Disconnect To Reconnect
All journeys, no matter how fruitful, come to an end. After a little over nine and half years I decided to leave SAP last week. What a journey this has been! Making Design Thinking real I was hired into a multidisciplinary corporate strategy team, set up by Hasso Plattner, the chairman of SAP’s supervisory board, […]
"Trying to be nice" Becomes Less Important For Developers As They Gain Experience
No, I didn’t say this, but 56,033 developers in 173 countries who responded to recent Stack Overflow’s developer survey did. I have always enjoyed going through these surveys to validate my several hypotheses and learn new things. I would strongly encourage you to go through the results from the most recent survey here. Here are some interesting […]
SaaStr on CXO Talk: “At the Beginning It’s All Hustle and Chutzpah” – Video + Transcript
The other day as you may have seen Michael Krigsman from CXO Talk and I did an in-depth sessions about learnings about the next great generation of SaaS companies, and how they are scaling. The video is embedded below and got 5k+ views just over the weekend so it seems to have hit some nerve. […]
Disruptive Enterprise Platform Sales: Why Buy Anything, Buy Mine, Buy Now – Part III
This is the third and the last post in the three-post series on challenges associated with sales of disruptive platforms such as Big Data and how you can effectively work with your prospects and others to mitigate them. If you missed the previous posts the first post was about “why buy anything” and the second […]
Disruptive Enterprise Platform Sales: Why Buy Anything, Buy Mine, Buy Now – Part II
This is the second post in the three-post series on challenges associated with sales of disruptive platforms such as Big Data and how you can effectively work with your prospects and others to mitigate them. If you missed the first post in the series it was about “why buy anything.” This post is about “why […]
SAP Buys Concur – Interesting Mix!
I have used Concur system for several years and had seen it evolve over time. Earlier this quarter, when I saw this announcement about Concur, Uber and AirBnb coming together, I knew that they are aiming big, given Concur’s active partnership with the likes of United, Marriott, IHG and Avis. There is definite meat behind […]
Disruptive Enterprise Platform Sales: Why Buy Anything, Buy Mine, Buy Now – Part I
I think of enterprise software into two broad categories – products or solutions and platform. The simplest definition of platform is you use that to make a solution that you need. While largely I have been a product person I have had significant exposure to enterprise platform sales process. I have worked with many sales […]
Recruiting End Users For Enterprise Software Applications
As I work with a few enterprise software start-ups I often get asked about how to find early customers to validate and refine early design prototypes. The answer is surprisingly not that complicated. The following is my response to a recent question on…
When customers want a product roadmap, do this instead
Product roadmaps suck. There, I said it. <exhales> OK, let’s explain that. Roadmaps that are real, living documents representing what you will deliver…are awesome. But that may not be the case for you; it wasn’t for me. Instead, a product roadmap was at its core a sales document for a prospect call. A lot of effort, with […]
Decision flow for customer feature requests
If you manage a product or service in the business-to-business (B2B) market, customer requests for features will be a regular part of your work. Requests come in through the sales team, service reps, and senior management, as well as directly from customers themselves. It’s a disruptive insertion of new items for your agenda. That disruption […]
Enterprise apps most profitable for mobile developers
After years of languishing in the backwaters of unsexy boredom, enterprise software has become sexy. This change reflects growing expectations among business users that software should be easy to deploy and consume. With $7 billion of VC money going to enterprise startups in 2013, it’s clear that enterprise software is now the darling of just […]
Mobile Shows That The World is Not for Dummies
It’s far too easy to hate statistics and use them to make a point simultaneously. Let’s use them to show that the world is not comprised of dummies and idiots. Beginning with the trends published by Mary Meeker about mobile adoption. She shredded some statistical constructs about the PC industry and its projected growth by […]
7 Crucial Tips for Choosing the Right Contract Management Solution
Managing your contracts effectively is essential for business success, but it can be tough to stay on top of expiration dates and approval processes, especially when half your time seems to be spent just trying to find contracts that have been lost in the shuffle. The right contract management solution can help immensely by keeping […]
Enterprise software: ‘Do our customers love us?’
A recent conversation with analyst Ray Wang, who appeared on CxOTalk (see video embedded below), makes clear that a significant business model shift is taking place in many companies. This shift marks a turning point away from feature-based selling to a broader focus on the ultimate outcomes that reflect customers’ business goals and got me thinking about […]
Chasing That Killer Application Of Big Data
I often get asked, “what is the killer application of Big Data?” Unfortunately, the answer is not that simple. In the early days of enterprise software, it was the automation that fueled the growth of enterprise applications. The vendors that eventually managed to stay in business and got bigger were/are the ones that expanded their […]
