The Week Before FKOM: A Midwinter’s Night Dream of SAP’s Prospects for 2019 (in verse)

As I tried to bring myself to write my first post of the year, obviously SAP’s Field Kick-off Meeting (aka FKOM), came to mind as a likely topic. It’s a pivotal moment for SAP and the industry, and with so much of SAP’s future riding on 2019, I pondered late into the night trying to figure out what I could possibly say. At some point fatigue got the better of me, and I fell asleep at my desk. I awoke to the sound of something trotting across my roof, and when I looked down at my screen this what I saw.

Twas the week before FKOM
And all through SAP-land
The time for a strategy now was at hand.
Should the board double-down
On the old tried and true?
Or try something bold, something different,
Something new?

Intelligent Enterprise – not all that clear,
It’s visionary, complex, Too costly, I fear.
With ROI missing, process value uncertain,
Integration’s a dream, hidden ‘neath a dark curtain.
CIOs confused, LOBs not engaged,
And CEOs asking, in a bit of a rage,
Maybe it’s time we rethink the way that we plan
Our future in SAP-land, while we still can.

So what about Leo – the innovation solution,
That’s actually leading to customer confusion?
It’s a platform, a product, a brand new direction,
Looks great in a demo, but there’s been a correction.
Come AI, come ML, Come on IoT.
Customers love it, as long as it’s free.
But charge more for it? Nah, we’ll just wait and see.

Blockchain? Oh please, can we try to get real?
Not tried, not true, no ROI, no deal.
Beat Workday and Salesforce? Though we try and we try
but with head-to-head selling we only scrape by.
We’ll never win if we play at their game
And we can’t seem to figure out how to better our aim.

We need to tell stories of customers who
Took all of our products and really came through,
With something that integrates, changes the game,
Spans silos and processes, makes the others look lame.

Oracle’s easy, they don’t have a clue.
Microsoft’s coming, and Infor is too.
But who’s the real problem: It’s me and it’s you.
We shoot our own feet, can’t get out of the way
And keep trying the same thing day after day.

Could supply chain be that brand new place
Where old SAP can start winning the race?
Supply chains need help, every industry knows.
To get it right means to see how stuff flows
Through networks of partners, the plan has to work.
Though constraints and bottlenecks will continue to lurk.
Use data, drive knowledge, so supply chains take action
That’s intelligent, rational, and not just a reaction.

In supply chain we can blend everything in the kit
Into something that’s bigger, something that fits.
S/4 HANA has data, IBP does the plan
Ariba does networks, and in theory we can
Add C/4 HANA, CX, SuccessFactors too.
And maybe with Fieldglass, we’d have a clue
How to match demand when it spikes real high
With just the right people, and not just scrape by.

Maybe this intelligent enterprise finally can
Make sense to our customers, foes and fans.
They want to know how to place their best bet
On pulling together all the tech that they get
When they buy our cloud, our platform, our vision,
And make that all-mighty important decision
To change and transform and stay in the race.
With SAP software we must make the case
To buy our products for what they can do
When it’s time, break silos, build processes new.
We can make business better, not just sell more tech
And do it we must, or be left in the dreck.

But there’s still this one issue that bedevils us all
It’s customer success, and we’re dropping the ball
Our partners – the big ones – are making the sales
But once the deal’s closed, mediocrity prevails.
The cloud doesn’t change that age-old story:
Inexperience leads to results quite gory.
Projects still fail at an alarming rate.
And in the cloud, that really mucks up our fate.
You can’t get renewals when customers aren’t happy
And too many projects are looking quite crappy.
We know as execs this problem is real,
But changing our culture has little appeal.
When it’s worked for so long and we’ve made all that money
Despite results that are truly not funny.

We also aren’t good at helping small vendors
Our partner program most resembles a blender
That spins them around in a big messy goop
And when it’s done spinning it’s hard to recoup
The lost time and effort in running a race
That’s all too often just ends in disgrace.

There’s so much to be fixed, where do we start?
With customers, always, though that’s just one part.
We need to think bigger and clearer and show
How we can fix industries, help them to grow.
We need to help partners, show them the way.
Which means we, SAP, must enter the fray
And rein in the baddies, reward the ones
Who do right by the customers and get the work done.
Let’s sell integration, and process renewal
And supply chain success, and value accrual.
There are products to build, stories to tell
So get out there and do it, just don’t oversell.

“Hasso sprang to his sleigh, to his team gave a whistle,
And away they all flew like the down of a thistle.
But I heard him exclaim, ‘ere he drove out of sight.
“Happy FKOM to all, and to all, sell it right.”

With apologies to Clement Clarke Moore, Dr. Suess, and doggerel lovers everywhere…..