Our View of the Future
We are on the verge of an unparalleled revolution that will challenge traditional applications. The rapid IT-empowerment of consumers, social networks, the emerging Web3 embracing intelligent devices, rapidly changing markets, globalization and increasing compliance requirements will bring enough changes to make it hard for legacy applications to keep pace. The sapience-series of events provides you with our (and our partners’) knowledge, experience and insights to help you with the creating strategies for a transition from the current ERP-world into the “post-ERP-age”.
IT and “for ever” are Incompatible
Those of you with a longer track record know it: at some time, there will be a revolution. Mainframes, once the indispensable gold standard of enterprise computing, have turned into a niche-product. We expect this to happen with ERP as we know it today.
We want to alert you to the volatility of enterprise application concepts thus helping you to pave the road for a transition – not because we like to tear down old structures but rather to enable you to use the best alternatives at the right time.
Working The Market
Most of the revenue of ERP tier-1 vendors is generated in the installed bas – a captive market with little or no competition. With the sapience-events, we also want to foster competition, because we believe that this is essential to improve the offerings in about every conceivable aspect.
ERP-suites are among the IT-products that are most difficult to dis- or replace. They have countless interfaces between business and IT. The suite concept, built around a paradigm of tight and proprietary integration, causes lock-in and knocks out competition. Market segments without competition do not provide enough challenge for the dominating vendor.
This happens in about every market and the SAP-market is no exception. As we know from economic theory, this will be a danger for both vendor and customers. Only vendors challenged by permanent competition will provide sustainable performance. On the other hand, chosing from a broad selection means entering fewer compromises and this, in turn, will send the right signals to the market.
Investment Protection and Revolution – an Oxymoron?
ERP is expensive. It is a massive investment calling for optimal amortization. In most cases, this alone will preclude “big bang” migrations. Most ERP-customers are quite satisfied with the core functionality running solid as a rock with near perfect features. The catch, however, is cost of operation. Lowering this burden is a precondition to finance progress. For some it is even key to survival.
Use as Required
For the most part the software industry has failed to bother about billing what actually is used. Most software is perpetually licensed and maintenance agreements cannot be scaled down or partially cancelled should usage have to be reduced. This is a common issue in this industry. However, due to the central role of SAP and the high costs of ownership SAP users are particularly affected by this practice. Looking for alternative concepts and ways to structure usage correctly is about as important as convincing vendors that more flexible concepts like cloud computing have started a new era.
Customers need to be able to adjust usage (and hence maintenance) downward for the following reasons:
- Winding down operations
- Moving out of market segments
- Switching to new technology
- Move to a better product
- Chapter 11
Render unto the Customer the Things that are the Customer’s
We want to inspire rather than impose our views. What helps you best counts. That includes also further investments into classical ERP software provided it is the best fit, bought optimally, and the resulting dependencies appear to be acceptable and manageable. Even here we want to help as we know that many customers may have to resort to further purchases during the lifetime of their ERP-solution.
We Share Your Interest
We are neither an ERP vendor nor ERP users. We want to understand your requirements to start searching for solutions. That requires a dialogue – we love to listen!