5 Years too late!

I'm Back!

Honestly it's been way too long, but when you read something like this it is finally time to stop being silent and make a few comments.

Before I start with a rant, let's disclose a few fun facts from my life.  SAP Products are not relevant in my current day to day work.  In fact without going into details, I don't see myself involved in the SAP ecosystem at all in the next several years.

Wait,  you posted a link about SAP talking about CRM, why do you even care?  Honestly it's because I care about CRM, not SAP.   It's funny to think that five years ago in March 2013 I was standing in front of a poster promoting a SAP CRM book that was soon to be finished/published.   It was probably I would say at my peak SAP ecosystem involvement and then it was time for the long-goodbye.

Honestly I knew that SAP had hit pretty much it's peak with CRM and remaining trip was basically a survival trip.  Honestly most on-premise SAP CRM folks were going to face the reality of either becoming HANA developers or if they like CRM go work on a different vendor solution.  I took a third path, and well that's for another day.   The CRM vendor war was about finished and SAP had lost and the real answer is that SAP did not have a viable SAAS CRM solution that was competitive with the other vendors.

Fast forward to 2018 and I see an article about SAP wants CRM again?  I really have to be completely skeptical since SAP had from about 2010 to 2014 to get this right.   Instead there was a lot of focus on other things.  Don't get me wrong, the people were always very talented, but the resources /direction needed to compete was never there.  Hybris although nice from a technical solution, brought the wrong culture to SAP.   SAP CRM resources on the cloud side became a closed inward looking ecosystem where glossy marketing was more important than knowledge sharing.  It's still IMHO much easier to learn SAP CRM on-premise with access to a sandbox than any SAP Hybris Cloud CRM solution because the Hybris culture was used to hoarding knowledge.   I don't know how SAP expects to win a CRM market when they make real practical education for their cloud based CRM solution almost impossible to learn without paying for expensive formal learning.

Then again myself and all the other folks who were part of the old SAP CRM community on SCN did what SAP never expected us to do.  We unlocked knowledge for systems that provided you could find a sandbox you could actually learn and become part of the community.  The only two vendors where I see that spirit are Microsoft Dynamics and Salesforce.  Both have vibrant communities that show it's okay not to hoard knowledge as opposed to the Hybris approach.

As I know many folks may not read this, but for my friends in the SAP Ecosystem who may see this, you don't really fully appreciate the power of the community that was destroyed until it is no longer there.  You also realize how much more similar other vendor communities are and are closer to what was there once you journey beyond your preset boundaries.

As for me going forward my focus will continue to be CRM and I hope somewhere down the road to relaunch towards the end of the year with a new perspective that reveals a little more of where I have been, but more focused on the new future.   Let's just leave this at to be continued.





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