SAP Virtual Events: A Work in Progress

With the economy still more sluggish than inspired, virtual SAP events are gaining real traction. ASUG's recent two day "Virtual Summit" had more than 1,000 people online at one time. For the first time ever, SAP is virtualizing its TechEd Community Day. Instead of the traditional on site Community Day event at SAP TechEd, SAP is holding a series of virtual events throughout the month of September, called Virtual Community Day (VCD). (You can see replays of prior VCD events and track upcoming events via the RSS feed of SAP's Craig Cmehil)

But there's a problem with virtual events: limitations in technology and bandwidth create challenges for those who conduct them. A properly held virtual SAP event can serve as a valuable educational medium and/or a very effective pre-sales and marketing tool. But there are challenges to overcome, and not all of them are technical. In some cases, the problems with events trace back to a misunderstanding about what the real value of these events are (interaction!) versus pre-packaged information sharing.

In this blog entry, I'll share some resources about ongoing SAP virtual events. I will also share some guidelines I've drawn from my own experiences (and those of fellow participants) about the good (and bad) of such events.

1. Event replays are a must. It is amazing how many live events are not taped and/or not made available after the fact. With interested parties in time zones across the world juggling all kinds of schedule conflicts, it's a big missed opportunity not to make replays of events and presentations available after the fact.

2. Interactivity is the "killer app" of virtual SAP events. Whether it's getting a nagging question answered in real time, or making a new connection with a fellow participant, the best online events and webinars are interactive. Treating webinars as a one way broadcast medium reflects a profound misunderstanding about why participants are there in real time. You can easily find recorded SAP events to watch at a later point. Whether it's SAP.com's webinars (free with registration) or Virtual SAP TechEd (which has free samples as well as a paid subscription) or SAP's own Learning on Demand site (which also has free content as well as a paid subscription), there's plenty of online SAP educational offerings available on demand. You can consume all this content at your convenience, so when listeners take the time to sit in on an event in real time, they are looking for more than a lecture.

3. There is a difference between a collection of webcasts and virtual events. Some virtual events I have attended are really just a series of simultaneous webcasts. A virtual event platform should provide opportunities for networking and virtual "birds of a feather" sessions. Simply showing webcasts and product demos misses out on the critical mass of participants that has been assembled.

4. Stand-alone webinars also have value, especially when they are presented in a carefully facilitated, interactive format. Too often, there is an element missing: maybe the webinar takes phone calls, but no one is paying attention to the chat. Or the questions from the chat are not being queued up properly. Or the presenters drone on too long, overloading the audience with slides and not coming up for air until there is a few minutes left and the participants are too burned out to even attempt a last minute question. Webinars that incorporate reader chat and questions throughout the broadcast, rather than exiling them to a shrinking time slot at the end, are much more effective.

5. The platform matters. Some platforms have terrible quality recordings, others are weak on necessary features. Budget is obviously a consideration, but for webinars, I'm partial to Adobe Acrobat Connect. Mark Finnern, leader of the SAP Mentor Initiative, has been putting on a series of public SAP Mentor webinars, called "SAP Mentor Mondays." You can see replays on the previous webinars already held on the new SAP Mentor Monday webinar wiki. If you watch one of them, you'll get a feeling for the flexibility of Adobe Connect in terms of managing chat, user questions, incoming callers, and presenter webcams. Giving users a chance to chat amongst themselves throughout the webinar is valuable for them, and incredibly useful for identifying technical problems and the real sentiment of the participants. Not all webinar providers have this feature.

Another advantage of Adobe Connect, which we see at use in SAP Virtual Community Day presentations: there's no registration required, so you can get folks to join up quickly on the fly, even on the same day. Yes, gathering registration contact information can be important, but there are tradeoffs there to weight out carefully. Good platforms don't have to be expensive, either. Craig Cmehil, SAP Community Evangelists, runs his Friday Morning Report sessions via ustream, and there is a good mix of video, audio, and chat. Replays are archived.

6. Live integration with Twitter matters. Live integration with Twitter can make a huge difference, both leading up to the event and during the event itself. Some live events are promoted on Twitter, but the live Twitterstream potential is not taken advantage of. One great example of the right way to go about this was SAP's recent special pre-TechEd webinar featuring Ray Kurzweil (TechEd keynote speaker) and SAP CTO Vishal Sikka. During the event, those who used the #sapteched09 hash tag could see their comments posted in real time in a sidebar next to the event video, and questions posed via Twitter during the sessions were asked and answered, facilitated by SAP "on stage personality" Ian Kimbell. (You can see a screen shot of what this looked like from the blog of SCN Chief Operating Officer Chip Rodgers).

