Special Report: we've lacked customer intimacy, says SAP UK MD

SAP's UK managing director Steve Rogers has spoken frankly about the company's shortcomings - but promises better things for the future.

By Stuart Lauchlan, news and analysis editor

Customer intimacy has not been SAP's strong point. That's not the view of any of the German firm's rivals, but of its UK managing director Steve Rogers, who used his keynote address at the firm's UK user conference to confess to some of the supplier's shortcomings.

Rogers spoke of his desire to open up a company that is perceived to be closed and resistant to change. "When I joined, I was surprised at how remote SAP felt from its customers. It didn't have the customer at the centre of its universe. What had happened was that there was a little complacency in the way it managed its relationships with its customers," he said. "That is absolutely out of order so we have focused hard on [addressing that] over the last year. We have not arrived at the place we need to be, but we are making progress.

“Customers are seeing more of SAP and SAP is trying to be more proactive in how we support customers and helping leverage the assets you have. We have seen customer satisfaction scores trending in the right direction. They are nowhere near best in class [but] we have set the objective in the UK of [getting up to] best in class, against other SAP subsidiaries and other comparable organisations.

"A little complacency had crept in to the way we managed relationships with customers... We have focused hard on overcoming that in the past 12 months." Steve Rogers, managing director UK and Ireland, SAP

"A little complacency had crept in to the way we managed relationships with customers... We have focused hard on [overcoming] that in the past 12 months,” he continued, adding that customer satisfaction rates are now on the increase. "We are nowhere near best-in-class, but we are making progress," he said, adding: "You guys will be the final arbiters on that.

"I was also shocked by short-termism of the organisation, especially in the UK. A year ago we had a planning horizon of 12 weeks and falling. There is not an IT operation in this room that has a planning horizon of 12 weeks and falling. We are one of your strategic suppliers... but we were trying to convince you to spend money that was not necessarily linked to business benefits, with 12 or six weeks notice, or less."

It's not just customers who have been short-changed, he added. "I was also surprised by the relationship [we had] with our business partners. I felt we had not done a good job of nurturing good, strong, trusting relationships," he said. "We had become arrogant. We expected partners to do stuff just because we were SAP. But there is not the market [to allow that] anymore."

Sweat the assets

Rogers did, however, urge customer to make more of their existing SAP investments. "Sweat the assets," he said, pointing out that customers have functionality they have paid for but not used - which has included its CRM offering in many cases.

"I find it frustrating that the majority of you only seem to be using a modest slice of the software you have acquired. If there really is no business value to you from an upgrade and you have to spend money from a licensing perspective, let’s have a conversation... If you are not leveraging the Business Process Platform or NetWeaver as a starting point I feel you are missing something. It is essential to leverage it."

In fact, UK customers are among the slowest to adopt the latest version of SAP’s core ERP product, according to Martin Riedel, head of SAP’s global upgrade office who tried to encourage upgrades by saying that some organisations had delivered an upgrade at 20 to 30 percent below budget.

User group president Glynn Lowth said customers need to understand the business benefits of upgrading to new technologies. "The key thing are the business benefits, using the technology for business benefits” he said. “You need [people to] comprehend the technology benefits and people to comprehend the business benefits. There are two communities: technical people with the vision, and business people who need to understand the business benefit, not just the cost but the integration, reuse, even how it can used to drive revenue."

One firm that has made a commitment is Garrard, the exclusive jeweller, has become one of the UK’s first organisations to implement SAP ERP version 6. “We are a big brand, with big expansion plans and we needed a world class solution,” said Harry Patel, finance director of Garrard. ““We considered several other packages. We chose SAP because, in our opinion, none of the other systems could do the job and be installed in the right timescale.”

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