The Old Brain
20 years ago, the brain of an organization was at the process level. But now business process is a commodity. Core processes are like the lights on your car. You used to touch them but now they just happen all by themselves. ERP has now moved into being the circulatory system of organizations. Depending on which analyst you listen to, it’s a $30B industry that’s not expanding.
The Slipping Boat
SAP built a multi-billion dollar business building out a process factory. They own the core processes that run business. They will always be there. But the process system is tapped. Information workers (I call them “social workers”) are now operating farther and father from the processes. Instead of a few people touching ERP, a ton of people are touching Social Business Software and doing their work in it. SAP increasingly just happens magically in the backend (like the lights coming on in your car).
The New Brain
The new brain now touches everyone at an organization. But not just them, it also reaches out and touches a company’s partners and customers. While SAP contemplates it’s circulatory system and uses it as the framework to push into extremities and other systems like CRM (sensory system) or SCM (digestive system), it’s hugely missing out on how to capture the new brain.
A New Battleship
It’s not too late, though SAP needs to recognize this and they’re letting huge assets go all over the organization that have been trying to drive this new growth (like Steve Mann, who CIO wrote about today). If I were them, I’d look hard at their acquisition of Business Objects and aggressively push those folks to help steer them in the right direction. This should help them at least begin to tap into the brain (or the stem) and capture a whole new set of SAP users and a ton of money.
So, the $50 Billion question for SAP: Will you aggressively pursue a new growth strategy or stay the course?
