Two Views of the Software Market

A Bridge Too Far? In a blogger briefing this week at SAP’s TechEd, SAP CTO, Vishal Sikka, drew a chart of the application software market and what new areas of technology are of interest to the firm. I’ve tried to reproduce his freehand drawing into the following PowerPoint rendering. I believe I have captured the essence of his
points but apologize in advance if I omitted some of the subtleties of
his sketch.

Vishal discussed how new technologies, like social networks, are
forcing ERP vendors to process new kinds of information (i.e.,
unstructured data that may exist in great volumes with little
organization), understand the explicit and tacit insights within this
data and connect it to the decision making processes of modern
companies.

I agree that new kinds of information are presenting themselves to
businesses. Sadly, most ERP vendors have often ignored new kinds of
information and, instead, focused single-mindedly on those transactions
that eventually end up in a general ledger.

Now, let’s look at the broader picture. ERP vendors are behind the
eight-ball on several data fronts. Here’s my abbreviated list on this
subject:

- event data – Businesses make all kinds of
decisions based on external (and many internal) events that are never
found in an ERP. For example, sourcing personnel make a number of
decisions as to how much to buy, what to pay, etc. based on current
commodity price movements. If a key commodity your firm needs suddenly
jumped up in price, would your ERP system notify a buyer? I doubt it.
Other events are triggered by legislators, competitors, regulators, the
press, bloggers, employees, etc. Does your ERP monitor and assess the
changing market share and business fortunes of your competitors or is
it still trying to perfect last year’s financial statements?

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