<rant>
We’ve often discussed SaaS Suites, ERP, specific vendors like SAP and Netsuite, so seeing this tweet by SAP a good month ago of course piqued my curiosity:
RT @VendorShootout: Business #ByDesign: The Most Complete,Adaptable OnDemand Business Solution http://spr.ly/6019RH4S #erp <-reg 2 download
Wow. It looks like SAP’s SaaS offering, Business ByDesign won some competition, let’s check it out.
The White Paper download process is rather convoluted, involves several emails, links to the wrong WP etc – hey, what is this, Fort Knox? Still intrigued, I click around. Here’s more detail about the “shootout”:
A fine roster of vendors, but just as notable are the missing ones – for example NetSuite. SAP’s Business ByDesign has quite a few competitors, including their own other SMB products, but when it comes to SaaS ERP, #1 for now is NetSuite. You simply can’t have a shootout without your major competitor. Now, before anyone calls me biased, anti-SAP, or pro-NetSuite, let me just say I called the other side, too, when I saw they were full of … it:
If it Swims Like a Duck and Quacks Like a Duck, then it Probably is a Duck. The Anti-SAP Duck.
Oh, well, in the meantime the gates of Fort Knox opened, after downloading some other crap report I did not want I finally got the right link to download the SAP ByD report:
“The SAP® Business ByDesign™ solution is the world’s most complete and
adaptable on-demand business offering, designed specifically for midsize
companies that want to grow profitably. SAP Business ByDesign helps you
streamline and optimize “…. yada yada yada. Too much marketing-speak for an analyst report, but keep on reading, perhaps we’ll get to the meat.“SAP Business ByDesign is the world’s most complete and adaptable
on-demand business solution. It’s everything you’d expect from SAP –
at a midmarket price…. delivering an unprecedented customer experience… Unmatched flexibility… Superior customer experience… ” yada yada yawn.:-)
Oh, boy. Naively I was thinking I’d be seeing some sort of analysis, biased as it may be – but this is pure marketing. In fact, on second reading there is nothing wrong with it – if I take it for what it is: a marketing brochure. Published by SAP, quite the right material when downloaded from SAP’s site. Just not a report, certainly not analysis, and does not belong to a site that claims to help buyers with their software selection process.
Help buyers by presenting them with preselected options – of the vendors who pony up. Yes, the ERP Shootout is Pay for Play. Which is all right, after all. There is nothing wrong with organizing a showcase for vendors why buy their stay presence. It’s the positioning I dislike. Buyer side it ain’t, selection it ain’t.. shootout it ain’t.
Don’t get me wrong, SAP’s Business ByDesign is actually a good product, after repeated false starts it is now getting real traction – they don’t need this type of promotion.
As for me, I’ll probably have to revise the title I used before:
Sometimes it swims like a duck, quaks like a duck, yet it’s still not a duck. 🙂
</rant>