7. Better to let the webinar run long than to blow off participants' questions. One thing I have never understood: why webinars always end abruptly on the hour, even when there are many participant questions that have gone unanswered. This is especially irksome when the speakers get bogged down with a bloated slide deck, run over on time, and leave only a few minutes for questions at the end, as opposed to the fifteen minutes that had been allotted. When there's obvious questions that need answering, why not say something at the top of the hour along the lines of, "Those who need to move on from our webinar at the top of the hour are welcome to do so, those who would like to stay on for ten more minutes to ask questions are welcome to stay."

8. Multiple voice are better than one. It's more engaging to hear from multiple speakers during the course of a webinar. Live action debate between speakers is an even more appealing option. People who attend live events are looking for a live experience, rather than just a hand-the-baton series of Powerpoints. PAC does a nice job of bringing in two or more voices, often from different geographical regions, during their webinars. This gives a global feel to the webinars, which makes us as visitors believe we are attending a significant "can't miss" event.

And last but not least:

9. People go to trade shows to further relationships and make new industry connections. Virtual events are no different. In many virtual events, the emphasis is on canned presentations - talks which are going to be available on demand after the event. The best of a trade show experience is the informal discussions that take place in lounges and networking rooms after the keynotes and seminars; a virtual event is no different. In some cases, there are limitations with the community software being used, but that's all the more reason to pressure developers of this type of software to understand that these events should be about networking first and foremost.

I've been to a number of virtual, day long SAP events where there were hundreds of people assembled online, but no real way for them to connect, except for private one on one chats - and even those were limited, as you had to scroll through long lists of attendees to find someone to chat with. Forget about meeting new people with that setup, if you're lucky, you find someone you know on the list and chat with them.

Why not empower participants to create "birds of a feather" rooms on the fly based on their interests in topics like SAP MII or SAP in the Utilities industry? If there is concern over allowing ad hoc rooms, then creating ten or fifteen topical networking areas would be an improvement over putting a bunch of people in a virtual event and trusting them to find the right place. Too often, you log into a virtual event platform and it feels like you are the only one there. Then you poke around and see a banner proclaiming that there are hundreds of others online, but there's no way to meet others who share your interests. That's a missed opportunity.

SAP virtual events are here to stay. Even in flawed formats, they deliver value to the participants. But with more thought to the right platforms and more emphasis on interaction, these events can do a better job of capturing the trade show experience. After trade shows, we always come home with a bunch of new business cards. When the same happens virtually, we're on the right track.

Catch our Webinar Tomorrow at 11AM EST

I'll be joined by PAC colleagues from around the world tomorrow, reviewing what's new in the SAP Services market, areas to focus on, areas to avoid, while previewing some of our latest research.

Come join us!

A Small Earthquake in the IT Market Today

A small earthquake happened today in the IT market. According to the German magazine “Wirtschaftswoche”, Siemens is considering to cancel its SAP maintenance contract, in favor of 3rd party maintenance services. Definitively a story with “lighthouse” character, however everyone should remember that for now, this is an unsubstantiated story (neither SAP or Siemens are commenting on the story), and according to our sources, SAP and Siemens are still in negotiations. SAP has offered one statement as follows:

"The current misinformation in the market provides incorrect information about the SAP Siemens relationship. SAP has and will continue to have a good, long-standing and very strong strategic relationship with Siemens; in fact, SAP is currently working with Siemens to deepen the relationship in a multitude of areas. Meanwhile, Siemens continues to leverage SAP solutions to manage its businesses around the world. Specific details of our relationship with Siemens will not be discussed in the media."

Nonetheless, this statement does not address maintenance, a very hot topic within the SAP ecosystem for several years now, given new weight with the entrance of Rimini Street offering SAP maintenance now, despite no public references as of now. For the SAP customer, the good news is that it is legal – both to quit the maintenance contract with SAP and to select a third party provider for these services (in Siemens case, they spend over $40 million in maintenance annually for their 160,000 user system).

But while it is possible, it is important to ask, does it really make sense for an SAP user? And does it make sense for the IT Services suppliers to develop such an offering (besides Rimini Street, it has also been mentioned by some bloggers that IBM and HCL are in the bidding)?

