We have the opportunity to attend SAP’s SuccessConnect conference in Las Vergas, the user conference of the former SuccessFactors. In opening Mike Ettling said that attendance is at a record with over 2200 attendees – always a good sign.
- Another SuccessConnect – another transition. Last year it was the first time that SuccessConnect happened with a new leader, Lars Dalgaard having left SAP, and Shawn Price did a very good job re-assuring attendees that the new SuccessFactors would only be better than before, to quell any takeover angst. And overall that has panned out very well for SAP with most of the SuccessFactors clients staying loyal, giving both credit to SAP and the product vision. Of course it doesn’t hurt when all customer need a product, that is being promisingly delivered – which is EmployeeCentral.
12 months later there is a new leader with Mike Ettling, who performed equally well with his first major keynote in front of the customer, user and partner base. A different style, it was all jeans on stage, a few more jokes and bringing back Lars Dalgaard on stage was a different delivery than last year, which – what matters most – was well received by the audience.
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| Rob Ensslin talkes about Global HR Trends |
- Trends, Trends, … No HCM event these days without talk about Millennials. And the keynote even brought them on stage – two new graduates of the SAP sales academy talking about experiences, an then in true – as presumed – Millennial fashion taped Dalgaard’s view on where the industry is – right in to a SAP Jam session. It was all good – but looked a little bit too scripted.
And in general we don’t think at Constellation Research that it’s about your date of birth, but your digital proficiency – read my colleague Alan Lepofsky’s report here). The implications for vendors are significant – as e.g. Jam is not only for the Millennials but for all users. If digital proficiency will postulate a different user experience – as it should – remains something to be seen – beyond SAP.
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| Mike Ettling announces services improvements |
- Major Service Improvements – Unfortunately only at the very end of the keynote – when the audience was as usual a little drained in attention span – Ettling announced a number of key services changes – unfortunately not explicitly mentioned on slides – so I may missed a few – but the key ones were:
- A rolling roadmap of 12 months, which garnered direct applause. A good move as customers deserve to know and plan what’s ahead.
- A separation of test and production. I think that is already the case – and probably this didn’t come over as clear as supposed to, meaning more that customers will have access to the new version before it goes to production. Certainly something SuccessFactors needed to address.
- A release document 6 weeks before cut over. Not sure how late or early SAP customers learnt what is in a release before, but this is certainly a welcome change, too.
We need to find out more on these – and see if they are meant for both SAP HCM and SuccessFactors products and more, stay tuned. Ettling has an extensive services background from his time at NorthgateArinso and Unisys – so I am pretty sure he knows what stands behind these announcements, which ultimately should be all for the better for customers and ecosystem overall. Now SAP needs to deliver on them .
MyPOV
A successful start for this SuccessConnect – next executive transition handled well – stay tuned for the event report in the next days. We had asked SAP for roadmaps since the longest time – something that SuccessFactors as a SaaS company claimed it couldn’t (or needn’t) to do – so this is a change for the better.And more on overall SAP strategy and products:
- Event Report - Sapphire - SAP finds its (unique) path to cloud - read here
- What I would like SAP to address this Sapphire - read here
- News Analysis - SAP becomes more about applications - again - read here
- Market Move - SAP acquires Fieldglass - off to the contingent workforce - early move or reaction? Read here.
- SAP's startup program keep rolling – read here.
- Why SAP acquired KXEN? Getting serious about Analytics – read here.
- SAP steamlines organization further – the Danes are leaving – read here.
- Reading between the lines… SAP Q2 Earnings – cloudy with potential structural changes – read here.
- SAP wants to be a technology company, really – read here
- Why SAP acquired hybris software – read here.
- SAP gets serious about the cloud – organizationally – read here.
- Taking stock – what SAP answered and it didn’t answer this Sapphire [2013] – read here.
- Act III & Final Day – A tale of two conference – Sapphire & SuiteWorld13 – read here.
- The middle day – 2 keynotes and press releases – Sapphire & SuiteWorld – read here.
- A tale of 2 keynotes and press releases – Sapphire & SuiteWorld – read here.
- What I would like SAP to address this Sapphire – read here.
- Why 3rd party maintenance is key to SAP’s and Oracle’s success – read here.
- Why SAP acquired Camillion – read here.
- Why SAP acquired SmartOps – read here.
- Next in your mall – SAP and Oracle? Read here.
And more about SAP technology:
- News Analysis - SAP commits to CloudFoundry and OpenSource - key steps - but what is the direction? - Read here.
- News Analysis - SAP moves Ariba Spend Visibility to HANA - Interesting first step in a long journey - read here
- Launch Report - When BW 7.4 meets HANA it is like 2 + 2 = 5 - but is 5 enough - read here
- Event Report - BI 2014 and HANA 2014 takeaways - it is all about HANA and Lumira - but is that enough? Read here.
- News Analysis – SAP slices and dices into more Cloud, and of course more HANA – read here.
- SAP gets serious about open source and courts developers – about time – read here.
- My top 3 takeaways from the SAP TechEd keynote – read here.
- SAP discovers elasticity for HANA – kind of – read here.
- Can HANA Cloud be elastic? Tough – read here.
- SAP’s Cloud plans get more cloudy – read here.
- HANA Enterprise Cloud helps SAP discover the cloud (benefits) – read here.