Augmented Reality/Virtual Reality), social media and more on the way.
Salesforce (Ticker: CRM)
Salesforce has already won the Saas CRM race (check out Gartner CRM annual reports) with
mindshare and market share but Digital is much more than just SaaS CRM. How
about all the technologies mentioned above under the digital umbrella,
Salesforce has its hands in most of them with Einstein AI, IOT tool kit
and good integration with social media sites.
SAP (Ticker: SAP)
SAP has won the legacy ERP mindshare and market share
but again Digital is not just ERP/back end systems. SAP has also jumped into
the digital wave with its brand name Leonardo which is a mixture of most of the
technologies mentioned above.
What does winning this new tsunami of digital
looks like?
Winning looks something like this where a 125-year
old company such as GE helping itself and its customers cut costs, proactively
track failures and do preventive maintenance on their industrial engines and
big machines, increasing output and cutting costs, increasing overall sales ,
shortening product lifecycles. All because GE decided to jump on the digital
wave and ride it and not wait and watch. GE Digital aims to be among the top
software company by 2020.
Can SAP or Salesforce do that to its customers
and help them win in this digital race?
Winning yesterday is no guarantee for either of
them to win tomorrow but there are some indicators to predict to the best we
can. SAP has all the back-end data and
front-end technology companies it has acquired (Hybris, Ariba, Concur etc.) but
the challenges remain. Can the customer get over the mind block of SAP being
complex, costly and not user friendly? SAP seems to be doing everything they
can to become user friendly with their HTML5 persona based responsive UI across
all SAP applications but making the complex simple has earnestly started but
remains to be seen.
Salesforce on the other hand is still seen as lightweight
not able to run a whole enterprise like manufacturing or HR or finance or
supply chain. Question remains does one need all that for being successful in
the digital age? Can they win just focusing on sales force automation (SFA),
service, ecommerce and marketing? These current focus areas have a digital
component to it and Salesforce will do well to win there if history is an
indicator.
When a whole billion dollar multi-national across
the globe wants to go digital whom will it look to; SAP or Salesforce?
May be both or whoever can help the customer get
where they want to reach within their time frame with minimum disruptions to
their current operations.
SAP’s challenge is trying to run nimble and make
the complex simple (better said than done) and Salesforce challenge to grow
their product portfolio while staying true to their winning formula; easy to
use and win fast.
It’s a good competition to have for the end
customer watching the David vs Goliath fight but ultimately all the customer
cares is who can help them move the dial forward and win be it SAP and/or
Salesforce.
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