For Siemens, in Germany, almost every supplier of Siemens knows about the ongoing cost savings projects inside of the Siemens group, and this is just one of many... Siemens has used SAP ERP FI for many years – and their group SAP FI is almost a pure custom specific solution, an extremely customized & adapted application and far, far away from the SAP standard. So, Siemens shouldn’t cry too loudly about their maintenance costs, but rather should consider using SAP as a standard software (that’s what it is!) and not as a “development workbench." This would produce much more cost savings around what Siemens spends for the application management of SAP than for the maintenance. Furthermore, SAP ERP FI is absolutely critical for Siemens as a business, and I can't come up with any SAP customer (160,000 users!!) going into the 3rd party maintenance model. Of course the savings could be huge... but so can the potential for disaster (both for Siemens and the 3rd party maintenance services supplier).

In a nutshell, in my view, I just cannot imagine Siemens completely recalling their SAP maintenance, this just wouldn’t make very much sense.

For the services supplier, besides possibly damaging the relationship with SAP (losing favor, co-marketing/development, investment priority, etc), it is also a highly risky business proposition. While 3rd party maintenance may have the potential for high profits, up front profits are quite low and risky, especially when providing maintenance service to such large users with highly complex and adapted systems. It is also a market full of question marks, especially since Oracle roped Rimini Street into its TomorrowNow lawsuit...

Yet, maintenance is still a highly contested model today, especially due to the entrance of SaaS and its subscription based model, without upfront license costs. SAP has to reconsider its maintenance strategy: on one hand, SAP has brought its “enterprise support” of 22% in line with its competitors; on the other hand, the ongoing rumors and chatter about this topic shows that SAP needs to continue to take action to find a solution. But, from my perspective a “third party maintenance market” will only work with a tight cooperation of SAP and its services partners.

(This entry was produced in collaboration between Tobias Ortwein from PAC Munich & Peter Russo from PAC NYC)

Does SAP Have What It Takes To Win SME Business?

I was invited to attend the SAP EMEA SME Customer Panel event in London yesterday with the theme “Clarity in Business”, for the second year running. The customer panel consisted of representatives from the following small and mid-market businesses:

• Dishman (Netherlands): SAP All-in-One with SAP ERP baseline (incl. BI)
• Kompak (Netherlands): SAP Business One and industry add-ons
• Consol (South Africa): SAP BusinessObjects Explorer (accelerated version)
• University of Greenwich (UK): SAP BusinessObjects
• NAG (UK): SAP Business ByDesign
• Shoosmiths (UK): SAP ERP, SAP Professional Services and Legal Management Solution (LMS)
• TMG Telecom (UK): SAP Business ByDesign

These customers largely selected SAP based on its established brand and reputation. Reliability, ease of use, functionality and a strong eco-system to achieve industry-specific enhancements were key factors that favoured SAP’s selection over competitor products such as Sage, Navision, Unit4Agresso and NetSuite. Pre-configured solutions under the “Fast Start” and “Start & Go” programmes has further encouraged uptake of SME solutions as they offer more affordable prices and a fast implementation time.

The ease of use was demonstrated in the demos of BusinessOne, BusinessObjects Explorer and Business ByDesign. I was pleasantly surprised to find that SAP Business ByDesign was in fact quite easy to use as were the other solutions, supported by good navigation and a simple UI. The issue beyond SAP’s control that can impact the performance of the on-demand solution are the bandwidth and browser settings. However, SAP Business ByDesign allows an end-user to check its settings through a “Desktop Check Tool”, which will prove to be helpful.

SAP continues to build on its ecosystem, with increasing focus given to encouraging and supporting some of its larger and stronger VaRs to develop their own network of SAP services partners to fill geographical or expertise gaps under the SAP Extended Business program. This two-tier model will enable these partners to expand their own business as well as allowing SAP to indirectly reach out to more businesses.

The main challenge presented to the SMEs is change management issues, as many of the organisations face resistance from ‘heavy users’ of the system(s) to be replaced. It is highly recommended for organisations to get users to buy-in early on as possible and to provide a lot of training to increase familiarity and to communicate the benefits.

While SAP faces some significant challenges with a move to an unfamiliar SaaS territory and being forced to operating in tough market conditions, the vendor has a lot of potential in the SME space, proving that they have what it takes to win market share against competition. However, SAP is still along way to go particularly with its Business ByDesign solution. The player has recognised the need to build up its customer base to not only strengthen its references but to also achieve volume to become more profitable. SAP continues to face challenges around the TCO of its Business ByDesign solution. Having launched the Feature Pack 2.0 in July 2009, the next Feature Pack is due to be released in mid-2010, by when SAP hopes to cut the total cost of ownership and enhance agility of the solution.